The Royal Air Force is taking its initial steps into a new era of networked warfare with the planned introduction of its combat cloud and the accelerated service entry of a drone swarm capability.Commanders say the Royal Air Force-developed Nexus combat cloud can equip any platform on land, sea or air with the ability to transmit and receive data from a multitude of sensors. Meanwhile, the development of the Alvina swarming drone capability has focused on a command-and-control (C2) system capable of flying and coordinating 20 unmanned aircraft systems to tempt and confuse enemy air defenses.The Nexus cloud, born from the Royal Air Force's (RAF) Air Information Experimentation program, presents users, from laptops and tablets, with "a real-time common operating picture constructed from data ingested into a ground-based Nexus node from a variety of information feeds," Air Chief Marshal Mike Wig-ston, the RAF's chief of staff, told the service's Global Air Chiefs' Conference on July 14.
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