Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #0238_ STORY INSPIRE: The Unsolved Mystery at Barksdale Air Force Base: Secret Military Operations, Strange Events & Unanswered Questions

Transcript

#0238_ STORY INSPIRE: The Unsolved Mystery at Barksdale Air Force Base: Secret Military Operations, Strange Events & Unanswered Questions · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Andy Lowery, welcome to the show.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. Good to see you in person, Sean.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I've been trying to get you guys on here for
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: two or three years now.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: Oh, is that right?
• 0:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: And, uh, so got a couple of mutual friends, Joe
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Lonsdale and Grant for standing and Grant actually put you
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: and Epirus on my radar and, uh, I don't even
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: know if I'm supposed to say this, but I saw
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: this cell phone video that was taken, I think, a
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: long time ago, and it was like very, very beginning
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: stages of Epirus.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, right.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: And then the video, you just see, it looked like
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: these drones were tethered to like a dog chain or
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: to the ground or something.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: And you see these, I think it's two or three
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: drones fly up, and then they just all three of
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: them fall down and everybody starts cheering, but you don't
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: see like why they fell down or anything. And I,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: but I knew what it was. I was like, holy shit,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: that looks like a EMP weapon deploy. Like I was
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: in the very beginning stages.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: I don't know how far back that video was, but
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: in the early days I've been told, and this was
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: even before I had joined the small team of innovators
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: that they first went about doing it. They were rigging
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: open microwave oven doors and stuff, trying to keep them
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: open and say, well, let's just stick a drone five
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: feet from the microwave oven. Can we get, I mean,
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: real startup stuff, you know.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I'm never using a microwave again, if that's the truth.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: But yeah, so we've been in touch with your team
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: and yeah, it's been like two or three years trying
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: to get you guys in here. So I'm really excited
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: about this.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Super glad to be here.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Especially right now with all the, with everything that's just
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: going on pretty much everywhere in the world, and drones
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: are top of mind for pretty much everybody.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: But I'd like to start you off with an introduction here.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Andy Lowery, CEO of Epirus, a venture-backed American defense tech
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: company valued at over $ 1 billion. Under your leadership, Epirus
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: deployed two combatant commands, 100 million plus in U.S. government contracts,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: and became the leader in counter-electronics technologies. Leonidas, the flagship product,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: a world-leading counter-drone solution using high-power microwave energy to neutralize
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: drones and electronic threats. 30-plus-year career leading advanced technology organizations
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: across defense and commercial sectors, including Raytheon and MACOMS. Retired U.S.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Navy Surface Warfare Officer. Served aboard the USS John C.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Stennis leading nuclear engineering teams in demanding maritime and combat environments.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Former business area chief engineer Raytheon leading radar and electronic
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: warfare programs, including the next generation jammer on the EA-18 Growler.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Founding CEO of RealWear, one of the fastest growing industrial
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: AR companies in the U.S., hold a degree in electrical
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: engineering from University of Illinois, currently studying integral noetic sciences.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: What is that?
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: How did you pick that one up?
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: I am.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Well, I tell you, there's this emerging kind of seam
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: with technology, ethics, consciousness, especially as AI and things become
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: more and more widely adopted. And so I've taken on,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: I'm a consummate self-educator, an educator. It's like what spurs
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: me on is to learn and to seek new knowledge.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: And so I decided to, in my off time on
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: the weekends and stuff, take some college courses and, you know,
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: pursue a PhD in something called noetic sciences, which is
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: kind of this crossover between some of the more soft touch,
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: you know, kind of spiritual and religion and consciousness and
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: things like that with then technology and how Does technology
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: basically impact those other fields? So not something that normally
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: you think to go together right away, but that's what
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: I think makes it so cool and why I'm very into.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: That sounds fascinating.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I'd like to talk about that at the end.
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Husband, father of two, servant leader, philosopher, and champion of
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: American manufacturing and life-saving technology. Quite the resume. Yeah, well.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: That's definitely me. Somebody that wrote it was very favorable
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: to me. I don't know if I would have been
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: quite as bullish with my write-up.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: So a couple things here before we get going. Everybody
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: gets a gift.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: All right. Thank you.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: The Jones League gummy bears made in the USA up
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: in Michigan. Legal in all 50 states. Not that you
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: have to worry about that in California. But There it is.
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Thank you. And I'll follow suit.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: Oh, man.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: There's yours. That's a Memento. We did a 49 drone
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: shoot down and sort of our inaugural shoot down of
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: a swarm, big swarm, 49 systems. And we made little
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: baseball cards that have a piece of those drones that
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: got knocked down. And then we've only made a limited
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: quantity of that. And Sean, you get number 49 there.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: So. That is awesome. So these are little pieces of
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: the drone you guys shot down?
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: The drones, right. That got shot down, correct.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: 49 drones?
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: 49 in one shot. Yeah, in one second.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Wow. This is awesome. I'm going to frame this and
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: put it in here. Thank you.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Perfect. So Andy, I want to... Before we get into
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: all things Epirus and directed EMP weapons, how do you
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: get into this? But you were a nuke in the Navy, correct? Correct.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: That's right. So I started nuclear power. I started enlisted.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: I enlisted in 1991. I got inspired by the Lava
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: Monster Marine Corps commercial. I don't know if you've ever
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: seen that one, but it was, I think to this day,
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: the greatest recruiting video that ever was made by anyone.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: And I sitting in the basement of my girlfriend, who's
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: now my wife of 35 years, but at the time,
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: my girlfriend, and not doing much, working at a TGI Fridays,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: I think. And I saw this commercial of this medieval
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: warrior fighting a lava monster, and he turns around and
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: snaps it up to his shoulder and turns into Marine
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: Corps saber, Marine Corps uniform, and I went, I want
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: to be a Marine. I don't know what they do.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: I don't know how they actually... what they operate on,
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: what they do. But if something like that lava monster, it's,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: I've got to go do this. And so I went
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: down to the Marine Corps recruiting station the next day
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: and they had the door closed. And a lot of
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: people know everywhere you see a Marine Corps station, you
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: see a Navy right next door. And so the Navy
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: was open and I looked in and he said, oh,
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: come on in. I said, oh, sir, I'm looking for Marines.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: And he goes, well, you know, the Navy owns the
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Marine Corps. And I went, oh, no kidding. And he's like,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: come on in. I'll tell you about it. And the
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: rest is history. I ended up going Navy nuke versus
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Marine Corps. And my Marine Corps friends to this day say,
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: you made a big mistake that day. You should have
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: stuck with the Marines.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: So much for the lava commercial.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the lava commercial did it, though. But got me
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: into the Navy. And it was probably a better fit
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: for me anyways, because I'm a strong engineer, strong in
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: mathematics and physics. And I did real well. And the
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Navy is smart. They take the best enlisted guys and say, hey,
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: these ought to be officers. And they put me through
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: a program called Enlisted Commissioning Program. And I went to
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: University of Illinois in the mid-90s. And I studied RF, microwaves, antennas,
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: all of these things. But then I went back into
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: the Navy and served another five or six years of
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: active duty as an officer. Never got to use much
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: microwaves in the nuclear power plants. It didn't really apply.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: I wanted to get into that, right? When I stopped
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: being active duty, I transitioned to reserves in 2002. I went,
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: let me find a company where I can work on microwaves.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: That's where I did in my college. And so let's
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: revisit that. I ended up at Macom. And Macom is
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: an RF microwave component company that makes the pieces. And
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: I worked there very successfully for about five years. And
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: then that followed with my Raytheon chief engineer position. And
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: after that, which I really got involved in electronic warfare
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: and microwaves and electromagnetic energy systems.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Wow. I mean, what was Raytheon doing?
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Well, Raytheon does everything. They're a prime. And this was
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: back when Raytheon had a pretty doggone good reputation. It
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: was under Bill Swanson was the CEO, and then Tom
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: Kennedy took over after him at a portion or down
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: the line. But with Bill Swanson, he and I worked
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: together on Next Generation Jammer, which was a big new
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: age electronic warfare program that basically took older technology, transmit
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: wave tubes, and vacuum tubes and that sort of thing.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: We can get into all what this stuff means later,
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: I guess. But used this old technology and then upgraded
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: it to a phased array, an antenna, a very sophisticated
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: antenna that was powered by something called gallium nitride that
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: I've heard on your show you guys talking a little
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: bit about, putting like a finger in the pond as
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: far as talking about gallium nitride. It's this really remarkable
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: semiconductor like silicon. Silicon is a semiconductor. It's a remarkable
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: semiconductor that can amplify signals and withstand huge, huge power
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: densities way, way, way better than traditional semiconductors or things
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: that we've used before in the past. And That is
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: really what's unlocked kind of a new class of directed energy,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: a new class of electronic warfare, a new class of
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: a whole bunch of different systems that leverage that kind
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: of technology, the gallium nitride technology. And that's really where
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: I found my niche is being sort of an expert
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: in systems that leverage gallium nitride in various ways.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: What year was this with Raytheon?
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: I worked in Raytheon. I started in 2007, 2008, and
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: I worked at Raytheon through 2014. About the end of
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: 2014 is when I transitioned into startups.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: What were you working on jamming? What specifically?
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: So there's something called the Next Generation Jammer. It looks
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: like a fuel pod. It goes on the wings of
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: a version of the F-18, a version of the Hornet
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: called the Growler, the EA-18 Growler. It flies on the wings,
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: and it just jams everything. It has a huge frequency
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: bandwidth that it can move around in, and it can
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: jam anything. It can do all kinds of sophisticated jamming,
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: like state of the art. And when you hear a
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: lot about these operations that we've been doing lately, you
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: hear a lot about like, oh, the lights all went out.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Everything just, the radars didn't work or whatever. The air
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: defenses got crippled. And I think President Trump said something
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: about a discombobulator. It's one of the things that I
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: think he's got in his mind about discombobulation. It is
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: kind of that. It discombobulates circuits, meaning it basically has
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: a whole different sorts of attacks that it can do
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: to take down a radar or confuse a radar, confuse
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: an operator of a radar, amongst other things, cellular stations,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: different electrical systems. base stations and things like that.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: What about humans? I mean, the discombobulator that we've all
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: heard about, everybody was in the fetal position on the ground.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's completely different. So it's hard because the
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: microwaves are invisible. It's hard to kind of see the differences.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: And so when you're looking at attacking electronics, most electronics
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: use pulses. They use pulses to do like a radar
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: will send out pulse and then it returns a pulse.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: So you're using a system that leverages a lot of
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: pulse power. And that means your peak power is very high,
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: your average power in comparison is very low. Whereas a
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: microwave oven or something that is tuned towards like biological
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: things has a very high average power. Your peak and
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: average power are equal because you're trying to get a very,
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: very high continuous power or beam on like a human
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: being or on a chicken in a microwave or something
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: that you're trying to heat up. And so you design
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: the microwave system very differently. You choose different frequencies. You
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: operate it much, much differently. And then if you do
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: it on the safe side, which some companies have done,
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: they do it up at like W band, which is
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: a way high frequency that you hear about the skin
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: and stuff getting needles and stuff and feeling like, well,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: that's just kind of heating the skin. It's localized heating
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: the skin. And so that can deter crowds and keep
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: crowds at bay. And then there's been rumors of other
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: things out there like Havana effect and stuff like that.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: But really, I don't have any knowledge of any of that.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know that those things are real. If they
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: are really real or they're not, I'm not aware.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Gotcha. Gotcha. So how did you get into Epirus?
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Well, a lot of the folks at Raytheon, it's kind
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: of almost, in some ways, a spin-out. Nathan Mintz worked
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: for me at Raytheon. He was the founding CEO. He
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: had Bo Marr. Dr. Marr came out of Georgia Tech,
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: worked in my organization for a whole number of years.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Me and Bo got real close at Raytheon. And then
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: when the team had built the company to a certain
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: sort of stage, we had gotten through most of the
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: initial technology discovery to see if it actually would work.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: And we were starting to look at product market fit
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: and then eventually scaling the company. They called me and asked.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: They said, hey, what are you doing? You want to
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: join the company? And I told them, just as long
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: as I'm not the CEO, I'll join. And they said, OK.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: And they made me the chief product officer. And I
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: was really happy in that role. I was doing great stuff.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: And then down the line, it just one thing led
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: to another. And I ended up in the position of
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: CEO a couple of years later. So I think Bo
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: is happy and Nathan is real happy that I eventually
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: made that decision together with the board, obviously, to offer
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: me the position. But I came in, this is my
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: third CEO job, and it's not an easy job for
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: those out there that have done it. It's very lonely
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: and high pressure and you've got a lot of pressure
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: both directions and it's tough. I needed a break and
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: I came in and I was able to do what
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: I love to do is build stuff and do the
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: engineering and help sort of advance the design that the
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: previous team had done. So when you look at the
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: designs we are now releasing and going into production today,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: those were designs that when I was the chief product officer,
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: me and the team just redid completely. We've redone the
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: entire work that we had done in previous generations of
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: the system and call this system Leonidas Generation 2 That's
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: a second sort of major, major upgrade that we did
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: in order to improve things like range and a lot
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: of the survivability type requirements.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay. I'm excited to introduce to you the newest
• 15:53
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• 15:58
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• 16:01
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• 16:04
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• 16:07
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• 16:12
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• 16:18
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• 16:21
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• 16:25
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• 16:28
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• 16:33
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• 16:36
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• 16:40
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• 16:43
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• 16:46
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• 16:49
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• 16:56
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• 17:00
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• 17:04
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• 17:09
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• 17:14
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• 17:29
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• 17:33
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• 17:37
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• 17:41
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• 18:07
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• 18:14
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• 18:45
  Speaker 1: and become part of the Sean Ryan Show's story. When
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: did Raytheon, or excuse me, when did Everest start? When
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: was it founded?
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: It was founded in 2018, right before COVID. And most
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: of the work that they did to get the system
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: proving that it would be viable was done during the
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: COVID period, actually. They brought people in, you know, and
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: we were safe about it, but, you know, they had
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: to work kind of hand in hand and it was
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: a real discovery phase those first two or three years.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: And then I joined in 2021, right when we started
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: to get into product market fit and doing our first
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: demos for the Army. Army RICTO was the name of
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: the organization, which is now called PAE Fires. We had
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: done some tests with Army RICTO and some other companies
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: in order to see what type of system would be
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: at least worth the Army taking a look at to
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: see if it had a viability for some of their missions.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: And that all started in about 2021. Wow.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Was it always counter-drone initiatives?
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: We brought up with the idea with counter-drone, we really
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: didn't set out to build a directed energy machine. What
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: we set out to build was a really, really high
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: powered RF transmitter, something that could put in out all
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: kinds of electromagnetic interference, or if you wanted to make
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: it a transmitter for a radar, It could be a
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: transmitter for a radar. Then you could have a receiver
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: sitting next to it that it could send the signals out.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: And the receiver could take those signals back in. And
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: you could use it as a radar. We had ideas
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: for that. We had ideas for other counter outboard motors,
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: for example, on engines on boats. You see a lot
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: of the unmanned boats now getting out there with these
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: engines in the back. Well, it has the same effects
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: on those commercial-type systems as it does on drones. basically
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: looks for anything that has a computer board. And it
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: uses a very high electromagnetic interference field to couple voltages
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: onto the computer board so the computer board just basically
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: ceases to function. We used to call this the blue
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: screen of death when it was like Microsoft causing it
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: on our computers. And we would have to unplug the
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: computer completely and plug it back in, give it a
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: real big reboot cycle. This is very similar to the
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: type of effect that Leonidas and this type of directed
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: energy has on computer systems.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay. So it developed, so it basically developed into
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: counter drone technology. It developed in- Or is that just
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: a sector?
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Well, it was always there. I mean, the founders like
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Joe and Grant that you've had on a couple of times,
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: I think Joe now, it's like they had the vision.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, and this is something that Grant and Joe,
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: and even at that time, there was John Tennant, Alex Moore,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: who still sits on our board. All of those guys
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: were involved in the very onset of the company. They
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: were all founders. It was basically financial founders in a way.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: But the type that dig in and actually help with
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: the engineering and with the thought process and from a
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: big picture, they kind of saw it. I mean, Joe,
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: to his credit and Grant too, they saw this coming.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: They saw this drone explosion, if you will, before it
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: really was anything. And in fact, they anticipated even before
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: that we would have something on stateside soil and Unbelievably,
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: we haven't. It's almost unbelievably because of just the ease
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: at which that could be done. But thankfully, through maybe
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: our protections and intelligence and things like that, we haven't
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: really had any issues to deal with on U.S. soil.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: But now we see it, we saw it in Ukraine,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: and now we're seeing it play out in a huge
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: way in our presence in the Gulf region now. And
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: so drones are here to stay, and they are very,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: very troublesome things.
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: They had that kind of insight back in 2018.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: I know. To me, it's amazing. To me, it's a
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: whole different kind of visionary. I think of myself as
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: a visionary, but more like pragmatic visionary, if you will.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: What's the next stage? What's the next step? How do
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: we make a better generation, a longer range system? Visionaries
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: like Joe and the board and Grant and 8BC and
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: Red Cell and stuff, they have this you know, they're
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: tapped into like 100 different people. And in that sort
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: of network, they juxtapose, I think, all of that information
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: and all those inputs, and they come out with these
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: enormously creative ideas that are brilliant. And they knew Bomar,
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: they knew Nathan Mintz from their history together, and went
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: to them and said, hey, we're thinking about something along
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: these lines. Do you think we should take a risk
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: and put the money, put the capital to work? And
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: at the time, the military had not thought of this
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: as a good approach. They thought the approach might not
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: be successful. So Joe set out and Grant set out
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: to prove them all wrong. And I think today we're
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: sitting in a pretty good position. Yeah, no shit. I
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: think the evidence is kind of self-apparent that we've proven
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: them all wrong.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Wow, wow. So was Leonidas the first, was that the
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: first product?
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Well, Leonidas is a scalable product. So it has these
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: little elements that can be much, bigger, we can make
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: much bigger antennas and have much more range where we
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: have smaller ones. And so the class of product we
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: call Leonidas was the first thing that they started working on.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: And the first one, it was actually a bunch of
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: huge antennas. It had like only nine or 10 elements
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: and had these huge antennas. It was, it looks like,
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you've ever seen the pictures of
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: like the first meta glasses or Apple, you know, does
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: the augmented reality stuff. They just look like Frankensteins. They're not, compact.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: They're not down into the right form factor. They don't
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: have all the performance figured out yet. That's what the
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: team built in that COVID period. They built their very,
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: very first prototype of the Leonidas. And they weren't entirely
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: sure how it would even be incorporated or what service
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: would want to go after it and all of that.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: And it was a big risk. It really was. But
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: the foresight that Grant and Joe had was pretty remarkable,
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: really remarkable.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: How many products are there? classes of products, I guess.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: We have platforms. And right now, we have the platform
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: called Leonidas. Now, when I say that, people focus on
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: the directed energy machine, but it's really a whole series
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: of different things. We have to have, first of all, layers.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: You're never going to get a panacea against this kind
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: of threat. You're not going to get one system that
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: works in all situations counter drone. You're always going to
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: have various layers and various technologies. And we can get
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: into the details of what those are and why some
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: technologies work really, really well in some applications, and then
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: other technologies work really, really well in other applications. And
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: so when we started to take a look at what
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: other products we need in order to finish sort of
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: the system, the system of systems, so that we're not
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: just saying, hey, we have this great effector, but it
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: has to plug in or we have to leverage what
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: you have and what you're using already inside your country.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: We knew kind of at the beginning or when I
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: started as a chief product officer that we would need
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: sort of a standalone version where we could have radar, electro-optical, telescopes,
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: all of that stuff, and our own command and control
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: software to kind of tie it all together. So we
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: built that, and then we built basically where we can
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: take the head off and plug into systems like Andral's Lattice.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: You know, we're working with Andral pretty tightly in order
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: to ensure that as they release Lattice for their various
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: customers that are starting to pick up, that our system
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: is well controlled by that software. So it basically became
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: a situation where we needed other products in order to
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: complete the product that we had. And so by that need,
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: we went out and either sourced through third parties or
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: developed ourselves a whole sensing suite, command and control suite, simulator.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: We have this really incredible, it's built by guys that
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: used to work at Call of Duty on the Call
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: of Duty program and Blizzard. And we've got about 12
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: or so designers, which at Raytheon, you know, no one
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: ever hires designers at Raytheon hardly. It's like something unique. Well,
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: they don't have a design-led philosophy there. And when we
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: talk about what is Silicon Valley adding to the whole mix,
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: if you will, you say, well, why is Silicon Valley, uh,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: sort of better in some way, I lean into the
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: design-led thinking. And design-led thinking is human factors, human thinking
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: from the very beginning. That's what it means at its core.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: In a Raytheon, you're a services contractor. You have the
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: military that decides what they want you to build. They
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: put them all down in like 1,000 requirements. They hand
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: you a bunch of requirements. And you just build a
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: system that meets the requirements. You get paid, and then
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: you move on to the next system. There's no real
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: design process there. It's like baked into the system engineering.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: It's baked into the way that operational commands give feedback
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: to procurement commands and to requirement commands. And all of
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: that is a very bureaucratic process. You get good products
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: out of it. You get expensive products out of it.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: You get exquisite products out of it. But what we're
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: seeing now is a whole new chapter. It's the stuff
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: that's built at the big primes are not sufficient. for
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: this new fight. And before anybody gets angry with that
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: and why I say that, I'll give you an analogy.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: For the last decades, the Primes have been focused on,
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: let's say, going out and hunting a lion or lions,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: like big, big beasts. They have to bring in the
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: big nets, the big guns, the big whatever that they
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: need to go hunt lions. The problem we see today
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: are like mice. and little mice that are running around.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: And what we're doing with our big rockets and our
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: big defensive systems are using the same thing we would
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: go up against lions, against mice. And it's really that fundamental.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: It's that, can you now develop mice-like apparatuses, Raytheon, quickly
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: and short order like they're doing in Ukraine, or are
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: you not rigged to do it? Are you not set
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: up to do that? And not that they can't change
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: and not that they can't like bolt on companies like
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: EPRIS and let them operate sort of independently and still
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: bring in the human factors and the design-led stuff, but.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're talking about shooting a $ 2 million missile
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: to destroy a $ 500 drone.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: That's what you're talking about.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: Yes, sir.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: It's not sustainable.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: It's just not even like appropriate. It's like, would you
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: ever take a huge gun or a huge... I don't
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: know what you want to do if you don't say
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: gun like net or whatever. cage, would you have a
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: cage for a lion with the bars this far apart?
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: You're stuffing mice in it and they're just running through
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: the bars of the cage. You know, it's like, it
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: just isn't the right stuff for this particular fight. And
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: the right stuff is, needs to be here yesterday. It
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: needs to be here yesterday.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Why do you think the big, I mean, Why aren't
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: the big primes doing this? Did they just get cocky?
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Do they think they don't need to innovate? What is
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: going on? I mean, I love it. I love seeing,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've interviewed a whole ton of these companies
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: like Epirus that are coming up, Shield AI, Anduril, like
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: a bunch of these. And the innovation that's coming out
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: of these companies is just amazing. I don't know what's
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: coming out of the other companies. I saw I saw
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: some of the stuff that Lockheed came out with at
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: that event in D.C. that I met you at. But
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: the younger, leaner, more innovative companies just seem to be
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: outperforming the big five defense tech firms. Am I wrong
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: on that?
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: No, you're not wrong, but I wouldn't blame them. Palmer
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: says this very eloquently. I've heard him speak on this
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: topic a couple times, Palmer Luckey of Andrew. He would say...
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: They're not incentivized to be fast and creative and move
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: very quickly. They're not incentivized to, at risk, spend $ 200
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: million developing a new system that they might have a
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: customer for, but they're not quite sure that they're going
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: to have a customer for. They're incentivized to listen very,
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: very well to the customer, being the military, and go
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: off like a services company, like when you go to
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: a law firm and you say, hey, law firm, I
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: need you to help me with... this dog bite case
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: that I'm in the middle of here or whatever. And
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: that law firm then pivots and says, OK, we're going
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: to work on that. That's not how the new neoprimes work.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: They don't work like a law firm. They don't work
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: like the primes. They guess. They go out. They survey
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: the land. They see the problems. They talk with the generals.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: They talk with the various folks that are out in
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: the field. And then they guess at what a product
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: that they could invent that they have in their head
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: might work to solve this problem or that problem. Some
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: of them are winners. Some of them will win. Some
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: of them will lose, just like in consumer products, where
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: you'll have a consumer product company that just doesn't make it,
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: but others that do. You're going to have winners and losers.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: And that's where the big risk comes into play. But
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: if you're willing to take that risk, then you get
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: way more innovation, way more creativity, because you're not bounded
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: to this very systematic, like, hand you this, hand you that, stepwise, one, two, three, four, five, six,
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: never really do anything unless the government says, here's a check,
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: here's how you get paid. And so they're incentivized to
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: just wait for the requirements, wait for the direction on
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: what they should build, and then they go build it.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: So like a law firm, just like it. That's what
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: primes are today. So are they useful?
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Will they build the big exquisite machines still into the
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: future on a very robust, well-exercised process?
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: I still think there's a big place for them in
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: the future world. but will they be the ones that
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: can make the mice traps and all the things that
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: need to come out like in a month to month
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: to month type iterative cycle and risk a lot of
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: money up in the front end of the thing to
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: make it all work? They just, they're not really set
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: up to do that. And the only way that I
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: could see them becoming more like that is if they
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: were to take a risk and like, let's say buy
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: EPRIS and then like let us operate exactly like we've
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: been operating under our investors and our board that we're
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: under now just operate the same, but be under their umbrella,
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: so to speak, or their brand, but still operate the
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: way that we've been operating. I could see that being
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: one way.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Is that starting to happen?
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: I've seen it in bits. Like Lockheed, you mentioned, I
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: know they have a big fund that basically funds different
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: small companies that they find having a lot of potential.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure how many of those are transitioning yet
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: to acquisition, but I think that's the intent is to
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: basically get involved by finding ones that have a real win,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: you know, and then transitioning them into a growth phase.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: Because, you know, as you start to scale and you're
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: talking about field service operators out in the field, you're
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: talking about people all over the world that are needing support,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: maintaining these systems, logistics for these systems, all the mill
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: PF type stuff that people talk a lot about all
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: of that. the primes do well. They're well situated, they're
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: well staffed, they have people all over the world. When
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: you need a scale in mass, it's nice to partner
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: with primes because they have mass. And for example, General
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Dynamics Land Systems is a major, major partner to us.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: And I had really never had a partnership quite as
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: close as we are with GD. And GD ends up
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: being that sort of big brother to say, hey, do
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: you have people in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: the Middle East and other places, because we do. We
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: have loads of people over there and we can help
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: you scale when it comes time to scale versus trying
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: to build everything from like new, like everything new and
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: everything fresh. Leverage what they're good at, scaling, mass production,
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: field support, all of those types of elements, and then
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: keep the innovation and keep the stuff that these neoprimes
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: are doing really well, like Shield AI and all the
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: rest of them. that you named, and more. There's many,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: many more. All of those companies are doing the innovation really,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: really well right now, in particular for these types of threats.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Gotcha. Gotcha. I mean, it just seems, especially with the
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: current wars that we're involved in right now, in particular Ukraine,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: with all the... I mean, everything just seems so cheap
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: that they're doing over there.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, cheap and innovative and quick and, you know, like
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: death by a thousand cuts, as they say, right? And
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: everything is very distributed. It's almost, it feels to me
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: like if people know in the audience about cyber and
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: like how cyber works, right? If you look at Symantec
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: and how it defends against these little Trojan viruses that
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: get in and try to do harm to your system,
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Those Trojans are like 110, 150, 200 lines of code.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: They can be very, very small pieces of software. But
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: Symantec needs millions or billions of lines of code in
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: order to defend against these little harassing software-type drones, if
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: you will. And if you look at the physical world now,
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: we have that sort of metaphor where The layered defense
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: that we know in cyber defense and the swarms that
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: you see in cyber attacks where you'll get viruses coming
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: in this way, viruses coming in this way, those types
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: of attack vectors, if you will, call them attack vectors,
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: are being used in the physical world now. So the
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: drones are like the little Trojans that are everywhere doing
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: mass swarms, trying to overwhelm the enemy through just sheer
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: quantity and mass. And then our defensive networks are becoming
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: more and more layered and nuanced so that we have
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: these layers of protection. Because what you don't hear in
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: the news a lot is like nine out of every
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: 10 of these drones were taken care of. It's just
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: one or two out of 10 that are leaking past. Wow.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: And as they increase that ratio scale, so if they
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: send in 100, that means 10 will get passed. If
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: they send in 1,000, maybe 100 will get passed. And
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: so we need more layers. We need more systems like
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Leonidas presented in the fight so that we can take
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: care of the leakers, take care of the swarms, take
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: care of the dark drones.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: Leakers?
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: What are leakers?
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Leakers are what I just said. If you have a
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: system in place, like an iron dome that takes care
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: of nine out of the 10 Shahids that come in
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: and you get one that get in, that's your leaker
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: that kind of gets through your traditional network. And Leonidas
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: is good for those. It's a good last line of defense,
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: like a close-in weapon system, but with electromagnetic energy. It's
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: a good analogy if the listeners know about the CWIS,
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: the little R2-D2s on ships that have the 5,000 rounds
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: a minute type of ability to just do that close-in protection.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: What we're doing with Leonidas at EPRIS is creating basically
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: a close-in weapon system, but using electromagnetic bullets versus physical
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: bullets to kind of provide that last line of defense.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: And one, it can provide a very nice Last line
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: of defense against leakers. We talked about those. Really nice
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: line of defense against swarms. Like the gift I gave
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: you was a 49 shoot down, but that doesn't mean
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: we can't shoot down 500 or a thousand or more.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: And then it gives you a really nice defense against
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: fiber optic, fiber optic drones that you've seen these in
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: the Ukraine now. These guys are about the drones that tethered. Tethered. Yeah.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: We call them dark drones because it could be fiber
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: optic in the future. It could be autonomous drones that
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: just don't use any sort of RF or any sort
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: of global positioning or any of that in order to
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: see where it's at and to navigate. Autonomous drones will
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: be like fiber without the line, without the tethered fishing
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: line that goes behind it. But those types of drones
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: are just as susceptible against RFX as a regular remote
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: control drone. So it doesn't really jam it. It's like
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: an EMP, like you said at the very beginning. It's
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: like a, small little electromagnetic pulses that we're putting out
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: exactly directed where we want to direct them.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Let's dive into Leonidas. What are all of its capabilities?
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: What does it do? Where is it deployed?
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: So just to start really simple, and then we'll double-click down,
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: in a simple way, it's sort of like the first
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: version that the human race of a force field that
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: anyone's ever created. If listeners are You've seen Star Trek
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: and Star Wars. They'll put these fields up. And those fields, obviously,
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: in the movies are like against physical objects that will
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: bounce off of them like a wall or whatever. Our
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: system isn't quite to that level of sophistication yet. But
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: as far as a version one of a force field
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: that is a close-in protective field that sends out these very, very,
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: very high, high-powered electromagnetic interference waves that when the drone,
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: if you imagine, Here's the field that we're putting out there.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: As the drone gets into this electromagnetic interference field, it
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: might stutter. The camera might stop working. Then it gets
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: deeper and deeper, closer and closer into the intensity of
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: the electromagnetic interference. And eventually, the computer just can't operate.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: It just does not operate under that strong of a
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: field surrounding the computer board. And computer goes dead or
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: one of the servos locks up or whatever.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: So this is like a bubble.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: It's like a bubble. Exactly. You could put a bubble
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: around an embassy. You could put a bubble around a
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: White House. You could put a bubble around anything. Anything
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: that you can think of, really. We've got smells. What's that?
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: A country.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: A country. Well, that would take a lot of money
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: and a lot of systems, but you could theoretically do
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: that if you wanted to make something huge, building size.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: You could go out miles with a system like this.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: If you wanted to let's say, protect the Straits of Taiwan,
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: and you wanted to build an enormous building-size version of Leonidas.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: You saw the one out there earlier. That one was
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: like 10 foot by 10 foot. Imagine 100 feet by
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: 100 feet, or bigger.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, shit, okay. You can really.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: Power project then and start thinking about huge things to
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: defend against these types of drones with a system that big.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Can they interconnect? Yes, they can interconnect. So meaning what
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about, I mean, what comes to my mind
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: is the Iron Dome over Israel. Correct. How is that built?
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Is that a bunch of systems all linked together for
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: one big dome? Or is that one massive device?
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: I think in essence, it basically gives you a theoretical,
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: in our minds, dome. But how it actually operates is
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: much more you know, down the traditional OODA loops where
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: you have, you know, detect, you're like scanning basically wide
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: area search and then you're tracking and then you're like, okay,
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: assign this effector to that type of threat. We know
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: that it can take out of it and then it
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: takes out of it. So it's really the, I think
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: the coordination that makes Iron Dome so successful. It's a
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: very close-knit coordinated system that works really, really well. In fact,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: I met not too long ago in Singapore, one of
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: the original engineers that designed, has credit to designing that
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Iron Dome. And they have other versions with directed energy
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: now and other things, but nothing like Leonidas. We've been
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: talking to Israel and we've been talking to others about
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: something like Leonidas. They're very interested. They want to work
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: with us because of all the issues that are now
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: plaguing Israel. You see it on the news every night.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: If you see something get hit in Israel, that's a
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: leaker or it's a dark drone or it was a
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: swarm that just overwhelmed us. their defenses as they're now rigged.
• 43:11
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• 44:51
  Speaker 5: Hi, I'm Sarah Adams, the host of Vigilance Elite's The
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: Watch Floor, where we highlight what matters. It became a
• 44:59
  Speaker 5: permissive state. Explain to you why it matters, and then
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: aim to leave you feeling better informed than you were
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: before you hit play.
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: Terrorists, hostile intelligence agencies... Organized crime, not everything is urgent,
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: but this show will focus on what is need to know,
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: not just what is nice to know.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: So I've seen, Grant actually sent me some videos of capabilities,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: or actually maybe Maybe I found those.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Whatever.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: I might have found them on your website. But the
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: way it appeared to me is it's 49 drones, 49
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: individual shots that all happen simultaneously. Am I off on this?
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I'm even thinking about using augmented reality glasses
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: to show what's going on and tie that into the
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: computer that's doing the commands and stuff so that you
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: could see what's happening. What happened in that 49 drone video,
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: if the viewers like really frame by frame take a
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: look at it, we do three major spots. But it
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: all happens in less than a second. So we hit
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: the one group that sits there, the second group there,
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: and then the third group there. And we do that
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: within like a half a second. We go one, two, three.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Holy shit.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: So we're steering the beam kind of like in a
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: laser light show. You know how they can steer one
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: laser and make like a whole shape. We're steering the
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: beam so quickly that the drones that are falling prey
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: to us think that they're all over, like the beam's
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: all over. But what we're really doing is very quickly
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: on the time scale moving the beam around in whatever
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: pattern the drones require us to do. So we're not
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: going to throw away energy. Like if there's not a
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: drone there, we're not going to point it in that direction.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: shape the basically force field for whatever sort of targets
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: that are out there in front of us.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: So the force field morphs into what you need it
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: to morph. Exactly.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: That's a great way of putting it.
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Shit, that's badass. Wow.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: It's tip of the spear tech. It really is. And
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: that is why I told you at the beginning, I
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: love learning. I love being part of something that's so advanced,
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: even in some ways controversial. We have our naysayers out there.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: We have the folks that.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Say, Controversial?
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: Well.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: What the fuck is controversial about counter drone?
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: I mean.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: No, not about that.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: I don't have too many people that say, hey, let's
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: forget about this counter drone problem. I don't think it's
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: going to be a problem in a couple of years.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: I think most people are wedded to the idea that
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: drones are here and here to stay and they're a
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: really big problem. But there's all kinds of opinions of
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: what the best way to solve the problem, right? There's
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: all differences. You've got laser systems. You have guys making...
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: gatling guns in the back of pickup trucks, the bullfrog
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: guy at Allen Control Systems building something like that, another
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: kind of close-in weapon system that provides with bullets anyway,
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: sort of that last layer of attack or defense, I
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: should say. And then you have a whole bunch of
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: other types of systems that, again, like I said earlier,
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: work really well in certain conditions and not as well
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: in other conditions. So The hard, hard problem that the army,
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: that the air force, that our foreign allies have right
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: now is figuring out what to pick, you know, what
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: to use in this layer or that layer. And that's
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: why we've leaned into the simulation. Like we've leaned into
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: the video game where you can play like tower defense,
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: but in real life and drop in Leonidas's, drop in
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: other electronic warfare systems, drop in radar systems and say,
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: if I set up a protection scheme like this, and
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: then We partnered with another company called Gambit. And Gambit's
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: another neoprime that basically runs scenarios. Like, drones could come
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: in and do this. They could come in high and
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: drop down. They could run 100 different scenarios and say,
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: will this layered defense network or this layered defense scheme
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: work for this particular target? That's going to be absolutely
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: 100% required as we move further and further into the future.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: Lots of companies are doing it. I think we're doing
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: it in a unique way right outside of Fort Sill
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: in Lawton, Oklahoma. We have a big experience center, experience
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: site that soldiers and others can come into and play
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: video games. It's like Ender's Game, right? It's like If
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: you practice it just like you fight, and so we've
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: created simulators and emulators that look like you're in the fight.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: It appears like you're doing it. So when you go
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: from the Fort Sill area over into the battlefield, you're
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: not going to see any difference. You're going to see
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: the same sort of scenarios play out, one in simulation
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: and one in real life.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: Wow. Man, I got a ton of questions. I'm trying
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: to organize them into a type of order. I mean,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: what is the... What's the range on something like this?
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: As usual, I'm going to give you probably an answer
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: that's a function of your question. So the range is
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: 100% dependent on the size of the system. And you
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: size the system and then therefore the range based upon
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: the target that you're trying to protect. So if you're
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: trying to protect a tank, you've seen maybe some videos
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: of first-person viewers with fiber optic tethers on them hitting
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: an Abrams tank in the back and blowing up the
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: tank or whatever. So you get a $ 3, $ 4 million
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: tank blown up by a $ 10, 000, $ 20, 000 first-person viewer drone.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: Those types of systems are like small, right? Or relatively small,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: like a big toolbox, about as big as a big toolbox.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: Very dense, the electronics. And then the range, though, is
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: maybe 50 meters. but a tank's not going to need
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: much more than about 50 meters by our calculations. And
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: so you've got certain size ones that have ranges at
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: that low of a level. And then you have ones
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: that have the need to go much, much bigger than that.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: If you're trying to defend a base or an airfield
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: or an embassy or any of those sort of things,
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: then you're going to need at least what you see
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: in kind of a lot of other different protective systems
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: where you're out at like SEWIS. SEWIS goes out to
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: about one and a half kilometers. If you look at
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: the nominal range of what a close-in weapon system can defend,
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: it's about 1.5 kilometers. So we are, like, defending a ship,
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: need about that size. It's about a building size. We
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: need something in that range. So the big one you
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: see out there that we kind of toured around and
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: take a look at, that one is for the embassies,
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: for the fixed targets, what sometimes they're called the point
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: defense type applications. Those ones are in that kind of Manifold.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Of range so that that would that would basically defend
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: this entire property.
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: You could it since it's mobile Absolutely, because if you
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: could detect out at five or ten kilometers Then you
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: move the system both on the ground and then with
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: the antenna to kind of protect and so out to
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: like a half mile mile that type of distance which
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: is what about this property would be you you would
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: be safe and if you had a really critical target
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: you might want to on a on a property about
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: this size and 180 and 180. Exactly. And then that
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: way you don't need to beam over the house or whatnot.
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: You've got one half of Leonidas, this guy, one half Leonidas,
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: this guy. And to your question earlier, you can take
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: the beams and steer them in the same direction, point
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: them at the same target. And it doesn't quite double up,
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: but it gives you about 50 or 60% more range
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: by having two systems. So the seams, like if you
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: had two left and right of your house right now,
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: the seam down the middle is where people would think
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: to go. But that seam is covered as well or
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: even better than coming right at the system. So we
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: try to make a very sort of robust shield, if
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: you will, so that nothing can get through. And we're
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: that final last line.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: What would this do to a human? Nothing.
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: Like I would stand in, like I tell people, there's
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: a famous, one of my sort of fans from the
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: nuclear Navy was Admiral Rickover. He was like one of
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: the greatest intrapreneurs in the world, created the entire nuclear
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: program in like four years for subs and surface ships
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: and all of that. And there's a famous scene where
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: Admiral Rickover goes into Congress and drinks the effluent of
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: the primary coolant. He drinks down a glass of it
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: saying how safe, to try to illustrate how safe. I
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: was telling someone before we came out here, I said,
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: I would stand in front of the main beam, not
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: for like an hour, but I'd stand in front of
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: the main beam for like 15 seconds and go, zap me.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: It won't do anything. It won't, it wouldn't do a
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: thing to me. And I'll tell you why. You go, well, why?
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, these microwaves, ovens and stuff, we happen to
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: use frequencies that are so low, they're close to kind
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: of RF. They're still microwaves, they're considered microwave, but they're
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: almost in the, RF or radio frequency band of waves.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: And those waves pass harmlessly through us. Those are the
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: kind of radio towers and stuff like that. The very,
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: very long wavelength, very, very low frequency waves. Those frequencies
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: are not harmful to humans. They just pass right through
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: us and pass right through biologics, not harmful to plants,
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: not harmful to birds. We are a little bit above that,
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: but not much. So we do have to be somewhat
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: safety conscious. We have to do HERO, HERP, these different
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: hazardous electromagnetic radiation for personnel. There's these limits that are very,
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: very tight and very tightly controlled. We have to be
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: below those by measure, but it's not hard for us
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: to be below them. We're well below them and you
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: can stand very close to the machine and not have
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: any sort of effects whatsoever.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: Okay. And it's not radiating any microwaves. unless it detects something, correct? Exactly.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: So even if you do radiate, it might be 20
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: seconds or 10 seconds of radiation, then it's off again.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: The drones are down.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: Okay. And so when it does detect something, if you
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: could see the beam, what would it look like? Would
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: it look like a laser? Would it look like a
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: blast wave? What would it look like?
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: It would look like... It would not look like a laser.
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: It would look more like a, it's about, oh, let
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: me think about this, how to say this right without
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: giving away too much. It's nowhere near as thin of
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: a beam as a layer. It's a thicker beam. And
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: if you look at it, so it would look like
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: a- A spotlight. Oh, that's a great analogy. It's about
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: like a spotlight. Yeah, like a spotlight that you would see,
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: it would be, yes, that's absolutely dead on. That is
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: a great way of looking at it. Like the spotlight
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: you see in the parking lots to say, hey, come
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: over here. And they shine up in the sky and
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: they zoom them around and make different sorts of things.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: That's about, in the microwave frequencies, exactly what the beam
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: would look like.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: How many of those beams can it.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: We keep it at just one because we want to
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: eke out every bit of power we can. We don't
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: want to distribute the beams into a bunch of beams.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: But we move it at microsecond speeds. So it's hard
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: for a human to even think about this, just like
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: the lights in this room are blinking on and off
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: right now, but we can't see them. And that's only
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: at 60 hertz. We're at a much, much faster repetition
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: rate that we're doing. So we can basically go around
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: this whole 60 degrees by 60 degrees and fill the
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: sky with pulsating electromagnetic interference energy, and a drone anywhere
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: in that big sort of section of the sky would fall.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: So it's so fast, it just looks like it's happening
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: all simultaneous, all at the exact, it looks like a
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: blast wave.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly, to the physical system, like if you were on
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: the drone, like a little guy inside the drone driving it,
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: you would just see, no matter if you were here, here, here,
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: you would see this electromagnetic pulsating wave just hitting you
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: and hitting you and hitting you, like as if you
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: took that spotlight that you made the reference to and
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: just had a guy that in one second could just
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: run that spotlight across the whole sky.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Shit. How does it detect the drones?
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: It does it through a combination of radar and electro-optical
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: and infrared. So we have three bands of frequencies. We
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: have the radar, which goes out and it's pretty high
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: frequency radar because it has to find these little drones
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: as far distance as we can find them. So we
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: start with like a 360 degree radar and we're searching
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: and we're searching. Or we're tapped into Andralattis and Lattis
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: is doing the searching and then handing us, hey, we
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: found something. We're going to assign it to you. But
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: in the headed situation where we're doing everything, we search.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: We search about maybe a 10 kilometer to 20 kilometer space.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: We see things way out as they're coming in. And
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: then soon as we see them, we're starting to move
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: or position our system to be able to take the attack.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: But we're not firing until it gets in that kind
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: of final sort of layer is where we fire, where
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: we don't try to hit them way out at 10
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: miles or five miles. It's in that last sort of
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: engagement zone. So other things are handling, other layers are
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: handling the further out fight. We're sitting back just like
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: a goalie in a hockey game, just pointed, ready, ready, ready,
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: ready to stop, ready to stop. We get either the assignment,
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: or if we're a standalone, we give ourselves the assignment.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: It's locked onto by our telescope, basically. It's an electro-optical
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: and infrared telescope. Some of the videos online, you can
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: see the infrared version of that telescope. So it locks
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: onto it very tightly. We hit the trigger. It goes
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: on for about two seconds. Every drone in the sky
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: falls down. Damn.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Very, very.
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: Quickly.
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Big of a drone could you take out? Something like
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: a predator drone? How big of a machine can you disable?
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: The theory applies and scales to anything with electronics. However,
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: as you get bigger and bigger drones, you're able to
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: get bigger and bigger weight capacities and you can do
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: a lot of things with electromagnetic shielding. So even drones
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: that even fly at a hundred thousand feet, they have
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: cosmic radiation and electromagnetic fields that have to like be
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: shielded against. And so, and this is actually in one
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: side you go, oh, that shoot, you can't get those
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: big drones. But on the other side, we're also not
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: taking out airplanes or 747s or anything like it's super
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: safe because of the kind of controlled short range nature
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: of the system. So it works really, really well against
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: Group 1 and Group 2s. So these harassing first-person viewers,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: that is what it was designed for. It was a
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: Group 1, Group 2 goalie. Stop. We have tested against
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: some Group 3s. We have lots of information, commercial information
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: around and commercial testing around bigger systems that enterprising people
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: pick up out of the field in the Ukraine that
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: get downed and then we buy those commercially and we
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: test our system to see the viability. And it does
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: seem to have good effects, at least in a chamber
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: where we test it. We haven't flown a Shahed at
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: it or anything like that. We don't have any Shahed
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: pilots and don't have a Shahed that's operational. So we
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: rig up the systems that we have and we're able
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: to gain access to and we test in the chamber
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: how our system would affect the system out in the field.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: And we have kind of math equations that are really accurate,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: like within 5%. If we can down the drone inside
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: of our chamber at such a distance or a calculated distance,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: then it equates to that same distance out in the field.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: So we do believe they will be effective against Group 3s.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: It is effective against Group 3s. But I wouldn't call it, again,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: I just caution everyone to say nothing is a panacea.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: There's always need for layers. There's always need for more
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: than just one set of stopping things. You have to
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: have other different types of systems in order to be safe,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: in order to be safe and get everything.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, if this is as successful as you think
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: it's going to be, or than it is, this would
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: make drone warfare obsolete. It's some point in time, probably
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: in the near future, correct?
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: If we do what I hope we're able to do,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: it will change the face of drone warfare completely. Now,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying it will obsolete it because this is
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: a chess game or cat and mouse game, you know,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: where You know, they build a bigger mousetrap and they
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: figure out a better mouse. And you just back and forth,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: back and forth. If you ask anyone who's an expert
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: in electronic warfare, that is all of electronic warfare. Like
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: Next Generation Jammer, we might be jamming something at 150
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: miles and then all of a sudden they change the
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: physical construction of the radar and it can't jam it
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: but 75 miles out. So you're always playing this who's
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: got the lead, who's got the upper hand, the enemy
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: or us, the enemy, the us. But with that said,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: this is a game changer. It is a game changer.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: It's going to force our adversaries back into normal, more
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: back into normal lanes where they're not attacking data centers
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: and civilian-type targets and all of that. We'll be able
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: to build enough of, I think, of a robust network
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: with our system and others that are emerging onto the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: market that will cripple the ability for bad actors to
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: be able to use drones. It will really cripple them.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: And so... What about.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: Nukes.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: A lot of big talk right now. Iran, Russia, China.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Been going on forever. A lot of fear about nuclear war, though.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: There has been for, what, probably since, I don't know,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: probably since the Ukraine war kicked off, which was, what,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: 22 maybe? But could they be repurposed, or is the
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: technology there to develop nuclear? the baseline technology there to
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: develop an, an iron dome that would defend against, you.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: Know, this, I would say that the, the best use
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: for the, the golden dome iron dome or golden dome
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: is president Trump and, and, and, and the team has
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: been calling it, uh, the golden dome, um, Those are
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: a whole bunch of different, very important systems, like THAAD systems,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: Patriot missile systems, and a network that networks all of
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: that together in this much larger air picture. Now, I'll
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: say that and those systems have been shown to be
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: vulnerable against mice. The nukes are the lions. The nuclear
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: ballistic missiles are lions. And in fact, a lot of
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: the ballistic missiles are what exactly what they say. They
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: go way up into outer space, and then they calculate
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: exactly where they need to drop their little bombs. And
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: they got like a bunch of them inside a warhead.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: And then they just drop these things. They're ballistic. They're
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: not electronically steering. They're using all this really high math
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: to figure out, OK, if we drop it right here
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: at this time in this direction and launch it there,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: it'll fall to the Earth and hit or explode in
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: the atmosphere, just depending on the type of nuke. So
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: they're tough.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: It's tough.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: It's a tough problem to stop ballistics. And you really
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: want to get at it as close to the launch
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: as you can. You want to be able to have
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: your target hit their rocket before their rocket even gets
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: a chance to ballistically drop those missiles and stuff like that.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: So it's a little bit different equation. I'll ask Joe,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: and he'll have five ideas about how it could help
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: in any case. I can't visualize how it would help
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: in that mission right now, but where I can visualize
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: it will help, it will protect the protector. So as
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: we set up THAADS and we set up these different bases,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: we should have our systems and other systems like ours
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: protecting those type of things from a Jersey drone types.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: You know, like if you have a Chinese boat with
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: a bunch of containers off the shore, send it in
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: a swarm of drones like the Ukrainians did in Operation Spiderweb.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: You have that last lane of defense so that your
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: big missiles and your big sort of defensive type systems
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: aren't being taken out.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: Okay. Wow, man. Warfare is changing. Totally. So much.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: It is really changing.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: Shit. Like it was yesterday, I was at war. I
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: wouldn't even recognize it today.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: It's the same. Like I was telling someone when I
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: was in the Navy, you know, when I'd go out overseas,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: you know, I'd bring warfighters like you over there, but
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: I was just driving the airport, you know, running the
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: nuclear plants underneath. And when my wife would say, are
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: you going to be heard? Are you going to be injured?
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: I said, no, no, we're sitting on an airport, you know,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: way out in the water. There's no way anything's getting
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: to us. You know, inland, those are the guys having
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: all the risk. You can't say that anymore. Everything's a
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: target now. Now, Ships have pretty good close-in defensive networks
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: like the Sea Wizards we were talking about earlier and
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: all that, but it's not improbable or even unimaginable for
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: a carrier or something like that to become susceptible to
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: a drone attack. It just is a new way of warfare.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: So where will these be utilized? I know you guys
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: have some that are already out in the field, but
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: are these going to be on every naval vessel, every...
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: Overseas FOB base, every embassy, over the White House. I mean,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: you mentioned everything from tanks to entire bases.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there is a potentiality for these types
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: of systems, and as they evolve into more and more
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: and better and better capabilities, for them to become almost
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: as ubiquitous as radars. I mean, when we built radars
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: back in the 40s and 50s, we hadn't, I mean,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: there was a lot of people poo-pooing them saying, oh,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: you know, radars are just a fad. They're going to
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: come and go. But, you know, now radars are everywhere.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: They're like everywhere. Everybody has a radar. I had a
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: radar on my little, I had a ranger tug for
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: a while in the Columbia River. I had a radar
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: on my ranger tug, you know, so you can get
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: radars just become commodity. I think this type of technology
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: very may well be a commodity type technology that If
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: we continue to live in a world where bad actors
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: are using these toys and these mice, as we call them,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: to kind of get out of the lane, you know,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: get out of the normal lanes of warfare to try
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: to use these things to create terror type stuff. Even
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: if the war ends in two or three weeks, that
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: doesn't end, right? We don't end the Houthis, you know,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: hurting people in the Red Sea and trying to mess
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: up our shipping lanes. It doesn't end people trying to
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: throw drones into American bases and such over in that region,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: other bad actors. I think even if we pull out
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: the big guns and we go back or whatever in
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: a few weeks from now, there's going to be at
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: least a many, many year sort of tail to this
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: that drones and this mice warfare is going to be
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: really prevalent, I think, in that region, especially in that region.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: How much will something like, I mean, you know, at
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: the beginning earlier we said, I had said, you know,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: a $ 2 million missile to take out a $ 500 drone.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, what, do these cost? What does each shot cost?
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just energy, so I don't know what
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: that equates to.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we have, and this is something that is very
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: relevant and we're doing right now with the Department of War.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: We're showing them basically... each and every sort of perturbation,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: what you just asked. So a system, just a standalone system,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: the big ones, like the ones you see out there,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: they can go for, depending on how you outfit them,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: what kind of sensors you're using, they can go from
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: anywhere from the mid-teens to upwards to 20 million or
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: more if you want all the bells and whistles and stuff.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: So they're not cheap. They're not cheap to buy the system.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: But then every drone they're on after is pennies. It's
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: literally pennies. The fuel that It takes us to take
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: down an individual drone costs just a few cents, 5, 10,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: 20 cents, something like that. If you combine those two,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: then it becomes an equation of how many drones are
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: you taking out in a given month, in a given year,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: utilizing that system. And if you take out, let's say,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: 50 drones in a month, it becomes dollars. Even the,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: you know, you're like hundreds of dollars per drone versus,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: and that's counting all that. between $ 10 and $ 20 million
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: of costs and all of that. All of that all in,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: you're still down at hundreds of dollars per shot once
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: you start to have utilization of the system. So there's
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: two ways that someone would decide to use our system. One,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: it would be a lot cheaper than going the missile
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: routes because if I'm using it all the time, it's
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: going to get a lot of utility, and that's going
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: to drive my price per shot way, way, way down.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: So then that big sort of bill up front is much,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: much littler. What was I going to say? So either one,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: that you're going to drive that cost per shot down,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: or two, you're going to understand that target that you're defending,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: even if it doesn't get like a million drones a
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: day or whatever, if that target even has a chance
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: of being attacked by drones, it's so valuable, you don't
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: even want the chance to happen. So I think those
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: are going to be the two really sort of robust
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: applications we get at right away. where either one, they're
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: going to protect something extremely important and vital to be
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: protected at all costs, or two, it'll be a very
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: high op tempo of many, many drones flying in per day,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: and then that'll drive the cost way down. If you
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: want to stick a big expensive thing like this in
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: like some port in Louisiana or something like that on
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: the Gulf, it would probably be overkill at this point.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: You know, at least at this point, and still we
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: start driving costs down as we start to scale and
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: we start to get into production. then they become more
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: and more ubiquitous. But first movers and first users will
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: probably be, you know, very high value targets at this point.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: Okay. I mean, I'm just curious, how small do you
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: think you can make this thing? I know it's probably
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: not a high priority right now, but I'm just wondering,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: you know, we see, I just had this Ukrainian drone
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: operator actually show up here and he hunted me down
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: on the property. And I've never been involved in drone warfare.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: It was not a thing during my time, other than Predators.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: Another problem, but not FPV drones running me down. Throughout
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: that exercise, it got my mind jogging. Would this be
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: a squad defense weapon, potentially, for a team of special operators?
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it very well could. We have a system that
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: we design prototypes. We never got into production with it,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: but we have several prototypes of something about the size
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: of the toolbox. It weighs about 40 pounds, so it's
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: not light and it's not super light, but you could
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: get a soldier to carry it or you could get
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: a couple people to move it around with a squad.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: The range is limited. That's the issue. If you want
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: to have something the size of a toolbox and go...
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: you know, 50, 100, 200 meters or something like that,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: that's right now with where the technology is, that's really
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: not possible. Other than if you had a whole bunch
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: of those boxes and you were pointing them all at
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: the same thing, then you could start getting sort of
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: into those type of ranges. But that's been a real
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: hard one. I mean, you've seen out on the news,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: maybe these drone guns that the folks have. I don't
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: know if you've seen them. Those are electronic warfare. Those
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: are jammers. They're trying to, use jamming to kind of
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: like if the bad actor isn't sophisticated or if it's
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: a hobbyist or whatever the drone guns work pretty good
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: we're looking at if we could design something like a
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: drone gun like a drone bazooka maybe it would be
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: more like where we could have an individual basically hit
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: something at 50 meters or 100 meters that just is
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: in close in sight i think it's possible okay um
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: i think the first step and we're working alongside andrel
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: on a bunch of things but One of the things
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: we've looked at is, and I heard Joe talk about this,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: is their Roadrunner vehicle that does the vertical land, sort
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: of like Elon's rockets or whatever. It's a really cool system.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: And it has a small little payload section that if
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: Palmer can get his Roadrunner in 6, 8 feet, 9,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: 10 yards, something like that, between 3 to 10 yards
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: from a target, then we can electromagnetic pulse it. falls,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: move on to the next one, move on to the
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: next one. There's an application for that kind of a potential.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: So you could have maybe a drone you could launch
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: and with a squad and go up and project that
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: range that way if you can't tolerate the littler range
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: that you're going to get on a smaller system. We're
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: right now in process of taking our electronics and making
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: them much smaller, much denser to make the power density
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: go way up and primary driver of that is vehicle protection.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: So we've kind of been working our way down. We've
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: gone from kind of the larger fixed and semi-fixed site
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: type protection with the bigger system. And we have a
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: medium system that the Marines want to use for some
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: of their platoons and sort of like expeditionary units and
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: things like that that have drone problems, but they could
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: bring them with them on a JLTV or some other
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: vehicle that they have in their arsenal. That's the medium size.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: And then the small sizes for individual vehicle protections, like
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: the tanks, like we were talking about earlier, we haven't
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: quite kicked off yet an individual soldier protection, although we're
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: getting tons of pressure and tons of requests out of
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: the Army to do that. I mean, they really want
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: to get it down to kind of an individual soldier
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: level that has something other than what they have today
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: to protect themselves.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, actually, I didn't even mean for the individual soldier,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: but if you were to... Something like the bin Laden raid,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: you know, where they could just, you know, roll a
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: vehicle up. Maybe it's attached to the helicopter that lands.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's on a vehicle. Maybe it's a fucking backpack
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: that you just set right in the middle of the target.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: And then it gives you, you know, you don't have
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: to worry about FPV drones, you know, coming to mess
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: with you while you're trying to pull a hostage out.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: Well, I even give you one better. You could take
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: that system and and point it at the wall that
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: you're about to bust through or the door you're about
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: to bust through and knock out all the computers, all
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: the different things inside. I mean, it, again, works on everything.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: So drones, yes, but it also will work at Bin
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: Laden sitting there on his computer network. Take out his computers.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: Everything goes dark in his room and then boom, the
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: explosion happens. They go in and get them. So it
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: has a ton of applications. When we start looking at
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: special ops and, uh, some of the three-letter agencies and stuff,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: it's got just a ton of adjacent applications other than
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: just drone stop. You can stop vehicles with this thing.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: So imagine like a cop with a thing on its hood,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: like one of the medium or small size systems on
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: the hood of a car, chasing out after someone, stop
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: them by hitting them with electromagnetic energy. The car engine
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: shuts down. They calmly and easily take the guy in.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: Or someone running a gate, right? Trying to do a
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: run of the gate. Typically, some tragedies have happened that
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: we've had to just shoot those folks that have gone
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: off the deep end and trying to charge into a
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: gate with a vehicle. You could create a system that
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: stops vehicles with electromagnetic energy prior to having to do
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: small arms fire on an individual doing that.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: Jet skis in ports. That's another one that is a
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: big problem. Jet skis running around ships and stuff in port.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: Don't shoot the jet ski. Just shoot it with a
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: little electromagnetic energy. Turn off the jet ski and rest
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: the perpetrator.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: Who is operating these? Is this operated by AI? Is
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: this an individual operator?
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: It's a range. I think SeaWiz is a really good...
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: I used to be a combat information center officer on
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: the Inchon. It was my first ship where I got
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: my SWO pin and stuff. It had three modes of operation.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: It has a man in the loop which is just manual.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: You have man on the loop where the system will
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: go through and give you a recommendation and say, we
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: recommend this course of action. And you say yes or
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: say no and change. And then you have fully auto,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: just like in a seaways where you're just like, oh man,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: this is, you know, the world is crashing down. I
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: got a thousand drones from every direction coming in and
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: I just wouldn't even have time to just, I got
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: to save myself. And you put it in full auto
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: and it.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: Does it all.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: It does it all right on you ready to go
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: take a look at this thing let's do it spring
• 1:18:56
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• 1:19:09
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• 1:19:12
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  Speaker 1: Ranch just got some defense tech upgrades. Check it out.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: All right, so we're out here with Andy Lowery, and
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: we got the Leonidas. right behind us on a truck
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: with all kinds of whizz-bangs on it.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 3: What are we looking at here?
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: Well, we debuted, this is our Leonidas AGV, autonomous ground vehicle.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: And what we have is a full-size system like we
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: were talking about, ones that would be appropriate against maybe
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: a base defense or something larger range. But now this
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: is made to be mobile. Now, three companies came together
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: to make this mobile. One, EPRIS, see the big antennae? two,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: General Dynamics land systems, and three, Kodiak Defense. And Kodiak
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: Defense provides the autonomy. So they're kind of doing the
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: Waymo of this truck. So this truck can drive with
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: a driver or without. Just like a Waymo car, drive
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: around wherever you need it, drive by wire or drive autonomously.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: Position the system wherever you need to position it. Like
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: let's say we get a detection and 10 kilometers away
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: on your property, here comes some hostile drones. Thing can
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: start up, drive itself over, start to close on those drones,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: get closer and closer, stop, position the antenna, take out
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: the drones. All in one package. You've got two radar
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: panels on the bumper here. Echodyne radar, high frequency, very,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: very much tuned to drone and drone detection. And then
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: on the front, on the top of the roof, you
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: see two more panels. Those are Echodyne radars. You have
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: four panels that give you 360 degree situational awareness that
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: you're surveying everything. And then you see cameras all along
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: for the autonomy by the rear view mirrors there. On top,
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: you have a Starlink antenna. So you have a Starlink
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: antenna and then some UHF antennas for communication. So you're
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: getting everything sort of, this is totally live node, if
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: you will, a node on the battlefield.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: And then the.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: Antenna itself, of course, is your electromagnetic interference field creator
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: that's going to take and position it wherever it needs
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: to position and then form a wall or a shield
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: of energy.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: So this is a really big request on the Army side.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: The Army really said to me, look, it's great. We
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: like the technology, but it needs to be mobile. It's
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: just the way the Army is going. They want everything
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: to be maneuverable as they're starting to defend different bases.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: They're realizing that mobility is like a necessity. And then two,
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: the Army has said that when the range is limited
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: and they can't get far enough out, can power project forward.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: They can move the mobile system out forward to the
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: front line and then from there get another half a
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: mile or mile out in order to stop the drones.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: Right on, wow. So four radars, two Starlink dishes.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: Some UHF antennas on top.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: UHF antennas.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: Yep and then some cameras and automated systems. You can
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: see these 360 degree cameras and servos.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: And all of that. That helps.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: This is like you see on a Waymo car. They're
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: just made to be militarized for this particular system.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: Okay. Wow.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: So you can imagine a guy in this passenger seat
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: will have a laptop where he'll have full situational awareness.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: He might have lattice running on his laptop by Andrew inside,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: have full situational awareness where everything's happening, where other effectors
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: might be. And then when assignment comes into this particular guy,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: comes in onto the computer. If a guy is inside,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: might be in a container somewhere just running everything automatically.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: But if there is a manual operator, he'd get all
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: of that information inside the cab and then be able
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: to drive the thing wherever he needs to drive to
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: protect whatever he needs to protect.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: So if this is fully autonomous and we need, this
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: thing decides it needs to be all the way over there,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: it will just drive itself over there and then position
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: the antenna in the way that it needs to be
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: positioned to take out the threat?
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: And then... Talk about this, the antenna here.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: So the antenna itself, you can see if you measured
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: it right now, it's about 10 foot by eight foot
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: where you see that square right on top of where
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: the sticker sits. Behind that antenna are hundreds of individual elements.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: They look like little square silver boxes and there's hundreds
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: of them. back behind here and phasing all, they call
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: it phasing all of those up. What you do is
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: each one puts out a little bit of energy, a
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: little bit of energy, a little bit of energy. And
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: you take all of that energy and phase it up
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: into one tremendously strong beam and then push that beam
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: out into the atmosphere. And that's what causes the electromagnetic
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: interference field or the directed energy field that causes all
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: the problems with any sort of electronics. So it's not easy,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: think about it. We are creating out of a machine,
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: made out of electronics, something that disables any electronics being
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: able to fly or being able to operate from hundreds
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: of meters, if not kilometers away without kind of self-destroying ourselves, right?
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: And taking ourselves offline. There's a tremendous amount of innovation
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: when it comes to shielding, when it comes to protecting
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: the circuits from getting their own electromagnetic interference energy back
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: on top of it. So that's why it's so state
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: of the art. And that's why I think it's so
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: unique is that we're taking into consideration things that just
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: really have never been done before or even attempted before
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: for that matter.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: Is this the, so would the beam be about the
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: size of this rectangle here or?
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: No, the beam would be a smaller than the rectangle
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: because right behind the rectangle are hundreds of those elements. Just,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: we pulled that rectangle off. You'd see hundreds. The beam
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: would come down to be about, let's say 10 degrees
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: or so, five to 10, Between 5 and 10 degrees
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: is where your beam is going to get shaped.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: Wow, so they all just go like this?
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you think about it, like on the water,
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: if you had like one wave maker in water making waves,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: and then you had another wave maker making waves, you
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: try to time them up so those waves start to
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: stack on top of each other. So like a hundred
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: times over though, like if you had a hundred water
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: wave makers that are making a wave in the water,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: wave in the water, wave in the water, and you
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: time them such that every wave crested at the exact
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: same point, fell at the exact same point, you could
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: create a huge wave. If you imagine hundreds of those
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: wave makers, you could create a huge wave out of
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: a bunch of little waves if you just time the
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: sequencing and the pulsing of those waves at the same time.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly what we do inside a microwave system. The waves
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: are moving much quicker. They're, of course, in microwaves, not
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: in water. And we're timing those waves so that each
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: one of those peaks and each one of those valleys
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: line up and then form it into a very narrow,
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: for the size of the system, narrow beam that we
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: then move the narrow beam around electronically by, again, timing
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: those waves in sequence so that the system goes to
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: the left, goes to the right, goes up, goes down.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: Then on top of that electronic steering, we have our
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: mechanical steering, where we can spin the system around. It
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: goes around about, each second it'll cover about 30 degrees
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: of rotation, so it moves very quickly. And every time
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: we see a drone, even if we start with an
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: electronic scan and then turn the antenna to follow so
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: that we get the biggest punch for the system that
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: we can possibly get. Because when you're face on like this,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: this is when the antenna is the most powerful. So
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: as this moves around, nobody's detecting it, nobody's seeing where
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: it's at, doesn't even know that the system can shoot
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: down drones. Drones appear, we shoot them down, then we
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: move the system away from where it just happened so
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: it doesn't become a target. Cause you know, well, sooner
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: or later people will start saying, hey, we can't get
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: any drones through if they've got one of these Leonidas
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: sitting out there. And if that happens, we're gonna wanna
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: move the system, right? So that it doesn't become a target.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: Gotcha. And so these radars that you have up top
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: and these two back here, that's what picks up the thread.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: And then this, you know, the bad boy right here,
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: the Leonidas, which shoots it down.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: What is the operator seeing?
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: What, when- So the operator sees like a God view
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: of the landscape. So they will have like Google Earth
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: and see your entire landscape here. And then on top
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: of that, layered on top of that, are the different drones.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: And they get kind of all pulled in through the Starlink,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: all networked in that same network. It can like see
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: all the drones, not only the drones right over your
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: place where our radars might be detecting it, but if
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: there's drones in your neighbor's yard and they have a
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: radar that's on the same network, it'll see the drones
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: even starting from over there. So we get a really big,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: we try to get the biggest heads up as we
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: possibly can to make sure that we're minimizing the need
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: for like hundreds of these to surround your property. We
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: want to have early detection, early observation, move the system
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: into the optimal place to defend it, and then defend
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: the place as the last line of defense.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: Is the distance that the radars can detect the drones,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: is that the same distance that this is max effective
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: range of the Leonidas? So when you detect a drone,
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: can you immediately shoot it down is basically what I'm asking.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: The detection range is longer. So you'll get detection of
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: the drones, hopefully. I mean, sometimes you won't. If a
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: bad actor decided to hide a drone in this weeds
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: over here and it just popped up, we'd detect it
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: and be able to shoot it in the same distance.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: But let's say in a desert. might have a lot
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: of landscape that you can see out to you might
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: detect a drone at 20 kilometers you might detect a
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: drone at 10 at least 10 kilometers you'll be able
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: to detect a drone this one will just position itself
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: and get ready to take the drones down when given
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: the assignment and then when it comes in around two
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: kilometers or something that's when we start engaging at about
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: two kilometers.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: Damn this is awesome you.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: See we have these cables this is where all the
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: dc power is being fed up into the system. So
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: you take AC power, alternate current power. So you get
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: a generator like power in your house. It's at 60 Hertz.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: You take that, you convert it back in the backend
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: to DC. These DC cables bring the DC up into
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: the columns. And then once that DC power's in the columns,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: all stored up, it sends it into what we call
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: the L-RAMs, those boxes. Those L-RAMs are magical converters that
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: convert that DC power into RF power, microwave power using
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: If you remember, I'll quiz you, gallium nitride. Using gallium
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: nitride in order to do that conversion. So that's like
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: the magic rocks, if you will, like a magic material
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: that's able to take massive amounts of power and convert
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: that power to massive high-powered microwave system or microwave energy.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: I just want to take a peek at the front.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen the front yet.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: On the front.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: Damn, that is badass looking.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: Look at that thing.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you feel protected just seeing it, you know? Wait
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: till it operates and people are like, what?
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 3: Oh man, I would love to see that.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: I would love to see that.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: Well, we're getting close to being a lot more liberally
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: able to shoot it. The FAA is very interested in
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: seeing these things deployed. They feel safe with this sort
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: of a system versus some of the kinetics and even
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: the laser systems can give people worry. when you're shooting
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: them over like El Paso or whatever, like they had
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: to shut down that airport a couple of times when
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: they had a laser system or whatever down there. This
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: system wouldn't need to shut down any airports. It wouldn't
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: have any sort of issues just operating alongside other radars
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: and other, it's kind of like a high powered radar
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: more than it is any kind of traditional directed energy system.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: Man, that is really cool. Really cool.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: And you're getting ready to crank out how many of these?
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: We're trying to get, This year, by the end of
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: the year, we're trying to get one a week. So
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: 50 a year, that's take us into next year. And
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 2: then after that, we need to expand. We're in Southern
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: California and we're looking at Oklahoma's where we can build volume,
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: where we can get over a hundred a year. So
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: we're looking at multi systems per week. In California, we
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 2: think we can manage about one a week. It's great
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: to see someone so excited about it as I am.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: Like I said, I've been tracking this thing for like
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: two or three years now. And, uh, to have one
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: in the backyard is pretty fucking crazy. So if you
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: have one in your backyard yet?
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: No, no, you have that privilege.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: Right on.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: Interested in a CEO job.
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 3: I am.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: Let's swap me out. I'll be your CTO.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 3: Cool, cool.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: All right, Andy, we're back from the break. Right. What
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: a awesome piece of machinery you've got out there. But
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: I wanted to go over, I got some myths debunking
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: Leonidas HPM myths.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: Which I think we covered some of that, but Havana syndrome.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: Are you familiar with Havana syndrome?
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 2: I've heard of what it is and I've heard the theories.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: But again, I don't know, I don't have any inside information.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: I'm just a microwave engineer, directed energy guy with some
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: amount of know-how and could perceive something to be at
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: the right frequency and the right energy and all of
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: that to hurt a human. I mean, obviously, microwave ovens,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: if you stood in a microwave oven, you wouldn't survive
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: over a few minutes. So there are ways of directing
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: that energy, just like we direct other energies, to probably
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: cause harm to others. Now, good news is that I
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: don't need to worry about any of that, even in
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: like a sort of a fratricide way with people. It's
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: very safe, our system. Our system, as I kind of
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: talked about earlier, I'd stand right in front of even
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: the main beam for a short amount of time. It's
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: totally safe. It's tuned in frequency and in energy. It's
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: tuned for electronics. And humans, but not only humans, birds, plants, trees,
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: any of that in the way of the beam won't
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: be affected at all. You won't get any damage at all.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: and these types of living creatures.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: Are there any other kind of misunderstandings or myths about
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: Leonidas that you want to address? It will take out
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: the tethered drones. We covered that, correct?
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it takes out tethered drones. I think some people...
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: This is getting a little deep, but I'll kind of
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: talk about it, and then just for the listeners that
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: maybe understand a little bit more about directed energy, and
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: in particular, high-powered microwave. There's two... kind of classes, I'll
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: call them. They're what's called wideband, high-powered microwave directed energy,
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: and narrowband, high-powered microwave. And when they say band, they're
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: talking about the frequency. So how many frequencies does this
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 2: particular system use or leverage? How many frequencies does this
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: narrowband use and leverage? Traditionally, historically, narrowband systems have been
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: working sometimes, sometimes not working. working on some targets but
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: not working on all targets. That's been historically the impression
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: that directed energy experts have about narrowband systems. Wideband systems,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: which we started decades ago, which we started getting at
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: decades ago, leverage something called vacuum tubes or transmit wave tubes,
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: which are these very sort of simple but very effective
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: amplifiers like gallium nitride, but they amplify in a way
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: that causes you have to operate the system differently than
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: the way we operate our system. You can't use the
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: same sort of techniques in the same sort of ways
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: that we operate our system. The difference between our narrowband
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: system and previous generations and previous ages that they've tried
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: this is, one, we have a component of being able
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: to move the narrowband frequency to whatever frequency within a
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: certain bandwidth that we want to move it at. choose
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: and pick. We can go through and say, try this frequency,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: try this frequency, try this frequency, try this frequency. So
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: we're trying to match or map the electromagnetic interference to
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: the drone susceptibilities. So some drones may be susceptible to
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: these frequencies. Some may not be. Some are susceptible to
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: these frequencies. Some others may not be. So we've changed
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: sort of the way that narrowband directed energy is used.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: And we do it in a smart way. We talked
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: a little bit about AI. A lot of this system
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: has a lot of software-defined AI and other sort of
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: like control loops, machine learning, and stuff like that that
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: helps with prosecuting these various drones. And that's the big
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: myth that's out there. The second big myth that's out
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: there is narrowband can't achieve the very, very high effective
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: radiated powers. Like some of the traditional systems would have
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: 2 gigawatts, 3 gigawatts, 4 gigawatts of radiated power. But
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: that's just not true anymore with gallium nitride. Gallium nitride,
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: if built to the right size and shape, can rival
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: the powers of even those traditional systems. The difference and
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: the advantage of using solid state, which is gallium nitride,
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: the advantages is you can also stretch energy, which means time.
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: So power times time equals energy. So what I can
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 2: do is hold a note, hold a frequency for a
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: long span of time, which traditional directed energy could never do.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 2: And I'm leveraging that energy, those huge, long pulses. I'm
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: leveraging that energy so that, as you can imagine, a
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: computer has a clock. It's ticking. The clock is ticking.
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: You want to be able to overcome many, many clock
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: cycles as you're trying to get this sort of electromagnetic
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: interference in there. So that's a little deep for the
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 2: folks that understand directed energy, but it is effective. I mean,
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: the proof is the proof. I mean, we have tested
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: this with the Army for three years. We have tested
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: it in many, many different conditions. We've deployed it in
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: two different regions of the world. We've tested it with warfighters.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 2: We've tested it with real air defenders. This all has
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: been completely sort of put to rest. And folks that
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: have not checked in with EPRIS for the last two
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: and a half years, I don't think realize that. In
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: the early days, there's a lot of information that got
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 2: out there in the struggles we were having to get
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: started up and get it booted up. If you look
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: at what we're delivering today, It's transformative. It's just absolutely
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: a different type of system than what we had even
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 2: three or four years ago. So systems that are starting
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: to go into production today do work, and they work really,
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: really well on what they're really good at.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: Have you seen if these deployed overseas?
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 2: They have, yes.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: Can you talk about where?
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: On the public domain, people can see that one was
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: in the Philippines on an exercise that we did. This
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: was several months ago.
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: Nothing in Ukraine yet?
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: Nothing in Ukraine yet. We haven't been able to get
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: through really the legal limitations and stuff like that because
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: our system, unlike some of the dual-use drones and the
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: commercial drones and things that are able to easily be
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: sold into Ukraine, our systems are a weapon system. They're
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 2: considered what's called a Category 18 weapon system. Any directed
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 2: energy system would be categorized as that. And when you
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: have these ITAR systems, they require a little bit more
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: I guess, approvals and paperwork in order to get them
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: through the hoops and ladders. And up until now, we've
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: been limited in our ability to do that. Now, this
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: war in the Middle East has kind of changed the
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: game completely. And this administration is aggressively helping us to
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: knock down any barriers to getting our allies protected with
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: these systems, plus our warfighters protected with these systems. And
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: that's ongoing. I can't say too many of the details
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: because it gets into... You know, operational security, like back
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: when we were in the Navy and we would never
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: tell anyone where our ships are going to move and
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: when they're going to move. These are sort of weapon
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 2: systems that are moving right now, moving into theater, moving
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 2: in to defend certain allies. And it's happening. Like right now,
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: like I said earlier, we're trying to build one a week.
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 2: If I could build one a week starting today, I'd
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 2: do it.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: Wow. Wow.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 2: It's that big of a demand.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: It's going to be a big... Can you talk a
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: little bit about drone warfare, whether it's Ukraine, Middle East...
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: We don't see it here in the U.S.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 4: Much.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: I think the closest thing we've seen is all these
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: damn drones that were up, what, a year ago over
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: New Jersey, which I think wound up being an exercise.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: Everybody was freaking out when that happened, and I was
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: shouting your guys' company out. I was like, this has
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: to be us because we already have the capability to
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: take this shit out, but we're not.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: The biggest one that I saw recently, and I'm not
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 2: at all addressing them as a problem. The Air Force
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 2: is actually moving very, very quickly with us right now.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: But there was an incident not too long ago where
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: the Barksdale Air Force Base that has a lot of
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: our nukes and a lot of our strategic bombers got overflown.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 2: But it got overflown by swarms, 12 drones at each
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 2: wave and multiple waves, a wave of 12, a wave
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: of 12, a wave of 12. Totally impervious to jamming,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: according to the article, according to the news. Totally impervious
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: to jamming. Flew over, surveilled everything, and flew back.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: Where were those from? We don't know.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 3: Do we know?
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: We do not know. So when you talk about Barksdale,
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 2: when you talk about those kind of surveillance missions, oh boy,
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: are we perfect for it. Because not only would we
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: drop all 12, and the next 12, and the next 12,
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: We don't damage the system beyond being able to infiltrate
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 2: and use for forensics and figure those questions out. The system,
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 2: the computer, if you turn it off and on, works again.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: Like the drone is broken because when it hits the ground,
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: the plastics break or whatever, but the computer is still intact.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: So we can go trace where those things were coming
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: from and say, oh, okay, I got it. Now we
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: understand where these originated from or those originated from. So
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: I am very, very encouraged this year that 2026 is
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: going to be the year of EPRIS. It's going to
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: be the year of Leonidas. I think a lot of
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: these things we're seeing in the news around the corners,
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 2: they're going to deploy our systems, and we're going to
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: get to the bottom of a lot of the drone
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: activity we're starting to see on the United States side
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: I can't believe they don't have these things deployed already
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: on bases like that.
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been a struggle. It's not all.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: What is the struggle?
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: We had 12 drones come and surveil a nuclear site
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: multiple times, and there's a struggle. What is the struggle?
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: That can't happen again.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 2: The top of the administration have, for the most part,
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: executed to the theory or the thesis that we need 80%,
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: 90% of the solutions that are ready today. We need
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: them deployed. We need them forward deployed. But there's still
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: a frozen middle. I've talked about this. It's like the
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: top guys say, do it. And if you get in
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: with the frozen middle or the middle people that actually
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: implement the tactics, there's a lot of sort of hesitation still, right?
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of, well, until someone tells me officially
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: I can do this differently, I'm going to do it
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: the same way. And so there are a lot of
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 2: wedded people to their old policies, their old processes, their
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: old sort of way of acquiring systems and testing systems
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: and wringing out every little risk to get like 99.999%
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: of the risks out. And then when they're sure of it,
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: they're ready to go ahead and deploy. Well, that's a
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: peacetime attitude, right? That's a peacetime attitude. I have some skirmishes,
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: nothing killing any soldiers. I don't have any injuries going on.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 2: I'm not losing any equipment.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: I'm not at war.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: We can take our time to run through the different exercises,
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 2: which we've been doing from Even before this administration, we
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 2: were working with the previous administration on these tests and
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: trials and all the rest. But now we're at war,
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: you know, I mean, or conflict, you know, whatever you
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: want to call it. But we are in battle. We
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: are combating with others overseas. It's a different, that's a
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: different threshold. I think we need to change our attitude.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: We need to, you know, I have a pretty interesting story,
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: just a two-minute story, but it was during 9-11. We
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 2: were talking about up on the Hill how you joined
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: right before 9-11. when you went into the Navy. I
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: was out at sea during 9-11. We were off the
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: coast of San Diego about 100 miles on the John C. Stennis.
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: We had no planes, no jets. I was running the
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: nuclear plants. The two towers get hit. We get the
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: order to go as fast as that aircraft carrier can
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: possibly go to get off the coast of Los Angeles. Meantime,
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: they're scrambling Marines out of Miramar with Sidewinder missiles on
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: F-18s and flying them out. We had no steam in
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: the catapults. I had to get steam to the catapults.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: I had to heat everything up really, really quickly. I
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: had to get everything military sort of like precision. The
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: transformation of my sailors, I have never witnessed before or
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: after anything like it. Like when we got hit, every person,
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: every lady, every sailor snapped into a new, like a superhuman.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 2: running around, knowing every one of their procedures, knowing exactly
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 2: how to move. And within a few hours, we're flying
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: basically escorts of every jumbo jet coming in from overseas
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: that hadn't landed yet in LAX. We're escorting every single
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: one of them down. Now, the same thing happens with
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: the United States in almost every battle that I've ever seen.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 2: We are, culturally speaking, underdogs. We are, culturally speaking, the
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: team that when gets socked in the head goes crazy
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 2: and just responds. And I saw that with the sailors
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 2: back there on the Stennis. I saw that when we
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 2: did the MRAPs, when we had the IED problem in 2008.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: And that was an incredible, like, almost Oppenheimer thing that
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 2: people don't know about, that the Army ASALT right now,
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 2: Brent Ingraham, led that whole thing like a modern-day Oppenheimer.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: He went from, in 2008, where they were spending like
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 2: $ 160 million on armored vehicles and such, to billions in
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: just a year. In one year, they changed that whole
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 2: face of that dynamic of the IEDs hurting our soldiers.
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: So we are able to do this. I think now
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 2: is our moment. We don't want to let off the
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: gas pedal. Even if the major war and the major
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: bombing all cease and we come back, we want to
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 2: still treat this like a dangerous situation where we need
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: to field and defend ourselves against this persistent, persistent threat
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 2: that certainly in At least my vision, I can't see
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 2: it going away. I can only see it getting worse
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 2: and worse.
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 3: Me neither.
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, I just... I mean, I'm... The utility of
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: this thing is just.
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: I think they're gonna be everywhere.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: They're so easy.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: I think there's the potential for them. I mean.
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: You know, we saw... What is it? Operation Spiderweb. The drone...
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just all over Ukraine.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 5: And.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: We just talked about 12 flying over a nuclear site.
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like that potentially every stadium, shopping mall,
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: anywhere there could be a terror threat, to be honest
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: with you. I mean, I don't know how realistic that is.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: We can't even harden our schools, you know, but I think,
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's just every military base, CIA, NSA, White House,
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: Capitol Hill, state capitals.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: It's a maneuver. It's a maneuver against what we see
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: as this totally asymmetrical vector. We have an asymmetrical vector.
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 2: We need to put a piece on the chessboard that
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 2: lets those guys know it's not free for all time anymore.
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: We're going to knock down your drones. We're going to
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 2: infiltrate those drones and we're coming to find you. You know,
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: it's one thing to stop the bees from stinging, but
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 2: there's another to find the queen bee where the nest
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: is and stop them. And when we start doing that,
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 2: It may not need the total ubiquity of every single station, everything,
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 2: because we'll start getting to the source of the issues.
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: But we need our system. We need other systems like ours.
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: We need direction-finding systems. We need other surveillance systems. But
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 2: that whole network of layers, our system provides a key,
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: key component that's going to level the playing field. Or
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 2: not only level the playing field, I would say upend
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 2: the playing field. Put them on the, oh boy, how
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 2: are we going to fly these drones in and do this?
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 2: Or how are we going to take that or take that?
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 2: when they see these systems standing up around a stadium,
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 2: for example.
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, are there any disadvantages to this system versus
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: a kinetic one or a laser one?
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: Well, I would say kinetics go further. Like a Coyote,
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 2: for example, by Raytheon or whatever, they have a longer range.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 2: They have a much longer range. That's an advantage of
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 2: kinetics over our system. When you're talking about similar ranges
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 2: Kinetics are known quantities. This is kind of like invisible rays. And,
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: you know, the Army is traditionally bullets orientated and, you know,
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: moving in that direction. Air Force and Navy are a
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 2: little bit more comfortable with new electronic warfare type modalities
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: and stuff. But Army is pretty comfortable too. I mean,
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: don't get me wrong. They're absolutely fascinated and want to
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 2: invest and, you know, want to move forward with us.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: But it does have I think that's one of its, actually,
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: to answer your question more straightforward, that's its big disadvantage,
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: is that it's a zero to one. It's like when
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 2: Peter Thiel wrote that book, Zero to One. It's a
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: zero to one system. It's a technology people don't understand.
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: That's why I appreciate being on the show to try
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: to explain it. And people are afraid of what they
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 2: don't understand, either afraid it won't work, afraid it's going
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: to hurt people. And we've dispelled a lot of that.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: If you look at the facts and data and all
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: the stuff we've done over the last couple of years,
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: we've dispelled almost all of those worries and all of
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 2: those risks. And now it's a chance to just get
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 2: some wartime kills, get it out there, get it in
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: battle and put it to the test. And if I'm wrong,
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: I'm wrong, but you're not going to waste that much
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 2: more money by everything you've done already so far by
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: getting it out there, getting it into the battlefield. And
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 2: I don't think that's a, hey, let's go challenge and
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: do that. It's like happening. I mean, this war is
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: driving us to that.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: Well, it is very impressive what you guys have put
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: together out there. Very impressive. Is there anything I haven't
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: asked you that I should be asking you when it
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: comes to Leonidas or Epirus?
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know. We've covered a lot.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: Even.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 2: Oh! One other thing that it advantages, so we've talked
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: about the collateral damage and it being a very safe
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 2: system so you can use it in homeland, whereas kinetics
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 2: you can't use in homeland in all situations without putting
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 2: a lot of danger to houses and residential types of neighborhoods.
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 2: So kinetics don't make for a good solution for the homeland.
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 2: They make a good solution overseas in some cases, but
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 2: the problem isn't just cost. We talked a lot about cost,
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 2: but it's also magazine depth. And we only have a
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 2: certain amount of missiles and a certain amount of production
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: capacity to build new missiles. And it's very difficult. It's
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 2: not like drones where you can just like, I think
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: I read in something that China can make 30 million
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: drones a year.
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: There's nothing we can make 30 million of in a
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: military lane, you know? So we have a real magazine
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: depth disadvantage as well by continuing to try to pursue
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: drones with some of the tried and true kind of,
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: you know, lion type weapons and defensive weapons and stuff
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: like that. Those are not easily reproducible and producible. And
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 2: they have a long tail when you say, hey, I
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 2: need another 10,000 of these coyotes, Raytheon. It takes a
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: while to spin up and get that capacity and get
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: that out to the field. So not just cost asymmetry,
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 2: but magazine depth asymmetry as well.
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: 30 million drones a year.
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 2: I heard, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. I mean,
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 2: when you have a kind of a authoritarian communist party
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 2: that can go in and tell a factory, hey, you're
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 2: not building laptops, you're building drones, and do that to
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: several places in Chongqing and Chengdu.
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: Man, I just have never heard that stat before. That's alarming.
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: It is alarming. And they're right north of Iran, right?
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, they could be helping outfit those guys. I mean,
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: read about in the news as well, Russia, you know,
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 2: giving them, targeting information and such. And so it's an
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: asymmetrical fight and we are less equipped than others to
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: start engaging. But it's our moment. I don't say that
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 2: with negativity in my mind. I think of it just
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: like the 9-11 moment. It's our moment to like be
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 2: the underdog, to turn the whole thing over on its
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: head and get at these bad actors.
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. I love what you
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: guys are building. And man, it makes me, I mean, But.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 2: When we start hitting some real wartime shoot-downs, I'll have
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 2: to come back on your show, and we can talk
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: about how well they're working once they get deployed.
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: I'd love to do that. I'm sure we're not far off.
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: Perfect. Well, Andy, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: No matter where you're watching The Sean Ryan Show from,
• 1:55:28
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• 1:55:31
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• 1:55:39
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• 1:55:44
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