Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome everybody back to Weekly Wings or wings. At dronelife.com podcast we are bringing you the latest news, innovation, insights into the UAS industry and things tech related and overlapping the UAS space.
As always, Terry Neff is with me, Paul Rossi. We are your hosts during the next hour or so and we appreciate you tuning in and giving us your time and attention as we are recording this episode of Weekly Wings.
We are watching live as the SpaceX Dragon capsule has touched back down here on Earth after a crew has been on board orbiting the Earth for the past couple days.
While, Terry, you have not been orbiting the Earth in a Dragon capsule.
You have been alive for the past few days and we have been alive for the past month. We just haven't been able to get on here as we would have liked to. But how are you doing, Terry?
[00:01:28] Speaker B: I'm doing pretty good. I'm a little tired today, but it's not going to stop me from having a good episode here.
Something I'd like to note for these, the SpaceX people here, there is no dress code. I see one guy's wearing, there's two dudes wearing fedoras or top hats. They look like fedora.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Over here.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Yeah, over on the left.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: Pretty classy looking hats though. So you've been, well, you've been good.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Been pretty good.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Pretty sweet view right here.
Dragon capsule. They're gonna lift this up and get the capsule onto the back of the boat.
It's been crazy. I, I keep looking down here and it's like, are these sharks? Like I look down and I swear when it first touched down, it, I was like, that's a, it just looked like there was like a giant whale just kind of circling out there. I'm not a marine biologist, but it's kind of like drones in the sky or airplanes in the sky. You know when you zoom back you're like, yeah, there's a real, the likelihood of, you know, seeing an airplane. It's like with the number of whales that actually exist, what's the likelihood of zooming into like a square mile?
What would be the population density of like whales in a square mile?
[00:02:50] Speaker B: But anyway, that's a good question.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: We'll leave that for chat GPT to answer.
So it's been an exciting month of March. I would just say I finished up my master's degree in space operations, so that definitely consumed a bit more time than I, I really would have imagined. But hey, if you're going to get a master's degree, shouldn't take no time at all. But yeah, I got that. Got that over with. And I swear I'd don't want to go back to school again, even though I decided to get back in the airplane. And so last week on my birthday, I actually got in an airplane, a small four seat airplane, and went up and, and did some flying and it was kind of like riding a bike. So pretty excited. Gonna try to get back into the whole aviation thing and build some hours.
So I won't be starting. I guess what I'm trying to say, Terry, is I'm not going to be getting into Jiu Jitsu anytime soon.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: I mean, you don't have to. It's not for the week.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: I know. I stick to the flying for the week, you know.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: For the rich.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: But what's funny is I did, I did.
As I've been coaching T ball for my oldest son, he's been every day comes home, he just wants to go to the batting cage. We live close to the high school, so we can just go right up to the high school. They've got two different batting cages. So he just, he just loves to hit the balls off the tee. But now I've got my glove back on and I'm getting outside. Pollen's everywhere. It sucks in North Carolina, but I put my, I put my information out to like the softball grown up adult league. And this guy reached out and I was supposed to meet up with him yesterday to possibly play on his team, but I got a text from him saying, oh, I picked a kid up from Jiu Jitsu practice and I think he's pretty sick.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: No way. That actually happened.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: And I was like, maybe if you're doing Jiu Jitsu, you would have got picked, Paul. I mean, Jujit.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Well, I'm, I didn't say I didn't get picked to be on the team, but what you're saying is maybe I would have bumped into this guy earlier. Maybe I need to get my kid into Jiu Jitsu.
[00:05:29] Speaker B: Yeah, get him in there.
Hopefully he doesn't break an arm. You know, I'm sure your rotator cuffs feeling good after playing baseball with him a little bit.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: No, actually right now, funny neck strain. So for the last two days, I've have, I've had, I've had the worst stiff neck. You know, just like. It's been terrible. It's been pretty bad.
March 26, though. You know what happened on March 26, I think, is this. Look at, here's the drone pilot. Do we see that?
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah, that's got to Be him. There's two of them. Looks like.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Right here.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: The classic look up. Where's the drone at?
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Yeah, because I was kind of wondering before, like, where would the drone pilot be? They've got to be. Yeah, that's totally the.
That's pretty cool.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: I wonder what drone they're using for this. Oh, that dude just jumped into the water.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: And this dude looks like he has maybe just like a handheld camera or something, taking some photos.
Oh, this has to be a Mavic 3.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Wonder what the other boat's doing. Just circling them, making sure no pirates come by and rob them.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: So when you think about the steps here as we're watching, just the live recovery of the Fram 2 crew that returned to Earth touched down, I don't know, 15 minutes ago.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Wait, there's people in this.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: Oh, there's four people in there.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: That's just jerking them around.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: I was gonna say, once you touch down like these, like here you come blasting back into Earth, you know, thousands of miles an hour. You survive the. The re entry. Then you got these parachutes that blast off. And so it's like, you know, you're, you're. You're surviving the impact of the deployment of the parachute. And. And then that thing hits the water.
And so now you've just done three days in space and confined area. And now for the last 20, 30 minutes, they've just been sitting in the bobbing water and. Oh, man.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Yep. They go straight into seasickness. And then they get put into a roller coaster with these guys. Just.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: I'd have thrown up for sure.
Yeah. This is. Look, it's totally like getting into the shadow or something. I don't know. Is that we're probably totally wrong. Well, if you want to start that. He's yawning. This guy's over here yawning. He's like. I haven't seen.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: He's had a long day. Paul, you got to give him a break.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: The guy looks like. He actually looks from this angle like Matt.
God, I can't remember his last name. Who worked for us up in Blackwell. Yeah, Matt Blackwell. He looks just like Matt Blackwell.
Is, is, is. If you tried to make your. Your deep in antennas in America, they're going to cost three to four to five times as much. And there's no way you're going to get, you know, people who are crypto folks and, you know, early adopters, they're not going to buy $4,000 antennas.
In order to make a little bit of money, you got to be able to make that thing for, for the cheap. So.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Well, I mean, it's making it for cheap and then there's exactly zero other places to go for it, more or less. I mean, I think Taiwan controls like what, like 94 of the semiconductor share of the world. Like they produce 94 of them. So I mean, China wants Taiwan too.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: It's wild.
And so we've talked as we're just kind of, you know, watch here. It's neat Again, I'm just fascinated with these people getting out of here. One thing they're going to do with this capsule as they get out is they're not going to assist them.
They're basically testing to find out, hey, can, can they, can they just get out on their own? And, and I mean, if they need help, they'll help them. But, but a lot of what they're going to do, just the little things that you can test because you don't launch all the time. You're not, you know, landing humans back. But anyway, remember the Japan UAS Industrial Development Association?
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: So we're always talking about the Jewada and how they've really, really pushing limits. Right. So Toyota Group tests Level 4 drone deliveries in remote Japanese islands.
I think this is just interesting because it's. Right.
Toyota and this Jada as it popped up, I'm like, they're pretty much doing anything to drive that Japanese UAS industry forward.
But how. It's just, it's just so interesting how everything's happening.
You know, all these things are happening everywhere with all these different drones and systems and people are doing it. But it's just so hard to know, like, who can scale this whole. Who can provide that aircraft not just here in Japan, but also here in another country. And that's it. So much of this, you know, trade and all this, you know, don't even talk about stocks right now and you know, people's portfolios, but you get a company like a Boeing and that they're getting dragged in, into the, you know, their CEOs being brought in to testify in front of Congress and stuff because of all these accidents that they've had. And it's like you get to a point where you're, where you're doing great and you're employing a lot, but then you're held to such this high, high accountability and standard.
And so you see like the J. Japan UAS Industrial Development association.
And I don't know, it's just interesting because as I finished my master's degree, you got these countries that get behind like like the whole country, it's not big. And so you can get like a more collective backing. The problem is, is you don't have the same resources and funding that a large country has. So the United States, you know, we're huge. We've got, you know, resources. We don't have all the resources, but we have a lot. But then the problem is, is things become divided capital, you know, capitalistically.
Through that capitalist framework that you have, the government, like the faa and they're supporting projects and then now in drone delivery, they're supporting and working with five different companies in all these different spaces.
I don't know you're. If you had any thoughts, any thoughts on that, Terry, how countries, small countries are kind of unified but they don't really have a whole lot to.
To leverage.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: That's why they got to unify.
I don't really have anything to note on that. I do have something to note on the.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Do you want to go to Europe?
[00:13:12] Speaker B: The medicine.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: The drone delivery with the medicine to the older folks of the Goto Islands. Good job. Get them, get them their medicine fast.
I'm sure it's, it's a remote island or just off the coast of Japan. So I'm sure it, it's kind of hard to get stuff over there.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: And so that's the other thing is, is you have these, these very.
The US is a developed place. So I always thought about this back to like instant gratification with drone delivery and small items versus the healthcare initiatives.
You know, the using, using drones in, in instances like this where maybe you have to draw someone's blood immediately and you got to get it back to shore. And so they're on this boat, they might not have the lab or the test equipment. So how can you get samples, specimens, you know, life saving stuff. And that's not what the priority is in the United States.
But, but you out. I mean they'll keep doing it and then. Did you sign up for that Defense Daily newsletter?
[00:14:27] Speaker B: God no. I don't sign up for newsletters.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: No, no, no.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: Ah, it's just a bunch of depending on what newsletter it is. It's usually trash. Except drone life.com dronelife.com has a great newsletter.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: They do.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: They do have a great newsletter.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: Have a good newsletter.
But if you're like Terry and you just bookmark the homepage and you're visiting it hourly, you really don't even need the newsletter, do you?
[00:14:59] Speaker B: My eyes always on the website.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: So they're going to try to get out of Here. But the next couple things, it just seems like Anduro army Enduro secret space satellite, US Green lights, small drones, we unusual machines.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: I've seen something about them.
Let's.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: I did meet someone from Andas holdings.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Did.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: Yes, in Virginia. The drone responders event that took place in March.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Okay.
Dive into that or.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: So this lady was there in order to.
She was part of like, acquisition, finding hardware software companies that Ondas holdings could, you know, acquire.
And.
And I. I think it had to do with like, Flock Safety because like a big thing is Flock Safety was there and Flock Safety had their drone in the box and Flock Safety was just a. Or Aerodome had just been. Has, you know, is recently acquired by Flock Safety. And so they're this big.
Just like all this is happening with the software side.
So I'm like, oh, wow, that's interesting. This person is here in Virginia at this drone responders conference trying to find a software or hardware company that needs, you know, capital investment and needs a structure. And I'm like, yeah, maybe that's the problem is, again we talked about it is like, you go back to that vc, you take on a bunch of money in order to do something that you're saying you could do, and then if you can only fulfill half or 50%, you're not going to be able to recover the full, you know, initial investment. And so it's just this very scary thing where people can show a great website and they can wrap a product and someone can go in and inject funding into it, but it doesn't mean it's going to be successful. And the whole way on trying to find out is a lot of people are going to, you know, pay, buy something.
It's pretty awesome.
They were freaking out too, and they were watching. We're seeing the four astronauts here or the Fram 2 mission. They're. They're about to get out.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: They have space blankets.
Were they cold?
[00:17:59] Speaker A: And so one thing that was interesting, there is this video where they went. And as they were orbiting Earth, they looked down and there's a. There's the video. It's as clear as day. They can see the spaceport at.
I think it was Canaveral, where they launched Florida. They could clear as day. There was. They could see the launch pad where they had. Where they had rocketed off from. Like, could you imagine being that high in the air? And then like a day later, you look down and you're like, there's the rocket pad that we were on.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: We're going back, we're Gonna hit it.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: Like, you know, you take off from an airport, you kind of. You go up, you do a 180, you're circling back, you're leaving, you know, Las Vegas, or you're leaving New York and you. And you're like, oh, wow, that's where I was. Like 200 miles in the air. Oh, wow, that's where I was.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: They must have good eyesight. Couldn't be me. I struggle to read letters on a piece of paper five feet away from me with glasses on.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: So, so when this person was like, did say, like, oh, what brings you here to this conference? Like, you know, why would this. This is what I'm saying. Why would this person be here? Because, like, this is not a drone pilot, right? Like, it's a first responders conference.
I work for Ondaz Holdings. I'm like, this what, like this person really say that? Because it just, it just didn't. I don't know, it just didn't make sense.
It reminded me that the industry isn't that big. If this person's looking for something here again, drone responders conference in Virginia. Great for first responders public safety. If you're listening and you don't know about drone responders, check out drone responders.
Here we go. This person's getting out with their own strength.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: Well, you will you say that, but wouldn't they want to go to the smaller conventions to find like new and up and coming companies that they can poach before they get too big?
[00:20:13] Speaker A: That is true. That is true. And so then this, this person's like, I'm with Ondas Holdings. And I'm like, I'm like, no, you know what I mean?
[00:20:24] Speaker B: Like, you jumped up and down and you said, I'm your biggest fan.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: No, not at all. No, dude, the stock, the stock was like, didn't tanked. This was like a couple weeks ago.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: It's not her fault.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: And so I'm like, I'm like, oh, I know. Andas she's like, yeah. I was like, yeah, I'm a shareholder.
I. I'm very familiar. I mean, we're literally like deep in the the down. And I was just like, oh, that's cool, it's neat and whatever. He's like, well, we're doing something with general so and so. And look at. They're like watching this person labor to get this bag out on her own.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: So not only do you have to get out of the space shuttle by yourself, but you have to do it in this crusty suit and they're probably like, cheer.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: They're like, no, don't say anything because they're like. You don't want to, like, cheer them because it's like we have. They have to do it with their own motivation. You can't motivate them.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: He's hitting his head because the helmet's too big.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: This is awesome, though. I mean, that's like. Because you got to think, if you come back and there's no one there, what would happen?
Germany, I don't.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: This. Their spacesuits are too Star Trekish.
Like, the way they're. The frame is of them.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: Have you seen the Space Force outfits?
[00:21:52] Speaker B: No.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: No. You've never seen. I.
Space Force has been around for quite some time now, and I never realized that they wore Star Trek outfits.
The buttons are all angled and everything.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: Theirs look good compared to this. This space suit, though, in my opinion, they look like they're about to cook up a nasty meal, is what they're about to do.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: The Space Force people, or these people.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: SpaceX, they look like they're about to cook some good food. They look like they're wearing a chef outfit.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Dude, that thing can imagine trying to get out of one of these things in like a. Well, the other thing is this is an intra vehicular spacesuit.
You definitely aren't gonna go outside the spacecraft with that on. I don't think so.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: The first person was the guinea pig. For everybody else that comes out, see how that guy kind of like sat down and then like just kind of rolled out?
[00:22:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I just got her.
Okay. It's like, all right, Australia. I think that's what he was.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: He was Australian. He looked Australian.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: It looked. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the flag there could have been something else from the region.
And so a couple other things here.
And Earl's Fury hopes to woo Australia away from Boeing's Ghost Bat. So as Boeing is, like I even mentioned just earlier, they're. They're taking some hits with their platforms and aircraft.
And now you've got Anduro's Fury. So we've talked about Anduro. We have talked about Anduro in the past. They have.
And we're going to talk about. And there's another article if we get to it, but this here is their Fury drone. So this is like, you know, hey, they've been making smaller drones, lower margins, and now it's like, well, why don't we make a drone to compete with Boeing? Why don't we, you know, produce something? And so you've got the MQ28 Ghost Bat, which must be like the most latest iteration of, you know, your predator, your reaper, your 28s.
And so I thought this was really crazy to see because everybody's like, oh, why doesn't Boeing make one of these? Why doesn't, you know, Tesla make a drone? And it's like, why doesn't. How long is it going to be until these drone companies start making drones?
And so this was seen outside the US in I believe it was Australia.
And so they're trying to get the Australian Air Force to buy these things.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: Well, it's.
So these are like drones that just kind of follow like fighter jets. So the drone's going to have to keep up with the. What is it? The F47. I think I read in the article, like they're going to have to do a demo flight with the F47 to see if it keeps up with it.
So I, I think, I think Boeing might have them beat there.
Respectfully, I don't know if Andrew has it in them just yet.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: Yeah, and so this is what we've looked at in the past.
Anduro. This article came out in March. Enduro in zone five. Technologies advance for Air Force DIU Enterprise test vehicle.
And I don't know if you remember seeing this, Terry. They had that switch blade looking drone that they actually want to con contract for.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: Andrew. Yeah, see, I mean I'm on their.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Website, I can bring. Yeah, I'll bring their.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: Is it the Roadrunner?
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Could be. But this Barracuda is their latest one and so yeah, let's just go to their website. Enduro.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: They're always popping out something new. You gotta stay on their website 247 too.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: Let's talk about contracts. This is what somebody was saying is that these companies like it's amazing how like companies aren't even like companies. They don't even make anything. The whole company exists with just a team of engineers. And all they do. Like when you look at the.
The Roadrunner. No, it was the Ghost in the Fury.
Yeah, this Ghost, remember this one that.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Looks like a grasshopper.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: Oh, we got the. The Japanese astronaut. He didn't even stop and wave to the camera. They just pushed this. Come on, we got one more. The crew like. Yes, last of the parts. Oh, put the bag back in. Like it was like a test bag. This doesn't even. You guys made us lift that out going back here.
[00:26:49] Speaker B: Are they making them lift bags out?
[00:26:51] Speaker A: They did, I think just for like to see their strength. This right here is the. The military was operating this which to Me, it just looks like. It looks like it could do the job with those tiny little legs and the size of it to be able to get that out in the field. Little, little wanky. And then there was the.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: Looks like it breaks.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: Well, here's their Fury. Man. That thing is. Yeah. And the Barracuda. This is their. Now that looks like you. What launch this? Oh, dude, that's launched out of a thing. Looks like it's launched off an aircraft.
Totally.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: Oh yeah. It's like a cruise missile.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Barracuda is a family of air breathing autonomous air vehicles. Purpose built for hyperscale production and mass employment.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: Air breathing.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: That thing's massive, right? You totally. Yeah, you totally attach this thing to like a helicopter or.
Or you attach it to the. I bet you it integrates right into the. The Viper. Is that what the hell they called it? We're going to blow your head off.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: All of Andurl's products looks like they come straight out of GI Joe. So like there's no like video of the Fury flying on their website and everything has like a video of it flying.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: And this is their video. It's like a cartoon, just like you said.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: I mean as long as they're impressing the Australian government, I guess they're doing it right. But they also did say that in the article that it should be cheaper than the MK28.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: It almost looks like you could mount this to like a.
Like right to an aircraft. Or like launch it. Like have like a.
It's so funny. That's the video. Or, or like shoot it off of a.
Like a. A damn aircraft. Like a boat or a. You know what I mean, like a war. What. What do they call it? Battleship Warship. Like that looks like it shoots. It could shoot out of a torpedo tube or something, whatever.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Maybe like a slingshot. I don't see where a slingshot would tell. Hook up though.
It is interesting. That person in the video needs to clean up their sleeves.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: See and they have these underwater things. That's. I. Dude, we talked about this too in the past. I think they're endural. But it looks like you could launch.
You could like load one of these into a tube in here and like deploy it from underwater. We're getting super. That's so funny. I feel like in the last year. But they've changed. So I was. And what I was saying is like. Is like I was reading an article or I don't remember what it was. It was just saying how like these companies don't have a product. All they do is they just look for the defense contracts, they look for RFQs, requests for information, and they just, you know, one day they're making this, and then the next day they're trying to make something else. Simply because that's what the government wants. Whatever the government wants, that's what they're going to try to make. And that seems like what kind of what Andurl is. Is doing rocket motors. Like did. Was this on here? I feel like we've been on their site recently and so now they're like, whoa, we'll buy. We'll make your rocket motors.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: They're making rocket motors.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: That's pretty cool.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: I mean they, their website's pretty. They should give them a few contracts.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: It makes you wonder like something like the Fury, like what the heck is powering this? Is this thing have a rocket motor in it?
[00:30:19] Speaker B: It's either Anduril's a big scam company or they're a lot more advanced than we think.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Dude. This is a single engine jet.
The Viper. No, the Fury. This Fury. This Fury. It's a jet engine. And so they're manufacturing their jet engine, most likely. And now they're saying, well, you know, we'll sell you our a rocket motor too.
It's kind of cool. They're hiring, Terry.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: They're hiring. I just called them a scam company. I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Be even looked at 792 jobs Avionics Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. I would qualify for that avtech job.
See you in Atlanta.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: All right.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: Totally kidding. Wow, that's crazy. They have a job for pretty much anything. Wow, that's pretty cool. I don't know. I bet you not even gonna look. Not a suggestion. Don't care where they're at on any market. It's probably down.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think.
Let's talk about the stock market for a second. Not looking good.
It's not looking good.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: Is that it? Not looking good.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: And we gotta better pivot before we start to get depressed in this call.
[00:31:41] Speaker A: So something I did see that came out, Terry, that I thought was really cool because we talked about this previously was the red tape. Remember? Like what was keeping. What was keeping the US soldiers from flying drones? Remember that article?
[00:31:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: And what was it saying?
[00:31:58] Speaker B: That they're going to be removing the red tape so soldiers can be. Can start to fly the drones around. I have to worry about like. Well, they were like, imagine it.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: Yeah, they were like charging them for it.
They were trying to like recoup costs if the drones like crashed. And the drones were pretty much gonna crash. And so it seemed like they just didn't want to fly them.
Like this enduro stuff. I don't know.
There's a teal drone.
I'm pretty sure that's a, that's a teal, which is made by Red Cat or Cat.
There's stock way down.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: So what did they. So it says not as much, but don't, you know, don't worry about it as much. What does that mean? They're still going to chart. Do they need a credit card to hold when they're flying it?
[00:32:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess so. I mean, it's, you know, different rules for losing because it's. This is what it says. Like the army's preparing a new memo for the rules for flying. But then like what happens when you lose it? Because most, most, unless you're in the military, like you're not.
Like, what would be the most high risk?
Like, like soldiers aren't taking these drones on base to like check the parking lots. We're talking about, like you're at the front line and you're flying this drone into enemy territory.
Around a cur, around a mountain, beyond visual line of sight. You might lose connection. You know, it's a piece of junk aircraft. Somebody might jam your signal. There's so many things that could go wrong.
And so the word losing is kind of a great way to explain like what happens if you lose this thing.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: You have to do a full investigation.
Yeah, he got shot.
Like, what do you want me to tell you?
[00:34:12] Speaker A: And this was the one right here, Remember it?
This was the article. That tiny little drone that cost like 30 grand, 40 grand, 10 grand. That tiny little drone, you lose it. It's like barely as big as a cell phone.
[00:34:26] Speaker B: You find it in your pocket the next day. Damn it. You know, I just got charged 15 grand.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: That was the article US army takes on most effective. That's right. It's like the whole joke was the most effective counter drone system was the army's red tape.
And so this had come back, come out back in October and it's. And it's neat to actually see this follow up article of like five, six months later.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: Soldier, what are they doing?
Just, just a new memo. Let's see.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: Dude, look at this photo right here. I just read this photo. This is an artist rendering. This isn't even an actual soldier flying the drone.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: That's AI. Look at his boot. Look at his left boot.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: Dude, that is so Crazy. That is so. It's so misleading.
It's so misleading. That's why if you. I don't have any sock in Red Cat. Nope.
You were saying though, there's a memo. So they're going to rewrite some stuff. If you lose or crash or break a drone, you have to do this full on. Oh, that's what you're saying. They. So they're trying to get rid of these investigations, hopefully.
Oh, that's right. They were. The Flying Flipples financial liability investigation of property loss.
The soldiers are like, oh, that's just a flipple waiting to happen.
An investigation could cost 8 to $9,000 just to do the investigation. And drone cost 10 grand, 15 grand. So it's like they're considered non expendable.
Anything over five grand is considered non expendable. And so there's no drone, there's no NDAA DUI blue drone that exists that costs less than $20,000, $10,000.
And so by, by the amount of value of the drones, they are automatically just considered non expendable. And so it sounds like that's what they're.
They can create an abandonment memo. If a drone that costs less than $10,000 and if it has non sensitive items on board, then an abandonment memo can be issued instead of a Flipple investig.
And if the drone's below $250,000, then a GS15, a colonel, full bird colonel can make the call. But anything over a quarter million dollars must, must be reviewed by a general officer.
That's pretty cool. So they're kind of powering it down to the command staff. So instead of putting on these, you know, ridiculous like, you know, investigations, it's like, hey, just let the lieutenant colonel make a decision. Let the colonel make a decision. It's, it's smart. It's smart.
[00:38:03] Speaker B: Do you trust your people? Do you think they stole it? I mean like, dude, all right, I want everybody in the military to keep in mind anything under five grand is free pickings. So if you.
[00:38:23] Speaker A: That's funny.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: Little can of ammo here and there ain't going to hurt nobody.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: That's pretty funny.
So going back.
Yeah, going back into space.
I saw this article back earlier in March and what this article was discussing is how recently Space Force deployed a payload.
And that payload is monitoring a Chinese satellite that is monitoring US satellites.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: What?
[00:39:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: And they, they did this secretly. I'm sure China knew. They had to have known.
[00:39:20] Speaker A: For several years the Space Force has had a secretive orbital tool that can gather information on China's own network of sensors that monitor American satellites.
Isn't that crazy?
[00:39:41] Speaker B: I mean, that is crazy. What is the.
Wait, go up a little bit.
Northrop Grumman's whatever spacecraft, okay.
These are sensors that can tell whether you're being observed, tracked, targeted, those types of things.
I don't understand how throwing up something near it can get that information.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: Many American satellites themselves aren't able to tell when they're similarly being watched.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: I wonder how many satellites are being watched by another satellite that's been watched by another satellite. Wonder how many of those exist.
[00:40:35] Speaker A: It's, it's, it become, this becomes almost comical.
[00:40:41] Speaker B: It's satellite inception.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: And then on the.
So that's cool. I just think Space Force, their suits as we were talking about, not the coolest.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: That's, that's pretty cool though. Sneaking up on China's satellites, watching them. That's pretty epic. At least we know Space Force does.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Stuff occasionally, you know, and that's years later, right? They're not telling us like same day.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: They'Re up there fighting aliens right now. We just don't know. We'll find out in about 10 years.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: Now, staying on that military theme. And we were talking about, right, these large military drones, the US green lights, a potential 1.96 billion b billion, 1.96 billion dollar deal.
A potential MQ9B drone deal for Qatar.
So sale would mark the first MQ9 sale to the Middle east for General Atomics.
So big drone here right Now, a basic $1.96 billion call. We'll round up a few million and call it a 2 billion dollar contract.
Like how are these people going to get involved in, in small drones, right? Like, like we saw that even as it breaks into this, even when there's this huge push for like oh, this, this Ukraine war and how, you know, small drones have completely changed the battlefield, but the margins are so slim and the production numbers have to be so high and then the like counting ammunition. Whereas, you know, do you want to be making ammunition or do you want to make aircraft? And so these folks are going to continue to focus on building large, high margin, highly effective drones.
And, and I don't think, I don't know why, I just feel like having to kind of harp on this because the companies that are doing it now aren't doing it very well. But they didn't.
They're not looking at it. They were just looking at it like a piece of, of tech. They're looking at it the same way, the way they should be, like a Computer or a laptop the way that DJI has done it. Because these companies, these big companies that make millions selling drones in large contracts, they're not going to make a small unmanned aircraft system.
[00:43:50] Speaker B: They're too used to getting $2 billion for probably. What is that, what did they say? Eight of them? Is that how many they're buying?
[00:43:57] Speaker A: Did it say in there?
[00:43:59] Speaker B: I think it said 8.
I could be wrong. You probably cover all of Qatar with eight drones as well.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: I don't know. And then the way that these jet aircraft are just being, you know, automated, it's. It's crazy that that'll be the focus. I don't know if it said the actual number. So you got any story, anything? Anything, Terry, that I unfortunately do not.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: Have anything too cool. We, we touched on a few different things.
Nothing for me, unfortunately.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: Nothing, Nothing.
Nothing exciting.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: No, this.
[00:44:38] Speaker A: No, this.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: Pepper spray drones in schools.
[00:44:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I saw that.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: That's interesting. Is it just an FPV drone with pepper spray attached to it? That's crazy. Just a little bear spray. Yeah, that's spin grenades. In Texas schools. What's happening in Texas schools that they need flash springs on drones?
[00:44:57] Speaker A: The.
I saw that and it's.
I can share that. Put that up. I just think it's, it sounds cool and it's a good idea, but from, from a manufacturing standpoint, from a volume standpoint, like use of drones armed with non lethal weapons to, to thwart school shooting. So like, you know, this might be cool as like putting cameras up. So like having these drones and they look like they would work but like, you know, how effective are they for the cost and the price and the amount that they're going to sell? You know, you're just taking an FPV drone and attaching something to it. And so as a student you might be scared and it, and it's like, oh, if you try to shoot the school up, this drone is going to fly and it's going to shoot you and maybe even hit you in the face and.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: Or hit you with a flashbang. The flashbang idea is pretty cool.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: Well, and then people are going to be like, well now when you go to the school, you need to have a trash can lid with you or, you know, how easy does it become to combat something like that? I don't know.
I just saw that. I'm like, that's, that's. Is that what the industry needs? I think, yeah, that's what we need.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: Pepper spray drones are pretty cool, man. I might buy one of those. Take it out into the streets of Fayetteville. See what, see what's happening.
[00:46:34] Speaker A: The mean streets of Fayetteville.
There was a couple other things here that popped up in the success story. Palm Springs Police department expands their drone program with radar technology.
We've talked on the podcast in the past about the company Matrix Space.
And so this is a beautiful photo.
Totally not a deployment for Ikea. This can't be from the actual department, but you can see one, you know, one facing east, west, north, south. You put these pucks out there, you're going to get 360 degree of radar coverage.
But altogether that poll is probably like a hundred plus thousand dollars and then your effective range. But anyway, the Palm Springs PD working with Matrix Space has been able to, you know, push forward their DFR program with some waivers for beyond visual line of sight. So shout out to Palm Springs, let's go.
[00:47:49] Speaker B: Palm Springs.
[00:47:50] Speaker A: If you need a safe place to go, you go to Palm Springs.
[00:47:54] Speaker B: Palm Springs sounds safe as is. So they just got safer.
[00:48:02] Speaker A: And then you were saying Unusual Machines.
Yeah, I saw this here. So this looks like this got written up here in drone life.
Unusual Machines aims to secure US skies with border drone ID technology.
Something we've talked about in the past.
I don't remember the name of the company. They probably bought them.
[00:48:26] Speaker B: Yeah, they love buying stuff.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
With its planned acquisition of a leading airspace management company.
Gosh Ondas. Why didn't you get it?
Oh, so they're using a loft here. Orlando based Unusual Machines is supposed to be able to provide government agencies and entities with greater ability to determine the origins of drones. In February, Unusual Machines purchased a law for the 14 and a half mil, 70%, blah, blah, blah. So their air boss product. So they're talking about, they're just kind of bragging about how great Aloft is and the number of reports of cartel flights. They're going to use Aloft's platform with some, probably some detectors, some detection.
Thing is, Aloft is just a software.
They need the Matrix space. Right.
[00:49:26] Speaker B: They need buy somebody that makes something.
[00:49:29] Speaker A: Similar to Matrix Space. They need the antenna. Yeah, yeah. Unusual Machines trying to, trying to stay relevant.
[00:49:43] Speaker B: I think they're just making very strategic moves into a certain direction that nobody really knows just yet.
They're trying to do something weird. I just can't put my finger on it.
[00:49:54] Speaker A: And we're all screwed. I don't know. I didn't wrap my head around like I still. These things happen and we're like whatever, you know, we'll see where this goes. But Last, you know, last night it was this. Or I don't even remember was it last night or the Trump tariff train continues. And so this article kind of just, just came out. And my, again, my biggest thing is, like, where does the tariff money go to? Where's the tariff money going to? Where is the tariff money going to? And so that's fine. I, like, I kind of understand it. I don't, like, I don't like more expensive things. I want America to be great and a leader. But what I'm trying to figure out is when, like, who gets the tariffs? Who's. Whose bank account is that going into?
But it seems like a 34% tariff on Chinese imports was essentially put in place, which is going to drive the price of these drones up even further.
And they just went up 20, 25% in the past six months.
And so when we look at the cost of the actual drones, they're not like, going up this much, but the cost of the drone to say the, the reseller is going up. So, like, both people are paying for this. And it's, it's, it's, it's not great.
Right? It's not great. Person selling it, person buying it, they're all paying more.
Where the heck is the money going?
So if you want to hear, if you want to check out this article, it's got a quote by a guy named Paul Rossi in there.
But this is crazy.
This is kind of crazy until, like, the stock market is just like a initial. Like, that's like, one thing to watch.
Then you got to realize being, being right there and involved in it.
Yeah.
There's like 15 different sides to this story and. Go ahead.
[00:52:27] Speaker B: I can tell you what I think's happening. I don't know if it's like, the most intelligent idea of what's happening, but I feel like we're just crashing the stock market to get better interest rates when the Fed refinances.
What is in May? Is that when it is next month? So we're just putting a bunch of phantom tariffs up to make the stock market crash.
Then everybody, all the billionaires buy up the cheap. The cheap stocks, you know?
[00:52:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I just. And that's, that's interesting. Like I said, there's like 15, 20, 30 different, different perspectives. And chances are you're not like, there's very few people who just have one, like, one finger in it. It's usually like you have the. You want to be pro America. You are selling products that come from China. So, like, you don't, you don't want the product to be expensive, but you don't want America to be ripped off. And you want there to be like an American option, and you want there to buy. The person buying it is American too.
And so you want Americans to make money, you want Americans to employ Americans, but you also want Americans to be able to buy products that aren't expensive because you don't want to pay an American a lot of money. And so we're talking about how, you know, though, the cost of living goes up, minimum wage goes up, but the cost of these products go down. So it's like, what's gone up? The cost of. When you talk about the cost of living, everybody's buying a ton of cheap shit on Amazon.
You can't afford to pay this. You can't afford. You didn't pay this bill, but your Amazon prime subscription is buzzing, you know? You know what I mean? So it's like, it's like, well, the cost of energy went up. Oh, the cost of eggs went up. Oh, well, yeah, but how much is everybody spending on this? The stuff that doesn't matter and not spending money locally in order to keep these other costs down. And so that's where this is a huge. It's all politics. It all ties back to, you know, cost of energy, cost of living, which is a lot of energy associated with it. Driving, automobiles, insurance is, it's, it's, it's crazy. You know, companies can't have high expenses and cheap products.
And so, hey, I'm in the United States. I learned years ago I could go make it somewhere else and still sell it in the United States. Why wouldn't I do that? Why the hell wouldn't you do that? Why wouldn't you make your product in the cheapest place possible? Yeah, outsource, outsource. You offshore, go send your production to wherever it's the cheapest to make it. And countries were just dying to say, yeah, we don't have any economy, we don't have any industry. Come make your shoes here, Come make your printers here. Come make your jackets here. Come make your, make your mic, make your make, make anything over here. Do your book publication production over here. Print your paper, print everything. Energy will be cheap, labor will be cheap.
But you're still sending it into the US and selling it for, you know, X amount of dollars. And then we need, and then we have to send our cool, fancy products to other countries and we have to lower and sell it for, for cheap. But as we wrap up the podcast, the Nintendo Switch, the new Nintendo Switch just came out, and I saw an article that said the Nintendo switch in the US costs 400, but a Nintendo Switch in Japan, it'll cost you 330American dollars. And so the only difference between the two units is one is Japanese language and one's English language. Same goddamn game system.
And so there's differences with currency.
There's like, hey, currency exchanges.
But when you look at it, American, American, the, the current, with the exchange rate, the same game system is $100 cheaper in, in, in Japan. Why?
Why?
Because they know that they can put the price at 450 and still sell a ton of units. And if they price it cheaper, they won't have enough units to sell like Disneyland. The price of the ticket at Disney is super high because if it was cheap, too many people would be able to get in. Too many people could get in. If you lowered the price, the lines would be too long.
Disney has to regularly raise their price in order to keep the lines down.
You make the same amount of money, but you have less people. It's crazy. You sell it into the US you can sell it for more because there's more people to buy it from you. And if you sell it for too cheap, you're not going to be able to make enough of them. Stupid. It's crazy. And so, I don't know, short term, it sucks, but I'm just glad I'm not retiring this year or I'm not living off of my 401k or IRA today, because if I was, I'd be pretty angry. But now I brush my teeth and I just go, you know, Joe Biden fell off a bike and the stock market went up. Donald Trump shows you a chart and the market goes down.
So I'm laughing. Who's laughing? It's like, you know, Joe Biden could fall asleep and the market goes up. Donald Trump adds a tariff and the market goes down. So everybody's going, no, this doesn't make sense. But what is, what is this going to look like nine months from now? Right. I want to see what does 2026 look like? That's what we should all care about. We should all be more concerned with 2027 and 2028. And I know today is important, but what's in my wallet today isn't as important as what could be in my wallet two, three, four years from now.
[00:58:39] Speaker B: Yeah, you gotta look in the future. The present's not the only thing you have to worry about if you plan on Living past two minutes from now probably would worry about the future a little more.
[00:58:49] Speaker A: And that was like an extended cut podcast for the past because we hit the one hour mark, Terry, we were like on the money. And I looked and I saw it and then I was like, let me just steal seven more minutes of our audience's time and let's talk, let's talk a little politics and markets here. So. Well, great episode. Another great episode. I'm sure we left some things out.
North Carolina is, is in the, the process of launching a drone responders working group. So anybody in the state of North Carolina, reach out, comment, ask a question, contact myself info@9:10 drones.com can tell you, you know, a little bit about that and how public safety needs to get together especially to speak up and speak out against these, these kind of bills here in North Carolina. So there should be event in July for like a North Carolina drone responders and then also Specsy. If you haven't seen this, we should talk about it on the next episode. Is Specsy. I think it's like specsy.com or something if you have a.
Yeah, check out specsy.com if you have a DJI mini 3 or mini 4 or maybe it's. It might be a mini 2 and a mini 3.
You can make money flying Specsagons. So it's kind of like part of this decentralized, you know, D pin. They're getting into tokens at some point. We'll talk about Specsy on, on the next episode, but check that out and be sure to check out dronelife.com Sign up for the newsletter. It's the only one that Terry is actually signed up for, which means it's very, very important. So we appreciate your time, appreciate your attention, and as always, look forward to connecting with you on the next episode. Thank you, Terry. Thank you.
