Latest / The SME Stream / How cheap drones became the defining weapon of modern conflict

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How cheap drones became the defining weapon of modern conflict · The SME Stream

0:02
Speaker 1: The war in Ukraine has turned the humble quad copter
0:06
Speaker 1: into one of the most important weapons of the modern battlefield.
0:09
Speaker 1: With cheap first person viewed racing drones now hunting tanks,
0:14
Speaker 1: artillery and infantry at close range, consumer gear you can
0:18
Speaker 1: buy off the shelf, DJI style camera drones, FPV racers,
0:23
Speaker 1: even three D printed parts and Ali Express components have
0:28
Speaker 1: been hacked, hardened, and networked into a vast lethal drone ecosystem,
0:33
Speaker 1: stretching from trench lines to deep behind enemy territory. I'm
0:38
Speaker 1: Peter Griffin from Business Desk, and in this episode of
0:40
Speaker 1: the Business of Tech, Powered by Two Degrees, we dive
0:43
Speaker 1: into how a nearly four year war in Europe has
0:47
Speaker 1: quietly rewritten the playbook for air power, not with stealth bombers,
0:51
Speaker 1: but with drones that started life in hobby shops and
0:55
Speaker 1: electronics stores. Those viral cockpit style FPV clips on social
1:00
Speaker 1: media are just the visible tip for much larger transformation.
1:04
Speaker 1: Commercial off the shelf drones have democratized air power, giving
1:09
Speaker 1: small units and even non state actors precision strike and
1:13
Speaker 1: real time surveillance once reserved for superpowers. So this week
1:17
Speaker 1: I'm talking to Fenix uas founder and drone expert, doctor
1:22
Speaker 1: Andrew Shelley, one of New Zealand's foremost authorities on unmanned
1:26
Speaker 1: aircraft operations, regulation and training. Andrew unpacks what Ukraine, the
1:32
Speaker 1: Middle East and other recent conflicts really tell us about
1:35
Speaker 1: the future of drone warfare, from fiber optic, tethered FPV
1:40
Speaker 1: drones and visual navigation guidance to how electronic warfare and
1:44
Speaker 1: counter drone systems are revolving. We also bring a story
1:48
Speaker 1: back home looking at how New Zealand companies and agencies
1:52
Speaker 1: are using drones today in agritech conservation, infrastructure, inspection and training,
1:58
Speaker 1: and where the real productivity game will come from. Andrew
2:01
Speaker 1: explains why search and rescue is still an unrealized opportunity
2:05
Speaker 1: when it comes to drones, how AI enabled agrotech drones
2:09
Speaker 1: could transform everything from wilding pine control to pasture management,
2:14
Speaker 1: and what needs to change in New Zealand's regulatory settings
2:17
Speaker 1: to unlock that potential while managing emerging security risks. So,
2:23
Speaker 1: if you want to understand how backyard drone tinkering turned
2:26
Speaker 1: into a defining technology of modern war and what that
2:29
Speaker 1: means for New Zealand farms, forests, coastlands, and defense planners.
2:34
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for my conversation with doctor Andrew Shelley. Andrew Shelley,
2:44
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Business of Tech. How are you doing.
2:46
Speaker 2: OHI thank you very much. I'm really happy to be here.
2:49
Speaker 1: Well, really great to have you on. I think Andrew,
2:52
Speaker 1: you're probably New Zealand's foremost expert on drones, both from
2:57
Speaker 1: in a practical sense but also in a theory medical
3:00
Speaker 1: sense as well. You've done at least two degrees, the
3:02
Speaker 1: focus of which was on drones. You're an economist, you've
3:07
Speaker 1: been involved in the aviation sector for a long time
3:10
Speaker 1: and currently you are the founder of Phoenix Uas, which
3:16
Speaker 1: is you've got a team of people. They're probably one
3:19
Speaker 1: of the biggest consultancies in New Zealand focused in this area.
3:22
Speaker 2: Oh yes, that's right. It would be the largest consultancy
3:26
Speaker 2: focused on the area. A big part of what we
3:29
Speaker 2: do is training, so we have multiple instructors. We'd be
3:34
Speaker 2: running courses for most weeks of the year. We run
3:39
Speaker 2: at least one course, might be multiple courses and multiple
3:42
Speaker 2: locations across the country. We'd have over a thousand people
3:46
Speaker 2: through our training school each year, and that includes both
3:50
Speaker 2: civilian and government people, including New Zealand depends forts, so
3:57
Speaker 2: we see all of the regulations from both sides of
4:00
Speaker 2: the fence. We also are one of the major writers
4:06
Speaker 2: of what's called expositions. So if someone wants to obtain
4:10
Speaker 2: certification from the Civil Aviation Authority to do something that
4:14
Speaker 2: sits outside the basic part one in one rules, you
4:17
Speaker 2: need to provide an operating manual of how you'll do
4:20
Speaker 2: that and how you do it safely. Civil Aviation Authority
4:24
Speaker 2: assesses that and requests changes if they need to, and
4:28
Speaker 2: then ultimately you get certification granted and you operate in
4:31
Speaker 2: accordance with that manual. We have as clients over one
4:36
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty of the three hundred that are currently certified,
4:40
Speaker 2: we've got about another seventy that are in the process
4:43
Speaker 2: of going through that. So again from that perspective, we
4:46
Speaker 2: have a broader overview of what everyone's doing with drants
4:51
Speaker 2: then perhaps anyone else in the country.
4:53
Speaker 1: Well, and we're going to get into that shortly, both
4:57
Speaker 1: the commercial and civilian use cases that are emerging in
5:00
Speaker 1: New Zealand, and also look at the military aspects as well,
5:04
Speaker 1: which has been sort of in the media spotlight in
5:07
Speaker 1: recent years, mainly due to the war in Ukraine. But
5:11
Speaker 1: Andrew really keen just to get your perspective if you
5:14
Speaker 1: look back over the last five to ten years, just
5:17
Speaker 1: the massive sort of innovation that's gone on in the
5:21
Speaker 1: drone space.
5:23
Speaker 2: You know.
5:23
Speaker 1: I remember probably about seven or eight years ago, I
5:25
Speaker 1: bought a DJI drone. You know, the rules and regulations
5:30
Speaker 1: were just sort of in the early stage in New Zealand.
5:33
Speaker 1: I would take that out to a remote area, put
5:35
Speaker 1: it up and you know, out of the woodwork would
5:38
Speaker 1: come people, you know, shouting at me, why are you
5:41
Speaker 1: filming my house? The seagulls and the magpies were dive
5:45
Speaker 1: bombing me. So I sold it very quickly. I think
5:49
Speaker 1: you were writing around the time twenty eighteen twenty nineteen
5:53
Speaker 1: that we needed better regulations for sort of amateur drone
5:57
Speaker 1: use in New Zealand. Talk about how things have evolved there,
6:01
Speaker 1: But in terms of the technology, what are some of
6:03
Speaker 1: the key breakthroughs that have happened sort of in the
6:06
Speaker 1: last ten years that have made drones so versatile for
6:09
Speaker 1: such a wide range of uses.
6:11
Speaker 2: If you go back ten years, that was when we
6:13
Speaker 2: first introduced our drone rules here in New Zealand. So
6:16
Speaker 2: it was obvious that drones were going to be a thing,
6:18
Speaker 2: and a lot of them were fairly rudimentary at that stage.
6:21
Speaker 2: A lot of people were building their own and DJI
6:25
Speaker 2: was pretty new on the scene ten years ago. And
6:27
Speaker 2: then if we look what's happened in that ten years,
6:30
Speaker 2: pretty much every part of drone technology has improved, not
6:33
Speaker 2: all in one big bang incremental improvements. Batteries have improved,
6:37
Speaker 2: so now rather than getting maybe twenty five minutes like time,
6:41
Speaker 2: you might get forty five minutes flight on. We're using
6:44
Speaker 2: lighter and stronger materials. Some of the manufacturing has been
6:49
Speaker 2: streamlined a lot, so that we've got the cost productions
6:52
Speaker 2: that come with massive production three D printing of components
6:56
Speaker 2: that were previously hand manufactured or machine And then think
7:00
Speaker 2: about some of the senses. Just the camera on your
7:03
Speaker 2: phone in that period of time has vastly improved. The
7:06
Speaker 2: same senses are there on the drones, and that's also
7:09
Speaker 2: gone to things like obstacle avoidance technology. Those are all
7:13
Speaker 2: the things you can see. What you can't see is
7:16
Speaker 2: that software on board, and that's continuous iteration and development
7:21
Speaker 2: of those systems as well, so there's much better obstacle
7:24
Speaker 2: avoidance than there ever was much better ability to hold position,
7:28
Speaker 2: do advanced things like follow me mode, fly around a
7:33
Speaker 2: point of interest, those sorts of things. That's all been
7:36
Speaker 2: a huge series of incremental improvements.
7:39
Speaker 1: And the buzzword obviously in the last few years is
7:41
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. The generative AI revolution has that also come
7:46
Speaker 1: to drones as AI making a big impact on how
7:50
Speaker 1: drones are operated in what they can do.
7:52
Speaker 2: I don't think in the consumer or commercial market yet
7:55
Speaker 2: that it really is and and of course AI is
8:00
Speaker 2: goes across a bit of a spectrum. For the last
8:05
Speaker 2: thirty years, there's been talk about using algorithms to be
8:09
Speaker 2: able to interpret data and predict what comes out of that.
8:14
Speaker 2: But we are starting to see now some I guess
8:18
Speaker 2: more leading each applications where AI is quite significant. I'll
8:22
Speaker 2: drop a few names as I go through through the podcasts.
8:25
Speaker 2: There's a new Zealand firm SPS Automation, and what they're
8:29
Speaker 2: focused on is building large agricultural drones that can identify
8:35
Speaker 2: wilding pints autonomously and go and deposit a small amount
8:40
Speaker 2: of chemical herbicide on those just the wilding pint to
8:43
Speaker 2: deal with that problem. And that's something that could be
8:47
Speaker 2: done by an individual drone with an individual pilot, but
8:51
Speaker 2: can be done so much more efficiently if you've got
8:55
Speaker 2: an AI based system that can visually detect which these
8:59
Speaker 2: plants are. So there's certainly applications like that which are
9:02
Speaker 2: on the verge of becoming commercial, which could make a
9:06
Speaker 2: significant difference.
9:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we've seen some pretty impressive demonstrations a lot
9:13
Speaker 1: out of China actually in terms of drone swarms, and
9:18
Speaker 1: you know these potentially have military applications, but also for
9:22
Speaker 1: entertainment purposes. You know, you can do some very impressive
9:25
Speaker 1: light displays with them. But introducing autonomy into drones, like
9:30
Speaker 1: you say, with the wilding pine example, if you can
9:33
Speaker 1: send off a few drones to automatically identify a pine
9:38
Speaker 1: tree that needs to be eradicated, you don't need one
9:42
Speaker 1: operator with a joyster controlling each drone. That's going to
9:46
Speaker 1: be a bit of a game changer for certain applications.
9:48
Speaker 2: Well will, and for that particular one, it's using drones
9:52
Speaker 2: by themselves enables you to get to places that would
9:55
Speaker 2: almost be impossible on foot and which might be prohibitably
10:00
Speaker 2: expensive to do with mand aviation. And then once you
10:04
Speaker 2: can go well, actually we've got maybe half a dozen
10:07
Speaker 2: of these, maybe ten of these, which can go out
10:09
Speaker 2: over a wide area. We can then do things which
10:12
Speaker 2: at the moment which just aren't being done at all.
10:14
Speaker 2: And so we do have this wild and pine problem
10:18
Speaker 2: on the South Island also in central North plind and
10:21
Speaker 2: it's just been cost prohibitive to be able to effectively
10:25
Speaker 2: address it. So there's a conservation application effectively for us
10:30
Speaker 2: that the use of ALI is going to make so
10:33
Speaker 2: much easier and more cost efficient.
10:36
Speaker 1: And in terms of there's drones, but there's also sort
10:41
Speaker 1: of the ground equipment and it's very much around safety
10:44
Speaker 1: and military applications as well, detecting, intercepting drones, jamming drones.
10:50
Speaker 1: We saw these incredible photos out of Ukraine kilometers of
10:55
Speaker 1: fiber optic cable strewn across the battlefield which is connected
10:59
Speaker 1: to it drone to try and avoid that drone being
11:03
Speaker 1: basically jammed and taken down through jamming off the radio
11:09
Speaker 1: signals that operate it. So we're seeing well this sort
11:12
Speaker 1: of innovation I guess as well happening. Airports are deploying
11:16
Speaker 1: this technology to make sure that a drone doesn't come
11:19
Speaker 1: into airspace and potentially cause an accident, and we seeing
11:22
Speaker 1: a lot of innovation there as well.
11:24
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And when you talk about the Ukraine case with
11:28
Speaker 2: the fiber optics, I remember it might have been early
11:32
Speaker 2: last year seeing a video of taken from an FPV
11:36
Speaker 2: drone and there was two Russian vehicles that were coming
11:41
Speaker 2: out of one road and turning on to another, and
11:43
Speaker 2: you could see with the perspective of the drone the
11:46
Speaker 2: front vehicle was some sort of arment vehicle. The one
11:50
Speaker 2: behind it was festooned with the antennas. It was the
11:53
Speaker 2: electronic warfare vehicle that was supposed to be jamming the
11:57
Speaker 2: ability of any drone to attack, and this little drone
11:59
Speaker 2: just flew straight past that one with all the electronic
12:01
Speaker 2: warfare equipment on it and hit the armored vehicle in front.
12:05
Speaker 2: We didn't have another view to show us just how
12:09
Speaker 2: big the damage was because obviously the drone that had
12:12
Speaker 2: been taking the photo is now blurt up. But that
12:16
Speaker 2: illustrated one of the early uses of that fiber optic.
12:19
Speaker 2: But I think part of that also illustrates that to
12:22
Speaker 2: a certain extent, what we're seeing in Ukraine is that
12:25
Speaker 2: the old is new again. So and by that wire
12:29
Speaker 2: guided missiles, I think they came into effect in the
12:33
Speaker 2: earlier in the nineteen seventies, so it's been around for decades.
12:37
Speaker 2: And now we've gone from radio control for these strike
12:42
Speaker 2: drones back to wyre guiding with a fiber optic link.
12:46
Speaker 2: The other thing that is sort of the old has
12:48
Speaker 2: become new again. As I'm old enough to remember Peter
12:52
Speaker 2: Rntt broadcasting from Bagdad with my hero the Gulf War.
12:58
Speaker 1: That's why I went into journalism, watching how on top
13:01
Speaker 1: of the building in Baghdad and nineteen ninety or something
13:04
Speaker 1: like that.
13:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, nineteen nineteen, nineteen ninety one. I remember actually watching
13:09
Speaker 2: Golf War footage at my when I got married that
13:13
Speaker 2: My stag doer was like, we've all got CNN on,
13:15
Speaker 2: we're watching the Golf War footage all that. But one
13:20
Speaker 2: of the things then was that the cruise missiles they
13:23
Speaker 2: did have crew GPS guidance, but their terminal guidance was
13:27
Speaker 2: based on visual navigation, so you had images of the
13:31
Speaker 2: terrain that they're flying over, images of the buildings so
13:33
Speaker 2: that they could accurately navigate. Well, we've gone back to
13:37
Speaker 2: that because GPS can so easily be jammed. We're now
13:41
Speaker 2: using visual navigation for drones. If we're talking about autonomously
13:45
Speaker 2: sending them to a location, they'll have visual navigation guidance,
13:50
Speaker 2: and so yeah, it's interesting to see we've gone sort
13:53
Speaker 2: of in a bit of a loop. The high precision
13:55
Speaker 2: GPS guidance can be jammed, and so we need something else,
13:59
Speaker 2: visual navigation. Back to the early nineties.
14:02
Speaker 1: And it's really incredible. And in terms we talk about
14:04
Speaker 1: dual use technologies, stuff that comes out of Silicon Valley,
14:08
Speaker 1: great innovation can be used for consumer purposes but also
14:12
Speaker 1: for military applications. And I think drones and UAVs really
14:16
Speaker 1: epitomize this. And it's become so obvious to the public
14:20
Speaker 1: as a result of the Ukraine War. Just how that
14:23
Speaker 1: is so true. How something that could be a very
14:26
Speaker 1: lightweight sort of quad copter drone that you would typically
14:30
Speaker 1: buy to put up to take beautiful photos and maybe
14:32
Speaker 1: a real estate agent would use to take footage of
14:35
Speaker 1: a house because they're trying to sell it. Suddenly these
14:39
Speaker 1: first person drones have become integral to a war effort,
14:43
Speaker 1: responsible for more deaths than missiles and bombardments and other
14:49
Speaker 1: things that they're doing on the battlefield. It's really quite incredible.
14:52
Speaker 1: It must be really eye opening for you as someone
14:54
Speaker 1: who understands this technology and seeing it for the first
14:58
Speaker 1: time deployed on a massive scale those sides of the war.
15:01
Speaker 2: It is, although it's not entirely surprising. So if you
15:07
Speaker 2: look at the Middle East conflicts that preceded Ukraine, we
15:12
Speaker 2: could see that this was starting to be an issue
15:14
Speaker 2: with what ISIS was doing. So ISIS didn't have a
15:20
Speaker 2: traditional air force, so it was starting to use drones,
15:24
Speaker 2: be anything from your Dji Phantom twos, threes and fours
15:30
Speaker 2: with a being able to drop a single munition to
15:33
Speaker 2: actually having they had drone and manufacturing workshops that essentially
15:38
Speaker 2: brought all their parts from the likes. I think it
15:42
Speaker 2: was early express that they bought their parts from and
15:45
Speaker 2: they could manufacture drones from the parts they purchased, and
15:49
Speaker 2: so they were using those for ISR. They were using
15:52
Speaker 2: them to drop munitions, not with the same effect as
15:55
Speaker 2: one thousand pounds long, but certainly enough to suddenly mean
16:00
Speaker 2: that the United States no longer owned the skies and
16:03
Speaker 2: that now Western troops had to be worried about what
16:07
Speaker 2: was in the sky above them as well. So we
16:09
Speaker 2: went from that then Syria, there was a lot more
16:13
Speaker 2: going on there than what we probably realized in this
16:17
Speaker 2: part of the world. That's where Turkey was perfecting the
16:20
Speaker 2: use of its TB two by Actar drone and the
16:23
Speaker 2: Russians were perfecting the use of technology to detect drones,
16:29
Speaker 2: particularly the djieroscope to detect DJI drones. So then after
16:34
Speaker 2: that we go to the Niguno Carabac war between azer
16:37
Speaker 2: Vaijan and Armenia, and the Turkish TB two drone was
16:42
Speaker 2: used to great effect there to destroy armen and that's
16:45
Speaker 2: what Ukraine used it for in the opening days of
16:49
Speaker 2: the Ukraine War. And then Russia's experience with this djieroscope
16:55
Speaker 2: and being able to pick up DJI consumer drones from
16:58
Speaker 2: up to forty kilometers away, that was put into a
17:01
Speaker 2: great effect by Russia in the opening days of the
17:04
Speaker 2: Ukraine War as well. So as these drone enthusiasts said, well,
17:07
Speaker 2: we've got drones we can fly, we can use them
17:11
Speaker 2: to identify what Russia's doing, what China effectively did is
17:16
Speaker 2: it disabled Ukraine's ability to use the auroscope system to
17:20
Speaker 2: detect drones, but allowed Russia to keep using it. And
17:25
Speaker 2: so there's plenty of videos out there circulating where someone
17:29
Speaker 2: would fly a djidrone, it would come back and within
17:33
Speaker 2: eight seconds there'd be an artillery round that was landing
17:37
Speaker 2: within a very short distance of where that drone had landed.
17:41
Speaker 2: So Russia had already perfected how to integrate drone detection
17:45
Speaker 2: and targeting with artillery.
17:47
Speaker 1: And there was the fascinating footage this sort of master
17:52
Speaker 1: stroke often attacked by the Ukrainians on military planes that
17:57
Speaker 1: Russia owned, and they managed to destroy a huge number
18:00
Speaker 1: of planes, very expensive planes as well, And that really
18:04
Speaker 1: was what was interesting about that was that wasn't a
18:06
Speaker 1: long range drone attack because you would run out of
18:09
Speaker 1: battery power going behind enemy lines into Russia. They were
18:13
Speaker 1: able to somehow get those into the country, pike them
18:18
Speaker 1: up in a truck, and deploy them from that truck.
18:21
Speaker 1: So just the innovative things they're doing around the operation
18:25
Speaker 1: and deployment of these drones as well, they're becoming sort
18:29
Speaker 1: of quite deadly and used in really sort of ingenious ways.
18:33
Speaker 2: Well they are, and I guess there's a couple of
18:34
Speaker 2: other examples which would add to that as well. And
18:38
Speaker 2: so if you look at the Hamas attacks on October seventh,
18:44
Speaker 2: the opening attacks, there were a very modern combined arms operation.
18:50
Speaker 2: You had cyber attacks, you had drones dropping munitions onto
18:55
Speaker 2: cameras on the border posts to take those out, and
18:59
Speaker 2: then you had their soldiers flying across the Israeli border
19:05
Speaker 2: and paragliders and paramotors and things like that. So a
19:08
Speaker 2: really modern form of combined arms operation. We think of
19:11
Speaker 2: tanks and ground forces supported by air, supported by artillery
19:17
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing. Their combined arms operation was very,
19:21
Speaker 2: very modern, completely different from what we've seen there. And
19:24
Speaker 2: then if we fast forward in that, an offshoot of
19:27
Speaker 2: that conflict was the twelve day Israel Iran War, and
19:31
Speaker 2: Israel had also had operatives inside Iran who had been
19:36
Speaker 2: manufacturing small drones and they were able to deploy those
19:42
Speaker 2: small drones from within Iran to disrupt some of the
19:46
Speaker 2: air defense systems and the missile systems, so similar in
19:50
Speaker 2: effect to Ukraine been able to assemble or deploy those
19:55
Speaker 2: small drones within Russia, transport them a long distance on
20:00
Speaker 2: the back of a truck. So it's a very different
20:03
Speaker 2: but very brave way to use the small drones. You've
20:07
Speaker 2: got operatives that are behind enemy lines, enemy territory in
20:12
Speaker 2: order to be able to do that.
20:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's incredible and I think all of us watching
20:17
Speaker 1: around the world other countries have really studied the tactics
20:22
Speaker 1: that are being used there, the technologies that are being deployed,
20:25
Speaker 1: the first person view ones, sort of a lot of
20:28
Speaker 1: viral videos of those. But there are big drones that
20:31
Speaker 1: are being used as well. There are companies now that
20:35
Speaker 1: Dji is famous as a commercial drone maker, but there
20:39
Speaker 1: are big companies in Europe tech ever. I think it's
20:43
Speaker 1: called the Portuguese company. It's now valued at a billion dollars.
20:47
Speaker 1: So that's just in recent years has become huge staric
20:50
Speaker 1: in Germany. We've got SIOS here in New Zealand out
20:54
Speaker 1: of Tawonger that's done a deal with the UK Defense Force.
21:00
Speaker 1: So it's really led to this flurry of innovation around
21:05
Speaker 1: the world. And interested in your views sort of looking
21:08
Speaker 1: through the lens of New Zealand where we're probably more
21:10
Speaker 1: an I part of the world, interested in keeping an
21:13
Speaker 1: eye on our realm, exclusive economic zone, search and rescue,
21:18
Speaker 1: deploying drones to look for lost sailors and that sort
21:22
Speaker 1: of thing. What's your view on how we have interpreted
21:26
Speaker 1: what's going on in places like Ukraine and started to
21:30
Speaker 1: prepare for our own drone needs here.
21:32
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think the West is particularly well prepared anywhere,
21:37
Speaker 2: And it's sort of like this year, we've suddenly waken
21:40
Speaker 2: up and gone, oh my goodness, we need to do something.
21:43
Speaker 2: And we've seen that in our defense Capability Plan, the
21:48
Speaker 2: government's intent that we need to have long range strike drones.
21:52
Speaker 2: But in reality the United States is actually not any
21:56
Speaker 2: further well, they're a little further ahead than us, but
21:59
Speaker 2: essentially they were doing the same thing. At the beginning
22:02
Speaker 2: of the year. Pete Hesget was standing up and saying,
22:05
Speaker 2: we've got this plan for American drone dominance because they
22:08
Speaker 2: realized that they didn't have it. Now, just this morning,
22:12
Speaker 2: I was reading an example of how much the US
22:15
Speaker 2: does not have drone dominance. The announcement is that they
22:19
Speaker 2: are now manufacturing a facsimile of the Iranian Shahib one
22:24
Speaker 2: three six drone, which Russia is using to great effects
22:28
Speaker 2: in Ukraine. Now the United States is going to be
22:31
Speaker 2: manufacturing something that they've reversed engineered from that, and they're
22:35
Speaker 2: going to be deploying it in the Middle East. So
22:39
Speaker 2: it's not a US innovation that's leading the way. This
22:42
Speaker 2: is an Iranian innovation and the US is copying that.
22:46
Speaker 2: So I think this is symptomatic of actually the West
22:50
Speaker 2: having been complacent in this area. We've got Turkey was
22:55
Speaker 2: leading the way with its bi actor TB two. Iran
22:59
Speaker 2: is clearly leading the way, whether it's series drones, and
23:03
Speaker 2: we are playing catcher. But that's not a bad place
23:06
Speaker 2: to be if you try to innovate fast is to
23:08
Speaker 2: actually have to be playing catcher.
23:11
Speaker 1: And it's great that we have at least one drone
23:13
Speaker 1: company here that it has attracted international attention in the
23:16
Speaker 1: form of Sios. It's won a number of awards this
23:19
Speaker 1: year for its innovation. Anything you can tell us about
23:22
Speaker 1: what makes that company particularly special in the drone space.
23:26
Speaker 2: At the moment, I think it's really just can do attitude.
23:30
Speaker 2: Here's this problem and we can do it. Listening to
23:35
Speaker 2: your podcast you did with Peter Beck, it's actually not
23:39
Speaker 2: too different. It's like, here's this space that's dominated by
23:42
Speaker 2: some big companies that are doing things fairly inefficiently. Well, surely,
23:48
Speaker 2: as kiwis, we can do something about this, and we
23:50
Speaker 2: can make something happen until you win some big overseas
23:55
Speaker 2: contract that's worth millions and millions of dollars. You're happy
23:58
Speaker 2: to do that on a shoestring and rely as much
24:01
Speaker 2: as you can on innovating to do things as efficiently
24:05
Speaker 2: as possible.
24:12
Speaker 1: I guess there's a sense that you know, this David
24:15
Speaker 1: and Goliath war in Ukraine, that it's sort of drones
24:19
Speaker 1: were able to level the playing field to some extent
24:22
Speaker 1: in warfare, that you could have a small, less wealthy
24:25
Speaker 1: nation and less resource nation that could really pack a
24:28
Speaker 1: punch as a result of using these fpvs, this consumer
24:31
Speaker 1: technology that's been repurposed, is that the reality of it,
24:35
Speaker 1: I mean, this technology is now so accessible, as you've said,
24:39
Speaker 1: around Russia, China, they really have led the way in
24:42
Speaker 1: developing drones to some extents. It's I guess the nature
24:47
Speaker 1: of the technology. It's so ubiquitous, the thresholds to entry
24:51
Speaker 1: are so low that everyone has it now, so it's
24:54
Speaker 1: not really as though any one country has a particular
24:57
Speaker 1: advantage anymore with drones.
24:58
Speaker 2: So certainly the ability to have a good isr intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance.
25:06
Speaker 2: Good visual imagery is really important on the modern battlefaird
25:09
Speaker 2: so you can see what the other side is doing.
25:11
Speaker 2: But it's difficult to say how much being well resourced
25:15
Speaker 2: actually necessarily makes it different. I think it's a very
25:19
Speaker 2: conflict dependent. When we're looking at the Russia Ukrainian situation,
25:24
Speaker 2: that looks like it's going to be a battle of
25:25
Speaker 2: attrition that comes down to who can sustain the production
25:30
Speaker 2: barms the longest, who can keep grinding away at that
25:34
Speaker 2: And at the moment, both US administrations, the current US
25:38
Speaker 2: administration and the previous US administration haven't really wanted Ukraine
25:44
Speaker 2: to win. We've resourced them to the level where they
25:48
Speaker 2: can keep going, but not that they can win. So
25:51
Speaker 2: that's been an interesting issue in itself. But in terms
25:54
Speaker 2: of how much do you need this technology? Does technology
25:58
Speaker 2: give you an edge? So I was looking at some
26:01
Speaker 2: statistics yesterday. If we look at Afghanistan in Ukraine, So
26:05
Speaker 2: Afghanistan has population of about forty one million, Ukraine has
26:08
Speaker 2: a population of about thirty eight million, about the same
26:11
Speaker 2: amount of people GDP per capita. Ukraine is sitting at
26:14
Speaker 2: about sixteen thousand US dollars per capita. Ukraine's it about sorry,
26:18
Speaker 2: Afghanistan's at about two thousand. So Ukraine is fabulously wealthy
26:22
Speaker 2: compared to Afghanistan, and yet it would be would be
26:27
Speaker 2: hard pressed to say that the Taliban didn't win the
26:31
Speaker 2: conflict in Afghanistan. It had the ability to outlast the
26:37
Speaker 2: United States with all its fabulously expensive technology. It's exquisitely
26:42
Speaker 2: expensive drone systems. Our predator is the latest estimate for
26:47
Speaker 2: Predator is about US thirty million dollars for system. And
26:52
Speaker 2: this guy was full of predators and armed predators, and
26:56
Speaker 2: yet the US lost. So it's not always a case
27:01
Speaker 2: of resource. And so this is one of the issues
27:04
Speaker 2: when we think about what lessons as the West taking
27:07
Speaker 2: from Ukraine, what lessons are Western military is taking. We
27:11
Speaker 2: have to spend a bit of time sitting through how
27:15
Speaker 2: much is that conflict representative of where we might be
27:19
Speaker 2: in future? How much are other conflicts representative? And if
27:25
Speaker 2: we're thinking about where is New Zealand going to potentially deploy,
27:29
Speaker 2: we would most likely be deploying, I would suggest in
27:33
Speaker 2: the Western Pacific or into Southeast Asia. And at that
27:37
Speaker 2: point you've got a lot of jungles, a lot of
27:41
Speaker 2: terrain that's really hard to navigate. Perhaps the mountains of
27:46
Speaker 2: Afghanistan are better, although they're not so much vegetation, Perhaps
27:52
Speaker 2: they're a better analogy for what will encounter rather than
27:56
Speaker 2: the flat planes of Ukraine. Although then when Ukraine it's
28:00
Speaker 2: the wet season and you've got all the mud, an
28:02
Speaker 2: arm I can't move through the mud. Something happens in
28:05
Speaker 2: the jungles, right, So there's certainly it's not clear cut
28:09
Speaker 2: that there's one set of lessons that we can can draw.
28:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can imagine we've got sort of limited firepower
28:16
Speaker 1: in terms of air force fleet. It's not really decked
28:20
Speaker 1: up for that since we sort of retired our jet fighters.
28:23
Speaker 1: But we could have drones if we did have some
28:25
Speaker 1: sort of rogue ship or something that was coming towards us,
28:29
Speaker 1: drones would be an ideal sort of means of attacking them.
28:33
Speaker 1: But in terms of like non state actors, criminal groups
28:36
Speaker 1: that may co op this technology to do things in
28:39
Speaker 1: New Zealand's terrorist attacks or whatever, are we preparing for
28:43
Speaker 1: that sort of thing in terms of using technology to
28:45
Speaker 1: jam drones to detect where they are. Is that becoming
28:49
Speaker 1: a thing here in New Zealand.
28:50
Speaker 2: Well, it wasn't until the Civil Aviation Act twenty twenty
28:55
Speaker 2: through E that the legal powers actually existed for anyone
28:59
Speaker 2: to do anything about it. That came into effect. Fourth
29:03
Speaker 2: of April this year, so the legislation was passed and
29:07
Speaker 2: it took two years for it to come into effect.
29:09
Speaker 2: So there is the ability there now, but we don't
29:14
Speaker 2: have processes in place to approve state agencies to do
29:19
Speaker 2: anything much about it. Police automatically have an authorization under
29:23
Speaker 2: the Civil Aviation Act to be able to develop processes
29:28
Speaker 2: and take counter drone action. Other state agencies could, but
29:31
Speaker 2: they have to be approved by the Civil Aviation for it.
29:34
Speaker 2: And so interesting thing about that is that, to my knowledge,
29:39
Speaker 2: no other state agencies have taken that step. Prisons are
29:44
Speaker 2: a huge issue for contraband. Once upon a time, it
29:48
Speaker 2: was putting a sock a tennis ball on the end
29:51
Speaker 2: of a sock and stuffing some stuff in there and
29:53
Speaker 2: swinging around, throwing it over the fence and having someone
29:56
Speaker 2: pick it up. Now you can have a drone fly
29:58
Speaker 2: at high speed across the prison at a preordained time,
30:02
Speaker 2: have a release mechanism, and whatever the payloaders drops could
30:05
Speaker 2: be drugs, could be cell phones, could be razor blades,
30:08
Speaker 2: all of that sort of stuff. And so I don't
30:11
Speaker 2: think New Zealand really has taken this seriously. The policy
30:17
Speaker 2: people tend to be focused on this scenario of what
30:21
Speaker 2: happens if there's a small drone that hits an airliner
30:24
Speaker 2: and airliner crashes and then there's terrible loss of life.
30:27
Speaker 2: In that ten years that drones have been a thing,
30:31
Speaker 2: there's been like about four incidents worldwide where the report
30:37
Speaker 2: has turned out that maybe it actually was a drone
30:39
Speaker 2: and two of them actually hit the airliner and bounced
30:42
Speaker 2: off it, and then when there's engineering inspection, it was like, oh,
30:45
Speaker 2: not a problem. So this whole thing about recreational use
30:49
Speaker 2: of drones being a problem for airline aircraft is not
30:52
Speaker 2: really a thing for airline aircraft. You have to be
30:55
Speaker 2: more concerned about someone who's gotten nefarious attend someone who's
30:59
Speaker 2: decided they're going to replicate what they see overseas and
31:03
Speaker 2: fly a first person view drone with explosives into an engine.
31:07
Speaker 2: Something like that. It's certainly possible, particularly if it's on
31:10
Speaker 2: the ground. Maybe even if it's coming into land or
31:12
Speaker 2: take off. Something like that, that is possible. We haven't
31:16
Speaker 2: actually seen that happen yet, but it's certainly a possibility
31:20
Speaker 2: that could occur, and I'm not sure that we're ready
31:23
Speaker 2: for it at all. One of the reports I've seen
31:27
Speaker 2: is that innovations in the Ukraine are taking about twelve
31:31
Speaker 2: months to get to Central America where the cartels are
31:33
Speaker 2: in their adopting them with drone technology. Takes about another
31:37
Speaker 2: six months for it to then get to Africa, to
31:39
Speaker 2: the Sahel where there's various conflicts going on there. And
31:43
Speaker 2: from there though, once it's made its way to the
31:46
Speaker 2: cartels in Central America, if you've got transnational organized crime
31:52
Speaker 2: groups that linked to us in some way, then you
31:55
Speaker 2: should expect that we could have the same technology here.
31:59
Speaker 1: It's obviously evolving rapidly, Andrew. If we look at the
32:03
Speaker 1: commercial civilian use cases off it, the one that's been
32:07
Speaker 1: promised for a long time has been piloted by Amazon
32:10
Speaker 1: and others as drones an easy way to deliver a
32:13
Speaker 1: product a pizza was the classic one. Domino's probably five
32:17
Speaker 1: years ago at least now did a demo of that
32:21
Speaker 1: in Auckland sort of went nowhere. Yeah, Amazon, as they said,
32:24
Speaker 1: has been trialing it for a long time, and there
32:27
Speaker 1: are some good startups that are finding good ways to
32:30
Speaker 1: efficiently deliver packages with drones. How far away do you
32:35
Speaker 1: think are we from that becoming mainstream?
32:37
Speaker 2: I think a long one when it comes to pizza delivery.
32:40
Speaker 2: I'm not a fan of the pizza delivery model, partly
32:43
Speaker 2: because the technology isn't necessarily as folk proof as you'd
32:49
Speaker 2: like it to be. For that, if you're flying into
32:51
Speaker 2: an urban area with lots of people around, coming and
32:54
Speaker 2: hovering over a place so that you can lower down
32:56
Speaker 2: this pizza, you have to have it so that nothing
32:58
Speaker 2: can go wrong. And I just don't trust software that much.
33:03
Speaker 2: Once upon a time I was a computer programmer. I
33:05
Speaker 2: just don't trust software to get that right all the time.
33:08
Speaker 2: And you could have other systems that will fail. What
33:11
Speaker 2: happens when one of these solid state motors has an issue?
33:14
Speaker 2: What is the meantime between failure for these We don't know.
33:18
Speaker 2: That model, though, would work for transporting small loads to
33:22
Speaker 2: remote locations. There was a trial done. I can't remember
33:26
Speaker 2: it was earlier this week. I think it was last week,
33:28
Speaker 2: and Towering are taking a medical payload out to met
33:32
Speaker 2: Cartna Island and then bringing something back. That's a perfect
33:35
Speaker 2: use case for it. It's flying over a location where
33:38
Speaker 2: there's not going to be hardly any people, and it
33:42
Speaker 2: can do that journey quickly and efficiently. When you're coming
33:45
Speaker 2: to an urban area. My response there usually is we'll
33:49
Speaker 2: have people who have teenagers on the scooters and that's
33:53
Speaker 2: going to be a faster and more efficient way to
33:55
Speaker 2: transport these payloads.
33:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll be surprised, I think if we have corridors
34:01
Speaker 1: of drones constantly zipping around delivering you know, maybe in
34:07
Speaker 1: certain cities where that works in Tokyo something like that,
34:10
Speaker 1: but I doubt we'll see it here. But in terms
34:11
Speaker 1: of where we get the productivity gains, where this can
34:15
Speaker 1: really improve efficiency, I guess you know you've touched on
34:17
Speaker 1: conservation and that, but agrotech is where it's at, really,
34:20
Speaker 1: isn't it. We've got all this land we need to
34:21
Speaker 1: monitor to keep eyes on. You can do that to
34:24
Speaker 1: some extent with satellites, but so much more efficient to
34:27
Speaker 1: just put a drone up to survey some land to
34:29
Speaker 1: look at your crops or your pasture. With the sensor
34:33
Speaker 1: technology now you can detect various gases and things like that.
34:36
Speaker 1: So that's really I guess the sweet spot for us,
34:38
Speaker 1: isn't it.
34:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think there's still a lot of growth
34:41
Speaker 2: to occur in that area. So one of the things
34:46
Speaker 2: that we're seeing a lot of is people now using
34:49
Speaker 2: the agricultural drones, particularly spraying. There's opportunities there to perform
34:54
Speaker 2: tasks very efficiently with the spray drones. There you could
34:58
Speaker 2: do with other means, but necessarily as well. Like one
35:01
Speaker 2: of the great examples is using slag bait, applying slag
35:06
Speaker 2: bait to a crop, to a market garden crop. Now,
35:09
Speaker 2: if this happens in typically fairly wet weather when the
35:14
Speaker 2: ground gets all muddy, and you could apply it by
35:18
Speaker 2: tractor and then you're turning up to the MUDs and
35:20
Speaker 2: you're probably destroying part of the crop, or you could
35:22
Speaker 2: do it on foot, and that's really inefficient. It's cost
35:25
Speaker 2: prohibitive to use a helicopter for that, and so this
35:28
Speaker 2: is where drones can come in there and actually suddenly
35:31
Speaker 2: that one plot of land becomes much more productive because
35:35
Speaker 2: we're not having half the crop eaten by slaves. So
35:37
Speaker 2: you've got something like that which is really good. Then
35:40
Speaker 2: we can move on to thinking about some other innovations
35:44
Speaker 2: that New Zealand's already achieved in pasture management. So one
35:49
Speaker 2: of them is that on dairy farm you'll typically find
35:52
Speaker 2: that they have consultants coming in working with them and
35:56
Speaker 2: what you call a feed wedge and feed wedge says
35:59
Speaker 2: looks at all your power and ranks them in order
36:01
Speaker 2: of how much grass is in there, and so you know,
36:03
Speaker 2: this one's got a lot of grass in there, that's
36:05
Speaker 2: the best one that I should be putting the cows
36:07
Speaker 2: and to get ximum productivity. And you're also checking to
36:10
Speaker 2: make sure that you don't let the grass grow too
36:12
Speaker 2: long and too much, because then its feed value goes down.
36:17
Speaker 2: And so you can do all of that and the
36:18
Speaker 2: technology that's traditionally been well, I guess traditionally now been
36:22
Speaker 2: used for that is either walking across a paddock and
36:26
Speaker 2: having a what they call a past gameter, which is
36:29
Speaker 2: a physical device you put on top of the grass
36:31
Speaker 2: and it tells you in that spot how thick is
36:33
Speaker 2: the grass. And then that evolved into having something you
36:37
Speaker 2: could tow behind your quad BikeE as you drove across
36:40
Speaker 2: the pasture. And now the potential exists that we should
36:44
Speaker 2: be able to get drones to be able to do that,
36:47
Speaker 2: fly across a paddock and get for the entire paddic
36:50
Speaker 2: what's actually the grass cover like. Now that requires a
36:53
Speaker 2: bit of clever software and stuff from behind that, but
36:56
Speaker 2: it certainly an approach that's the air and it could
36:59
Speaker 2: yield significant increases in productivities.
37:03
Speaker 1: If you look out say ten years, which is a
37:06
Speaker 1: long time in the development of this technology, how are
37:09
Speaker 1: we going to be using this? How will it evolve?
37:11
Speaker 1: Do you think what will surprise us about how drones
37:14
Speaker 1: are used in everyday life?
37:16
Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the things that will surprise
37:18
Speaker 2: us is that a lot of the things that have
37:22
Speaker 2: been well, some of the things that have been talked
37:24
Speaker 2: about the most won't have them. So like that whole
37:27
Speaker 2: pizza delivery things, there's too many challenges involved in that
37:30
Speaker 2: for it to be be something that's particularly viable. We
37:35
Speaker 2: hear of the advanced air mobility, the flying car concept.
37:40
Speaker 2: People aren't going to have a flying car that means
37:43
Speaker 2: in their driveway. In order to have something that works,
37:47
Speaker 2: it actually has to be quite large. So I've seen
37:50
Speaker 2: two seater flying cars which take up entire with the
37:54
Speaker 2: two lanes of the road. So yeah, you've got things
37:58
Speaker 2: things like that. It's going to be think of those
38:01
Speaker 2: as more being electric helicopters and whatever is. Maybe they
38:05
Speaker 2: have a cost efficiency relative to traditional helicopters, But I
38:10
Speaker 2: think what we're going to find is that some of
38:12
Speaker 2: the existing uses will become more widespread. Infrastructure inspection. We're
38:18
Speaker 2: finding that, say, in the power line side of things,
38:24
Speaker 2: firms have been starting in the last couple of years
38:26
Speaker 2: to move into power line inspections using drants, but they're
38:29
Speaker 2: still limited by what the rules allow, and that's limited
38:32
Speaker 2: in part by the technology as well. So you can't
38:36
Speaker 2: just sit here in your office, press a button and
38:39
Speaker 2: have a drone go and fly one hundreds of kilometers
38:42
Speaker 2: along power lines to conduct an inspection. You've still got
38:45
Speaker 2: to have linemen out there doing that. So I think
38:47
Speaker 2: there's a space there that we'll see quite a change,
38:50
Speaker 2: and we can then extrapolate that out to other sorts
38:53
Speaker 2: of infrastructure, like maybe natural guest pipelines and things like that.
38:58
Speaker 2: As we get tech that develops has more safeguards built
39:01
Speaker 2: around it, it opens up more of those potential opportunities.
39:05
Speaker 2: One of the other things I think we haven't done
39:08
Speaker 2: well with is search and rescue. Drones would be ideal
39:11
Speaker 2: for search and rescue, but by and large they haven't
39:15
Speaker 2: been utilized to great effect there, and so I think
39:18
Speaker 2: again there's an opportunity there for us to significantly improve
39:23
Speaker 2: how they use.
39:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a hugely important area for us with our
39:27
Speaker 1: mountainous regions, our national parks, and a vast ocean. You
39:32
Speaker 1: know a lot of people unfortunately come to grief in
39:34
Speaker 1: those areas. So instead of putting up a P eight
39:37
Speaker 1: with a whole crew and hundreds of thousands of dollars
39:39
Speaker 1: per hour, if we could put out drones to try
39:41
Speaker 1: and get eyes on someone in trouble, that's got to
39:45
Speaker 1: be hugely efficient.
39:46
Speaker 2: Well, absolutely, And when we think about some of those
39:48
Speaker 2: sorts of search and rescue situations, so maybe we're thinking
39:53
Speaker 2: of maybe around a coast where it's quite rocky, hard
39:57
Speaker 2: to access, and maybe the winds and visibility aren't ideal
40:04
Speaker 2: for a helicopter to be there either. We have to
40:07
Speaker 2: move into a mindset where we're happy to lose the technology.
40:10
Speaker 2: We don't want to lose a man helicopter with people
40:13
Speaker 2: on board, absolutely not. But if we've got a fairly
40:17
Speaker 2: sophisticated complex drone system maybe costs US one hundred thousand dollars, well,
40:24
Speaker 2: actually the potential to lose that as opposed to a
40:28
Speaker 2: couple of million dollars on helicopter, and then the lives
40:31
Speaker 2: we might need to be recalibrating how we think about
40:34
Speaker 2: some of the potential for loss of equipment.
40:37
Speaker 1: And you've studied very closely our regulations, policies, you've done
40:41
Speaker 1: a PhD in this space. Is there any one thing
40:45
Speaker 1: that you would change now to steer drone development in
40:49
Speaker 1: a positive direction in New Zealand.
40:50
Speaker 2: Years And it doesn't actually require any rule changes at all.
40:54
Speaker 2: So one of the issues we've had over the past
40:57
Speaker 2: ten years is we've had this rule system that had
41:01
Speaker 2: Part one to one. These are our standard operating rules
41:03
Speaker 2: Part one O two. If you want to operate outside that,
41:06
Speaker 2: you need to have certification from the Civil Aviation Authority,
41:08
Speaker 2: and then there's been a lack of guidance as to
41:11
Speaker 2: what would be acceptable. So I was listening to I
41:16
Speaker 2: was at the Aerospace in New Zealand summer recently listening
41:19
Speaker 2: to I think it was James Power from Dawn talking
41:23
Speaker 2: about their experiences and how they had to invent everything
41:26
Speaker 2: from scratch, including how they could satisfy the Civil Aviation Authority. Well,
41:30
Speaker 2: what they were doing was safe, and so that's fine
41:33
Speaker 2: as an organization that's trying to build something absolutely world
41:36
Speaker 2: leading to do that, But then you've got subsequent developers
41:39
Speaker 2: come along and you wanted to do something that's not
41:41
Speaker 2: nearly as close to the edge of the envelope as
41:44
Speaker 2: what Dawn's doing. But there's no guidance from CILIA as
41:47
Speaker 2: to what would be acceptable. And what's happened is that
41:50
Speaker 2: in the past the policy team from CILIA have gone, well,
41:54
Speaker 2: this part one or two rule is infinitely flexible, so
41:56
Speaker 2: if we provided clear guidelines, that would be limiting people's flexibility.
42:01
Speaker 2: But what it's done is it's meant it's really hard
42:05
Speaker 2: for people to know what's acceptable and what's not. So
42:07
Speaker 2: the one thing that I would change is to provide
42:11
Speaker 2: some clear guidance from Civil Aviation Authority. This suite of
42:14
Speaker 2: measures is something that we would accept. You may propose
42:18
Speaker 2: something else that would also accept, but we can tell
42:21
Speaker 2: you that this suite of measures here is given what
42:25
Speaker 2: we've approved day and experience we've had, these are things
42:28
Speaker 2: that would be acceptable that would make a big difference.
42:31
Speaker 1: Well, that's good that practical advice, and they are revisiting
42:35
Speaker 1: these regulations on a regular basis, so hopefully they'll take
42:38
Speaker 1: that on board.
42:39
Speaker 2: On there. I'd like to say that there has been
42:42
Speaker 2: a change in the senior leadership at CIA just this
42:45
Speaker 2: year and it's been an absolute breath of fresh air.
42:50
Speaker 2: Got a lot of almost excitement to see what's going
42:53
Speaker 2: to happen. It's been a complete culture change at the
42:57
Speaker 2: top and we've certainly we've seen it now with the
43:01
Speaker 2: engagement with industry, with what the Civil Aviation Authority is
43:05
Speaker 2: looking to do. So yeah, pretty positive about where we
43:09
Speaker 2: might go in that space.
43:11
Speaker 1: Hey well Andrew, thanks so much. It's been a fascinating
43:13
Speaker 1: look at drones, how they're developing, how they're being used,
43:16
Speaker 1: drawing on your incredible expertise, So good luck with Phoenix
43:22
Speaker 1: UAS it's obviously thriving business. Will put links up to
43:26
Speaker 1: how people can find out more about you. And thanks
43:29
Speaker 1: so much for coming on one of our last shows
43:31
Speaker 1: of the Business of Tech for the year.
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Speaker 2: Great, thank you for having me on. It's been a
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Speaker 2: fantastic conversation.
43:45
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of the Business of Tech,
43:47
Speaker 1: the penultimate episode for the year. Thanks so much to
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Speaker 1: doctor Andrew Shelley from Foenix UAS for sharing his insights
43:55
Speaker 1: on drone warfare regulation and the rapidly evolving drone ecosystem
43:59
Speaker 1: here in Tauroa, New Zealand. And thanks to you for
44:03
Speaker 1: listening to the business of tech. Make sure you follow
44:05
Speaker 1: the show in your podcast app, and we'll catch you
44:08
Speaker 1: for the final episode of season three next Thursday. Right here,
44:12
Speaker 1: I'll catch you then.