Crucial call for innovation: Empowering operators with intelligent flying robots
Discover how Skydio's advanced AI-driven drones, in alignment with the US DoD's ""Replicator Initiative"", are transforming frontline military operations by enhancing tactical capabilities and readiness, offering unparalleled autonomy and adaptability to redefine modern warfare strategies.
Gain insight into:
- Autonomous technology: Discover how Skydio’s AI-powered drones provide superior autonomy, enabling more efficient and safer mission execution.
- Enhanced operational effectiveness: Learn about the drones’ role in improving real-time intelligence and decision-making for military operators
- Tactical Innovation: Gain insights into the diverse applications of Skydio drones, from urban surveillance to disaster response, and how they are becoming essential tools in military and defense strategies.
Join us to understand the pivotal role of Skydio drones in empowering warfighters and shaping the future of military operations.
Learn more about Skydio for Defense
- today's webinar, and we are excited to welcome an excellent
- speaker here with
- us today, Mark Valentine. So Mark is the President
- of Global Government at Skydio, where he focuses on delivering
- intelligent drones to militaries and governments around the world.
- Previously, he led teams at Scale AI and Microsoft,
- and served for over 25 years as a combat veteran fighter
- pilot, commander, and staff officer in the US Air Force.
- He holds a BS from the US Air Force Academy and an MA from
- Georgetown University. So we are certainly in great hands for this
- conversation today. And with that, Mark, I will hand it over to you.
- Awesome. Thank you, Shannon. Uh, really appreciate the, uh, overly kind
- introduction. Uh, and welcome to everyone attending the
- webinar today.
- Uh, as stated, I am Mark Valentine.
- Uh, wish I could see all of your faces, but I can't.
- Uh, but please, if you have questions, uh, type those into the chat window and
- we'll definitely save time at the end of the event, uh, to get to as many of those
- as possible. So my plan for today is I think we have, have roughly 40
- minutes. Uh, so I will probably transmit for 15
- or 20 of
- those minutes. Uh, and then I would really like to spend, uh,
- you know, another 20
- minutes answering questions, 'cause I think that
- is probably the most important.
- So, uh, we're here to talk about the
- transformative impact that
- drones, and obviously I work at Skydio, so I can emphasize and speak to more
- about Skydio drones, have, uh, impacted the frontline military
- operations. But to get there, I think we need to cover a few things
- first.
- So I, I will give you the bottom line up front,
- uh, and I will say this again at
- the end. I, I see a future based on what I'm seeing
- today,
- where there is a future battlefield where there are sensors
- everywhere, they are connected to everything,
- and they are informing everyone. So again, I will, uh, get
- to, to that later, and we will end with that same statement,
- but I wanted to put
- that up front, uh, which should frame the rest of the
- comments.
- So again, we're here to talk about innovating and,
- and, uh, how drones
- are used in, with frontline military operations.
- So it's probably good at this point to take a quick step back
- and remind ourselves why military forces
- exist in the first place. Uh, and obviously the first thing
- that comes to mind
- is close with, destroy, terms like that, fight, win.
- Uh, and those are all true, uh, but I think those are
- subsets of what the broader idea of having a military is.
- And that's ultimately to create peace.
- And in a perfect world, uh, we create peace without ever having to
- fight. Uh, and to accomplish that, uh, one
- side must have or at least be perceived to have the ability to impose
- such high costs on an adversary that they decide that aggression
- just simply is not worth it. Uh, and to put this in a single word,
- that's called
- deterrence. So deterrence is a function of many things, but at a
- high level, it's generally the capability, uh, to inflict
- damage and the will to use that. Uh, and so I think
- deterrence can also be thought of as a function of rightness.
- So when I think about my job at, at Skydio, uh, and our support, uh, we're
- a dual use company, but when we're supporting military forces, uh,
- I really think
- of our, our job is to create the most effective,
- resilient and reliable
- tools that we can, uh, and provide those to US and a-
- allied military
- so we can actually prevent conflict.
- So in, in a weird way, I see, uh, deterrence as, as part of my job,
- like here at Skydio. And I think that's especially important
- right
- now because it just... I feel like we're at
- an inflection point, if you will, in human history, where just turn on
- the news today or whatever your news source is,
- there's conflict just about everywhere you look around the world.
- Uh, obviously you've got the Russia-Ukraine
- conflict, and I just, uh, came
- back from Ukraine last week, and I can tell you there's an active armed
- conflict, uh, going on in Eastern Europe.
- I think everyone sees what's going on in the Middle East.
- Uh, but there are also skirmishes and aggressive actions going on
- around the world, Central Asia, Latin America.
- And then of course there's the threat of, uh, the Ukraine-Russia war expanding
- throughout, uh, Europe, and then this burgeoning competition,
- which
- may become a conflict in East Asia.
- Uh, and this, these last two in particular raise the
- specter of po-
- potentially another World War. And, and it's very disconcerting, and it
- makes one wonder, why is this happening now?
- And if you, you actually go back and, you know, talk to military strategists or
- read military history, uh, people who study conflict and conflict
- resolution, uh, in general, the, the thought is that wars
- really happen for one reason, and that's because deterrence fails.
- Uh, and if we wonder why is deterrence failing, it, it appears to
- me that at this time a lot of deterrence is failing because many
- of the strategic paradigms upon which we built that str- that
- deterrence, uh, they're kinda stuck in the past.
- Um, and this is either because there's tons of
- massive miscalculation around the
- world, or aggressors are maybe accurately assessing
- that many nations won't risk, uh, many of their high-end exquisite or
- expensive weapons systems in order to achieve their aims.
- And so this is where, you know, the critical call for innovation I think
- is important because I think drones, and especially
- small uncrewed aerial systems or small UAS,
- actually are starting to change some of the strategic calculus,
- and I think this is
- good for the world. Uh, so before we get there, I think to
- understand
- w- why we are where we are today, we probably need to go back and look at,
- you
- know, how small UAS are changing battlefield tactics
- and understand a little bit of
- the history. Uh, and I do think that's important.
- And we all know powered flight's been around since, uh, 1903.
- And since 1903, there have been tons of examples, uh,
- of remotely piloted vehicles, uh, and aircraft being flown without humans
- in them. Uh- But really in the defense context, I think
- the history of, uh, UAS in particular starts about a quarter
- century ago or right after 9/11 when the
- US started to use the RQ-1, which was called The Predator, uh,
- in their campaign in Afghanistan.
- And they were using the RQ-1 in what's called an ISR or an
- information ... or excuse me, intelligence, surveillance,
- and reconnaissance role.
- And the idea was to put a persistent eye in the sky, uh,
- that could stay airborne for a long time, uh, high resolution,
- provide a great feed of full motion video back to a command center
- so humans can make better decisions. And that persistence was important.
- And you could also, because there was not a human in that aircraft, put it
- into more dangerous situations than you might be willing to put a human.
- And, and I think this makes sense when you look at how drones or small UAS
- are used around the world. Uh, typically speaking,
- we're talking about putting a
- sensor, uh, in a place where we don't want to put a
- human,
- whether it's too dangerous to put a human there, too drudgerous, uh,
- or it's just not economical to do so.
- So the military, uh, started doing that roughly, uh, right after 9/11.
- And these systems were used to great effect.
- Uh, I mean, they really, really changed the, the nature of
- especially tactics at the time on how the US was, uh, fighting the
- war in, in Afghanistan. The problem was
- these systems were still really, really large.
- I mean, it took several C-17s of logistics
- capacity to
- move over the air vehicle itself, the launch and recovery crew, all of the
- computers. Uh, and these expensive systems also required
- a
- very, very large group of spe- of specially trained
- humans, uh, to operate and support that equipment.
- And so while it looked like, "Hey, these things are uncrewed," as a matter of
- fact, the US Air Force stopped calling them
- unmanned aerial
- systems at the time, and specifically started using the words
- RPV or remotely piloted vehicle because they did not want to
- imply that these things didn't have a large, uh, trail of humans that
- it took to support and operate them.
- Uh, and if you look at over the next decade
- or two, uh, since 9/11,
- those systems got smaller. Uh, so they went from, you know, 29
- feet in length and, and wingspan down to maybe 10-ish or so.
- Uh, but they were still relatively large.
- And, and while they were relatively cheap in terms of US
- defense dollars,
- I mean, these things still cost millions of
- dollars to procure, and then many, many
- more millions of dollars to train the operators and actually operate them
- in combat.
- And so the systems were great, uh, for the, the contemporary conflicts that
- were going on in the Middle East, which were primarily in a counterterrorism
- role.
- But somewhere around 2009 through
- 2012, uh, the strategic calculus started to change
- and, and our leaders started to recognize
- that maybe there was a larger threat out
- there. And this idea of competing once again with
- near peer competitors, which was really a code word for
- Russia, China, et cetera, that started to become a larger strategic
- challenge than those, uh, counterterrorism days that,
- that we had been facing
- for the last decade or so. And so military theorists started
- looking at the options and they said, "Hey, maybe these things that are
- working well in a counterterrorism type operation might not
- be the best choice, uh, in this larger conflict against, uh, a
- near peer competitor." And this led a group of military
- strategists to really
- start considering what many called a hedging strategy.
- Uh, which instead of focusing on a small
- number, uh,
- very, very capable but also very, very expensive things,
- uh, started to shift their thinking and go perhaps a better way to do this
- is to focus on a large number of small things that are
- also inexpensive and so we're not afraid to lose them.
- Uh, and if you go back to military, uh, strategy, you might see something called
- an exchange ratio, which is essentially the cost of something
- that you might
- lose to the cost of something that would take it down.
- And so this strategy became known by many, uh, as the small, the
- many, and the agile. And the first person I heard say that was,
- uh,
- Admiral Warren Selby, who's the personal friend
- and also the former Chief of Naval
- Research. Uh, and so this small, many agile strategy really started being,
- uh, discussed more and more. And, and then by the late 2010s,
- the United States military said, "Yes, we at least want to
- explore and investigate this area." And they, they
- turned, uh, to the private sector and commercial off-the-shelf
- technology to support this small, many, and agile strategy.
- And the initial goal was to provide organic or dedicated, uh,
- ISR, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to individual
- infantry platoons, uh, in both the Army and then later on in the
- United
- States Marine Corps. And both of those organizations found
- great
- utility in providing that, uh, that ISR down to the
- platoon level. Uh, and they started to realize that
- intelligent small UASs or ones that were much easier
- to fly, uh, ones that did not have a huge, uh,
- burden o- of pilot training, et cetera, were even better.
- And because in addition to providing, you know, accurate and timely
- intelligence, which is of supreme importance, they found
- that that really,
- really reduced the training cost, and more importantly,
- most importantly in my
- view, reduced the cognitive burden on the
- operators.
- And this essentially allowed them to democratize the use of small
- UAS to not just a small group of highly trained pilots, but to
- democratize it down to multiple users perhaps had never even thought about
- using a drone before. And this allowed soldiers to focus on the
- fight
- and not the flight. And that, and that's a very important.
- And we actually saw this in the manned aviation space as well.
- Uh, I flew the F-16. And over time we would add more and more
- automation to the airplane. And every time we did that, I
- was able to take my
- limited gray matter, uh, which gets more limited every day-
- And focus it on the higher order tasks instead of maybe some
- administrative tasks of checking fuel and checking engine gauges.
- It allowed me to focus on the tactics and get notifications, uh, when those,
- uh, negative things were starting to happen.
- And so we're seeing the same transition at a more rapid pace in the small
- UAS space. So these programs led to what, uh, the United States Army calls
- their Short Range Reconnaissance Program, and the Marine Corps calls their Short
- Range Short Endurance Program. And we at Skydio actually are honored, uh,
- to be the
- program of record holder on both of those, and we've been consistently iterating
- with the Army on new, uh, improvements, uh, to those vehicles, and I'll get
- to those more in a minute.
- But then all of a sudden in 2022,
- everything changed. And the major change
- that happened there is we saw
- Russia, uh, illegally invade Ukraine.
- And while many, many military strategists gave Ukrainians
- a slim
- chance of surviving even a month, uh, I think you all know the rest of the
- story. And I can confirm 'cause I was over there last week, and with my own
- eyes, I can tell you that not only did the Ukrainians survive
- that month,
- uh, but they are still fighting and still protecting their nation to this
- day.
- And, and a major reason for their success thus
- far has been the
- adoption of that small, mid, and agile strategy I was describing
- before. Uh, and ultimately, I, I think the
- Ukrainians and also the rest of the world have learned from th- that
- conflict so far that drones aren't just something that's
- nice to have and might provide a little bit of better information here, better
- information there. But they, they found that in addition to being, hey,
- a
- tactful, nice thing, they become actually a
- strategic imperative that can ultimately tip the scales of war.
- Uh, and I think we can prove that that is true by
- how the Russians reacted to the use of Ukrainian small UAS.
- Uh, and the way the Russians reacted is they invested a lot of time
- and a lot of
- money into creating counters, uh, to the Ukrainians' new
- benefit of small UAS. And the way they chose to counter it
- was to use
- electronic warfare. Uh, and that started out initially as jamming the
- global navigation satellite signals, or GPS, uh, to
- confuse drones so they couldn't get where they needed to be.
- Uh, but then later, uh, also jamming the radio links
- between the controllers and the drones.
- Uh, and this was all in an effort to deny the
- Ukrainians that advantage that
- they have gotten. And it worked because, and there are
- various reports on this, uh,
- m-
- I think the last reports that I saw is the electronic warfare
- is so potent, uh, in Ukraine right now.
- Ukrainians are r- r- losing roughly 10,000 drones, uh,
- per month. And so if you thought about that
- and losing 10,000
- Predators a month, uh, it would just be, uh, amazing.
- But th- they're still losing a, a lot of drones,
- which leads me to this discussion
- of what are some of the innovations that are happening, uh, to counter that.
- And then I want to talk a little bit about what I see as the future in this
- industry. So some of the major innovations that,
- that I think we have
- learned from the battlefield as well as our commercial customers and that we're
- trying to apply and put into the drones so that they can serve humans better,
- uh, starts with autonomous technology.
- Uh, so autonomy in Skydio drones at least
- manifests in several
- different ways. Uh, the first is in something we call obstacle
- avoidance.
- So the vehicles themselves have multiple fisheye cameras, uh, and are
- also loaded up. Uh, there are multiple neural networks running on
- the drone
- itself. Uh, and this allows the drone to understand
- where it is,
- uh, have a visual understanding of where it
- is.
- And now with the X10, that visual understanding
- is at both day and at
- night. Uh, and that understanding allows the drone to
- avoid
- obstacles. So as an operator, uh, you have to focus less
- on avoiding the tree or avoiding hitting the ground
- or a building,
- uh, and you can focus on accomplishing the
- mission, and that is getting the drone
- from point A to point B. So you can take the sticks
- and run full forward at a
- tree, and the drone will just fly around it.
- Uh, and I'd love to say that they are 100% uncrashable.
- Unfortunately, sometimes, uh, bad things still happen.
- Uh, but it, uh, happens very, very infrequently.
- So the obstacle avoidance is very important, and that leads to that
- democratization to where instead of having a highly trained,
- you know, fleet of drone operators or drone pilots, uh, we can have a much
- larger swath of that, uh, military community fly those drones.
- Uh, the next thing is, uh, we're able to put, uh,
- classification algorithms running at the edge on the drone, uh, so that
- the drone can identify or at least classify, say, a vehicle or
- a person, and now be able to track, uh, that individual
- and stay with them without a human touching the, the sticks, uh, the
- throttles, what have you. And again, this is another important feature to allow
- humans to direct the drone to do something,
- and then take their hands off and
- focus more on the broader, uh, topic.
- Uh, another, uh, nuance of this is something that we call Scout that is
- available, uh, in our, in our drones.
- And the Scout feature essentially allows the drones or a few of them
- to mimic a convoy movement. So if you're driving in a small
- convoy of, say, Humvees, uh, the drone knows where,
- using its computer vision and radio links, knows where that convoy is and can
- follow it and essentially sweep out in front of and behind that
- convoy to create a 360-degree bubble of
- situational awareness, uh, to keep soldiers safe.
- And again, all of this allows f- uh, soldiers to focus on their mission
- and not, uh, flying, flying a drone.
- Uh, which all of those things allow a much
- greater operational
- effectiveness, uh, and allows us to continue
- innovating. So I, I'm gonna leave that subject and kind of get to
- what I think is the future of the UAS market.
- Uh, and,
- and then I'd like to, to take some questions.
- So when I look at the future, uh, first off, I see-
- And especially in the tactical ISR use case, supporting defense
- customers to understand their environment, what's over the hill, that age-old
- military question is I see a greater proliferation
- of drones across, uh, the space. Whereas right now, uh, for
- instance, the US Army has fielded the systems at the
- platoon level, which is
- roughly one drone per 40, uh, people.
- Uh, we see that proliferating across perhaps
- down to the squad level,
- which is roughly, uh, one drone for every eight people,
- and one day perhaps being
- at, uh, one drone per, per individual.
- Uh, so that proliferation is important, and there you can see
- why that, that need for democratizing the use,
- making
- them so easy to fly that anyone can do it is so important.
- Because now each individual, uh, would have the benefits, uh, available
- of that ISR asset, uh, for them. So, you know, I think that
- is, uh, incredibly important. But, uh, when I look
- even a little bit further out, based on some of the things we have
- learned as a
- dual use company from our commercial and our public safety customers,
- I think that tactical ISR use case is literally just the tip
- of the iceberg, and there's a lot more ice under the
- waterline, uh, than
- there is sitting on top. Uh, and so some of those areas
- where I think, uh, we're going to see continued innovation
- and we
- need to see continued innovation because it will help with
- readiness and therefore help with this idea of deterrence, uh, starts
- with infrastructure inspections.
- Uh, so in the commercial space, uh, you know, we see many customers using
- our drones to perform autonomous or at least human-assisted
- inspections of bridges, roads, buildings,
- uh, electrical infrastructure, uh, such as towers and
- substations, warehouses, et cetera.
- And this is important because now, uh, these as- inspections
- can be accomplished much more rapidly, much more efficiently,
- at a much lower cost,
- and importantly for a military context, with a much lower use of
- fuel, which is a huge burden in a military, uh,
- context.
- Also, uh, these defense assets, whether they're airplanes, ships,
- tanks or vehicles, or the infrastructure such as runways,
- towers, et cetera, the military has all of those things,
- and it's very analogous
- to what we're seeing in the public sector.
- Uh, and as the US military and, uh, allied military
- start to
- build these in- inspections and do them autonomously,
- they can start to build
- heuristics of digital twins, observe those
- changes over the time, and now start to get to a point where we
- can really,
- really start to do, uh, predictive maintenance, which
- is something that I had the
- honor of focusing on, uh, at another company, uh,
- through vast amounts of
- data.
- Another area is streamlining global supply chains.
- Uh, there's an old adage in, in military parlance, and I'm gonna
- paraphrase it, but it basically says that, uh, "Rookies focus on tactics,
- but experts focus on logistics." So the US military
- moves vast quantities of things over vast distances and is really
- a strategic, uh, uh, benefit, uh, to the United States of America
- and the allies as well. Uh, so building upon the knowledge
- that we have gained at
- Skydio from some of our commercial partners on how they're using drones to
- do everything from scanning the inside of a warehouse to gain, gain
- in-transit visibility on the boxes by scanning the UPC codes
- autonomously at night or on, on command, uh, is super
- important. Uh, also, uh, as we're seeing in our public safety
- world,
- a- as well as some of the commercial
- businesses that we work with, using drones to
- amplify or augment humans in securing a facility or a location.
- So much like, uh, you know, there are, uh, police forces right now that are
- starting to use drones to secure, say, a large venue for the Super
- Bowl, if you will. Uh, military bases, uh, look much like
- that, and there's an opportunity to use drones,
- uh, to supplement
- human security forces or military police, uh, to do those things.
- This is an important part of the US, uh, military strategic, uh,
- requirement as well, because as we start to look at dispersing
- assets,
- those assets must be protected. And quite frankly,
- there aren't enough humans, uh,
- to go to all those dispersed places and perform the security needed.
- Uh, so being able to use a, a, a drone to do so autonomously or
- at least, uh, to amplify the humans that are there is an important part of
- achieving strategic deterrence.
- And then finally, and then I wanna get to questions, uh,
- in the future,
- uh, and we're kind of on the leading edge of
- this right now, is
- developing, uh, multi-drone collaborative tactics.
- And by this I mean multiple drones working together to accomplish a goal.
- And this is more than just a drone light show, which typically those are
- pre-programmed efforts, uh, where every drone knows exactly where it's
- gonna go
- before they all launch. And they just ...
- They look like they're acting together, uh, but they're really not.
- They're each performing a preplanned, uh, event, and they just happen to be
- preplanned together. So true multi-drone collaborative tactics,
- uh,
- are where we take the intent of a single human or small group
- of humans and distribute that intent to multiple
- intelligent flying robots. And by the way, this is why we call them that and not
- drones. And now having each of those individual
- flying
- robots determine what part of the intent it can
- accomplish, and then working and communicating with the other drones to
- make that
- happen. Uh, and the beauty of this over, say, the preprogrammed drone
- light show, is that if one drone fails, other drones can now
- reason in real time, see how they can pick up that mission.
- Or if the scenario changes, the drones can understand, "I still
- know the intent, and even though the scenario has changed,
- I might have to change
- how I do it, but I'm still gonna focus on achieving
- that intent." And I
- think this is of supreme importance, uh, to the, the
- US and the allied militaries. Uh, because when I look at the
- concept that many of the US Department of Defense leaders have communicated
- in the form of the Replicator initiative, uh, where they state
- the, the need for vast quantities of
- autonomous,
- intelligent, and intrudable, uh, unmanned aerial systems,
- uh, I think we're going to have to move Uh,
- to a point, uh,
- where, where we have these multi-drone
- collaborative tactics.
- Because at the end of the day, the vision that,
- that I'm hearing from many US
- leaders is of a future battlefield with thousands,
- maybe tens or hundreds of thousands, uh, of robots.
- Uh, some of which might walk, some might swim, and others are gonna fly.
- But when I think about that battlefield, uh, I, I, I don't think
- we can have the old school control paradigm where there's a single
- human holding a controller communicating with one drone.
- I just simply don't think that will scale.
- If for no other reason, I don't know if there will be enough human hands to
- hold
- all the controllers required to make that happen.
- So in order for that vision to become a reality, and I think that it should, I
- think it would be more stabilizing and, and achieve greater deterrence if
- that were the case. To get there, we must break the
- one-to-one control paradigm and get to a one-to-many, uh, situation.
- 'Cause if we don't do that, uh, then again,
- I think we're gonna continue in this,
- uh, deterrence failure loop. So I, I guess I'm gonna end this, uh, prepared
- remarks session where I started. And kind of this summary vision that I
- painted for you ultimately looks like
- sensors everywhere, uh, connected to everything,
- and then informing
- everyone. So I appreciate, uh, your time and attention through those
- prepared
- remarks. Hopefully they made sense. Uh, but now I'd love to take some questions.
- Uh, so Shana, I don't know if you've gotten any questions yet, but
- if you do,
- let's, uh, let's jump into those.
- Absolutely. We do have a couple coming in.
- And just as a reminder, attendees, please submit your questions clicking
- that Q&A button at the bottom. But yes, we've got
- a good chunk of time to, to dive into these.
- So, so the first question that we have, uh,
- so far is, is how do the Skydio drones integrate
- with existing military communication systems in order to help
- enhance the coordination during these operations?
- Yeah. Absolutely. It's a great question. And it actually is...
- We could probably do a whole webinar, uh, just on that 'cause it gets highly
- technical. So I will try to stay at the, uh, summary level.
- And if someone ne- needs to dive deeper, uh, please give us a s- uh, shout and
- we're happy to go deeper. But at a high level, uh, at, at Skydio,
- we, uh,
- always attempt to maintain what we call a modular open system
- architecture. Uh, where, uh, again, my opening line,
- you know, sensors everywhere connected to
- everything, so the connection piece is
- really important. Uh, so the way that manifests
- primarily in the defense space is being able to connect through the most
- widely used tactical interface, uh, and that is, uh, ATAK,
- uh, or the Android Tactical Assault Kit.
- And so in addition to that, there are several other, uh, government
- communications, uh, standards, uh, is probably the best way to put
- them. Uh, one's called RAS-A, uh, which is the aerial version
- of the robotics, uh, system. It's essentially a communications,
- uh, uh, protocol. Uh, so we have been
- communicating and working with that community, uh,
- to further develop RAS-A to
- make it even more robust. And then finally, uh, many of our
- commercial drones are connected through 5G so that
- they can do robust remote operations anywhere in the world.
- Uh, like literally if we could work the cameras,
- I could get on my laptop right
- now and, and I'm, I'm in the southeastern part of the United
- States today, but I
- could fly drones in California on my screen just through my keyboard.
- So we have lots of commercial customers doing that today.
- Uh, m- many military customers are not yet doing that, but if you
- look at some of the other things that they're looking at,
- they're looking at
- deployable private 5G networks at the fore edge of the battlefield.
- And so we're working with them, uh, to start using some of these more open,
- uh,
- 5G type, uh, connectivity pieces, so they can also take advantage of those
- capabilities.
- Impressive.
- Thank you. Um, so, uh, the next question, you, you actually
- talked about being over in the Ukraine and seeing firsthand some things.
- So a question sort of related to that, how has the feedback from these
- frontline operators influenced the evolution of Skydio
- drones, the design, the functionalities, and, and the work you guys are putting
- into them?
- Yeah. So I mean, broadly speaking, so not just Skydio
- but through kind of the,
- the small US space in, in general, uh, I think
- what we've learned from, uh, what's going on in Ukraine is
- that there you can't
- just look at one use case and think that, you know, uh,
- all drones are gonna do that one thing.
- Uh, and while it's great to create, you know, a, a jack of all trades
- or, you know, a Swiss Army knife of drones, if you will,
- what we're seeing in
- Ukraine is some real frontline innovation where,
- you know, their soldiers are breaking out soldering irons and
- reconfiguring drones and making them, uh, right there on the front line, uh,
- for very, very pur- purpose-specific type, uh, items.
- So in a more, uh, specific context with Skydio, uh, we've
- had teams, I think this was our 17th trip, uh, to
- Ukraine in the last, I think, 17-ish months.
- So it, it's happening quite frequently.
- And so we've tried to create a rapid feedback loop.
- Uh, and most of the learnings that we've obtained are around how
- to counter, uh, the Russian countermeasures, which
- are primarily, uh,
- EW or electronic warfare, or what they call radio electronic
- combat. And so some of the things that we have focused on are making our
- data link between the controller and the, uh, the vehicle more
- robust. Uh, we've, uh, started recently, we released a
- frequency hopping radio, uh, so that we can avoid, uh, where things
- are being
- jammed. And also, uh, m- we've done many, many software
- updates to improve our AI. And this is where we think the real leapfrog
- opportunity is. Uh, because electronic warfare is
- it's always been a cat and mouse game where someone develops
- capability,
- someone develops a counter, and you just end up in this ratcheting
- effect.
- And so we have been trying to find ways to leapfrog that, uh, so that it
- would take a longer time to catch up, and we think AI is the answer to that.
- So some of the ways that we've started to use software, uh,
- to make the AI
- better to counter the GPS jamming, uh, is to start using
- more and more visual navigation. So in addition to the cameras on the
- drone, uh, as I said, being used for obstacle avoidance,
- they also
- understand where they are in the environment.
- And you can almost, it's not technically
- Perfect to say this, but you can almost think of the drone as
- throwing down little
- visual breadcrumbs, uh, as it starts to execute its mission.
- And if it does lose all contact with the, the controller through the
- radio frequency link or, uh, to GPS through that link,
- now the drone can actually navigate home using those breadcrumbs that it's done
- visually so that the operator can gain the insights that that drone's found.
- And this is important not just for military operations.
- We see this happen a lot in the commercial space, especially for customers that are
- operating in dense urban environments.
- Uh, there's a condition called the urban
- canyon where GPS signals will
- bounce around the, uh ... Which, for those who don't know, GPS signals
- are really just very, very accurate timing signals.
- Uh, but as they bounce around off the building
- to the road to another building,
- that creates a time delay. And so it really, really confuses, uh,
- GPS receivers so they don't know where they are.
- Uh, and so this is another area where that,
- that visual breadcrumb
- capability using AI is of extreme importance, uh,
- even outside of a
- military context. So I ... The short answer to your question,
- those are the
- kind of things, uh, that we're working on. A- and but I'll tell you, it's hard.
- Uh, it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of dedication,
- uh, to
- continuously maintain that connection, uh, with end customers.
- I can only imagine. [laughs] Absolutely.
- Um, we've, we've got a couple questions
- that have come in around the
- Replicator program. So I was wondering if you could just sort of
- share your overall thoughts and, and how, how Skydio
- approaches that, that concept.
- You bet. So I'll start with this. First, I don't call
- Replicator a program. [laughs] Program in the US Department of
- Defense, uh, terminology is a very specific thing.
- Uh, it means, you know, congressional authorization,
- congressionally appropriated
- funds, a program office who's running a very
- detailed program.
- And I, I don't think that is Replicator yet.
- So when I think of Replicator, I think about it as a strategic
- concept, uh, and one that is actually quite necessary.
- So I think this started with, uh, Dr.
- Kathleen Hicks, who's the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
- I believe last October, uh, she was at an event and released this
- idea of ... And again, this kind of goes back to that small, mini
- and agile hedging strategy that I talked about in the opening
- remarks.
- Uh, but recognizing the need to deter, uh, a
- country that has, you know, four times the, the people we have.
- Uh, they're highly invested in technology.
- Many of their technology capabilities are onshored within their own, uh,
- economy. Uh, and to contrast that with, you know, we have long
- supply chains. Uh, many of the especially,
- uh, important things that we need for computer chips,
- batteries, rare earth
- minerals, et cetera, we often have to import.
- This creates, uh, a strategic brittleness to recognize
- that we need
- to invest upfront in what she called a
- vast quantity, uh, of small, uh,
- attritable and autonomous, uh, systems.
- Uh, so that we could essentially demonstrate
- that, hey, you don't wanna take an
- aggressive action because if you do, uh, we will, A, know about it and, B, be able
- to, uh, to respond to it. And, and you will not gain, uh,
- what you think you might gain. And so to do that, again,
- leaning back on that
- small, mini, agile strategy. So at a high level, I think that's what
- Replicator is. What it means to us at Skydio, I think,
- is it
- is a validation of our foundational thesis that, that created
- this company. And that is that if you can make small
- UAS easy to operate, uh, so that it didn't take huge
- quantities of training, vast amounts of time,
- and make them useful to people,
- uh, through autonomy, AI, et cetera, then there would be
- a wide group of people who never thought about using, uh, drones that will start
- to use them. And so in many ways, I see this idea or
- this strategic concept that many are calling Replicator as a validation o-
- of what we have started and what we continue to do at Skydio.
- Perfect. Thank you.
- Sure.
- And, and you know, kinda, kind of bridging on
- to Replicator and the, the impact that this technology can
- have in,
- in military operations, um, the question is asking, "In,
- in what ways are the Skydio drones contributing to minimizing that
- collateral damage and protecting civilian lives during these
- operations?"
- Yeah, that's, that- that's actually a great question.
- So when I [clears throat] talked about what I call the tactical
- ISR, or again, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance use case, that
- is probably the most widely used use case that we
- see in the defense world. Uh, and in addition to looking over the hill
- and understanding what's there, which again has been a problem since Sun
- Tzu
- has been writing about military history, uh,
- m- many of these drones are also being used to identify, okay,
- this is an enemy
- target, and to be able to know what is around that
- enemy target. And right there, the ability to minimize collateral
- damage is important. But also, we have a highly accurate, uh, sensing
- capability and can get highly accurate coordinates so that we're communicating
- the most accurate information back to battlefield commanders, which does a
- tremendous job of minimizing, uh, the potential for damage to
- non-combatants. And that's, I think, of critical importance as well, and we're
- seeing that around the world. Because if, if you want to deter, you have to
- demonstrate the ability to, you know, uh, prevent the enemy from
- achieving their action. And sometimes, uh, the enemy
- actually wants collateral damage.
- So to be able to prevent that from happening, uh,
- is an important part of deterring
- in the future.
- Perfect. Thank you. I'm, I'm looking, we're,
- we're kind of nearing the end of our
- list, so one more plug, audience. If you have a- additional questions
- that you
- wanna get to before we close out for today, uh, go ahead and type them in
- and submit them now and we'll, we'll get them in our queue.
- Um, but we do have another question, and it's kind of that forward-looking
- like you were mentioning, uh, towards the end of your presentation.
- [clears throat]
- How, how is Skydio kind of planning to address
- the challenges of
- these evolving threats and counter-drone technologies in
- maintaining their operational superiority?
- Yeah, you bet. So, uh- Again, you can tell that drones are being
- successful because nations, uh, and militaries are developing
- counter-drone technologies. Uh, if drones were not having an effect,
- people
- would not be wasting money or time on counter-drone technologies.
- So that's your number one, uh, uh, proof point that, that
- drones are actually, uh, of strategic importance.
- So those counter-drone technologies are roughly, at least in my view,
- broken down
- into two things. There are kinetic counter-drone capabilities,
- which would be
- missiles, uh, nets, uh, even a baseball bat,
- right? You could, uh, in theory, knock a drone out of the sky
- if it got closer to
- you or close enough to you with a baseball bat.
- And then there are non-kinetic, uh, capabilities, and most of those are
- in that electronic warfare, uh, domain that I talked about earlier.
- And I talked mostly about radio frequency jamming, uh, and global
- navigation or GPS, uh, jamming. But there also could be directed
- energy in the form of lasers and things like that.
- So again, I... The
- most efficacious way we are looking at addressing those
- challenges,
- uh, keeping our drones airborne and making them more robust
- and more resilient,
- uh, is the, the dual approach, number one, of creating better
- radios, uh, that have the ability to hop around
- and avoid that RF
- jamming, wider spectrum, et cetera.
- Uh, but also, uh, leapfrogging with our artificial
- intelligence to get to a point where you don't need a radio link,
- and you don't need a GPS signal that that drone can,
- with its own visual navigation system, uh, accomplish the mission from start to
- finish. And, uh, we've demonstrated great progress towards
- that,
- uh, in our most recent trip to, to Ukraine in actual real-world jamming
- conditions. Uh, it's, it's quite impressive to see.
- So that- that's where we're mostly focused today.
- Uh, and we believe that that focus on the AI
- and the software piece,
- uh, is probably the most critical because in
- addition to solving today's
- problem, when something is software-defined, now you can
- iterate on that so much more rapidly.
- And this is where, you know, there's a famous...
- Well, I don't know if he's famous to everyone,
- but he's famous in the old fighter
- pilot community, a gentleman named John Boyd.
- Uh, and he was the one that was credited with creating this idea of an
- OODA loop,
- or observe, orient, decide, and attack.
- And the, the basic thesis there was the faster someone
- can gather information coming in, recognize what it is, gaining
- situational awareness, and then acting on that information,
- that is
- gonna be the most important thing in the long run to strategic success.
- And so we see that as being software-defined. [coughs] Excuse me.
- Uh, and that's why our radios are software-defined.
- So as we see new techniques come out there, w- we should have the
- ability to rapidly innovate and get that, uh,
- out in days or weeks rather than, "Okay, we have to
- go rebuild a new radio with new cameras and a new drone," and that might take
- six months to a year. And we think that is the secret, uh, to
- tightening the OODA loop up and surviving in that, uh,
- contested environment.
- That's perfect. Thank you. Um, we, we did get another
- question that came in-
- Mm-hmm
- ... uh, sort of shifting out of military
- but more into the public safety
- domain-
- Mm-hmm
- ... um, in talking about using Skydio products,
- uh, with
- public safety, um, programs. And so
- it's kind of addressing the idea of the cost differences and-
- Yeah
- ... and support for that. Would you see a federal program to allow
- greater use of
- blue-listed UAVs, or any insight into kind of your thoughts
- of, of what about around that difference that could help support
- public safety
- too to utilize-
- Yeah, you bet
- ... Skydio drones?
- So I, I, I recognize that probably the price at the point of
- sale,
- uh, for some of our drones might, might look higher,
- but I would encourage everyone
- to look at the total cost of ownership, uh, before making a
- decision. And what I mean by that is if you buy drone X,
- uh, which doesn't have some of the, the autonomous features
- that I'm talking about,
- and you crash them at a certain rate, uh, which is way higher than
- you would crash ours, I think you would see relatively quickly,
- uh, that that
- cost delta would even out. Uh, so that, that's one thing I would encourage folks
- to
- do instead of just looking at, "Okay, here's...
- When I go to the website, here's the price I see," uh, because
- that doesn't tell
- the full story. Uh, the next thing is, uh, you know, I recognize that there
- are, um,
- uh, legi- there's legislation out there, uh, like the, I think,
- countering, uh, or the American Security Drone Act, uh,
- is one of
- them, and I think there's another effort called,
- uh, Countering
- CCP Drones. And I recognize that those are, uh, placing
- restrictions on using Chinese-made drones in a, uh,
- commercial or, uh, defense or government context,
- whether that's state
- and local government or national government.
- Uh, uh, and, and I recognize there's some concern
- that people have that
- perhaps we're, uh, disturbing the market or that those
- pieces of legislation are disturbing the market.
- But I would encourage people to go read, uh, the CISA, uh, or
- CISA, uh, vulnerability assessment that, that was recently released,
- uh, that was backed by the FBI. And I think you will find that there
- are some
- significant vulnerabilities, uh, that, that that legislation
- seeks to, to counter. Uh, and, and I think it's important.
- And it's not unsimilar to what we saw with, uh, Huawei,
- uh, a few years back. Uh, so I'd encourage people to read that.
- Uh, and then
- the final piece is I think, and I, I can't verify this, uh, maybe someone
- with a legislative affairs background, but I have heard that with those pieces of
- legislation, uh, that the United States Congress has
- developed grant
- programs, uh, that they are going to focus on state and
- local entities [coughs] so they can do fleet replacements, uh, to
- replace, uh, Chinese-made drones with American-made
- drones.
- Perfect. Thank you so much for-
- Sure
- ... for that response. So that has gone through our
- questions right at about the 45-minute mark.
- So Mark, I'd like to give you an opportunity for
- any closing comments
- before I close this out for, for the afternoon.
- Yeah. Well, first off, uh, thanks to AUVSI, uh, a- and
- Shannon, thanks to you in particular for hosting
- this. I really do appreciate it.
- For those who joined, uh, thank you. Uh, I, I really do appreciate it.
- Again, I wish I could have seen your faces.
- It's much easier for me to talk to people when I can look at faces a- and
- measure, uh, uh, reactions. Uh, but for those who had questions that maybe
- you did not want to ask in front of the whole audience, uh, I'm really easy to
- find. I'm on LinkedIn, William Mark Valentine.
- Uh, pretty easy to find. Uh, please reach out.
- Uh, and if there was a question that you did not get asked here, uh,
- I will do my
- best to answer it. If I can't for whatever reason, uh,
- because I don't have the
- right brain cells installed for that, I can find the people that can get the
- question-
Watch Time
43 Mins 16 Secs
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