Red Cat advances drone warfare and all domain integration

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this morning's conversation. I love doing the 945 a.m. sessions

The caffeine is flowing. Everyone's got great energy to kick off the day. Go ahead and put on those cool disco headphones you got there so you can listen to our conversation with Stan this morning

Good morning, one and all. My name is J.D. Durkin. I'm a contributor here at Defense News

I will be your moderator for this morning's conversation with Stan from Red Cat. Quick housekeeping before we start going

There's a QR code right there at that podium. I think they'll be up on the screen as well

If you would like to submit a question for Stan throughout the next half hour, 45 minutes or so, you're welcome to do so

Power of technology. Those questions pop up right here on the iPad

We can ask them to our guest in real time. Stan Nowak is the vice president of marketing at Redcat

He is our special guest here this morning at the Aerospace Forum. Thanks a lot for being here

Yeah, thanks so much for having me here, J.D. Of course. For sure. Let's start with a bit more of an introduction as to who you are, your background, and your active role at Red Cat

Stan, for anyone who might be otherwise a little unfamiliar. Sure. Yeah. So, again, Stan Nowak, Vice President of Marketing at Red Cat Holdings

I've been in this industry almost 25 years now. 20 of those years were actually at Aerovironment, now AV

So I was very happy to actually be at the kind of beginnings of the drone boom in the early 2000s

I was directly involved in designing parts for Raven, the Raven program with the U.S. Army, the Dragonite program, the Pointer program, all those kind of initial early drone adopters from back in the day

So I've been on the engineering side as well as now the marketing side. I can't even imagine how you've seen this space evolve in the last 20 years

It's been insane. Can you take me back to early in your career when this technology first started to emerge

Kind of what caught you most by surprise? And did you have any idea then that we would now be having the conversations with regards to drones' roles in warfare that we have today

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, first, let me state that even after all this time, I still feel that we are in the Model T phase of the drone industry

There's still so much more capability, so much more mission applications that we still have yet to find out

But going back to the early 2000s, you know, we saw historically this more single point solutions, right

You have kind of one operator, one mission controller, vehicle operator, and then you send an aircraft out

it beams back, kind of a closed loop system, right? But that, based on the technology at the time

was the kind of grand option. You start to fast forward to today

and we're looking at more of an interoperable battlefield. I like to call it the internet of battlefield things

And so, if you're not connected, and if you're not interoperable with a lot of these other systems on the battlefield

it goes back then to the early 2000s, right? So in order for us to say that the game

all these things can be playing nice on the battlefield. And then you start to take that a layer up

not just from like robotic solution to robotic solution. Now you're looking at protocols that have to be kind of engaged

with international partners and coalition partners and alliances, right? How do we have these systems play nice on the battlefield

This is really where the future of all this is headed. Yeah, Redcat is a really well-known company, at least back in the United States, a publicly traded company

It's something that if you cover defense or the drone warfare space, you can't really get a few sentences out in conversation without referencing Redcat

But for anyone here in England might be a bit unfamiliar more broadly with the company's role in the global conversation

not only national conversation. Talk to us about how you uniquely see Redcat situated

So, yeah, Redcat actually started more on the commercial side. I was actually brought in about four years ago to completely pivot the company to a defense and security based company

And so we have this kind of legacy and pedigree in FPV, actually drone racing competition parts and solutions back in the day

We now have all that into a bunch of acquisitions across the board. One of them being our flagship acquisition, which is Teal Drones based out of Salt Lake City

They are the makers of the Black Widow Short Ridge Reconnaissance drone, which was selected by the U.S. Army as the program winner for the Short Energy Connoissance Program in the United States

We have another company that we acquired last year called Flightwave Aerospace, which has a hybrid VTOL tricopter called Edge 130

And all these solutions are in our booth, S4-240, if you want to come see it. And we recently announced a venture now into a new maritime division for uncrewed surface vessels

which at some point, and I'll speak about this even in a little bit, all of these things will get integrated together for an all-domain solution battlefield

Yeah, when you're talking about drone racing, right, that was one thing you meant. I always think of, like, the pod racing in Star Wars

It's very similar. I mean, that's a pretty cool, but that's a pretty cool evolution, though, obviously, to sort of proof of concept and stress test that component of the technology

to eventually be rolled out for more modern warfare uses. Is that a fair read

Well, what's interesting is that there's a lot of things that we're learning from businesses and industries outside of our own

and so you look at the gaming industry and how we actually interface with information. And a lot of those gamers are now drone operators

And so this leads into how do we make these systems more intuitive and user-friendly

There's a lot we're learning from the gaming industry, as well as then the drone racing competition industry

A lot of those pilots, when you look at Ukraine, it's not easy actually to fly an FPV drone

There's actually kind of a long lead time in training, but they make it look so easy

And a lot of that has to do with, again, this kind of gaming mentality to be able to kind of see exactly what's happening in real time

and then now use these systems on the battlefield on a regular basis by the thousands right now in Ukraine

Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the evolution of NVIDIA, not in terms of warfare specifically, but gaming

your proof of concept, the technology early on for one purpose. It obviously naturally evolves into other purposes for global scale

Talk to me about some of the biggest shifts you have seen, even in just the last, let's say, five to ten years

about the way that drones are used. Well, I think really AI, and I say AI

that's somewhat becoming kind of a throwaway term. There's a lot of discussion around what is defined by AI

I know at Redcat we're actually adding a lot of layers in our tech stack for our drones

It's this idea of reduction of cognitive load for the end user. But that's really, I see, where the biggest changes are

in the industry is this adding these layers of AI, whether it's aided target recognition, 3D mapping

focused on the video stream, all of these things are now being integrated

on a regular basis, and that's really what's changing the battlefield. I think the other thing to look at too is

what's driving what? Is technology driving how battlefield operations are happening, or is it the other way around

Or is it kind of this hamster wheel? And I believe it's the hamster wheel

You know, the evolution, that's why I think we've seen the evolution of drones happen so quickly

because the battlefield is extremely dynamic, especially again when you look at Ukraine

where it's changing daily. And so this idea of collecting data to drive your innovation and your product development

we were fortunate enough to actually have Black Widow over in Ukraine for multiple times of testing

And it wasn't until we actually had it there on the front lines to really gather that daily data

to see actually how the cat and mouse game is happening. You know, you tweak something on your end, the adversary, then tweak something on their end

and it's this dance that you're doing. But it has to be done on a constant basis If you not iterating you die It that simple Yeah it reminds me of what a lot of cybersecurity giants talk about which is you want the technology in the hands of the proverbial good guys

but you know the bad guys oftentimes have access to the same underlying technology

And in the cybersecurity realm, a lot of their biggest challenges is how do we ensure that we are staying one step ahead

What does that look like for Red Cap? Well, again, I think it's just it's constant iteration

I think one thing that we've learned from Ukraine is this idea of urgent need, driving innovation to get it out

something that's built in a garage and try to get it fielded that day

So this idea of how fast can we get things to the battlefield, I think in the United States at least

I think we're looking at the industry of recently with Secretary of Defense

and a lot of initiatives that they're now employing in the United States of how can we get this technology in the hands of a warfighter as soon as possible

How do we eliminate some of the red tape that it takes? The idea of these long extended programs of record

that happened in the past that are five to eight years, those are going away, right

Now we're seeing this idea of this iteration's happening within a two-year period where they're re-competing

every two years. That keeps the technology from being stale, but that also helps and drives our companies like us

to constantly be innovating so that we can get the latest and greatest technology

So one of the things, the initiatives that we started at RedCat was called the RedCat Futures Initiative

that we started last year, and it's basically an industry consortium where we know what we do best, the drone

but all these other layers of tech stack when it comes to AI and, like I said

3D mapping and aided target recognition, leave that to other companies, right

Let's work and partner with best-in-breed companies to bring that technology and accelerate it forward

and, again, to get it in the hands of the warfighter sooner than later. They can be innovating and iterating on their end

We can be innovating and iterating on the drone, and we're all marching forward together, and it just makes it a really faster solution

What are some of the biggest challenges in the general drone warfare space? Is it the production, the building of the actual equipment

Is it the flying of the equipment? Is it managing the data afterwards or a combination of all the above

Oh, I think it's all the above. And again, getting back to Ukraine

I believe in finding the right tool for the job. And so this idea of FPV drones have extremely taken off in Ukraine

because it's very easy to put them together and assemble them and get them fielded

Again, I think if you look in the United States, just historically, there's all these really long lead times

to try to get the latest, greatest technology into the hands of the warfighter. And so we're trying to reduce that time

and so, but then also work with the customers. Bring that feedback back into the product development loop

So the needs, wants, and desires are met a lot sooner than later

So the challenge is, when it comes to even video pipeline and the optics and all those things

I think it's all going to be about partnerships now. Every single one of these companies that are at the show this past week are all specialized in something

I think there's got to be a lot more collaboration partnerships in order to be successful. I think we're going to start to get away from these kind of companies that are doing closed-loop solutions within their own company

And this idea of there's so much great technology out there, I think we all need to be working together to get an enhanced warfighter

You've mentioned Ukraine a couple of times now. Where else are actual real-life use cases around the world using RedCat technology

Well, I mean, we sell across the board to border security. You know, really to we're just now going to be starting to sell to the European Union and NATO

Really, the biggest customer we have right now is the U.S. Army. We sell to Australia

So it's kind of across the board. And as we kind of grow as a company, we're going to be expanding that presence around the world

I think one thing we learned by selling to the U.S. Army and being a part of the short-range reconnaissance program

is all of that legwork that the U.S. Army did to build requirements and airworthiness and all those things

Now we're starting to see countries actually come to us and say, OK, the U.S. Army has done a lot of the burden

Now we want to look at your solution, specifically Black Widow, because it actually meets the needs and requirements that we have

And so you're going to start to see basically towards the end of this year in 2026

probably an explosion of our systems meeting the demand signals around the world

Yeah, you mentioned NATO. RedCat touts itself as the best drone intelligence solutions, both for U.S. defense and security forces, as well as our NATO allies

There are 32 member countries in NATO. We all woke up here in London yesterday to see the latest news with regards to Poland and Russia

What does interoperability look like specifically for the NATO bloc so that stronger military NATO countries and the smaller ones as well are able to sort of interchange the key components of your underlying technology

Yeah, I mean, I think what's interesting just about the drone industry in general is that we're starting to see a sea change in reduction of cost but higher capability

And so when you start to meet with these other countries, say Poland, they're starting to build up their arsenals of smaller and smaller drone technology because they become intritable

And it's not something, some massive investment that you have to do over a long period of time. It's like I can start to buy thousands of these drones, use them on a daily basis

If one falls out of the sky, okay, I have another backup to keep going

So that's kind of the paradigm that we're starting to work with in a lot of these countries. And those countries themselves obviously are collaborating and working together as well

So I think that's what we're going to start to take advantage of is forming really strong relationships with European countries and NATO

and actually foster that kind of dynamic and the collaboration between the countries using our technology

and a lot of other drone technologies too. Again, I said it has to be a kind of interoperable battlefield and interchangeability

So all these drones and robotics need to be talking to each other. And so I think feeding into that connected battlefield is the most important part of the process, I think, moving forward

Yeah. Pardon what might sound like a bit of a silly question, but these are the sorts of things I wonder

and so I'd imagine someone else thinks about it too. How do you go about getting government deals and establishing those relationships with key governments around the world for any private company

Or in your case, you're basically privately held, but you are a publicly traded company, at least back in the United States

But how does the process even begin to establish those relationships and then ultimately to gain the trust of those key governments in the United States and around the world to use your technology

Yeah, I know. Great question. Again, we can't be everywhere at once. So we rely heavily on in-country reps

The relationship building is the most important aspect of the business. Again, I've been doing this a very long time

You start to get to a point where you meet with customers so often. you know the names of their children

you know the names of their family members. I mean, you're sitting down and meeting with them

on a constant, constant basis, right? Because they rely on you. They rely on the technology that you're providing to them

And so to establish that relationship with the beginning. Now, that being said, you know, again

going back many, many years ago, you know, we would look at the market and say, like

from first touch, how long would it take to actually do, let's say, an international sale

We're talking five to seven years sometimes, right? That dynamic is actually changing now

because of the fast iteration and the urgent need and the things happening in Europe

especially, again, around Ukraine and Poland, they need this technology as fast as possible

So again, this reduction of timeline from that first touch is, again, is an advantage for us

because we can get that stuff faster out to them. But yeah, I mean, that's essentially how

it's really the strong relationship building that gets us, and the in-country reps

I mean, if you don't have a rep in a country, it's going to take you that much longer. Because again, they know the customer

They can meet with them on a regular basis. Again, our business development team can't be everywhere at once

And so we really rely on that network I have no doubt that there are many learned lessons on the battlefield Perhaps you go into particular missions or you establish these relationships with governments and you have one set of plans and those plans ultimately may change and that forces you

to be agile. How important is it to take into account real life lessons, taking that real time data feedback

and be able to adjust course either for your underlying technology or the status of your

relationship with the countries that use your technology? I always say, for Red Cat, we are a company of listeners, but really, even just being here at DSCI, we have to be an industry of listeners

If we are not sitting down and listening to the customers, then we are really designing in a bubble, and we're not meeting the needs directly

Again, I think there's a tendency sometimes to maybe over-engineer a product to where the end user is really only using maybe 20% of the 100% that you've put into the system

So unless you're sitting down with them and actually talking to them and getting those needs, wants, and desires folded back into your product development plan

again, you might be solving problems that are not there. And so, I think it's really best to understand

how can you develop the tool that they need for the toolkit to solve the problems

that they need to solve, right? Whether it's, again, ISR, whether it's delivering precision effects

whether it's, again, just having some type of all domain solution, it's important and paramount for us

to be sitting with the customer and be listening on a regular basis. I think that's truly the biggest advantage

I think, of having this wide network and meeting with customers and taking that data

and on a regular basis, folding it back in. Yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about the role of the arachnid family

because I think it's a fascinating series or family of products, especially those main core three items

What does the role of the drone operator look like in terms of RedCat technology

and how has the role of the drone operator, either for RedCat or across the industry, shifted in recent years

Again, even getting back to what I said before, we've gotten away from these single-point solutions

where you have kind of a closed-off forward operator who's operating a drone

in a remote area, and somehow we're trying to disseminate that data somewhere else

Now, especially for what we do at RedCat, ATAC, it was a conscious decision for us to be folding

into an existing battlefield management system, especially specifically within the United States

but then that actually helps an advantage of then working with other countries. So we use ATAC, UAS tool is our primary control interface

We worked on it actually with Boozell and Hamilton. And what that allows us is that not only can we use that

as the primary control interface, but we're already automatically now engaged and interfaced with a huge battlefield management system

How that helps us now selling internationally is that we're looking at a lot of our customer sets

are now like Poland, some of the other countries are saying, okay, we actually are going to be employing ATAC as well

And that helps back with that interoperability, interchangeability I mentioned before, where now you have the connected battlefield

you can see where everybody's at. If I wanted to actually hand control over our drone to someone else where maybe I'm operating the payload

and they're operating the drone, you can be doing that now. And so it's making it a lot easier for these coalition forces

to be working together. Yeah, you mentioned artificial intelligence and the role of AI a bit earlier in our conversation

You know, I'm a financial markets reporter. I cannot do my job in 2025 without asking more

about the role of AI. From the consumer face, we know what it's like to use chat

CPT, and those others. But when you talk drone warfare, aerial intelligence

AI is an entirely different ballgame. Talk to me about the ways that Redcat has increasingly adopted things like generative AI and what that means for your underlying solutions

Yeah. So, again, through our Redcat Futures Initiative, being able to partner with multiple AI companies

And so what's interesting is, like I said before, it's becoming kind of a throwaway term

You have to look at it as how are we doing all this amazing problem solving. You know, there's different facets to AI, right

You know, one example, right? You can completely apply AI to swarming technology, right

How are the drones collaboratively working together? how can you actually take a swarm, which we're doing

Let's just say you have a swarm of 20 drones, and how are you now tasking percentages of the drones

to do various missions within missions, so kind of a multi-mission aspect, right? So you could have a certain amount of drones that are just doing ISR

You have a certain amount of drones that are doing, you know, chem bio detection. And then you have a certain amount of drones that are maybe based on targeting

can do delivery of precision effects. How are all those drones working together, right

I think the other thing to look at, too, is, you know, When you start to do command and control of drone swarms

sometimes you don't want to be doing constant transmission back and forth, because that could give away your position

and put you at risk. So you can actually upload an entire mission

to just one of those drones out of an entire swarm. They go off and do the mission

you're not doing any transmission back and forth at all, and that lead drone is basically the one

that's communicating to the rest of the drones. That's one layer of AI, that's one problem to solve with AI

Again, another one, A to target recognition, You know, the idea of 3D mapping and then data fusion

You know, there's so many problems to solve with AI when it comes to even developing models for that

But again, we can have all these other companies be working on that and we focus on the drone and then we can funnel that technology in

All right. Let's talk about what some would consider to be the good stuff. The Arachnid family of products, the Black Widow, the Tricon, is that how you pronounce it

Tricon. Tricon, excuse me. And Fang, still under development. Let's start with the Black Widow

I'd argue in my year and you and I talked before we came out, I'd interviewed your company CEO last year

I know this has been a top priority for a long time. What are the key features of the short range reconnaissance abilities of the Black Widow that you think are most notable for that particular drone

Sure. Yeah. So what's interesting about the Black Widow system is that we've been working on it probably for the last four years

We were involved in tranche one of the short range reconnaissance program, and we actually weren't selected

And so that was a very humbling experience for us. In a good way, because you learn from what happened through that process

And so that forced us to sit down with the warfighters and build that list of needs, wants, and desires

Going into Tranche 2, it started with 37 companies, ultimately down-selected to basically two

And again, we've been able to then spend some time. We spent basically the last nine months optimizing the aircraft, getting the flight time up

getting the range, getting better range, getting the mesh networking better. And so what's funny is that when we entered into the program

we were actually, the U.S. Army had basic requirements. Those requirements were six years old

And so that's the- Sorry, you said six years old? Almost up to six years old. Wow

So you're automatically entering a program that's dealing with requirements that are from the past

Well, how do you take that information and then start to evaluate and say, okay, I need to now design for the future to make a future-proof

And so that's what we did. And once we announced being a program winner for the program at the end of last year

we then took the next nine months to optimize the Black Widow system

developing our own ground control station called WEB, which is the Warfighter Electronic Bridge

which is now becoming a universal common controller, incorporating ATAC, working with Boozell and Hamilton, like I said, on the UAS tool

and then really just, again, optimizing for the mission that's at hand and future-proofing it

One of the biggest things, I think, about Black Widow is that it's field repairable. And so this idea that inevitably an operator is going to take a hard landing

You're going to probably break a motor arm. You're probably going to maybe break a gimbal assembly. We've made it so that, you know, with the spare parts that we send

the operator can actually, you know, fix it in the field within just a couple minutes. That means that they don't have to send it back to us to fix, and they don't lose their tool

They're not without their tools, right? So it that forward thinking that I think was forced us to really again make it an advantage for the warfighter when they out there Of course Yeah we do have a question with regards to Black Widow I don know to what degree you can answer this but I at least kick it over to you

on behalf of our guest who submitted it. Have you integrated any lethal payloads onto Black Widow or your other drones

Yes, so we actually are involved in a program with DevCom called the CLIC program

the Common Lethality Integration Kit. And so we have integrated a Picatinny rail into the bottom of our system

which basically goes over the battery. And so you're able to carry what we just say

you're able to carry stuff. Now, that's usually dictated by the customer

and that could be anything from delivery of precision effects, it could be delivering a medical kit

And so we wanted to make it open enough to be able to have the customer decide what they want

That way we don't necessarily have to worry about being a munitions company

We can actually partner with companies, there's a company we're partnered with called MMS

Miniature Munition Systems. They make a product called Molnir And we've actually been able to do demonstrations where we can either drop that payload or if you need be, you can actually then take the drone and actually take it into a target

So we want to make sure that we're open and flexible for the customers to be able to do that option on their own

All right. Let's talk about Tricun now. Vertical takeoff and lift, longer duration missions

What is most notable in terms of the underlying tech or capabilities of that particular piece of equipment

Sure. So, yeah, when we acquired Flightwave Aerospace out of California at the beginning of last year

we inherited their Edge 130 platform, which, again, is a hybrid VTOL, takeoff vertical forward flight like an Osprey

The design is so sexy. It's one of those things when you walk by the booth and it just catches your eye and you have to come over

and everybody, I think, looks at it because it's such a novel-looking aircraft. That aircraft actually looks like a fixed wing, but it actually weighs less than the Black Widow

It's only about two and a half pounds compared to about four pounds for Black Widow. And so it has a very novel design, very efficient motors

Now, when we looked at it, though, this idea of optimization that we're constantly trying to do

when we started to conform this idea of the arachnid family of systems

which was really based around Black Widow obviously being a spider, that's the marketing part of all of this

But to evolve that platform forward, we realized that, okay, right now it kind of has a single-point solution radio

We need to get on the same radio network as the Black Widow is. So, again, we can have that kind of constant communication if you're going to be flying these things at the same time

And so we work with partners like Doodle Labs in their mesh networking, which also allows for EW resilience and frequency hopping

And so we're going to be evolving Edge 130 into what is going to be known as Trichen

So that's why it's still under development. but anything from optimizing the sensors to putting new mesh radios in it

trying to get more efficient battery technology into it to get further range and more endurance

So a Trichen will be an Edge 130 on steroids. Amazing. And another reminder to those of you watching, if you'd like to submit a question

go ahead and scan that QR code. They'll pop up here on my fancy iPad. Finally, Fang, first-person view, I believe still under development largely

Yep, soon to be released. All right. What stands out there? What are you hoping for

So what's great, again, when we started the conversation, that pedigree that we have coming from the commercial world for FPV drones

this idea of what we call the low-cost kill chain, low-cost portable kill chain

So this idea that an FPV drone of different sizes from a 5-inch all the way to a 7-inch, 9-inch, even 11-inch, that can carry a variety of payloads

But what we're going to be doing is adding a level of autonomy to it. Like I said before, it's not easy to fly an FPV drone at all

The amount of training that it takes to actually fly an FV drone, it takes a while

There's some nuances. But if you start to add a level of autonomy to where you can get that training down to even just two to three days

again, that gets us back in the fight a lot easier. And this idea of low cost, right

We want to get something down to the $2,500 range to make it not only more affordable

but to be able to then project these things out by the thousands. And so, you know, when you start to look at the toolkit then, we look at the family of systems, and all of them, you know, these will then be operated by our web controller at some point

And so, again, you know, you can just sell the entire system to everybody, and they have the right tool for the job, and it's all within the same network

How far away does the web controller need to be? Well, it depends on the aircraft

It depends on the radio. So, right now, Black Widow has about an 8-kilometer range

Edge 130 and Tricon, you know, that's getting up to about the 20-kilometer range. And then FANG, we're looking again between a 10 and 15 kilometer range

How far can the Arachnid family of drones go? How fast can they go

And is that contingent on the weight of the underlying payload? Oh, it's all size, weight, and power

So again, a standard Black Widow can go between 40 to 50 miles per hour

But obviously when you start to add additional secondary payloads on there, there are going to be some sacrifices made

And the same thing goes with the other systems. Yeah, of course. Thank you for saying miles per hour, at least from my New York brain, because when you say kilometers, I've got to do the math really quickly

I'm going to have to do the math, Mike. It's pretty fast. Those of you who are Americans, you understand what I'm saying here. We've got another couple of questions here

Let's see. If you're responsible for hardware and your partner is responsible for software AI, where does the cybersecurity risk lie

Actually, on both. And I think that's the collaboration between the two

I think one of those things to understand is that, again, we're not in a bubble and they're not in a bubble. We're actually being collaborative the entire way through

So we have an entire R&D department within RedCat that is focused just on partner integration

And so we're holding, I guess, each other's hands through the process. And so cybersecurity is something that's completely woven in from the beginning

Now, which of the Arachnid drones is your personal favorite, if you have one? Is that like asking you to choose your favorite kid

I would have to say Black Widow just because, well, I named all of the aircraft, just being the marketing guy

but Black Widow is definitely dear to my heart. Wait, can I cut you off? I'm sorry. You named all three of these

Yeah, we do a lot of naming exercises. To be honest with all of you, it's not easy to name aircraft systems these days

You can only use ChatGPT for so long. You're going to get a list of all sorts of weird names

but we decided to go with kind of a very aggressive strategy around it

Yeah. And so even the word trichin is actually a Latin derivation of a certain type of spider

Sure. So, you know, there's gimmicks all over the place, in the drone industry, but we wanted something that could actually encompass kind of the aggressive nature of these drones

and, you know, look at them, again, as a family of systems as a whole

So somewhere, you and only, you have access to all the names that didn't make the cut, the ones on the cutting room floor

And honestly, if any of you want to see them, you can come over to the booth and I'll share. We can have some coffee and I'll share the list with you

Now we're cooking. I love that. What do you feel is most misunderstood about drones in global warfare right now

That's a really good question. I think what's misunderstood is sometimes it's about, well, I'll tell you one of the biggest things is

especially for our company that deals kind of with the smaller group ones, a lot of people think based on, again, the commercial drone space where, you know

you're kind of looking at more like toy technology. When you see something based on size, it's like, okay, that kind of looks like these toys that we use over here

In all honesty, I'm sure some of you notice, too, the smaller you get, the harder it is from size away in power issue

And so it's an extremely challenging environment to try to get as much capability as you can

that's around four pounds or less. Because, like I said, it does become this idea of size, weight, and power

You do something over here, and it does affect something over here. So that's why we're constantly trying to optimize the drone from a performance aspect

and try to, again, get the best capabilities to the warfighters we can

Yeah. You and I both come from the United States originally, but, of course, we're here in Europe

Much of our programming is focused on Europe. And since you did mention the ongoing conflict in Ukraine

what do you think is one lesson from Ukraine that Europe cannot afford to ignore

especially more connected to the conversation about drones and their role in aerial intelligence

Yeah, again, I think what's fascinating to me is, again, how, and in fact, last night

I actually had dinner with some frontline Ukrainian war fighters, and we had a very, very nice, very, very long conversation

Again, for them, it's do or die, right? It's like if this stuff doesn't work, lives are lost

And so this importance of having high quality, and I think that's what we're looking at, especially in the United States

is how can we churn out drones on a regular basis at high rates of manufacturing

with really extremely strong supply chains to give warfighters like them something that's going to work every single time out of the box

It's not easy. It's an extreme challenge. But the ownership is on us to be able to make that happen

And so I think the other fascinating thing, too, is not only just looking at Ukraine

but also looking at what is the next great conflict. There's a lot of talk, obviously

in littoral environments in the South China Sea. How are we now designing for that environment

which is a completely different environment from what we're experiencing in Ukraine? These are the types of problems that we need to be doing now

And if we're not doing it now, then really shame on us. So we have to be solving for this other area

of thousands of island chains. How are we going to approach those islands? How are we going to keep a lot of these soldiers back in the rear

and let the drones do the job? Whether it's through, again, ground robots, aerial assets

uncrewed surface vessels, all of those things working together. These are extreme problems to solve

and we have to be doing that now. How much does that force you and the team at Red Cat

to go essentially back to the drawing board and say the underlying technology we have may suit the purposes of the armed forces in Ukraine When you deal with the South China Sea you dealing with islands more of a marine environment I imagine

Maybe some of what we have really works and it's applicable and there's interoperability

There's a whole other suite of core products and abilities for our drones that need to be modified for the next potential conflict like the one you mentioned

Yeah, no, really, I mean, inside Red Cat, even on some of the walls in our buildings

we have a quote that says, iterate or die. You know, the constant iteration that you have to do to be able to solve some of these major issues

You know, one of the things that's interesting is that, you know, some people actually were kind of scratching their heads when Red Cat went into this new maritime division

or Blue Ops, or Uncrude Surface Vessel Division, was, you know, why did you do that

Why did you go into that domain? and the natural progression of drones being incorporated into other all-domain assets is inevitable

And so we want to be at the forefront of that. We started that division with that in mind

this idea of not only having the boats themselves be smart and have their own sets of sensors and kinetics and those types of things

but ultimately then integrating our drone technology into the boats. So we're developing a portfolio of uncrewed surface vessels at the moment

from a 5-meter, 6-meter, 7-meter, and 11-meter. Think of the five meter being a, you know, one-way kinetic

Think of all the way up to the 11 meter being a small aircraft carrier that can maybe launch up to 22 drones

So we're already starting to think about that and how to do the problem solving for what we think the next great conflict is going to be

We have another audience submitted question. And thank you, by the way. You've done a great job with the questions so far

This one says, what technologies and approaches have you developed to enable your drones to work in GPS-denied environments

That's a great question. So when developing Black Widow, we had the opportunity of actually taking that over to Ukraine

And so this is where we first started to see this idea of, like I mentioned before, this kind of cat and mouse game

So it has to be based on real world data. If you not having your drone technology actually out there somewhere on the front lines collecting the valuable data again you then removed and you designing in a bubble And so that the one thing we learned that by bringing Black Widow over there we were actually able to fly it against actual Russian jammers

And so, and what that allowed us to do was, through the Doodle Labs radios that we use

is do that tweaking that we needed to really be successful. And so not only were we able to fly about almost four to five kilometers up against the jammer

we were actually able to hover over it. And so that data was invaluable for us

And so the idea that we're now constantly, when you have the relationships over there

we constantly have to get our stuff over there to do that optimization and tweaking

Because, again, the dynamic battlefield is changing every single day. And if you're not a part of that conversation, then you really kind of are left out of the movie

Yeah, I keep thinking about that South China Sea point from a few moments ago

that sort of transition from the Ukrainian battlefield onto the potential for another battlefield

I wonder how hypothetical do you and the team at Red Cat need to be to consider new emerging potential battlefields for the future

maybe ones we're not even talking about, drone warfare and things like low Earth orbit

and then how experimental to avoid being too far ahead of your skis

but also being prepared for the inevitability that anything can be the next great conflict

Yeah. No, the perfect example for that is GPS, right? I mean, GPS, we rely on a society so much, right

It's something that's in our phones, it's in our vehicles, whatever. but in every single drone, I'm sure that is even in this show

has some type of GPS system. But we're getting to a point where GPS

is actually not going to matter. With these contested environments, you're not going to be able to fly with GPS

So you have to start looking at alternate solutions. Right now, we have a very strong relationship with Palantir

of using their VNAV visual navigation system. So to be able to operate and push mission elements out to

like I said before, like a swarm of drones, to be able to operate and have no transmission back and forth

where jamming is happening all over the place, that's exactly how we're going to have to be doing it

And so this kind of, you know, it would have been heresy to say that a few years ago

to say, oh, we're never going to use GPS ever again. Now, we have to consider it

You know, to not, we're going to have a system where GPS is not going to be able to be used anywhere on the battlefield at all So we have to kind of you know solve for those problems now Yeah you and I are about out of time We have a moment or two left What technology do you think will most matter for readiness by the time we reach the year 2030

We'll do a little bit of a forward-looking view from where we go from here. Yeah. Again, I'll get back to the term all domain

You know, we're looking at already integrating our stuff into ground robots

You know, I mentioned the uncrewed surface vessels, right? We're actually, you know, I think the thing to think about, too, is that since our company is

dealing with the small technology, we have very limited range in endurance

Well, how do we get our stuff closer to the fight? Whether it's a mothership

let's say we're working with either AV or Edge Autonomy on having our stuff deployed

from a larger fixed wing aircraft. How are we incorporating it into uncrewed surface vessels

How are we getting it closer to the fight so that those drones can then go off and do their missions that they do best

And then what is that collaborative effort that's happening between the drone technologies? That's where we have to be

That's where we have to be. I'm gonna sneak in one more because it's comparable to one that someone in the audience just submitted

Do you see drones replacing at any point true manned aircraft and reconnaissance

or simply being a complement to them? So our CEO has a good term that the next great conflict is going to be Drone War One

Say it again, please. Drone War One. Drone War One. And so this idea, it's robotics versus robotics

And so I, again, I don't want to speak for the entire industry, But definitely, I personally think that, yeah, we're going to see a lot more of our warfighters kind of being back in the rear

And a lot more of these robotic systems actually are the ones that are kind of like battling it out on the battlefield

Now, how do you decide who wins? That's yet to be seen

But it's going to be really the war of the robots, I think, over the next few years

It's an incredible series of challenges and a really important conversation coming at a crucial time for the ongoing conflicts today

And, of course, setting the stage for the conflicts of tomorrow. Let us know quickly, where is the Redcat booth down here, if people want to come by and say hello

S240, just a few booths away. So please stop by if you have any other questions. I'd love to answer them

Amazing. Very grateful for your time and grateful to all of you for submitting your questions, for being here today

There are more jam-packed panels coming up on this stage and many others throughout the day. Please enjoy the rest of your time here at DSEI

And one more time, put your hand together for our special guest. Thanks a lot for joining us today. Good to have you. Thank you, everybody

Appreciate it