Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: And welcome to another episode of Weekly Wings, a dronelife.com podcast.
As always, Paul Rossi here with co hosts Samuel Stansberry and Terry Neff. We have a wonderful episode today. A lot of great topics. Always a wonderful episode, always exciting. Always lots to talk about. How are you doing, Terry?
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Doing fantastic.
Nothing to complain about this week. You know, life's good.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: That is positive. Samuel, how are you doing?
[00:00:34] Speaker C: I'm gonna. I'm gonna take Terry's no complaint and go ahead and complain and just be a little upset that it's 85 degrees in North Carolina, because I thought. I thought it was gonna be fall. Want some fall weather? But it seems like whether it's hot or cold, it's not gonna stop some drone light shows that are coming up. So I'm excited to talk about that. That's something to look forward to.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it's saying hot, but be careful what you wish for. You know, in like a week, you'll be talking about, man, it's so cold. North Carolina. Yeah, North Carolina weather.
But with that, with the changes, and I think 713 is the sun setting today in North Carolina. So if you think compared to the 830 that we were seeing like a month, month and a half ago, certainly better for drone light shows, I would think, you know, temperatures, that window of opportunity, you don't have to keep people outside until 09:00 at night in order to, you know, have those environmental conditions that are conducive for night shows. So when the sun's setting at 445 05:00 you know, still dark out, but with those hours, probably easier to get people to come out. And so here shortly, we'll be talking about that exact, exact thing, drone light shows coming up here in North Carolina. We talk about them a bunch over the past four or five months. So today in this episode, we're going to be on the moon. We're going to be talking about some developments by a company, Sierra Space, and we'll be talking about drone light shows in Pinehurst, North Carolina, looking at a tech spotlight. Zipline has recently put out a pretty detailed video in regards to the future of their, you know, drone operation. So we'll look at that. Not, not watch the whole thing. Pretty lengthy video, but we'll be looking at also military applications, the sale of drones internationally, and then also the US army selecting some more drones for use, as well as developing and building out, you know, actual drone units within the organization of their structure.
Looking at some success stories. B Cave, Texas. That is the name of a town in Texas. B Cave, Texas, is launching their DFR program, and the University of Kentucky will be visiting that campus where they have not in person. Right. Just. Just in our minds. Right. Going to University of Kentucky, where they got a grant for some interesting drone research.
And then we'll be finishing things up in the regulatory corner. Kind of regulatory, not so much, but looking at the NTSB's drone fleet and visit to Taiwan by some us manufacturers. So again, we'll kick things off. Did you guys see have a chance to read any into this?
Sierra space unveils breakthrough technology designed to extract oxygen from lunar soil, enabling sustainable human presence on the moon.
[00:03:53] Speaker C: That does kind of lead into that major breakthrough part. I mean, I did not see that until you brought it up to us. But that's a. Seems very revolutionary.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Yeah. I didn't read anything about it, but I'm not going to pretend like even if I did read it, I would know what I was talking about.
This is, I think, out of my spectrum of knowledge.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: So what's actually really interesting here, and I didn't realize it at the time, but I worked for the company, Sierra Nevada Corporation.
And so Sierra space is kind of like a.
I don't know, Sierra Nevada Corporation would be like the parent company of Sierra space.
And this dream chaser aircraft that you see here, I'm sharing this tab right here. Big american flag. So this dream chaser spacecraft is similar to like the shuttle where you launch it, rock it, blast it into orbit, and then it will come down and land on a Runway.
But this system aircraft was being built on the same airport facility as where I was doing work on aircraft. So seeing these things circle back to where now Sierra space, who is also heavily involved in just traditional aircraft operations, is building aircraft that are going to carry people to and from the moon, from the moon to Mars, Mars to their orbital reef. They're working on these in space type of hotels.
Seeing this is pretty exciting. And this is September 17 that this came out. So think of this as a machine that you can put on the moon. And what it does is it scoops up and it grinds or extracts the gas gases from the moon, moon soil. So they've tested this at Kennedy Space center, and they've tested it in temperatures 45 degrees -45 degrees celsius, all the way up to 1800 degrees celsius.
So subjecting the actual equipment itself to the vacuum of space and then all the temperature variations and then putting this thick like this, like moon dust, moon soil, the way they explain it, is there's nothing there to soften it, or a stone in an ocean, in a river. Over time, it smoothed out from all that erosion. That's not happening on the moon. So all this regolith and soil is extremely sharp and rigid.
Why do we need oxygen? What's the importance of oxygen? Getting oxygen on the moon to sustain life long term?
So 100% right. The first thing everyone's thinking, oxygen, right? Humans need oxygen. If you have a way to produce oxygen in situ. In situ resources would be, hey, we're making oxygen on the moon. We don't have to bring oxygen with us. If you don't have to bring something with you anymore.
Now, you saved cargo space, but also, what is an engine need in order to function right? You have to have fuel and you have to have oxygen. So folks want to launch aircraft. Like the moon is just going to be like, I would say like a sheets, but I think sheets, gas stations for folks that aren't familiar, they're great.
But I think the moon is more deserving of, you know, Samuel, I'm gonna. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go big here. And I think you know where I'm going with this, but the moon is gonna be like a bucky's.
[00:08:10] Speaker C: I almost thought you're gonna say wawa, but I think Bucky's might be a better comparison here.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, we're going. Bucky's here. Because on the moon, you're gonna fly to the moon, and then you're going to refuel on the moon, and the moon is going to be like a pit stop. So not only are you going to need fuel, but you're going to need oxygen there. So if you can produce oxygen for individuals, but then oxygen as one of the main components for combustion in a jet engine. So folks are pretty excited about this.
[00:08:41] Speaker C: I'm curious in terms of, like, how much they, like, what is the ratio they get for, like, the amount of energy they have to put into the soil to, like, extract that o two. I don't know. I'm kind of looking through the article now, and I don't necessarily see that, but I'm curious long term, like, how much of an effort that would be, because that sounds very demanding, for lack of better words.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I looked, I read through the article, too, because after I started, I was like, wait a second. Let me, like, okay, they got oxygen, but how much oxygen did they get? Right? How much of the soil did they process? And after processing that much soil, what was the, like, hey, one breath, you know, like a.
[00:09:26] Speaker C: There's two weeks of work right there.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Yeah. One can of. One can of oxygen. So, yeah, it'll be. It'll be interesting to kind of see how that advances. But the first step. Right. Is to just identify the process, then refine the process and improve the process itself.
I share this one last thing, because I meant. Go ahead.
[00:09:49] Speaker C: Well, I was kind of curious. So are they extracted the soil from the moon, and they brought it back for testing?
Right. Or are they testing it in space with solar panels? Okay. They brought it back.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: No, no, no. So this was done at Kennedy space Center. So every time, you know, a vehicle comes back from space, there's always useful payload to bring back. Right. You have pressurized payload, which is where humans would be. You have to be pressurized. You have to. So some things, in order to bring them back from space, they have to be inside a pressurized cabin like humans on a plane. You can also bring things back in, like an unpressurized, you know, non life sustaining kind of like the bed of the truck.
So since we've gone to the moon, it has been a priority to also bring this. Regolith is what it's called every time. It just makes me think of Thor, like, whenever I hear regolith. Right. So this moon soil is called regolith. They're bringing it back as much as they can in order to study on Earth. Put it through the machine here on Earth, and then send it up to the moon and. And start, you know, processing after it's. It's refined.
[00:11:17] Speaker C: You know, I think you actually.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Same thing with Mars, I was gonna.
[00:11:21] Speaker C: Say, I think you unlocked a weird childhood memory. When I went to a museum and I got to see some. Some space or some moon particles, and in my head as a kid, I was like, this is just dirt, essentially. Like, it looks. It's just. Yeah, it didn't look that special, but, yeah, I mean, sorry to go off on that, but, yeah, I don't know why that just unlocked.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: And so, before jumping to the next topic, the last thing, because I mentioned orbital reef. So Sierra space is making the aircraft, as you can see. Like, if I zoom in here, right? See the little dream chasers, these spaceships, the. The aircraft that they're making, they call it dream chaser. So the dream chaser flies cargo and humans to the ISS and in orbit destinations. On orbit destinations. So they also make the equipment to extract resources. Well, what they're working with and the company they're doing orbital reef with is blue Origin. So blue Origin is Jeff Bezos's company.
Amazon. So if you don't know who Jeff Bezos is, you probably know what Amazon is. Jeff Bezos, owner founder of Amazon, has started blue Origin launching, trying to launch their own rockets and all this fun stuff. So they're working with Sierra space in order to create a mixed use business park in space. So the idea is this right here would be like the ISS. Instead of being owned by a government, it's owned by a commercial entity. And some of these pods would be for businesses. They could rent, buy, purchase access to the value. Right. So they could do their research, they could do testing and all kinds of stuff. And then the other pods would be available for like, space tourism. So someone could rent a stay at orbital reef and fly, spend a night or two up there in space and, you know, just kind of check out the earth.
[00:13:36] Speaker C: Put that on the field trip. Yeah, podcast field trip.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Yeah. We need a sponsor to pay for us to go to space. If anybody can make it happen, please reach out.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: And it's neat. Like you got your little, like plants and stuff, right? So, like, that's from what I can tell, the purple stuff here looks like there's actually uv lights. Yeah. So you got your parsley and oregano.
[00:14:05] Speaker C: And, you know, that's your hydroponics at work right there. Yeah.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Yes. In microgravity and then all your other instrumentation and your little window. So, yeah, really exciting stuff. Think things are certainly advancing and it. Everything else going on in our lives, this stuff doesn't get a whole lot of attention. But what does? Golfing. People love golfing. The guy, Scotty Scheffler. I can't. I don't even realize it. Like, the number one golf, one golfer currently, he, like, won the big tournament, got all the money, and, like, it's.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: Anyway, you know, got arrested.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Which so didn't, you know, it was like, whatever. The Miami Dolphins guy, Tyree kill. Yeah, Tyree kill. All these athletes, all these people getting arrested just driving into there, just trying to do their jobs. You know, any who. Pinehurst, North Carolina. So why are we in Pinehurst?
[00:15:08] Speaker C: My favorite topic. We're. Yeah, I was gonna say drone light shows. There you go.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: It is light show. Festive in flight.
[00:15:18] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm a little surprised we're seeing. I shouldn't be surprised because, I mean, you go into Walmart, you can already see next to the Halloween decorations or the Christmas decorations going up as well. But this is going to be a Christmas drone light show in Pinehurst for November, November 29, 2024, starting at 05:00 p.m. i don't think it's just the drone light show. It looks like we have some other stuff going on as well. But for the most part, the highlight of the event is the drone light show. It seems like a very cool, family friendly thing to be doing as we prepare for Christmas. Inflatable alpine tubing slides. Like I said, not just during light shows, but I think we all know why we're going.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: There's that cold weather you're looking for.
[00:16:08] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: You're going for this, for that nice cold slide. You said you were. You were like so hot you wanted an alpine slide.
[00:16:17] Speaker C: I was talking to Terry about it. We're thinking about going. That's local or local enough anyways, so. And keep in mind, podcast, thinking about going? Yeah, I mean, well, I was looking up the ticket prices, and it says starting off at $45, the fee is $4.87. My sales tax came out to $3.49. So total for one ticket was $53.36. So that was a little bit more crazy too, right?
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Like that. Yeah, a little more than the other light show. But I'm looking at this and I'm just. Something just tells me, like, yeah, it will. $20 was the ticket for the other drone light show. So 53 is like, yeah, it's.
That's. It's not a cheap ticket, but when you think of Pinehurst and what Pinehurst is all about is, you know, it's. It's a super, super.
You know, they have. They just had the US Open here. So we were speaking golf, right? Like the US Open, one of the four major golf tournaments of the entire season, happens here at Pinehurst. There's such rich history of golf and just doing things well. Right? I don't know how else to kind of like, just rich tradition in quality.
So as Samuel mentioned, it's going to be from five to seven. They're going to have live dj carnival rides. There's going to be glow putting, um, a trackless train ride, the inflatable alpine tubing, food, beverages. The drone light show will start at like 650, what they're saying.
And then skyworks. Drones.
Skyworks drone shows is the company that is doing it.
And so, like most, like most drone show companies, they've got. There's their fpv drone qualities of the video itself. Isn't that great? The piloting, isn't that.
Feel like those ones where like, you could tell the pie.
[00:18:37] Speaker C: I was gonna say most everyone knows enough.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: I say the pilots having fun ways.
[00:18:40] Speaker C: A good fpv guy, you know?
[00:18:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Like, he's having fun, but the video is coming out terribly.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Hey, man, you know what? I feel like he's doing a great job.
[00:18:53] Speaker C: Terry. I will say he's doing a lot better than I can do, so kudos. Like, I'm not trying to play down on him. He lets. I'm just saying.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: Flying through them, too. Like, he. He's close to hitting them.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's like. It's just kind of like. Again, I think he's having a great time. I think he's showing off some skills. But even this right here is a little.
[00:19:16] Speaker C: Yeah, that's on the roof. Whoa.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: Like, they launched from a marina. She got all them boats, so that'll be cool. They're saying 200 drones. I know we saw a show with a hundred. So if it's 200 and the cost is twice the price, hey, maybe it'll be.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Maybe it'll be paying for the southern pines, like, fee to be there.
[00:19:45] Speaker C: I think there is that nice southern pines groundskeeping and, like, just the ambiance in general. I mean, I'm hoping it's not in a farm.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: It's.
It's not gonna be, like, a farm field, though. Like, nothing. I'm just against speaking to the one that we went to, and I was hoping. When I first saw this, I was really hoping. I was like, oh, come on.
You know, I was pulling for Scott. I was like, man, I. That'd be cool if his company. What? Air vision was doing it, but, yeah, it's totally different. You've got the rides involved, and.
Yeah, so I think there's other things that this specific show is bringing, but I'm looking forward to seeing it. And you guys, like, maybe go see it. Like, maybe, like, I certainly signing up because this is.
[00:20:35] Speaker C: I think it's just because the last one I went to was, like, $20. So this threw me off a little bit when I got to check out, and it was like $50 for one person. And, like, we talked about the drone show in Orlando. That was what I mean, that's. That's one thing I feel like we haven't talked about with drone light shows is the price.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: You know, the cost, the ticket price.
[00:20:55] Speaker C: I mean, but that makes sense because, I mean, drone light shows are expensive. Like, if you want to host one, that's gonna cost you a pretty penny. And the one in Orlando, like that. Those have been ticketed. Not ticketed events, but they've been things to draw people into other stuff. They've been advertisement for you to go check something out.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Like, it increases your sales. It increases your sales, and it makes your venue more competitive. Like the atomic golf, the. That we talked about, like, a couple months ago, one of the people actually in my network who I met there stayed through Thursday. So there was a group of people that went and saw it. But, yeah, that makes people pick atomic golf over Topgolf, right? Cause there's a Topgolf in Vegas, but they don't have. I'm pretty sure there's. Yeah, there's a top golf Vegas. They don't have a drone light show. So it's. It's just like the casino, the hotel casinos in Vegas, they all have their own residencies. So, like, Mandalay Bay. Mandalay Bay does the Michael Jackson show. So, like, if you stay at Mandalay Bay, you're gonna get cheaper tickets for that show. So. 100%.
Yeah. Like, if that show. If the light show is the only thing, then it's probably not gonna be 20 more than 2020, $5. But if you're, like, getting a ticket to Universal, you know, you're already paying. It's just kind of built in. But we also. You mentioned, as you were saying that. I was thinking. I was like, we've talked about a lot of drone light shows, especially. Especially local ones, but most of the things we're talking about are, like, post show. It's like, articles that people wrote about the show having happened versus, hey, here's an upcoming show. And we actually pulled the registration, but shout out to. What is it Illumi? Was it illumi drones? The other light show, the ones out of Canada.
[00:22:46] Speaker C: I want to.
I would have to dig back. I can't say off the top. My head.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Illumina. This one right here. Yeah, we'll have to see. They listened. They shouted. They sent in.
They listened to the podcast, and they were shouting out, letting us know, like, might have them on, like, in the future here. And I was telling Miriam to let them know if they have a show coming up in the US anytime soon, to let us know. And if, you know, one of us can get out there, if there's any way to. Or if two or three of us have that conversation.
Yeah, well, I was like, I know Samuel will find the time for sure.
[00:23:26] Speaker C: So that'd be pretty sick.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Now, jumping into our tech spotlight, Zipline posted and put out this video. So behind the scenes of Zipline's new p two. So platform two has been shortened to p two system and a look at drone delivery innovation. So in this drone life article, you can get to the link, you can get the link in the article and the video is embedded there. And we'll have all the links in the description for the different podcast platforms and then also in YouTube. So all those links are down into the, in the description. Again, this video that they just came out with, it does like a real deep dive into this, this new system where you have the zip. It's two drones in one. The zip is the big main drone, and then it carries a second drone, which they're calling the droid, and it's actually tethered to the zip.
And it's a really, really, very interesting system there. I'm just going to go back. Keller, their CEO and one of their co founders kind of starts this video off and he talks for about two minutes, just explaining how they've gotten to where they are and why.
It's like their vision. And I'm watching this and I'm trying to make sense of this and understand.
And you start to realize, like, the rigorous testing that they're putting these drones through. Like, they go through a lot of like, you know, light testing and the box door opening.
Maybe I'll just play mind blowing when you see it in person. But eventually, we think it's going to be normal, boring, everyday delivery, only much faster and better for the environment to get there. This technology has to be hardware on each and every component. Cycle testing on our roll tilt motor, spin testing in our wind cannon, wingtip light function testing, droid door testing, vibration and pogo testing on our primary structure. Pogo testing. And so much more to prepare for both icing conditions and extreme heat. We run thermal chamber tests from negative 50 to 170 degrees fahrenheit. And we're also doing full flight testing in cold Wyoming winters and hot California summers.
Negative 50 to 170. That's way, way less, less dynamic than the moon test, huh?
[00:26:07] Speaker B: You're doing very rigorous testing on this, do you, Paul?
[00:26:13] Speaker C: Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't know if you caught that Mark Grover video, like maybe a year back or so, too. Like it was first introducing, and this feels like a second iteration of that, almost.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Yes. And it was his video. I would say if we go to zipline, I'll pull this up because they actually highlight him on here.
I think that's what you're talking about, right?
So Mark Rober visits Zipline. They actually have his YouTube video on their website. Like they purposely did that. Right? This is a whole influencer, right? You know, well known tech person on YouTube. I saw that video and I just thought, this is crazy. This is just, you know, they actually. It seems like they have a path where they're. They're doing things in a way that makes sense. You have to get people to understand it because it's hard to get people behind it if they don't know what they're getting behind. So I think Zipline's done a. A pretty good job at, you know, getting out there in order to educate the communities.
And so this is like that video that you mentioned. This is basically kind of the same thing, except a video that they made themselves and probably opened the door on a little more things that hadn't previously been been discussed.
[00:27:44] Speaker C: It does feel like much more in depth deep dive, like all the. All the intricacies, or at least more so. Like, I don't think we would have heard about the pogo techniques that the drone goes through prior. You know, that's. That's not something I was expecting.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Right. And this guy, Donovan Bass, they're. Get his name up here. The head of product management do this. He goes through here and he starts talking about, like, like some of the interface, the. The system for mounting. He's talking about how drones are going to pick up donuts in the morning. They're going to pick up, you know, salads and different lunch stuff in the afternoon. And in the evening, they're going to deliver medications because all these drones are going to, you know, service different hubs.
One of the neatness, one of the more neat things is they are showing how they're going to interface with. If I can get it here with buildings. So you have a feed system that will feed. It goes so fast.
Holy smokes.
[00:28:51] Speaker C: I think you can.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: Right? So you have an in building.
In building system. So this will feed the items directly into the building. There's an outside system. So this will not direct things inside. It will all be outside. And then there's like a roof mount system. So this will allow them to interface directly through a rooftop. So much in this. There's too much. Yeah. This. Check this video out if you want to play behind the scenes with zipline.
[00:29:25] Speaker C: Yeah, I was just going to say, if you go, you can tap through the frames by pushing greater than or less than on your keyboard. And it should slowly just kind of. If you're just looking for something specific later. But I mean, looking at those photos, it seems like a major infrastructure, like, project, though. Those things are. That's huge.
Which makes sense if you're gonna, like, revolutionize, like, delivery.
[00:29:52] Speaker B: I feel like this video is kind of a flex, and it's just a video to answer all the questions people have about their drones, more or less. It's. Is it safe? Yeah, it is. Go watch our video. We throw it in an ice chamber and then fly it. It works perfectly fine. You know, it's rigorous testing, and then, like, even for, like, competition for the companies. If I operated a different drone company, I'd be looking at this a little worried, but huge.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: It's like. It's like. It's like an Elon Musk video of a Tesla plant. You know, just. You don't have to make this video. Who's the video for? But think about who. Who's seeing that, right? Investors.
People who are. You're telling them one thing and then what is coming out publicly. And so you really. I think that they're now at a certain point where they're. They're seeing the path forward, and they also feel like they have built the machine necessary to get there. And so that video is. Wow. It was pretty neat because they're not just thinking about the drone. They're thinking about the whole entire ecosystem. So a lot of exciting, like, if people are wondering what does the future look like for drone delivery, that video is going to really outline not. Not exactly what every operation is going to look like, but for a majority. And they're. They're checking everything. Healthcare, commercial, business, like a lot of stuff. So when I saw the. The video by the youtuber, I thought, ah, you know, that's kind of neat. Here's like an attention thing, this and that. But now that I've seen them do it and they're showing the, the pogo. When I saw the pogo testing, I was like, that's. That is right. Structural testing. That is significant.
[00:31:40] Speaker C: A dedicated, dedicated pogo room just for the drone to go up and down.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: We're gonna pivot a little bit away from kind of commercial civil back into military. I know last week we mentioned it's still the same thing. If you go on Google, type the word drone in and click on the news box, the first three pages is nothing but Ukraine. And I think the Ukraine's hit a huge ammunition depot. And so we're going to talk about it anyway, even though it wasn't on thing. But I just, I guess Ukraine hit a huge ammunition depot with some drones, like a long range drone attack. And it was such a massive explosion. It caused like, an earthen earthquake, something like that. That's what I heard. I didn't read any articles, but what we are going to talk about here is Prime Minister Modi and Joe Biden hold bilateral talks and a mega drone deal firms up. What is a mega drone deal? We talked about this before, how small drones, small margins. The market doesn't exist. Big drones, high margins. So you have, you know, reputable, proven aerospace companies making drones, but they're making these drones.
Right. So what is importance of this article here? Right. India. So the prime minister of India visits the United States. There's conversations happening. It looks like India will be acquiring 31.
Not 300, nothing, 10,031. 31. That's 31 drones at a price tag of nearly $3 billion.
[00:33:29] Speaker C: I hope they can make those last for.
That's a crazy deal.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that's the 31 drones for $3 billion going to India.
And so do they.
[00:33:49] Speaker C: Do they know something we don't know?
[00:33:57] Speaker A: If you were consider how many drones we already have versus how many drones they have. Like, this is a huge step in the growth of these other nations that can, you know, hey, we're all NATO, but it's like having a group of collective people, but only one of them is capable of defending everybody else.
So there is a benefit to. It's not that they know something. Well, I mean, no, I mean, they just know what everybody knows is that right now where everybody's talking about borderline World War three.
Right. We're on the verge of some more significant. So if there's a time for, you know, other countries to. And so. But also, at the end of the day, this isn't necessarily these. These drones.
It's the Sky Guardian and the Sea Guardian. So not your reaper. Right. Not your traditional, you know, multimillion dollar drone that is solely dedicated on attack.
What these systems are capable of is humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, search and rescue, maritime awareness. They can monitor seas. They can monitor, you know, things. It's not. The first purpose of these drones for a country like India is. Is not to attack primarily, you know, defend, showing strength, but then also to use this to support the growing population of India.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I think India just passed China for the most populous country. So, I mean, if your population is growing at extreme rates and you're becoming a leading country, I mean, you gotta invest something into your country in terms of defense. See, it's not offense, it's defense. They're defending their country.
[00:36:03] Speaker A: Yep. And so they have a breakdown in here where 31 drones, 16, are gonna go to the navy, so they're gonna be able to survey them. Their surveillance of the Indian Ocean is gonna just significantly increase right. A new asset that's gonna provide better overwatch eight going to the army to use along the line of actual control with China and the line of control with Pakistan. So you're bordering China and Pakistan. A drone like this is going to help you monitor. And then the remaining aircraft are going to the air force for precision targeted missions across the border. So there is. Right, mostly from a navy army standpoint, it's determined, like Terry pointed out. And then a handful of them from the air force side would certainly be equipped for precision long range targeting for those big companies. I thought it was important to say, like, that's where the money is. Right? So when you're manufacturing your margins, you've been doing this for a long time, you build big aircraft, it doesn't make sense to all of a sudden break things down and say, well, let's go from making hundreds to let's make thousands.
But thousands are still needed. And so also, at the same time, news comes out that the US army has selected new small unmanned aircraft systems for company level use. So two platforms have been chosen. The Ghost X from anduril Industries and the c 100 from performance drone works.
The awards are going to total just over $14 million. And it doesn't mean that this money is all guaranteed. It just opens up the opportunity. So if these companies are able to deliver on time and on quality, then it is possible for them to receive these dollar amounts.
I don't recall if we looked at enduro Industries in the past there.
I think there's this.
[00:38:12] Speaker B: I think we remember the command and control for some reason on their website.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: And so Enduro has this single rotor, more flown like a helicopter. Single main rotor with a tail rotor.
[00:38:32] Speaker B: They make the roadrunner. That's where we know him from.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: Okay, so this here is going to be extended range ISR targeting, more or less your kind of like a Kiowa or a Blackhawk, I guess, right? Decent range, good payload, not necessarily going to.
It's not going to be your main workhorse to be carrying things kind of like your small frontline ISR drone. And then also, and I say that it has a good payload capacity, but in comparison to the c 100 from performance drone works, we're seeing here that PDW has really developed and established the c 100 to be able to really carry heavier lift stuff, still has the same good payload, and even the two look very similar in size. I think either one is going to work in order to get the job done from a ISR, Overwatch standpoint, surveillance standpoint. But then these, both of these aircraft are going to be able to also carry payloads, as you can see here in the image. An explosive payload, four batteries. So that's pretty interesting. Four batteries all placed on top. All four batteries can be used in either slot, so fully.
A lot of flexibility there.
NDAA compliant and blue suas approved. So exciting for these two manufacturers, PDW and Anduro. So chances are you might see them around more. You might even see jobs popping up in order for them to fulfill these contracts.
[00:40:42] Speaker B: I just had a realization, and I don't know why I never thought about it before, but, like, all these military drones and I'm have parachutes, I don't know why I would think every drone would have to have a parachute. But it makes sense when you. There's no fucking rules. When you're. Sorry to cuss, but there's no rules. You're in war.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: Wait, are you operating over people? If something happens, you need to make sure that that drone comes down safely.
[00:41:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
You gotta make sure the bomb doesn't explode. Okay.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
And so everything's inspired by Ukraine. Like, even here. Defense one came out with the same article about the drone. So they're saying inspired by Ukraine, the US army picks two commercially available drones.
And then this one here, this article in defense one says, army embraces Ukraine style warfare with new all drone unit. Like, okay, again, they've been doing this in call of duty long before Ukraine, so why wouldn't anyone have already thought that our military had this? If I had asked you like, four years ago, a few three years ago, if you thought like, hey, does the military, military use drones?
Not predator drones?
[00:42:01] Speaker C: We kind of introduce it with the jack knife, I believe, or what was that? What was that drone we donated? I believe in like 20.
There was trying to think. There was like, I remember vividly, like there was a drone article or a drone thing going on, on the news when I was staying somewhere, but. Sorry, go ahead.
Um, I'm gonna text you later in like 2 hours.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: And we even had.
[00:42:29] Speaker C: Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: And we have. Because when you think back to the company arrow environment and like, their medium UA's small us, so it's the puma. That's the one I was thinking about, a puma and a raven. It's like every people in the military, you know, but again, this hand launch throne, this was the technology that we were ready to carry into, like, you know, the next 2030 years. And so the fact that they're just.
I already clicked to the puma, so these are small drones. However, a lot of them like this. Okay, we're hand launching this, right? But how easy is it to move and maneuver and carry that at a squad level?
So we've been using drones, but it was just amazing now to realize that the United States was not necessarily really preparing to equip themselves with drones that you. That weighed five pounds, ten pounds you could put in a backpack you can easily carry and control right there on the front line. And if anything, the war in Ukraine has certainly showed the value of not very large drones, but even. Even, sir, super small drones as well. So the 101st Airborne's nine man team is designed to coordinate fire, reconnoiter ahead of vehicles, and strike with loitering munitions.
[00:44:07] Speaker C: It did take me a second, but it was the switchblade drone is what I was thinking of back in 2022, which is what the US donated. Ukraine.
We did it before everyone knew how.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: Cool the Ukraine Russia war just so happened to come around, like in perfect timing for drones to just start popping off.
They just got lucky almost, in a sense.
[00:44:38] Speaker A: And that's what it is. The lethal unmanned systems platoon. So they're now calling it the Lus.
The lethal unmanned systems platoon.
Multipurpose company. So you've added a whole, whole nine of the lust platoon's 21 soldiers fly drones, including Meyer and the platoon leader, first Lieutenant Jamar I King. So 21 person platoon with nine. So the US is fully integrated.
They basically. They must have watched the video. What was the video? Who was the Ukraine pilot?
Darwin. They must have saw that. And they're like, yeah, we need a Darwin. We need. We need that. And I guess if you think about it, that's exactly what they're mimicking. That whole group. We only talked. We, in the interview, they only talked to Darwin. Right, but you had all those other people who were kind of in support getting the drone, you know, getting the thing ready, and he's just sitting there, you know, chain smoking flying. And everybody else is. Is actually supporting the operation.
[00:45:49] Speaker B: So, yes, something interesting I want to know is that. So it's nine of 21 people that are actually flying drones. Everybody else is defending them with anti, you know, counter UA's stuff and like, stingers, anti aircraft, they're defending them. It's like a. I guess they plan to hunker down, helping them find.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: Yeah, probably helping them find targets. Doing some counter UA's. Because if you're flying your own attack UA's, you need to make sure that your location stays secured. So I did see where this one Ukraine. In Ukraine, they were actually.
They found a way to set up the.
Because people were learning to trace and track the remote signal, and then they were just, you know, blowing up, firing at the remote signal. So what they've done is they put repeaters on trees, and so they're actually flying the drones through these, like, repeaters. So it's almost like a VPN network for. For drone piloting. So you. You get a detection of where the. The control is coming from. The problem is you shoot and what you're. What you're actually blowing up is just like a tree with a electronic repeater basically on it. Yeah. Pretty wild stuff happening.
[00:47:03] Speaker B: The mesh net. That's what Wi Fi is going towards nowadays. Like Internet.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: Yeah. We've talked a lot about the BV loss and the DFR stuff, and it does seem like, you know, every week that goes by, there's another commercial company getting beyond visual line of site authorization or, you know, another public safety agency starting their DFR program, whether it's, you know, Phoenix Air. Excuse me, Phoenix. Phoenix, Arizona, or, you know, Winston Salem growing theirs here. Now, this one's super interesting because just the name of the place. B cave. B cave, Texas. Fully autonomous drone first responder program is set to launch small Austin suburb in a. B Cave hopes to be the first city in the country to launch a fully autonomous drone as a first responder program for its police department. So fully autonomous, not just a drone in a box that you have to manually control, but fully autonomous, meaning the drone just automatically sends itself based on alerts and alarms that go off.
They're working with a single drone developed by an Austin based startup company called Eve Vehicles. So this is a completely new one we haven't really seen before. So here's the drone by Eve vehicles. What do you guys think about this? What do you think about B cave? Have you ever been to B cave?
[00:48:26] Speaker B: I have not been to be cave. And I did look up the name. It is named after a cave with bees in it. So just a heads up on that.
First thing I noticed about the drone, though, was the, like, undercarriage is shaped to kind of, like, slot in. Since it's autonomous, it goes into its charging base.
[00:48:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think I see the parachute.
[00:48:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the parachutes are, like, canister thing back there that's slanted.
[00:49:02] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be my guess.
Dual. So it looks like we've got dual GPS right here.
I think these cones could potentially be GPS. Antenna facing up. You've got your gimbal, your.
Your payload, here.
So you're calling this aviate? Introducing aviate, but certainly exciting. One of the most exciting things, you know, I did want to bring this up is because, again, this is a vehicle that we haven't seen yet. And we knew that this demand for autonomous DFR beyond visual line of sight solutions was going to exist.
That's super interesting. This right here, the crow is the first concept, but will be second to fly.
And as we've mentioned, it's all about the network and the solution, the software that you're going to use to fly it. So, looking forward to, you know, seeing this, this solution come to market and, you know, hopefully success, hopefully much success to Eve and the Eve team here.
We'll be following along.
[00:50:38] Speaker B: Well, I mean, it's good news for them. I don't know how long this company's been around evacles, but if you're already getting picked up by a police department, you're probably doing something right unless you just know somebody. So.
[00:51:01] Speaker A: Additionally, in our little success store corner here, recognizing BK for their advancement of DFR, and as mentioned, we're also at the University of Kentucky where they have secured a grant to develop drone technology for cattle management.
So the US Department of Agriculture funds a five year project to explore drone use in herding and monitoring livestock and cattle.
The Martin gain College of Agriculture, Food and Environment has received a $910,000 grant from the USDA to advance the use of drone technology in livestock management.
What do you guys think about drones? Livestock management.
[00:51:48] Speaker B: Using drones to herd?
[00:51:51] Speaker C: I. I mean, I think that's kind of a, that's definitely something I've never thought about. But, I mean, I can see the, the use of it. I think it actually could be put into practice very well, which I just, again, me, I've never would have thought of that, you know, but it seems like that could be very beneficial. Just don't tell the, the herding dogs that they might be out of a job, you know?
[00:52:17] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you think you use dogs. So there's already, you know, tools that have been used in addition to the humans themselves.
The management aspect. You know, you can fly a thermal drone over your property and you can count, you know, you can just automatically count the, the animals.
[00:52:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:52:38] Speaker A: So you don't have to go ride out each. These, these cattle are money. This is money.
But if it's not healthy, safe and where it's supposed to be, then that, that's bad money. So on a daily basis, weekly basis, you have individual humans that are riding around and they're trying to count livestock and cattle.
[00:53:02] Speaker C: You're giving me, like, double counting of what a new age cowboy is with his drone popping up and doing the livestock count. You know, he might have his little autonomous robot dog, too, helping him.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Efficiency. So if you can put a drone up on a weekly basis and run, you know, thermal in the evening, you can have a, you know, your software count your. Your cattle and livestock for you, and it's a more accurate count, and it. It allows you to focus on the. Doing something else that's way more productive than probably driving around and counting.
But the herding part is pretty interesting as far as how you actually not just find it, but then drive the cattle in. Into certain, certain areas. And I'd imagine swarming might. Might be involved, because instead of having, like, five or ten cowboys, you know, riding around herding, now you can just have a fleet of drones. And so, last two things just want to touch on here as we, as we wrap up. The episode is, one, the NTSB is seeking a cloud based software provider to help manage its drone program. So I sent this link over to my guys I know at aloft, there's a company called Aloft, and they do fleet management for drone programs. And so that's exactly what the NTSB is looking for. They're looking for a cloud based software to manage their drone fleet. What does that mean when these accidents happen? What better tool to use to document an accident than a drone?
So the folks who investigate aircraft accidents are now integrating unmanned aerial systems into their work for the accident investigation.
And so what this article mentions is they've had just about five drones in the past, so they've been able to do, you know, all their management and all their data collection and fleet management by hand, you know, just using basic spreadsheets. It sounds like they've now grown from five to twelve drones, and they have a team of 15 pilots. So now that they're. Now that their internal drone program for accident investigations has grown, they're looking for software solution so that they can know where our drones, where our pilots, you know, when were our drones registered? Are our pilot certificates current? It's pretty exciting to see the NTSB leveraging drones and using them so successfully that they're adding more.
So, hey, you know, now with your remote. Positive. You never know, you might become a.
An investigator with the NTSB.
[00:56:18] Speaker C: It's a big world with drone opportunities, I like to think.
[00:56:29] Speaker A: It is. And then the final article that we have here, I just wanted to mention it. Us and Taiwan seek to strengthen drone supply chain to keep out China. So all these talks about, you know, and there it looks like the switchblade, an example of the switchblade. All these talks about not being reliant on China. Well, if we're not going to work with China, who are we going to work with? So it looks like executives from.
Executives from 26 Us, makers of uncrewed systems or anti drone systems will arrive in Taipei on Sunday for a three day meeting with taiwanese industry counterparts. So, you know, pretty wild. You have a collective group of companies who compete with each other, all flying to one country in order to learn what supply chain, right, access or value might be there. All the same players, you know, going to one place in order to compete over the same stuff. And among those visiting companies was aerovironment, who's the vendor of the Switchblade suicide drone, which Taiwan has bought more than 700 of d drone. A counter UA's company is heading out there as they do contracting for Northrop Grumman. But it is really interesting to see, to see this collective effort of not just saying we can't use chinese drones, chinese drones, but now it's like, what if, what are we going to use? So here you got 26 representatives all heading to Taiwan. They're there this week in order to potentially figure out, well, if we're not going to use chinese chips and components, and that's not NDA compliant, that's not blue, what are we going to use? Because the domestic drone industry doesn't have enough scale like what's stated in here, it's going to be hard to support military needs, let alone commercial needs. It's funny. Taiwan is right there near China. Right? So it's. So the geopolitic. The geopolitics that are really crossing into this industry are absolutely, absolutely crazy.
[00:58:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, Taiwan makes like all chips, basically.
I mean, they have like the largest market share. So it makes sense we're going there to start making technology.
I don't think China is going to like this, but there's nothing they can do about it. So.
[00:58:55] Speaker A: And so I thought I had the article up, but here's the article. So us, Taiwan seek to strengthen drone supply. You got the switchblade.
So I have this posted in the, in the description on YouTube and all the different podcast outlets. So if you want to read up on, on this. And yeah, we can't just say we can't have that. We got to figure out what the next best solution is because we don't have the domestic supply of componentry that's needed to build drones, and we need many more drones. Many, many more drones appreciate everybody's time and attention today, as always on another great episode of Weekly Wings, a dronelife.com podcast.
Remember, you can always reach out email editoronelife.com paulrossi at nine 10 drones.com if you have any questions, comments, stories you think might be interesting for us to share with our audience.
Terry, any any closing words here? Until next week, fly safe.
[01:00:03] Speaker B: Have fun.
[01:00:04] Speaker A: Awesome. Samuel, anything for the listeners. As we close out.
[01:00:09] Speaker C: I'm going to echo Terry's thoughts on that. Fly safe and have a good rest of the week.
[01:00:13] Speaker A: Yeah, fantastic, fantastic. Appreciate you, Terry and Samuel.
And to our listeners, as they said, fly safe and we will see you next week.
