Each node requires two addresses on the compute network: one for the compute address and another for the Baseboard Management Controller (BMC), which is used for hardware monitoring and power control.

Considered a "pseudo satellite," Vulture may one day serve as a persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platform, or as an aerial node in a global communications network.

The node could lose network connectivity to the other nodes, the heartbeat process could be stopped, there might be any one of a number of environmental occurrences, and so on.