Blue Ops and Black Widow: Red Cat’s next leap in defense tech

We can put our UAVs on our USVs and extend them hundreds of miles from deployment to get over the target

That's a really big deal that extends us truly into an all-domain defense company

So what's new with the Black Widow product line and Blue Operations is we're on the production contract for the SRR

short range reconnaissance program with the Army and fielding a lot of interest from NATO in

particular right now on that system. And on the blue ops side of the house it's our brand new

company entering into the USV uncrewed surface vehicle space. So we're starting to staff up there

getting the facility set up and ready to go and start building boats to get into that market. The

trends that are going to be changing in the next six to 12 months are probably the constant trends

at more AI, payload improvements, range endurance. Those are the same four basic principles that are

over and over and over and over, just continuing to iterate on our products. And also on the

autonomy side, we have several strategic partners that we're working with right now. Each of those

companies bring something a little bit different, and we're working with all of them to get it

integrated and improve our product lines, specifically in visual-based navigation, automatic target detection, and vehicle tracking. Black Widow is our latest and greatest product

right here It in full production right now This is the air vehicle that is being supplied to the Army on the short reconnaissance program fresh off the press right So we starting to build and deliver to that And on the blue ops side of the house we have a facility that we secured in Valdosta Georgia

We're starting to staff that up. We're getting the molds built on the blue ops side of the house and starting to work on the autonomy stack

We're doing a family-assisted approach because we realize there are different tools for different jobs

So with the low-cost kill chain aspect of that, we're looking to be one-stop shopping for our customers from FPV Fang, our FPV drone, through the Black Widow for ISR, over to the Edge 130 for mapping and into the USVs

We want to be one-stop shopping for our customers. So that's our family assistance approach

If we can operate all of that off a single controller, it's a bonus for them. But again, we're trying to make it the easy button because it requires a different tool for a different job

So Red Cat Futures Initiative is a partnership consortium with the best available tech out there

What we've found is no single company can really do everything that is required right now to support the warfighters

At Teal Drones, at Red Cat Holdings, we don't do 3D mapping

We're working with Reveal Technologies. They're the market leader in that. We're working on voice commands with another company

So companies that specialize in the tech that the warfighters require, the Red Cat Future

Initiative Consortium brings all those together to provide the warfighter what they really need to accomplish their mission because it takes several companies working together closely in partnership to give them what they need So on the domestic front for contracts when is the SRR production contract we are currently in

full rate production and delivering to the Army as we speak. And on the international side, we were

down selected for a five-year contract with Naval Support and Procurement Agency, NSPA, that allows

anybody in NATO to come to that contract and procure our systems. So at AUC this year, what

we're going to be rolling out is our FANG product, which is our low-cost attributable kinetic system

So that will be coming to ASA. It'll be a first look for everybody to come by the booth and see

what we got going there. I'm Barry Hinkley. I'm the president of Blue Ops, which is the new marine

division of Red Cat. Red Cat's goal is to be an all-domain defense company, the world's three

quarters ocean, we got to be on the ocean to play in all domains. I was approached to launch Blue Ops

for Red Cat because I come from a family of boat builders. We've been building boats for over 100

years. We've partnered with another family, the Hodgson family up in Maine, where I'm from

initially, that has been building boats since 1860. So combined, we've got eight generations

of boat builders. We can guarantee delivery of the best platforms in the world. At the end of

the day, the USB is the platform upon which we deliver the technology, whether it be UAV technology

you looking at here with the Black Widow or USB technology that actually gets you to the location where we launched these We looking forward to the convergence and it already happening of UAVs and USVs To extend the range of our UAVs

very often we have to put them on USVs and go hundreds of miles to get over the target, literally

So working together with the UAV divisions of Red Cat, we're creating the future of what battle systems

and all domains will look like. At Blue Ops, we're starting with our 7-meter variant

which is the most diverse hull that we have offered today. It has five different mission types

It does kinetic, which, of course, is the kamikaze in vernacular. It does ISR

It has machine gun. It has surface-to-air missiles. And it also has UAV deployment

So very diverse boat that allows us to play in those five domains anywhere there's water

Production capacity is a big part of the future defense of the United States of America

And when we talk about production capacity, we talk about producing hundreds and thousands possibly in the future, a year of USVs

The world's a big place. The U.S. Navy is everywhere. And when you deploy USVs, you're not deploying one or two

You're deploying swarms of 40 or more at a time, all with different mission functions

And we are set up at Blue Ops to deliver on that promise of reshoring American manufacturing and producing hundreds and eventually thousands of these drones a year