Air · Group 3 VTOL ISR and strike
Specter
Hovers like a rotorcraft. Cruises like a wing. One airframe.
Mission
Fourteen hours on station from a clearing thirty feet on a side.
The Group 3 ISR mission is currently split between two aircraft: a rotor aircraft that can launch anywhere but cannot stay, and a fixed-wing aircraft that can stay but needs a catapult, a net, or a runway. Buying both means training both, sustaining both and shipping both — and it means the aircraft on the pad is regularly the wrong one for the tasking that just arrived.
SPECTER-X is a 185 lb hybrid-electric aircraft that lifts off on four electric ducted fans, transitions in twenty-two seconds to a heavy-fuel pusher, and holds custody of a track for a working day. It launches from a road, a rooftop, a jungle clearing or the fantail of a STYX, and it comes back to the same square without GPS.
Key figures
Specification
SPECTER-X parameters
Hover figures are density-altitude dependent and the binding constraint on the whole aircraft. We publish the chart, not a single number.
| Class | Group 3 VTOL, hybrid-electric |
|---|---|
| Maximum takeoff weight | 185 lb (83.9 kg) |
| Empty weight | 96 lb |
| Fuel | 47 lb, JP-8 / F-24 |
| Payload, max | 42 lb |
| Length | 9.2 ft |
| Span | 16.4 ft, folding to 4.1 ft — two transit cases |
| Cruise lift-to-drag | 14.2 |
| Assembly | 2 people, 11 min, cases to running |
| Lift | 4 × electric ducted fans, 14 kW peak combined, doors close in cruise |
|---|---|
| Cruise | 12 hp heavy-fuel rotary driving a pusher prop |
| Generator | 3.2 kW — carries the electrical load and trickle-charges the pack |
| Battery | 2.4 kWh — 90 s hover at MTOW plus a one-fan-out landing reserve |
| Transition | 22 s, about 0.9% of the battery |
| Rotary engine TBO | 300 h today, 600 h target |
| Endurance | 14.0 h at 62 kt loiter with a 22 lb payload |
|---|---|
| Endurance at max payload | 8.5 h |
| Cruise / dash | 78 / 105 kt |
| Service ceiling | 18,000 ft density altitude |
| Hover ceiling at MTOW | 9,000 ft DA |
| Combat radius | 240 nm with 6 h on station |
| Transition crosswind limit | 22 kt |
| Duct FOD inspection | Every 25 landings on dirt, 100 on paved |
| Payload bay | 1.9 ft³, plus 2 wing hardpoints at 22 lb each |
|---|---|
| ISR fit | 8 lb 4-axis EO/MWIR gimbal with 60× EO and a 1.06 µm designator; 6 lb wideband ESM; 11 lb SAR/GMTI |
| Strike fit | 4 × SHADE-M, or 2 × 22 lb precision glide munitions |
| Launch and recovery | VTOL from a 30 × 30 ft pad, a truck bed, a ship deck or a clearing. No catapult, no net, no runway. |
| Terminal recovery guidance | Visual-inertial against a fiducial, 0.4 m. GPS not required. |
| Comms | REVENANT MESH, BEACON SATCOM, Link 16 receive |
| Autonomy | REVENANT CORE, full mission model resident, LEDGER-signed collection |
| Turnaround | 18 min, refuel from a jerry can |
| Unit cost at rate | $410k |
| Rate | 2,000 per year from FORGE-1 |
Concept of operations
A working day of custody
Emplace anywhere, transition, persist, recover in the same square. None of it needs a site, a survey, or a satellite.
Four phases
-
Emplace anywhere
Two transit cases out of a pickup bed. Two people, eleven minutes to assembled and running. The pad is any level thirty-foot square: a road, a rooftop, a clearing, the fantail of a STYX. No catapult to align, no net to rig, no site survey.
-
Transition
Vertical to 120 ft on the lift fans, nose over, rotary engine to power, fans stop and the duct doors close. Twenty-two seconds and about 0.9% of the battery. Above this point the lift system is dead weight and we know it.
-
Persist
62 kt loiter with a 22 lb multi-INT payload for fourteen hours. The generator carries the electrical load; the battery exists only for hover and for a fan-out landing. The aircraft holds custody of a track for a working day and signs every collection into LEDGER at the edge.
-
Recover in the same square
Descend, restart the fans, transition to hover, land on a fiducial to 0.4 m in full GPS denial. Refuel from a jerry can. Airborne again in eighteen minutes.
Engineering rationale
Why it is built this way
We paid 2.4 hours of endurance to delete the launch site. That is the whole argument.
Thirty-one pounds of dead weight, on purpose
The lift system is 31 lb of fans, motors, ducts and doors that a fixed-wing aircraft of the same span does not carry, and the ducts cost about 4.8 counts of parasite drag. Together they are worth roughly 2.4 hours of the endurance SPECTER would otherwise have. Cruise lift-to-drag is 14.2 against about 19 for a clean fixed-wing of the same span.
We took that trade deliberately. A Group 3 aircraft that needs a catapult, a net or a runway needs a place. A place is a coordinate, and a coordinate is a target. Fourteen hours from a jungle clearing beats sixteen and a half hours from a site the adversary surveyed last year.
It also collapses two fleets into one. A battalion that today carries a rotor aircraft for the launch-anywhere profile and a fixed-wing aircraft for the stay-long profile carries one aircraft, one training pipeline, one set of ground support equipment and one spares bin.
Program candor
Open engineering risks
Hot and high is the one that will bite a customer first.
Four of them
- Hot and high is a weight-altitude chart, not a wall. Like every rotorcraft ever certified, SPECTER-X trades weight for density altitude: full MTOW to 9,000 ft DA, and above that a published reduction in fuel or payload. The powerplant is flat-rated so shaft power holds to the corner of the chart rather than falling off with ambient. We publish the whole chart rather than one hover-ceiling number, because a single number in this class is a marketing decision, not an engineering one.
- Heavy-fuel rotary time between overhaul. 300 hours against a 600 hour target. On 14 h sorties that is an overhaul every 21 sorties, and it is the most likely source of customer complaint in year one.
- Transition in gusts. The 22-second transition is the highest-risk regime on the aircraft. Cleared to 22 kt crosswind. Above that we do not fly it, and the control authority work is ongoing.
- Duct foreign object damage. Blade erosion on unprepared ground drives a 25-landing inspection interval on dirt.
What it carries and what it cues
All air systemsISR programs
Send us your worst pad
Density altitude, sea state, payload and dwell. We will tell you what it costs and what we cannot do.
Every figure on this page is a design target derived from first-principles analysis, not a measured result. No SPECTER has been built or flown. Where a number here is later measured and comes out worse, we will publish the measured number. No export-controlled information is published on this site.