Bastion Defense Systems has published the first capability brief for the MV-12 Hive: a purpose-built mothership truck whose rear cargo cell opens like a ramp hangar, exposing vertical and horizontal drone racks ready for rapid launch.
The concept is simple on purpose. Drive into a hide, drop stabilizers, open the rear, and push air vehicles into the sky without lining crews up on an open airstrip. Racks hold a mix of attritable strike drones and longer-endurance ISR airframes that can stay on a live video and telemetry link.
In strike mode, operators assign a ziel—target coordinates, laser handoff, or a track from Clarity EO/IR or Horizon overwatch—and the selected drones leave the racks on a one-way or recoverable attack profile. Bastion stresses rules-of-engagement software, blue-force filters, and abort paths; the truck is a launcher and C2 node, not an unsupervised weapon.
In live-UAV mode, the same racks field reusable aircraft for convoy overwatch, route reconnaissance, or depot security. Video returns to the truck shelter over LinkGrid mesh when line-of-sight holds, or climbs to a roof-mounted VSAT terminal when the formation needs beyond-line-of-sight control.
That VSAT path is the third employment: orbital satellite backhaul for remote crews. A Hive truck can sit in a forest hide while pilots and payload operators work from a partner TOC hundreds of kilometres away—useful when local spectrum is contested or when ministries want centralized employment of forward-launched drones.
Engineering details in the program sheet include shock-isolated racks, auto-inventory RFID on each air vehicle, a fire-suppression bay, and a hybrid APU so the shelter can run silent-watch power for radios, VSAT, and medical inverter takeoffs without idling the main truck engine.
Hive sits beside Wasp and Horizon in Bastion’s unmanned family: those are the aircraft; Hive is how you mass, move, and command them from a road-mobile cell. First partner evaluations are framed for 2026–2027 training calendars under investor-owned Bastion with CEO Simon von Rothschild.