00:00:00 · Ty Morse, Olaf Hichwa
[00:00:00] S0: Today, I'm sitting down with Olaf Hichwa, co founder and CTO of Neros, in their new quarter million square foot factory that's on track to produce a million drones a year by something like 2028. I was here about four months ago interviewing Soren when this was an empty box. [00:00:16] S1: Big empty box. [00:00:17] S0: Big empty box. [00:00:17] S1: Not a thing in it. [00:00:18] S0: Nothing in it. And now you guys are almost, I think, completely out of the the old place or soon to be. We're completely out of the old place. [00:00:25] S1: That is now a small empty box, and we have a slightly less empty box here. [00:00:30] S0: But this is going to be at, I think, a 130,000 run rate drones This year. Year Yep. By December. [00:00:37] S1: This So [00:00:38] S0: tell me about just starting up this entire production line from scratch literally in a couple months. [00:00:42] S1: Man, ground up redesigns, they are awesome. We were so cramped in the old building and so much of our kind of production process was dictated by initial decisions by the line of folding tables that we put together about two years ago. So getting to design something fresh, design, you know, a production line with component feeder stations that go into each assembly station, it's been huge. And the numbers have been huge. We've been just consistently ripping, you know, a thousand drone weeks, 1,200 drone weeks, and more soon. Can you put it in context, [00:01:17] S0: what is a thousand drones per week? [00:01:19] S1: Yeah.
00:01:19 · Olaf Hichwa, Ty Morse
[00:01:19] S1: Yeah. [00:01:19] S0: Because there's like no company in The United States producing that many right now. [00:01:23] S1: Right now, we build more drones in a week than any other drone company in America builds in a month. Every two minutes during business hours, we have an Archer coming off the production line. And that's, you know, America's state of the art FPV strike drone. It's it's a world class piece of engineering. [00:01:42] S0: There's another podcast that you did where you talked about the number of casualties in Ukraine and Russia from drones versus any other weapon. And I think right now, it's something like seventy percent of all casualties are from FPV drones, I believe. This dwarfs any other weapon in history as far as, like, number of deaths.
00:01:42 · Ty Morse, Olaf Hichwa
[00:01:42] S0: There's another podcast that you did where you talked about the number of casualties in Ukraine and Russia from drones versus any other weapon. And I think right now, it's something like seventy percent of all casualties are from FPV drones, I believe. This dwarfs any other weapon in history as far as, like, number of deaths. [00:02:02] S1: We're living in a crazy time. Never in human history that I'm aware of has a piece of technology come out that has had this big of a swing in how conflict is fought. You know, 70% was this big stat popularized by a Reuters article and and some some research. Zelensky came out and now is quoting higher, you know, I hear 80, I hear 90. But at the end of the day, when has there been a time in human history when a piece of technology has come out that has been as impactful to the battlefield as drones, maybe nuclear weapons, but even then, it was, you know, not as big of a percentage as drones. The front line is just the drone zone. When you when you drive around, all you hear is drones. Drones are going to be and already are the defining weapon system of our generation. And, you know, it's really critical that America and the free world has a play in that. If we let, you know, another group of folks define the weapon system of our generation, I I don't think I need to exactly walk through what happens. Know, PAX America falls. I would like
00:02:02 · Olaf Hichwa, Ty Morse
[00:02:02] S1: We're living in a crazy time. Never in human history that I'm aware of has a piece of technology come out that has had this big of a swing in how conflict is fought. You know, 70% was this big stat popularized by a Reuters article and and some some research. Zelensky came out and now is quoting higher, you know, I hear 80, I hear 90. But at the end of the day, when has there been a time in human history when a piece of technology has come out that has been as impactful to the battlefield as drones, maybe nuclear weapons, but even then, it was, you know, not as big of a percentage as drones. The front line is just the drone zone. When you when you drive around, all you hear is drones. Drones are going to be and already are the defining weapon system of our generation. And, you know, it's really critical that America and the free world has a play in that. If we let, you know, another group of folks define the weapon system of our generation, I I don't think I need to exactly walk through what happens. Know, PAX America falls. I would like [00:03:10] S0: to talk about, like, the current drone market today and where it can kind of transition to maybe five or ten years from now. You said earlier today something on the order of, like, 14,000,000 drones are being sold from China to both Russia and Ukraine, like 7,000,000 to each side, and they're basically just blowing each other up.
00:03:10 · Ty Morse, Olaf Hichwa
[00:03:10] S0: to talk about, like, the current drone market today and where it can kind of transition to maybe five or ten years from now. You said earlier today something on the order of, like, 14,000,000 drones are being sold from China to both Russia and Ukraine, like 7,000,000 to each side, and they're basically just blowing each other up. [00:03:26] S1: Talk about a talk about a business model. I mean, it's terrible. And I I, you know, I I feel bad for the Ukrainians that have to put up with like, you know, their vendor. You know, generally like, we don't like it when our vendors supply to our competitors. We put up with it. Imagine, you know, you're giving feedback. You're a Ukrainian drone manufacturer. You're giving feedback on your design based on the blood of your comrades, and that information is going directly to your enemy. And often the Chinese give Russians the newer drone tech. Right? The first terminal guidance videos I saw on Twitter were from Russian drones. These are AI automated drone strikes. Fiber optic was also like, I saw it on Russian X accounts first. [00:04:08] S0: How do you think that's going to shift over the next couple years as you guys start to ramp?
00:04:08 · Ty Morse, Olaf Hichwa
[00:04:08] S0: How do you think that's going to shift over the next couple years as you guys start to ramp? [00:04:11] S1: I think the kind of western drone base is slowly, slowly coming online. People are starting to realize that, you know, drones are the most lethal weapon system of our generation and they will define who runs the world. And we're starting to put two and two together where like, okay, we should probably build them. And so you've got factories springing up. You know, we're not we're not the only company with this million drone dream. I'm seeing new announcements, and other people are saying we're gonna build a million drones a year. I think that's awesome. I think the West needs a lot of million drone factories because China has that as well. So I'm I'm hopeful, you know, in a in a reasonable amount of time, Ukraine will be able to have a a credible alternate to China in the West, in in Europe, in America, in Millennium one, in this building, but all over. [00:05:00] S0: Earlier today, I was in a meeting with you, and you're talking about basically pulling in timelines and making sure that you can actually ship products. [00:05:06] S1: For some reason it's always in, [00:05:07] S0: never out. [00:05:07] S1: Yes, Always in. [00:05:09] S0: What like trade offs did you make on the design of Archer so that you could actually ship it in a fast, rapid pace and scale your production quickly?