Shows / DIB Innovators
DIB Innovators
The DIB Innovators podcast celebrates the brilliant minds behind innovation within the Defense Industrial Base. In each episode, host and co-founder of RADICL, David Graff will speak with DIB leaders who are driving technological advancements, championing our nation’s security, and shaping the future of defense technology. Brought to you by RADICL — Cybersecurity-as-a-Service purpose-built for small and mid-sized businesses in the Defense Industrial Base. Starting your CMMC journey? RADICL…
Episodes
DIB InnovatorsEP 127 — Fortastra's Sahil Desai On Why Orbital Warfare Becomes A Quantity Problem And How To Build Space Defense For Scale
Ten of the most capable satellites in the world still could not defend against a large volume of threats. Orbital warfare becomes a quantity problem, and…
DIB InnovatorsEP 126 — Catalyx Space's Rifath Shaarook On Why Compliance And Picking The Right Licenses Are The Hardest Part Of Space And Defense
Rifath Shaarook, Co-Founder and CEO of Catalyx Space, says building a satellite is easier than the compliance around it. The hardest part is figuring out which…
DIB InnovatorsEP 125 — GaardTech's Steen Bisgaard On The Robotic Fighting Echelon Reshaping Land Warfare
Steen Bisgaard spent over a decade in the Australian Army's Armoured Corps before founding GaardTech to build the combat robots he wished he had in the field…
DIB InnovatorsEP 124 — Asylon's Damon Henry On How Selling Outcomes Instead Of Robots Changes Defense Acquisition
Asylon showed up to an Air Force aircraft inspection demo with zero general visual inspection software. While every competitor brought five or six people…
DIB InnovatorsEP 123 — Overmatch Ventures' Morgan Hitzig On The Founder Offset And Why America Wins By Playing Its Own Game
If 85% of defense M&A exits land below $100 million in enterprise value, why are so many defense tech founders raising at valuations unmoored from the…
DIB InnovatorsEP 122 — AEVEX's Manan Patel On The Modular Drone Strategy That Won Army Launched Effects-Short Range (LE-SR)
Manan Patel deployed to Iraq as a civilian engineer and mission commander on airborne ISR platforms, then left the government lab with no business plan to…
DIB InnovatorsEP 121 — Tidal Flight's Jude Augustine On Building The First Clean Sheet Seaplane In Decades
Seaplane design hasn't changed since the 1950s. Jude Augustine, Co-Founder and CEO of Tidal Flight, is building Polaris, a hybrid electric amphibious aircraft…
DIB InnovatorsEP 120 — Crow Industries' James Crowell On Why The U.S. Army Is Betting On Smaller Ground Robots
James Crowell is an expert in extreme environment robotics who spent the first decade of his career developing and deploying polar, volcanic, and space systems…
DIB InnovatorsEP 119 — Baker Institute's Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes On Why Critical Minerals Are The Weakest Link In Western Defense Supply Chains
Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes drilled the first unconventional wells in Argentina for ExxonMobil, built a nickel mining company in Western Australia, then served as…
DIB InnovatorsEP 118 — CisLunar Industries' Gary Calnan On How a Space Furnace Accidentally Created a Power Electronics Company
Gary Calnan, CEO and Co-Founder of CisLunar Industries, built power electronics to melt metal in orbit. A research partner noticed the same hardware could…
DIB InnovatorsEP 117— NODA AI's Phil Duong On Building Mission Command For Autonomous Forces
Phil Duong, CEO and Co-Founder of NODA AI, is building the mission command layer for autonomous forces that nobody else is focused on. His company orchestrates…
DIB InnovatorsEP 116 — Carbonix's Dario Valenza On Building 10-Hour Flight Drones That Compete With Helicopters
How do you build a drone that flies 10 hours, takes off without a runway, and earns the first beyond visual line of sight certification for its class? Start…
DIB InnovatorsEP 115 — WAR Inc's Jon Williams On Building a Defense Company Backwards, From IP to Factory
Jon Williams took ownership of technical data packs for munitions from 40 millimeter to 1,000 pound bombs. WAR Inc. is building a single facility where raw…
DIB InnovatorsEP 114 — Saronic Technologies' Vibhav Altekar On Building 300 Autonomous Vessels In Two Years For Zero Crew
What happens when you design ships for full autonomy from day one instead of retrofitting crewed vessels? At Saronic Technologies, it meant removing living…
DIB InnovatorsEP 113 — 3Wire Partners' Anita Antenucci On Why 80% Of VC-Backed Defense Suppliers Could Disappear
Anita Antenucci, Founder and Managing Partner of 3Wire Partners, has spent three decades and roughly five hundred deals watching the defense capital stack…
DIB InnovatorsEP 112 — Persistent Systems' Jon Patrick On Winning $120M in Tactical Networking Without A Program Of Record
Persistent Systems won a $120 million tactical networking award without a program of record. Their Wave Relay MANET served as the network backbone during…
DIB InnovatorsEP 111 — Vision Miner's Rob Lent On 9 Years Of Bootstrapping Accessible High-Temp 3D Printing
Rob Lent, Co-Founder and COO of Vision Miner, has spent nine years making high-performance polymer 3D printing accessible to companies that used to need…
DIB InnovatorsEP 110 — AdlerAerospace’s Wilhelm Meya On The Broken Math Of Drone Defense
Wilhelm Meya spent his first career building linguistic technology. Then he pivoted into aerospace, founded AdlerAerospace, and started integrating…
DIB InnovatorsEP 109— Skyways' Isaac Roberts On Mass-Producing Autonomous Cargo Drones For Contested Logistics
Isaac Roberts spent four years in the Navy, built and sold a computer vision company, co-founded a robotics startup, and then joined Skyways to tackle the…
DIB InnovatorsEP 108 — Clear-Com's Jonathan Sorensen On Building Comms That Run On 5G Infrastructure The DoD Is Already Deploying
Jonathan Sorensen went from working live events at Red Rocks and broadcast engineering for the Colorado Avalanche to solving military communication challenges…
DIB InnovatorsEP 107 — Hidden Level's Antoinett Dufort On The Scaling Problem Most DIB Companies Ignore
The defense industrial base has no shortage of innovation. It has a scaling problem. At Hidden Level , the team went from building prototype passive RF sensors…
DIB InnovatorsEP 106 — Space Copy's Madison Feehan On Building Infrastructure With Local Materials In Earth's And Space's Most Extreme Environments
Space Copy builds ruggedized 3D printers that take in raw local materials, soil, sand, scrap metal, ceramics, even simulated moon dust, and print…
DIB InnovatorsEP 105 — Delta.g's Tony Lowe on Taking Quantum Gravity Sensing From Lab to Field
Delta.g built a quantum gravity gradiometer that detects underground voids, tunnels, and buried targets in 200 milliseconds per reading, a capability…
DIB InnovatorsEP 104 — Impac Systems Engineering's Justin Smart On Cutting The Weight From An Aerospace Part Without Losing Structural Performance
Justin Smart has spent 30 years in additive manufacturing. Now at Impac Systems Engineering, he helps manufacturers adopt 3D printing for production-scale…
DIB InnovatorsEP 103 — OpenC3's Greg Bonn On How A 20-Year-Old Defense Prime Spin-Out Turned Profitable In Year One
How does a 20-year-old product spun out of a defense prime become a profitable, bootstrapped business in year one, all while staying fully open source? At…
DIB InnovatorsEP 102 — Vendra's Shan Mohta On Going From 200 Investor Rejections To Parts Orbiting Earth
At Vendra, three operations engineers manage over 250 U.S. suppliers. A top competitor worth $5 billion needs one ops engineer for every two to three…
DIB InnovatorsEP 101 — Purple Rhombus's Mike Benitez On Building 100,000 Group 2 Drones A Year Using Factories That Already Exist
Mike Benitez, CEO of Purple Rhombus, has built the Grackle™, an attritable Group 2 UAS, on a production model he claims can deliver 100,000 units a year using…
DIB InnovatorsEP 100 — Outlander VC's Paige Craig On Funding Defense's Black Sheep Before Anyone Else Will
Paige Craig built his first company by sneaking into Baghdad as a private citizen with a fake CNN badge, no government backing, and no contacts, starting with…
DIB InnovatorsEP 99 — AI Strategy Corporation's David Mroczka On Cutting U.S. Army Tech Scouting From 12 Months To 2 Weeks
What does it take to scout 150 dual-use companies for the U.S. Army in six months when the existing process takes 10 to 12 months for a fraction of that…
DIB InnovatorsEP 98 — AimLock's Bryan Bockmon on Keeping Humans in the Kill Decision While Automating the Rest
The Keystone fire control module is weapon-agnostic from day one. Bryan Bockmon, CEO, President, & Chairman of AimLock, describes how the same edge computing…
DIB InnovatorsEP 97 — Teague's Matt McElvogue on Why Operators Stop Trusting the Tech & Start Working Around It
Matt McElvogue, VP of Design at Teague, doesn't talk about design as a polish layer. He talks about it as a mission-critical failure point. His clearest…
DIB InnovatorsEP 96 — Patriot Group's David Dickey on When Defense Tech Startups Can't Hire Fast Enough to Scale
David Dickey, CEO, Founder, & Executive Search Consultant of Patriot Group, has seen it happen: an executive placed into a PE-backed defense company and a year…
DIB InnovatorsEP 95 — Sagittarius Logistics' Jonathan Slavik on Payload Handoffs in Hours, Not Months
Coastal launch infrastructure is a strategic chokepoint that is one EW disruption off the Cape grounds US space ops, and bespoke responsive launch systems top…
DIB InnovatorsEP 94 — Silent Ventures' Jackson Moses on Why Dual Use Is a Dirty Word in Defense Tech
Jackson Moses, Founder and Managing Partner at Silent Ventures, spent a decade building companies before he started backing them. He founded Silent Ventures to…
DIB InnovatorsEP 93 — Atlas Cup's Philip Hover-Smoot on Building Capital Pathways Outside Government Funds
There are roughly 438 companies building propulsion systems for space right now. Nobody knows which ones actually perform. Philip Hover Smoot, CEO of Atlas…
DIB InnovatorsEP 92 — Rogue Space Systems' Brook Leonard on Building the Infrastructure Layer for Modular Space Operations
Brook Leonard, CEO of Rogue Space Systems, spent 31 years in the Air Force, including as Chief of Staff of US Space Command. Today he is building the modular…
DIB InnovatorsEP 91 — IceNine's Jeff Crusey on the SaaS Playbook Mismatch That Takes Hard Tech Companies off the Rails
Jeff Crusey, General Partner at IceNine, has watched the same failure mode repeat across energy, defense, and deep tech: investors who don't understand the…
DIB InnovatorsEP 90 — Grid Aero's James Gherdovich on Why Autonomous Logistics Must Self-Heal, Not Just Deliver
Removing the pilot from an exquisite manned airframe doesn't make it expendable; it actually makes it more expensive to lose. James Gherdovich, Chief Strategy…
DIB InnovatorsEP 89 — Anduril's Shane Arnott on Eliminating Design Review Theater through Equal Financial Risk
Australia and Anduril each put $50 million into Ghost Shark. That 50/50 split eliminated the customer-contractor power imbalance and got the vehicle in the…
DIB InnovatorsEP 88 — Chariot Defense's Adam Warmoth on Powering Edge Compute and C2 Where There's No Grid
Adam Warmoth, Founder & CEO of Chariot Defense, fielded with the 101st Airborne at GRTC six months after first check by pulling silicon carbide power…
DIB InnovatorsEP 87 — Galvion's Todd Stirtzinger on the Warfighter Lab That Replaced Self-Reporting with Design Science
Galvion built a warfighter lab in Portsmouth, NH: a configurable shoot house with high-speed cameras, VR, 3D sound, and a double-PhD cognitive scientist on…
DIB InnovatorsEP 86 — Firehawk's Will Edwards on Cutting Propellant Production from 60 Days to 6 Hours, No $1B Facility
Will Edwards, CEO & Co-founder of Firehawk walked around defense conferences with what was essentially Lego plastic demonstrating it could become rocket fuel…
DIB InnovatorsEP 85 — Hermeus' Zach Shore on Building Mach 5 Aircraft & the Path to Reusable Hypersonics
Zach Shore, President of Hermeus, and his team have demonstrated a turbine-based combined cycle engine in a wind tunnel for roughly $20 million. NASA and DARPA…
- DIB Innovators
EP 84 — Ashish Parikh on Building Mesh Radios That Frequency-Hop Faster Than Jammers Can Track
Doodle Labs engineered multi-band radios that frequency-hop in milliseconds, outpacing jamming attacks that make satellite control impossible for real-time…
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EP 83 — Oura's Geoff Wylde on Building Wearables That Guide Troop Readiness and Effectiveness
Oura tracked an armored unit's gunnery qualification and found baseline heart rate variability statistically predicted top-quartile performance on weapons…
DIB InnovatorsEP 82 — DEWM's Clark Haymond on Using Networks to Accelerate Product Validation Cycles
Clark Haymond, COO of DEWM, leveraged active duty relationships to compress validation timelines that would take years through traditional AFRL sequences…
DIB InnovatorsEP 81 — Inversion's Justin Fiaschetti on Hiring Engineers Who Think Like Founders
Storing cargo in orbit is becoming cost-comparable to maintaining hundreds of terrestrial warehouses scattered globally, but in orbit, they’re not as…
DIB InnovatorsEP 80 — Lothric Labs' Jonathan DiMattei on Capability vs Compliance in Defense Manufacturing
Jonathan DiMattei, Founder & CEO of Lothric Labs, describes his pathway into defense manufacturing as fearless, relentless, and totally unbiased networking. He…
DIB InnovatorsEP 79 — PrimerAI’s Sean Moriarty on Time-Bounded Mandates vs Incremental Reform in AI Adoption
Primer.ai reduced a 50-day intelligence analysis timeline to hours, enabling operators to redirect friendlies away from hostile forces before collision. CEO…
DIB InnovatorsEP 78 — Epsilon3’s Laura Crabtree on Compliance as a Trust Signal for Defense Customers
SpaceX's early mission operations exposed a fundamental problem: mission-critical teams were executing complex procedures across Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, and…
DIB InnovatorsEP 77 — Lazarus Alliance’s Michael Peters on A Security Trifecta that Replaces Checkbox Compliance
Michael Peters, CEO & Founder of Lazarus Alliance, built his cybersecurity career on one principle: turn over rocks before the bad guys do. After 25 years…
DIB InnovatorsEP 76 — OpsLab's Arun Nair on Teaching AI the Art of Scheduling
OpsLab's scheduling platform saves Air Force squadrons 200 hours per month — time previously spent by pilots manually fixing flight schedules until late at…
DIB InnovatorsEP 75 — Elara Nova's Kim Crider on Balancing “Shiny Objects” & Foundational Infrastructure
When Kim Crider, Founding Partner at Elara Nova, became the Air Force's first Chief Data Officer, she had no mandate, minimal staff, and skeptical four-star…
DIB InnovatorsEP 74 — Roger's Jill Castilla on Building Fee-Free Banking for Under-18 Military Recruits
Roger fills gaps other military banks ignore: free credit score monitoring that typically costs $20 monthly, 2% yield on checking with savings rates reaching…
DIB InnovatorsEP 73 — Ethos's Sasha Seymore on Training Warfighters at the Speed of Weapons Innovation
Sasha Seymore, Co-founder & President at Ethos, walked onto the UNC basketball team as a senior, struggled with outdated playbook training, and turned that…
DIB InnovatorsEP 72 — Zone 5's Thomas Akers on Why Production-Focused Requirements Beat Performance Goals
Zone 5 Technologies cut cruise missile costs from $1.5 million to $200,000 by rethinking not just the engineering, but how you build the supply chain and…
DIB InnovatorsEP 71 — Skydio’s Mark Valentine on How Sanctions Freed Them from Supply Chain Dependence
What happens when China sanctions your drone company? For Skydio, it became the catalyst for complete supply chain independence and battle-tested technology…
DIB InnovatorsEP 70 — A-LIGN's Matt Bruggeman on External Service Provider Scope Issues That Kill CMMC
Defense contractors assume they understand CMMC assessments, but Matt Bruggeman, Director of GTM Federal at A-LIGN, has a harsh reality check for them…
DIB InnovatorsEP 69 — Venus Aerospace's Sassie Duggleby on Mach 5 Flight With No Moving Parts
Venus Aerospace achieved the first flight of a high-thrust rotating detonation rocket engine, proving that decades of theoretical research can translate into…
DIB InnovatorsEP 68 — Nooks' Sean Blackman on Classified Infrastructure as a Service Model
America's defense innovation pipeline has a massive bottleneck that most people don't even realize exists: the infrastructure access problem that prevents our…