AEVEX shows off jet-powered Specter attack drone at AUSA

AEVEX is showing a full-size model of Specter, its new jet-powered one-way attack drone, at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting in Washington this week, along with a maritime drone line built from its recent purchase of BlackSea Technologies.

The California-based company announced Specter on Sept. 23 as a high-speed, turbojet-powered autonomous strike platform under development with Divergent Technologies, a Los Angeles company that builds structures through additive manufacturing. AEVEX says Specter will come in ground-launched and air-launched versions and has a swappable nose section that can carry explosive warheads, electronic warfare equipment or surveillance sensors without redesigning the airframe.

The drone uses AEVEX’s CompassX autonomy software, which the company says is built to keep working when GPS and communications are jammed. AEVEX has not released Specter’s speed, range, size, payload weight, price or flight test schedule, and has not named a customer.

Divergent’s role is to make the drone easier to build in large numbers. Its DAPS production system designs and prints complex structural parts digitally, which AEVEX says lets it change the design quickly and plan for high-rate production from the start of engineering. The model at AUSA is the first time the company has shown Specter at full size.

AEVEX is best known for the Phoenix Ghost loitering munition, which the United States sent to Ukraine starting in 2022, and for larger Group 3 drones such as Disruptor. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange this year. It also buys rocket-assisted takeoff motors for its drones from X-Bow Systems, which has delivered hundreds of them under a $12 million contract.

The company used AUSA to introduce AEVEX Maritime Systems, a new unit formed after it acquired BlackSea Technologies, a Baltimore-area maker of uncrewed surface and underwater vessels that supplies the U.S. Navy and other U.S. forces. The acquisition was valued at about $650 million. AEVEX says its portfolio now covers air, surface and subsurface drones, aimed at an army expecting to fight with jammed navigation, cut communications and supply lines under attack.