Domain 04 · Air
A runway is a
coordinate
Six air systems that launch from something that is not an airfield and finish the mission with the link dead.
The thesis
Air power in a peer fight is not limited by aircraft performance. It is limited by bases, by bandwidth, and by permission.
Every fixed airfield inside the first island chain is a surveyed coordinate with a published runway heading and a known maximum on ground. It is a target set, not a sanctuary. Every uncrewed system built in the last twenty years assumes a datalink, and peer adversaries have spent those same twenty years learning how to remove datalinks. And the hardest constraint on autonomous lethality is not technical at all: a commander cannot authorize what he cannot audit, and a government cannot defend in public what it cannot reconstruct. Programs die there, not in flight test.
The six systems below answer those three constraints in that order. Each one launches without a runway or without a fixed site. Each one carries the complete mission model on the node, so degradation is toward itself rather than toward a cloud. Each one hash-chains every observation, classification and engagement into REVENANT LEDGER, so the sortie can be reconstructed by a judge advocate, an accident board, or a Senate staffer.
We are not claiming better aerodynamics. We are claiming a better set of constraints — and every product page states what its system cannot do, with the number attached.
The air arsenal
Built at FORGE-1Air domain key figures
Read this part
The hard parts, decided
A spec sheet with no engineering in it is a brochure. These are the constraints that actually shaped the air systems, and what each one cost us to close.
Seven decisions
- A laser link dies in cloud. So the aircraft carries two quiet channels, not one. Optical while the air is clear; a 94 GHz directional channel at 14 nm when it is not, carrying the identical intent-only payload. Handover is automatic in 400 ms and signed.
- MADL is government-controlled. So it is an installed option, not a dependency. The teaming baseline is Link 16 plus our own directional channel — both ours — and WRAITH is a useful flight member with or without the furnished terminal.
- A printed airframe cannot be reused. So the recoverable round is not printed. POLTERGEIST ships in two build standards: expendable on printed structure, and ISR-R on a wrought machined spar, qualified to 40 flights and recovered under a guided parafoil. Same tube, same bus.
- Regeneration time moves with the weather. So the round never sees the weather. BANSHEE is a sealed all-up round in a launcher-conditioned canister, and nine minutes holds from −40 °C to +60 °C.
- A hover test flatters a wind limit. So SHADE's 25 kt is measured flying the mission profile instead. It is the smaller number and the only one you can plan against, because no sortie is a hover.
- Density altitude costs weight. As it does on every rotorcraft ever certified. SPECTER-X holds full MTOW to 9,000 ft DA on a flat-rated powerplant, and above that we publish the whole weight-altitude chart rather than one flattering hover ceiling.
- Cognitive EW needs an adversary that reacts. Against one that does not, there is nothing to generate — because a fixed emitter is already solved. REQUIEM answers it from the library in 240 ms, deterministically and releasably. Two modes, chosen by the emitter.
Full parameter tables, engineering rationale and open risks for every system are on the product pages. Imagery on this site is engineering visualisation; WRAITH first flight is targeted for Q1 2029.
Programs & partnerships
Talk to the air program
Classified performance, signature data and integration detail are discussed in a cleared facility. Start here and we will arrange it.