Spectre

"Flying fortress of bloon doom."

- Official Description

Spectre is the final upgrade on path 1 for the Monkey Ace in Bloons TD 5. It costs $15300 on Easy, $18000 on Medium, $19440 on Hard, and $21600 on Impoppable. It makes the plane continuously fire bombs and darts very quickly directly at the bloons instead of firing eight darts. The bombs can pop lead bloons and black bloons. With the Spy Plane upgrade, they can target any bloon or MOAB class bloon within range and can easily destroy ceramics, rainbows, and other bloons that result from MOAB class bloons.

With a update, the bombs from the Spectre pops 2 layers of Bloons instead of 1. As a result, the Spectre is now hands-down the cheapest effective tower against non-MOAB class Bloons.

It doesn't have target priority and just shoots whatever's closest. To counteract this, it's better to place it off to the side so that the Bloons are always coming towards it. That way, it will generally target "First". However, it stops shooting if the plane flies too far off-screen.

Trivia

 * The Spectre is based on a real US gunship, the AC-130 Spectre.
 * Thus, this explains the reason why in Bloon Monkey City that the AC130 Construction Hangar is required for the Spectre.
 * It shoots a lot faster than the previous upgrades (300 spm).
 * If you look carefully at the artwork, you can see the words "From: Ace" and "To: Bloons" are tagged on the first and second bombs.
 * If the Spectre does not have the Spy Plane upgrade, it can still target Camo Bloons although it will not pop them.
 * As of Mar 22, 2012, Spectre bombs can pop Black Bloons and Zebra Bloons.
 * Unlike the Neva-Miss Targeting upgrade from the Monkey Ace, projectiles will not turn and follow bloons when they miss, mainly because of their speed.
 * One Spectre can easily take down Ceramic Bloon rushes like round 76.
 * Only one Spectre is enough to beat an entire beginner track on easy, even on medium. It can't beat any difficulty alone on Switch, Castle, Drag Strip, Death Valley or on extreme tracks. The player can try this with Cash Injection.
 * One Spectre can destroy a MOAB easily, unless there is more than one spaced out, due to the fact that the bombs explode in a short radius, and can damage about 1 or 2 MOABs. Only the sharp darts are able to attack more than one.
 * Note that a 4/2 Spectre by itself cannot damage a DDT. This is because though a Spectre can pop black bloons and leads bloons separately by shooting a combination of darts and bomb shells, a DDT has immunities to both ammunition, making the Spectre useless against a DDT without support of Monkey Intelligence Bureau. However the Spectre still can destroy the DDT in Bloons Monkey City Mobile.
 * The design of a Spectre Monkey Plane can also represent a theme called "Defending Our Skies".