Best of LinkedIn: Defense Tech CW 24/ 25

00:00:00:

00:00:24: So to jump right in, our mission for this deep dive is Pretty straightforward.

00:00:28: We are distilling the absolute most critical defense tech insights we've seen on LinkedIn over the past two calendar weeks,

00:00:35: right?

00:00:36: And were specifically zeroing in on digital transformation and what it means for defense professionals today.

00:00:41: fast paced focused on operational realities definitely no hype

00:00:45: Exactly.

00:00:46: And just a quick heads-up for you listening out there, we're going to be talking about some intensely politically charged scenarios like the conflict in Ukraine or defense spending debates.

00:01:10: most brutal reality check is happening in the air.

00:01:13: Oh, absolutely!

00:01:14: The counter-UAS problem...

00:01:15: Right.

00:01:16: Unmanned aerial systems?

00:01:17: Cheap drones are just completely upending traditional economics of air defense.

00:01:22: Yeah, let's unpack the mechanics of that math because it is wild.

00:01:25: Mark CL posted this brilliant analysis about how Russia is fundamentally losing the cost exchange ratio against these cheap Ukrainian drones.

00:01:35: The hardware costs are just staggering when you look at them side by side.

00:01:38: They really are Russia being forced to use these Soviet-era IGLA missiles To shoot down like off-the-shelf commercial plastic drones And an IGLA costs roughly fifty thousand dollars a pop.

00:01:51: And the math actually gets worse.

00:01:52: A fifty grand is just for their cheapest legacy interceptor.

00:01:56: when they have to deploy newer systems, The financial bleed just accelerates even if you assume a perfect one-to-one intercept ratio which Mark notes as totally contradicted by actual battlefield footage You're still bleeding the adversary's budget dry.

00:02:09: and mark pointed out something that should terrify legacy militaries.

00:02:13: Ukraine hasn't even hit peak economies of scale yet.

00:02:16: They are establishing airspace superiority just by exhausting the enemy's magazines.

00:02:21: It is warfare-by-spreadsheet really!

00:02:23: Exactly, I mean firing a fifty thousand dollar missile at a cheap drone is like swatting housefly with solid gold

00:02:30: bar?

00:02:30: That s great way to put it

00:02:31: Right.

00:02:32: sure you kill fly but if there was swarm of them then go bankrupt before clear your room.

00:02:37: So let me ask you Are legacy defense primes building more expensive gold flieswaters?

00:02:45: Or

00:02:45: is the actual integration changing the math here?

00:02:48: Well, the good news is that architecture's finally shifting.

00:02:51: Stephanie C Hill recently posted about this major development from Lockheed Martin called sanctum.

00:02:56: Okay what makes sanctum different?

00:02:57: It's an end-to-end integrated solution.

00:03:00: it's not just a kinetic weapon...it acts more like a central nervous system That constantly calculates The most cost effective way to neutralize a threat.

00:03:08: Oh wow and we actually saw the physical application of that Just days ago.

00:03:11: right

00:03:12: We did.

00:03:12: yeah Tim Cahill and Paul Lemo shared some updates on a highly specific live fire test.

00:03:17: Right, they took a joint air-to-ground missile, a JGM ,and launched it from this containerized grizzly y launcher.

00:03:25: but the crazy part was that integrated with sanctum then tied everything into third party radar Fordham

00:03:31: Technologies R-Forty Radar to be exact Yeah And successfully intercepted an attack drum.

00:03:37: It's just massive that these giant primes are learning how to play nice with specialist ecosystem partners.

00:03:42: Exactly, it proves you can create these rapid modular setups without waiting a decade.

00:03:48: but form factor is huge here too.

00:03:51: Tom Adams from Drone Shield break down how dismounted tech, it's changing things

00:03:55: like stuff an individual soldier can actually carry.

00:03:58: yeah he detailed their RF patrol MK two which detects drone radio frequencies and they're droned gun Mk four Which actively defeats them.

00:04:07: you need that mobility because a drone could literally pop up behind the tree line fifty yards away.

00:04:11: so true.

00:04:12: But to really win that cost exchange battle long term Just playing defense isn't enough.

00:04:16: You need autonomous mass on your own side!

00:04:19: Absolutely, which brings us to the industry's biggest nightmare... The Valley of Death.

00:04:24: Uh yeah Alana Gold had a really sobering post reflecting on warning from investor Ross Fubini.

00:04:30: FUBINI is not someone to ignore either?

00:04:32: No

00:04:32: definitely not.

00:04:33: He was warning founders that defense tech startups are basically heading straight for the valley of death.

00:04:39: As Alana noted, the technology gets you the meeting but production is what actually keeps you alive.

00:04:45: Right they build a great prototype But then they just die because they can't scale it while waiting on the Pentagon's painfully slow procurement process.

00:04:52: So let me push back on this bit.

00:04:54: In the commercial tech world, like The Valley of Death is where bad ideas die right?

00:04:59: If your app doesn't work it goes under.

00:05:01: Sure So Is the defense tech valley-of-death actually filtering out bad technology?

00:05:06: or is the DoD's slow system just accidentally starving the exact innovators they say they desperately need?

00:05:12: It is definitely starving the innovators.

00:05:14: Commercial markets filter for product market fit but defense procurement filters from bureaucratic endurance.

00:05:20: It's a system built for buying aircraft carriers over thirty years, not software-defined drones.

00:05:26: Right which need updates every three months?

00:05:28: Exactly!

00:05:29: But we are seeing some startups break out.

00:05:32: Eugene Guy and Robert McFauls shared this massive update about Enduril winning the US Air Force CCA production contract

00:05:39: The collaborative combat aircraft program.

00:05:42: that is huge deal.

00:05:43: it is especially because two years ago Endurill actually lost the mission autonomy competition for that exact program.

00:05:50: Wait,

00:05:50: really?

00:05:51: They lost it and still came back!

00:05:52: Yeah they completely rebuilt their lattice autonomy software from scratch using internal capital yeah.

00:05:58: And now they're pushing the FQ-IV drone into serial production.

00:06:01: That is insane resilience...and we are seeing European joint ventures hit scale too.

00:06:06: Florian Sybil posted about quantum ten core delivering two thousand termite unmanned ground vehicles to Ukraine

00:06:13: Delivering two thousand units as real scale..that's not just a lab experiment anymore

00:06:17: No, it's real battlefield impact.

00:06:19: And the ultimate proof of this autonomous capability has to be what happened in The Strait Of Hormuz.

00:06:25: Weston Moyer and Sophia Rose Haft highlighted this incredible story...

00:06:29: Oh!

00:06:29: The Sironic Rescue?

00:06:30: That was incredible.

00:06:31: Yeah.

00:06:32: Sironics' twenty-four foot Corsair Autonomous Boat rescued two down American pilots at three a.m..

00:06:38: And keep in mind, Task Force-Fifty Nine has spent years out on those waters validating these unmanned systems.

00:06:44: That trust literally paid off by bringing two pilots home safely.

00:06:48: It's amazing.

00:06:49: but here is the catch right?

00:06:50: Having thousands of autonomous drones and boats basically useless if a warfighter can't easily command them.

00:06:56: Which brings us to theme number three Software integration & Command.

00:07:00: Honestly, legacy military integration reminds me of the dark ages of early computing.

00:07:05: Like when every piece of hardware required a custom proprietary cord just to plug it in.

00:07:09: Oh I remember that you had different charger for every single device.

00:07:12: Exactly so.

00:07:13: why has it taken The Military this long?

00:07:15: To adopt a basic app store mentality where systems Just talk to each other via open APIs.

00:07:21: Well because those proprietary silos were incredibly lucrative For the Legacy primes.

00:07:27: but That's finally breaking.

00:07:29: Matt Bonaman and Christian Brose posted about the US Army's operation jailbreak.

00:07:34: Jailbreaking the battlefield, I love that term!

00:07:36: It is so accurate.

00:07:37: Lockheed Martin Sanctum was officially jailbroken meaning their APIs were opened up to break down those legacy barriers.

00:07:43: And Daryl Lattice won the army command-and control competition right?

00:07:47: Yeah it now anchors the IBCS maneuver program.

00:07:50: The core philosophy shift here is massive.

00:07:52: They want a move of cognitive burden.

00:07:54: So this soldier is the crew chief for AI

00:07:56: instead of just acting as the human adapter between three disconnected screens.

00:08:00: Exactly, and Simon Luck posted a perfect example from Exercise Northern Star.

00:08:04: British and Finnish troops were near Russian border using Enderill's ghost-and-bolt drones on the Lattice network.

00:08:11: And get this!

00:08:12: These are non specialist soldiers who learn the whole system in

00:08:15: mere days... That is The Power Of Intuitive Software.

00:08:19: Joshua Baggett also noted that Lockheed's project Overwatch just delivered the first in-flight tactical AI combat ID for F-thirty five.

00:08:27: Wow, AI right on the cockpit!

00:08:31: Speaking of data... General David Petraeus highlighted something wild out of Ukraine The Trophy Lab launch.

00:08:37: Oh, the crowd sourcing platform!

00:08:39: Exactly they are effectively crowdsourcing battlefield intelligence by opening access to captured Russian weapons technology for global partners.

00:08:47: that is just brilliant.

00:08:49: but you know we do have to ground all this software talk in physical reality

00:08:53: right?

00:08:53: Right...the hardware still has to be built

00:08:55: and paid-for which brings us to the harsh realities of the industrial base and vendor dependence.

00:09:00: Jason Bowers did this deep dive.

00:09:02: that kind of blew my mind.

00:09:03: The SpaceX Starlink situation?

00:09:05: Yes, SpaceX charged the Pentagon five times its previous rate for starlink on LUCS attack drones during active strikes and the DoD just had to pay it.

00:09:15: Talk about having zero leverage.

00:09:17: That's a terrifying level of vendor dependence

00:09:19: Totally.

00:09:20: And while thats happening Allied nations are struggling with bad spending habits.

00:09:24: Luca Leon posted about UK defense debate.

00:09:27: It's not just about needing more money, it's about stopping terrible spending.

00:09:30: Like the tank fleet?

00:09:31: Exactly!

00:09:33: They are preserving one to two hundred legacy tanks... ...just to avoid exposing a seven-hundred million pound sunk cost and doing

00:09:40: that

00:09:41: actively starves their twenty thirty capabilities.

00:09:43: That sunk cost fallacy is dangerous And Dr Jonas Singer had very sobering post about this.

00:09:49: He said NATO three point.

00:09:50: oh as budget Not an army.

00:09:52: Ouch.

00:09:53: But he's not wrong.

00:09:55: He pointed out the Bundeswehr is short over seven thousand recruits for their twenty-twenty six buildout.

00:10:00: A treasury can move money in an afternoon, but building a bench of experienced NCOs takes a decade.

00:10:06: so true.

00:10:07: So how was the industrial base trying to fix this physical manufacturing bottleneck?

00:10:12: Well Zach Silber highlighted a company called Standard & Works.

00:10:15: They're building a defense manufacturing campus down at Moorsville North Carolina.

00:10:19: Okay leveraging the local talent.

00:10:21: Yeah, they're actively using NASCAR engineers to work at what they call motorsport speed.

00:10:25: Okay wait I have to challenge that analogy!

00:10:27: NASCAR Speed sounds amazing for a pitch deck but building a race car quickly is one thing.

00:10:31: it only has to survive a five hundred mile Sunday drive

00:10:34: Right on the smooth track.

00:10:37: If it breaks... A pit crew fixes in ten seconds.

00:10:40: Can start-up speed manufacturing actually produce ruggedized hardware That survives a grueling ten year deployment In mud and sand?

00:10:48: It's totally fair question.

00:10:50: But the idea behind motorsport speed isn't about making flimsy hardware, it's about iteration.

00:10:55: Instead of taking five years to redesign a drone chassis they can analyze a failure machine in new part and have back-in-the-field in weeks.

00:11:03: So its' the speed at the iteration cycle.

00:11:05: not necessarily life span on first prototype Exactly!

00:11:09: And legacy primes know that need this speed.

00:11:11: Julian Cracknell Robert Merriweather and Helen Wood all-referenced BAE systems committing fifty million euros to VC funds via Launchpad, the back European defense tech.

00:11:21: Wow!

00:11:22: They are literally paying to inject that startup speed into their own ecosystems

00:11:26: because they have too.

00:11:27: and if you really want talk about grueling deployments in ruggedized hardware I wanna leave with a final thought inspired by David Cowes post.

00:11:33: Oh About physical AI.

00:11:35: Yes He argues that Physical AI is becoming a geopolitical infrastructure layer.

00:11:41: NASA's thirty billion dollar moon base is going to require robots operating with no GPS, severe communications latency and three hundred degree temperature swings.

00:11:51: That makes the mud of a terrestrial battlefield look pretty easy

00:11:54: Exactly!

00:11:55: The ultimate proving ground for next generation defense tech might not be on Earth at all.

00:12:00: It may be navigating extreme conditions in space essentially writing playbook for future autonomous warfare.

00:12:07: that was wild thought.

00:12:09: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

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00:12:22: Absolutely!

00:12:22: Thank You so much for joining us as we unpack these realities.

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00:12:27: Thanks For Tuning In And We'll Catch Ya Next Time.