00:20:46 · Ty Morse, Olaf Hichwa
[00:20:46] S0: What was it like when you first decided to start working on this? Like what was the first few weeks and iterations of this product like? [00:20:53] S1: Yeah, I remember that. I mean it was nights and weekends at the very beginning. [00:20:56] S0: And when did you decide? Like what what made the flip in your head?
00:21:00 · Olaf Hichwa
[00:21:00] S1: Really it was it was taking that call with the Ukrainians and just getting getting on those calls, really, and seeing the need. You know, I grew up in DC. Very normal nice bring up. Right? Went to, you know, a good local school in the area, and never really thought about, like, the dangers of getting bombed or anything like that. It was just so foreign. And I kinda had the thought, like, why work on weapon systems when I could work on, you know, Bay Area stuff, like, you know, getting a burrito to arrive thirty seconds faster at at a house or something like that. Talking to Ukrainians really quickly changed my mindset. I can't believe I, like, like, how quickly it became abundantly clear that if you don't build weapon systems, everything falls apart. And not building weapon systems is a massive luxury. Like, being able to, you know, sip your matcha and take your electric skateboard to work, to your Bay Area cushy job, is something that, you know, every Ukrainian dreams of, I'm sure, but does not have. Right? They they have... They are worried about getting blown up by Russians as as, you know, that's a real threat. I think if Americans kind of remembered what what history was was like and and what the generations before us did to make sure that we can live this good life, people would be much more interested in in building weapon systems. I think that realization was really what made me, like, wanna stay up all night designing the motherboard, the the main PCBA, printed circuit board assembly in Archer at the time. So, yeah, that was like the first big engineering project, just ripping ripping the motherboard. It was... I was a full time board designer, so I I had been doing it for quite a while. And I remember that motherboard, I bought it on my credit card. It was the first PCBA of my career that I designed that worked for a spin. And that was really important because there was not time for another spin. That was that was that was our shot. So really really thankful that that worked out. Thankfully it was a it was a lot of, you know, knowledge pulled from the drone racing days. Was the exact same flight computer that I designed in high school as an example. Yeah, those early days were awesome. It was just Soren and I cooking.
00:23:19 · Olaf Hichwa, Ty Morse
He was up all night doing mechanical CAD behind the initial birds, then we, you know, asked our friends to come and help and camped out in his basement in Vermont. But great, great times. [00:23:31] S0: You mentioned that you went to Ukraine recently. What was that like? What's changed since the first time you came?
00:23:36 · Olaf Hichwa
[00:23:36] S1: The the conflict has become more intense. Like, on the previous trips, like, my my reaction in Kyiv, which is, you know, pretty far from the front line, was just like You can probably almost forget the country as it were. Like there's long periods of time where it's totally normal. And life always continues. That's one of the big learnings. Like even, you know, 20 kilometers from the front line, you can have, had a great steak dinner with friends and discuss, you know, random topics. Like life always continues. But during the first few trips it was like... Kyiv seemed... It was like... It's like Paris, but, you know, in Eastern Europe. I'd say the the war has intensified a lot. The the strikes on civilian infrastructure by Russia, it's it's awful. It's it's, you know, an act of terror. And they're really... They're not pulling the punches. Right? They're they're purposely targeting apartment complexes of of civilians. And like, you hear Shaheeds, you know, up in the sky just buzzing by, and that's just like a thing that people have had to live with. What is a Shahed? It's a Group three, which is DOD speak for big drone. It's kinda like the size of like a minivan and it's just packed full of explosives. Just just packed. And they're super cheap. They're like tens of thousands of dollars. They have little rocket motors, they launch up. And they're little deltas. They're... Not little, big, big deltas. It was actually an Iranian or a German design initially, a long time ago. And the Iranians perfected it. That's why the name. And then there was this, like, crazy deal where Russia shipped bars of gold, literal physical bars of gold to Iran for the design, and then Russia started producing them. And now they send, you know, hundreds of these things every night to Ukrainian cities to to blow up Ukrainian civilians. And worse than just hitting the apartment buildings often, they're really... They're not holding any punches. They're blowing up power, which if you like... If your power station goes down, people freeze. They're they're really just trying to blow up anything that makes the the lives of ordinary Ukrainians trying to defend themselves hell. And those impacts are are more clear in in Kyiv now. On one of the one of the nights I was in Ukraine last time, I actually went out with a military unit that was hunting Shahids.
00:25:49 · Olaf Hichwa
And that was a really impactful experience, kind of hanging out with the guys. It's it's a much less official operation than you might think. It's like four guys that know each other really well. You know, two guys, they're nerdy, they sit back, they they build the the drones. I remember at the time they had like a fleet of five interceptor drones that they were very proud of, and they were like talking about maybe soon they'll get a sixth, but these are like really prized possessions. And they've got a van, and they take the, you know, pack the van full of, you know, a Starlink, a few of these interceptors, some really cool software, software, some some radio radio tech they've been experimenting with, and they go park in the middle of the field. And our our shift was like 8PM to 5AM, and we were stationed basically just looking for Shahids. And of course, like, you know, it's a lot of waiting, a lot of fucking with each other, and maybe, you know, rotating, sleeping a little bit. But I remember, like, there were, you know, a few false alarms. There was a Shaheed headed towards us. Often these anti aircraft phys... Or air defense positions, like, wanna take out. Right? You wanna blow them up so that way you can break a hole in the air defense and go through. So we got on high alert, but another unit went and killed the Shaheed before we could go and take it out ourselves. So, like, a few false alarms. The the Shaheeds, they... Like, we saw them on a map and and they would take the most nontrivial routes. Like, the goal is to hit Kyiv, usually, most of them, is to to hit civilian infrastructure in Kyiv. Like, depends, but a lot of them are trying to get there. And you'll see a Shahid, it'll go like two thirds of the way to Kyiv, and then it'll turn around. And the reason for that is it just learned that there's a gap in the air defense, and it's gonna send the rest of the Shahids to go exploit that gap, or it's it's it's trying to find another gap from the inside, that way they can send more. So sometimes it doesn't make sense to just go strike directly even if you're close. It makes more sense to gather information on where the air defense units are and where they could be taken down. I remember close to the end of the shift, one was getting closer and closer and actually got in our bubble. And so we launched.
00:28:01 · Olaf Hichwa, Ty Morse
We launched the interceptor to try and blow up the shock heat and we we got close, but another another unit actually blew it up right before and we were able to hear the boom. That was terrifying. But just the kinda realness of like... It's kinda like a video game in that you just have a map with like all these birds or drones flying over Ukrainian airspace, like, you know, hunting. And it feels very, you know, fake. Like it's just like you're looking through a screen until you hear the bang. And you're like, oh shit. It's very, very real. Like, there is a there is a real world on the other side of this, you know, camera lens. But I think it's the future of conflict. Like, I think people are gonna be, you know, more and more just fighting through screens. It's really obvious. But it's more and more gonna be, you know, drone on drone. And drones are like, you know, this kind of like apex predator of the weapon ecosystem. It's like, you know, rock, paper, scissors, drone all the way at the top. [00:28:57] S0: Because it costs almost nothing and is super like precise and able to deliver a lot of force. [00:29:02] S1: Yep. Yep. I think people will soon realize that like basically, you know, the only way to defeat a drone is another drone and then there's gonna be this drone war where, you know, one side is gonna deplete all of their drones and then the other side is probably just gonna surrender. There's no point in fighting a like man on drone war. You'll lose, and when people know they lose, like they generally don't fight.