Seeing potential in a design that other Kiith were quickly abandoning, Somtaaw engineers went back to the drawing board both with the frigate itself and the drones. The major breakthrough in drone design came from studying the attack swarms used by the protectors of Khadesh. Using that technology as a baseline, engineers were able to design and build their own Swarmer drone fighter, which retained the firepower of the old static drone but combined it with full maneuverability and a combat AI. Now that the drones were able to control themselves, the space aboard the command frigate that was being used for drone techs and their equipment could be utilized for weaponry.

The result of all this design work is the Hive class ADF, a heavily armored frigate armed with twin medium mass drivers in a fixed forward mount and having the capacity to launch and maintain six Swarmer class attack drones. The Hive's mass drivers are not powerful enough to handle another capital ship all by themselves, but are very effective in supplying heavy fire support for the Swarmer wing. While the Hive is a much more rounded combat craft than the Puppeteer, it is still vulnerable to massed strike craft attacks if its compliment of Swarmers is destroyed. Hive squadrons will often enter combat first and use their drones to draw fire away from more valuable manned strike craft, and then retire for a few minutes to rebuild their Swarmer compliment before returning to battle.