The systems and methods described herein include, among other things, processes for providing low latency packet transport in ad hoc networks. To this end, the systems, in certain embodiments, employ an architecture for communication nodes in MANETs, in which the delay introduced in “routing” or “relaying” the packet is reduced. In these systems invention, the data plane of the OSI stack at relay nodes is collapsed so that bits entering the node are re-energized “on-the-fly”, with only a brief pause. A transit key in each packet, inserted by the originator of the packet, is used to index into a transit table to determine one of three actions to perform—drop, keep, or retransmit the packet. A control plane determines, for each packet, whether it should be re-energized or not. The control algorithm ensures that only nodes along the path from the source to the destination re-energize (relay) the packet.