Airborne networks (ANs), such as networks of aircraft or flying drones, are finding use in various applications. Research on ANs is performed in this article from a communication protocol design perspective. Multiple flying objects with same or similar tasks generally form a flocking network where each object is considered as an airborne node. High probability of hiding (HPH)-oriented communication, which aims to avoid easy signal detection by adversaries, is thus very important for a robust AN. To protect the data of wireless communications, HPH requires to hide the very existence of radio signals [7]. Chapter 2 focuses on the robust routing protocols in ANs. Particularly, an AN equipped with the latest antenna technology, called multi-beam directional antenna (MBDA), is mainly considered. MBDA allows the simultaneous packet delivery in multiple directions without RF interference among the antenna beams. We have found that MBDAs can actually bring new opportunities to enhance the popularly used AN routing scheme, i.e., optimized link state routing protocol (OLSR). In particular, MBDAs enable OLSR to better achieve HPH, a critical requirement in many applications with adversary nodes nearby which try to eavesdrop the signals. Chapter 3 aims to solve a challenging issue in the ANs: in a three-dimensional (3D) airborne network which performs flocking operations (i.e., changing formations from time to time), how do we efficiently establish/maintain one or multiple paths between region regions (i.e., groups of airborne nodes with location proximity and task similarity), during the dynamic airborne nodes flocking process? A distributed routing scheme is desired that only uses localized message exchange (among 1-hop neighbors) without GPS position information. In Chapter 4, a task-adaptive, quality of autonomy (QoA)-based band routing scheme is analyzed. Adaptive Batch Coding (ABC)-based transport and routing layer co-design realizes smart inter-region routing for high priority task-command traffic. Scored time-delay embedding (STDE) technique provides a way for finding out and representing the time series’ periodicity quantitatively, which is suitable for airborne node stability estimation. Multi-time-granularity prediction (MTGP)-based band routing scheme is utilized to make the airborne communication support QoA metrics. Early backup (detour) node/path setup is achieved by the prediction results.