The TERN initiative seems to have expanded from a information, surveillance and reconnaissance node to a shooting platform as well, with concept art showing the aircraft toting weapons capable of pinpoint strikes—the latest of which is shown at the top of this story.


This fits perfectly into the Navy’s increasingly high-priority movement to diffuse its combat capability over more assets and larger areas. This is known as Distributed Lethality, and it is becoming a very big deal on multiple levels within the halls of the Pentagon.