00:22:50 · Bobby Healy, Adrian Weckler
[00:22:50] S1: Would say it did huge damage to our business. Like, we were two years unable to open up new bases. Like, in Glasnevin, where we had like, what, 150 people working? We couldn't even open a base in our own HQ. To no particular anybody's fault. We went too fast for Ireland. Like, I don't blame Ireland here. We went so fast, no one saw it coming, like, space is what we needed, right, to give the planners what they need to permit stuff, and we we have no use space in Ireland. The IEA, ERNAV, Ireland, you know, they've no budget to do use space. [00:23:29] S2: But I remember last August when the government came out with its framework document, it was supposed to address lot of these issues. In other words, the expectation was things are disjointed, they're a little bit of a mess. We're still in the early stages, but we are a forward thinking country and we're going to provide clarity. It's called the framework document. And it addressed use space really in name only. I remember reading it thinking they've just pushed it back to the local planners. They've just pushed most of the key stuff. Yeah. Stuff about noise. Stuff like numbers. Number of flights. [00:24:03] S1: Yeah. [00:24:04] S2: Back to the local planners and dressed up in, you know, words like innovation and the future and, you know, pro business. So my point here though is, you know, I'm wondering if you've lost any heart in Ireland because we have a pro business government, we've pro business this, that, and the other. I've heard you say, but at the end of the day, you can't get stuck.
00:24:30 · Bobby Healy
[00:24:30] S1: Look. It's... Wearing my green jersey as an Irish person, not as Bobby running Manna. It's it's a stupid situation where we didn't figure out as a country to get behind this technology and keep winning, we but haven't lost. And to be clear, man has grown like crazy in Ireland. Like, we've got three aircraft that we're designing. One, Mark two just got its approval from the FCC in The United States, so that starts flying in January. Mark III is under development, nearly there, and Mark IV comes behind it. We're hiring engineers in Ireland, still growing, high quality jobs in Ireland to build. So Ireland hasn't lost anything. The only thing it's slightly embarrassing for my company and Ireland that we can't grow in our own country, but doesn't I mean, Ireland's a tiny market anyway for this business. We've always been United States, United States, United States. And if we weren't in The United States, we'd be worth a hundredth of what we would be worth if we were, you know, so and Europe isn't even EU isn't even an interesting opportunity for us, it's The United States. So we've always said, when we're ready to scale, we're going to raise growth rounds, and hopefully in the billions, not in the tens of millions, it's The United States we want to be a leader in. I don't want to be the winner in Europe, I want to be the winner in The United States. I want to beat Google, beat Amazon, beat ZipLine,
00:25:52 · Adrian Weckler, Bobby Healy
[00:25:52] S2: And so... So you've you've moved Tulsa in Oklahoma. Now you've gone from having arguments over m 50 car parks to a city in Tulsa. And just describe to me what the environment's like there in terms of a drone company. [00:26:08] S1: Well, like, we're backed by, politically, the governor of Oklahoma, the lieutenant governor, the mayor of Tulsa. We've had two senators visit us in Dublin and load our aircraft, US senators, one from Michigan, one from Oklahoma. We've had the governor of Oklahoma come here. We've had no end of political support in The United States because jobs matter. And Trump, the White House, issued an executive order about a year and a half ago called Unleashing American Drone Dominance, right? A bit of does what it says on a tin, but it was intent on saying, right, America has lost twenty years to the Chinese on manufacturing, supply chain, everything from motors to batteries to PCBs to carbon, you name it. [00:26:57] S2: Not wrong about that.
00:26:57 · Adrian Weckler, Bobby Healy
[00:26:57] S2: Not wrong about that. [00:26:58] S1: No, 100%. And the only way to fix that were, like, at the geopolitics, look at China's influence in Ukraine, Russia's influence, all this stuff, and it's pretty obvious that America fell behind on this and needs to fix that. So, they introduced this act, and the act basically said, we are not going to tolerate this anymore. We are going to build an America. We are going to favor American companies. We are going to disable foreign adversaries. And unfortunately, in that word, they used the word foreign instead of just Chinese. They should have just said Chinese, but it affected us. They basically banned man as drones from America. So we've been doing a lot of work with our political allies in The United States to get open, and we just got that just a few days ago with FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. And so it's a delicate thing, but behind that executive order came meaningful actions, right? So the head of the FAA, the Federal Aviation Authority, Bryan Bedford, he came to Dublin to see our operation. This is a guy with 40,000 employees under him. He's responsible for the entire airspace in The United States, the biggest airspace in the world by far. And he visits our office in Glasnevin, and I couldn't even show him an operation running out of our office. And he says to me, Bobby, what do I have to do to get you to The United States? What do you need from me? He's the head of the FAA. You know, that's compelling from my point of view. [00:28:29] S2: What's the difference in visions here? Like,
00:28:29 · Adrian Weckler, Bobby Healy
[00:28:29] S2: What's the difference in visions here? Like, [00:28:33] S1: Jobs first, right? So America needs to catch up, it needs to enable. So what China five years ago created a set of laws called the low altitude economy, and they essentially commercialized the airspace below 500 feet. They made it easy for people to fly and build a business, right? They did it countrywide, once you have a license, do anything you want. There's no local planners, there's no anything like that, it's just get going and fly. [00:28:56] S2: So what about... Let me ask you about Tulsa, though, because I've seen you say before that you wanna set up a base and I think you're setting up... Is it 30 bases there? [00:29:05] S1: We think 25 to 30 is Yeah. All we have 10 now, 10 From [00:29:11] S2: concept to having a base done, it's more a matter of months or weeks there. [00:29:16] S1: I moved there July 3, and five weeks later we were flying commercially. [00:29:22] S2: Right. And what about the stuff that comes up here, like planning processes, community objections, noise? How is [00:29:31] S1: that dealt with over there? The Federal Aviation Administration under the Part 108 regulations federalized all the rulemaking. So they say there's a federal rule around noise levels, environmental, wildlife, all that stuff. It's singular. [00:29:47] S2: Framework document. [00:29:48] S1: Framework... Well, no. And implemented, right? We have a great framework document with no budget and no political will, right? And that's fine. I understand that we're a small country, you know,
00:29:48 · Bobby Healy, Adrian Weckler
[00:29:48] S1: Framework... Well, no. And implemented, right? We have a great framework document with no budget and no political will, right? And that's fine. I understand that we're a small country, you know, [00:30:00] S2: but is it fine? I mean, [00:30:02] S1: mean, it's not not kicking some arses, you know, quietly, and I, you know, collectively, I would say, me and lots of others, will be back in Ireland, and we will make it happen. [00:30:13] S2: Do you think you'll fly again here in Ireland?