In two short years, the Pentagon went from launching a “stealth bike” competition through its Small Business Innovation Research award to having prototypes at an industry expo in Florida.

“Silent Hawk” and “Nightmare” are on display for journalists at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Special Operations Forces Industry Conference at the Tampa Convention Center.

Defense One got an up-close look Wednesday at the Silent Hawk by Virginia-based Logos and the Nightmare from LSA Autonomy. The projects are funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The bikes make less noise than a 55-decibel conversation in quiet mode, can reach speeds of 80 miles per hour, and operate on “mystery fuel” and lithium-ion electric batteries.

One of the first things Defense One asked about were the lithium batteries, which have been known to explode.

“They have an active cooling system in it that insures that even if there is a cell failure that one cell will fail with no explosion. It will remain operational,” said Logos engineer Alex Dzwill.

Special operations forces, Marines and soldiers will be happy to know that both bikes also run on a variety of fuels, including JP-8, Jet A-1, gasoline and propane.

“If it’s gasoline, tell it it’s gasoline. Tell it it’s something else — it will figure it out,” Mr. Dzwill said.

“Could you run it on lipids, olive oil?” Defense One asked.

“Theoretically, yeah,” the engineer replied.

Silent Hawk weighs in at 350 pounds and Nightmare at 400 pounds.

“Our system is a bigger brother. We’ve got a much bigger bike for the same type of requirements,” Jean-Marc Henriette, chief engineer at LSA Autonomy, told the website.

Logos brought their Silent Hawk stealth bike prototype to #SOFIC2016 (super quiet vroom vroom) pic.twitter.com/AEyy4ewXdP — Patrick Tucker (@DefTechPat) May 24, 2016

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