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?
00:05:09 · Ty Morse, Olaf Hichwa
[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? [00:05:16] S1: Reality is a very powerful thing, right? When your engineering project is in simulations or in low volume demonstrators or in demo mode, you get to have a lot of control over the world and things are pretty perfect. When you build things that serve a, you know, critical national security objective and are made in massive volume and are used by people whose lives depend on them in volume, you don't have very many luxuries. And you're kind of forced like the... Kinda... I've I've noticed the Elon algorithm is kind of forced upon you. The insane deletion isn't really like a a luxury. It's like a... No, you will fail. You will not deliver anything. Your volumes will be tiny. Your timelines will slip, you have to be vicious in the deletion. Every requirement gets questioned to shit. We push back on all of them. You know, you want picture perfect drone swarms that like, you know, operate like in thousands of units and behave like a wild animal swarm, like a fish swarm, you don't actually get that requirement. That's a demo requirement. And you have to be much more real. You have to think like, what do the users want? What has worked when we deployed? What can we manufacture? And those kind of realities are just hammered into the engineers that work on on Neros products.
00:06:40 · Ty Morse
[00:06:40] S0: A lot of people talk about like autonomous weapon systems now, but you guys very specifically from the beginning are basically trying to focus on trade... Creating the best possible thing for an operator. Yep. And now you're like moving into slightly more autonomous systems, but mainly still focused on the operator. Why did you do that? Why didn't you just go straight to autonomy?