#247 Brandon Tseng – Shield AI’s X-BAT: The First AI Fighter Jet to Outsmart Top Gun

Brandon Tseng is the President and Cofounder of Shield AI, a defense technology company he established in 2015 with his brother Ryan Tseng, specializing in AI-powered autonomous systems for military applications, including the V-BAT drone deployed in operations like those in Ukraine. A graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and Harvard Business School with an MBA, Tseng served seven years in the U. S. Navy as a SEAL and Surface Warfare Officer, with deployments including Afghanistan in 2015, where he witnessed the need for AI in warfare. Under his leadership, Shield AI has raised over $1 billion, achieved a multi-billion-dollar valuation, expanded globally, and focused on ethical AI for national security. Named to TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI for 2025, Tseng has testified before the U. S. House Armed Services Committee on technology innovation and serves on the Board of Directors for the C4 Foundation, supporting Navy SEAL families. He advocates for public-private partnerships in defense, advancing AI to protect warfighters, and securing U. S. leadership in autonomous systems amid global competition. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Join the Waitlist - https://theglacierapp.com/waitlist ⁠https://americanfinancing.net/srs⁠ NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.327% for well qualified borrowers. Call 866-781-8900, for details about credit costs and terms. ⁠https://betterhelp.com/srs⁠ This episode is sponsored. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. ⁠https://calderalab.com/srs⁠ Use code SRS for 20% off your first order. ⁠https://shawnlikesgold.com⁠ ⁠https://helixsleep.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://ketone.com/srs⁠ Visit https://ketone.com/srs for 30% OFF your subscription order. ⁠https://patriotmobile.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://ROKA.com⁠ – USE CODE SRS ⁠https://simplisafe.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://tractorsupply.com/hometownheroes⁠ ⁠https://ziprecruiter.com/srs Brandon Tseng Links: X-BAT: Earth is our runway - https://youtu.be/OnpuNlE3UxU?si=2xaDo6C0vnwNyDLq Unveiling X-BAT- Launch Keynotes https://youtu.be/BEer2MXTAcU?si=vBuocOW9VN-Ej0Lf X - https://x.com/brandontseng2 X - https://x.com/shieldaitech Shield AI - https://shield.ai TIME 100 AI Profile - https://time.com/collections/time100-ai-2025/7305863/brandon-tseng Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching band wake up call at 5:55 and 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by PayPal. You know how a mom's bag has everything? Sunscreen? Snacks? A stapler? The new PayPal app is like that, but for your money. Shop, pay, manage your account, and earn rewards, all in one place. And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security, and pass keys, you're protected at every step. Download the new PayPal app to get started. See paypal.com/protectionterms.

• 1:04Shawn Ryan?

  Brandon Sang, welcome to the show.

• 1:06Speaker 03

  Thanks, Sean. Really excited to be here.

• 1:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, me too. We've been, uh, we've been really looking forward to this for a long time. And now I have a model UAP sitting in my front yard here. So, uh, this is gonna be super interesting. I know all the locals are like, what the fuck is that thing doing here? What is that?

• 1:25Speaker 03

  I'm excited to show you it. It'll, uh, and yeah, it's, it's pretty cool.

• 1:28Shawn Ryan?

  I can't wait, man. And, and, you know, like I was saying at breakfast before we started the interview, I mean, it's just, I just love seeing not just veterans, but especially team guys, SEALs, you know, get out and do something totally different. And, um, it's just, it's just, it's cool, man. It's, it's, it's a huge inspiration for a lot of team guys getting out and, and, uh, and, and like you just have really...

• 1:56Shawn Ryan?

  Broken into a whole new, a whole new thing that is just unimaginable for a lot of people other than maybe Dino Mavrukas, but, but congratulations.

• 2:06Speaker 03

  Thank you. No, it's, I appreciate that. It's, it's painful and, um, you know, but, uh, you know, we're excited about what we're doing and hope, hope to make a big impact on the world. And, and similarly like I, I'm super inspired being in this room. Um, everything you've built is uh, very cool as well.

• 2:24Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, Ben. Thank you. But, uh, everybody starts off with an introduction here. So here we go. Brandon Seng, co-founder and president of Shield AI, a defense technology company you co-founded in 2015 to build AI pilots for military assets. Helped raise over one billion in funding for Shield AI, growing the company to over a thousand employees. You're a former Navy SEAL who served two deployments to Af- to Afghanistan and one to the Pacific Theater. A graduate, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and you later earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. Advocate for advancing US

• 3:04Shawn Ryan?

  national security through AI and autonomy. Testified before Congress on topics like technology innovation, acquisition reform, and the role of AI in warfare. You're a husband and a father.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  Yes, sir. Thank you.

• 3:20Shawn Ryan?

  So Brandon, I'd like to do a life story on you. And I know we got limited time today, but I'd like to go from childhood all the way up into what you're doing right now and, uh, talk a little bit about your time in the SEAL teams, how you got into the, into the AI business world. And, um, it's gonna be, it's gonna be a fascinating interview.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 3:41Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, couple of things to crank out here before we get started.

• 3:47Shawn Ryan?

  I always like to give gifts. So here we go.

• 3:52Shawn Ryan?

  First one, vigilance league gummy bears made in the USA, legal in all 50 states, at least right now, until RFK outlaws, red guys and massive amounts of sugar.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  No, love it. Thank you. And, uh, you know, since you're a team guy, I think you'll really appreciate this one.

• 4:15Shawn Ryan?

  This is sick.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  Oh, love it.

• 4:23Shawn Ryan?

  So that is the first Sig Sauer autonomous pistol. No, I'm just kidding. That's the

• 4:33Shawn Ryan?

  wait a minute.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:34Shawn Ryan?

  I wanted to do that first, but uh, no, that's the Sig Sauer P211 GTO 9mm. It's a first 2011 model from Sig, so.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  Amazing. Thank you, Sean. I brought some gifts also. Um, uh, two things, like, you know, you got me a gun. Seals love guns and knives. Um, and so brought you some guns and knives.

• 4:57Shawn Ryan?

  I love guns and knives.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  These are, uh, you can open them up. Um, was in Brazil, working with the Brazilian Navy, went out to a place, they said, yeah, we can do these steak knives for you. And get them laser engraved.

• 5:10Shawn Ryan?

  Look at that.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  And so I'm like, they're like, what do you want on it? First thing that came to mind was, you know, I was feeling sorry for myself. Uh, suffer in silence. And so, uh, with the SEAL tried it on there. Um, and, uh, then this one, I'm pretty excited to give you two. How do we give something that is gonna be pumped about? Um, that is, uh, civilian version of the HK MP5.

• 5:41Shawn Ryan?

  Are you shitting me?

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so, um, apparently it started.

• 5:47Shawn Ryan?

  What?

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:53Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, shit.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. So obviously MP5, a lot of history and soft so calm. Um, don't know if you ever got to carry one around, but, uh, yeah, things, uh, things sick.

• 6:08Shawn Ryan?

  This is awesome.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm gonna get one myself.

• 6:12Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 6:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Seal teams have a long history of the, uh, MP5. No, I never carried one. I shot them. Did you carry one?

• 6:21Speaker 03

  Uh, I never carried one. We had one guy who just like carried it. It's his, uh, um, his secondary, just cause it was fun to carry an MP5. So I'm like, why? He's like, cuz, why not? So I was like, all right. So, um, I've shot it before, but yeah, I never carried it.

• 6:36Shawn Ryan?

  Man, thank you. That is. Fucking awesome.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  And there are three patches from Shield AI on there. Uh, one, I work with the US Coast Guard interdicting uh drugs in the Caribbean Sea. Two, um, flying, you know, jet aircraft autonomously. Um, and I think the third one is, yeah, AI has the aircraft, which is uh the call that fighter pilots make when they push a button on the F-16 and it becomes autonomous. That's what this uh, this shirt is, so.

• 7:05Shawn Ryan?

  That's, yeah. That's awesome.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you.

• 7:08Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 7:11Shawn Ryan?

  Did you, you just said you're doing uh Shield AI is doing counter drug ops?

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah.

• 7:17Shawn Ryan?

  Well, yeah, let's just start right there before we get into the life story. I'd love to hear this, cause uh, you know, I saw a couple of boats get blown up.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I joke with my government relations team that I want a letter of marque, but uh, they said, they say, don't talk about that, but um, no, we've uh, we've been working with the US Coast Guard, actually in the past couple of weeks. Like, we went operational with them, um, so there's this big, long process. We passed operational testing and evaluation, hundred percent on key performance parameters, hundred percent on uh key system attributes. Um, it's our aircraft, the VBAC, which is a hundred and eighty pound vertical takeoff, launch and land aircraft. Easiest way to think about it is like a miniature Reaper Predator drone. Um, and uh, two weeks in, I've interdicted over half a billion dollars uh worth of cocaine in the Caribbean Sea.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Yep, in the Caribbean Sea, um, just absolutely, um, obviously, there's, there's a lot of operations going there. We're with the US Coast Guard. Uh, I've also done US Navy operations down there with uh, Fourth Fleet. Um, can't say uh, about like all the ops going on in there, but um, yeah, what I can say is we've interdicted a lot of drugs, interdicted a lot of vessels. I've seen a lot of ships sent, set on fire in the past couple of days, or past couple of weeks, so. Uh, which feels right, good as an American. I actually like always, you know, I'm, I'm excited about what they're doing in terms of uh, the, the Caribbean Sea. Um, and just stopping the flow of drugs into the country.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  And so I'm, I'm like, the thing that I live for is mission impact, and so it's cool to get to have a positive impact on the world in that way.

• 8:56Shawn Ryan?

  That's incredible, that, man, a billion, over a billion in less than, in two weeks.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've been absolutely like, it's, it's wild, I mean, yeah.

• 9:06Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. Any fentanyl stuff?

• 9:09Speaker 03

  Uh, not that, I don't know. Well, like they, they say, what they give you is like the, the, the weight and they give you the street price. And so then I hop on Google to determine that that is most likely cocaine. So, um, yeah.

• 9:25Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. Damn. That's awesome. One more thing. So I got a subscription account. It's on Patreon. And a lot of these, a lot of these folks have been with us here since the very beginning when I was doing this damn thing out of my attic. And, uh, you know, they're, they're the real reason I get to sit down with people like you. And, uh, so one of the things I do is I give them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. This is from Hunter Widdon.

• 9:54Shawn Ryan?

  How did your battlefield experiences where lives depended on split second decisions shape your vision for building AI systems that protect warfighters in combat?

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, it, it had a massive impact. Um, in the sense, so, uh, like just really quickly, my, my first deployment as a Navy SEAL. I got to augment development group, augment SEAL Team Six. And just to be like super clear, I was not a member of SEAL Team Six, didn't go through Green Team. But, uh, the SEAL teams would send out junior officers to go gain experience, um, deployed.

• 10:28Shawn Ryan?

  That was your first deployment?

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was amazing. I, I, I, uh, am very blessed. I also, it just happened to be with the troop that killed, uh, Bin Laden. So this was one year after they had killed Bin Laden and it was just like a masterclass, um, in ISR and targeting operations, a masterclass in direct action missions. Um, and so during the day, uh, we, well, during the night, the troop would go out, they'd conduct, uh, their raids, capture, kill missions. Uh, during the day, we would conduct, uh, kinetic strikes. And so, um, that is understanding that kill chain, uh, from the intelligence surveillance reconnaissance targeting to, uh, having effects on the battlefield.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  Like that was, you know, didn't know it at the time, but really understanding that process in and out has helped me build SHIELD AI, helped me understand like how to build these, uh, the autonomous systems.

• 11:26Shawn Ryan?

  Very interesting. Wow. What a hell of a first deployment.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, and like, to be clear, I tell people, I was like, I was, I was the, the equivalent of a squire for the ground force commander. I do everything from, I look, I would just wanted to be a good, you know, young SEAL officer, load his magazines, grab a muscle milks, you know, before the op. Uh, get those guys what they needed, uh, to be successful. Um, and then, you know, when we were doing strikes, it was coordinating with the, the battlespace commander, uh, with air assets. And so, um, the, the one fun thing, I, I did try to make it lively and energetic. I would cheer when we would do kinetic strikes in the jock and everybody was like, what the hell? I was like, look, this is fun, cool stuff. Like we're, we're, we're taking out bad guys. Like, what's not to, to love about it? So.

• 12:14Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool, man. Well, let's, um, let's do, let's start with the life story. So where did you grow up?

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Uh, grew up, uh, so I was born in Houston, Texas. It said, grew up in Seattle, moved to, uh, Seattle, Washington when I was 10 years old. Finished high school in Florida. It was just my dad's job in corporate America. Um, but, uh, yeah, I was, uh, one of four kids. I have an older, the oldest is my sister, older brother, younger brother. So I was, uh, number three. Um, but yeah, that's where, yeah, a lot of good memories in Seattle and Florida. It was fun times.

• 12:50Shawn Ryan?

  What'd your parents do?

• 12:51Speaker 03

  Um, my dad, uh, worked in corporate America. Um, started off his career at Bechtel, largest engineering construction company in the world. Uh, then worked for a small engineering construction company, uh, in Houston, Texas, did another company called, uh, Foss Maritime in Seattle. Uh, and then at the age of 50, decided to, uh, buy a small engineering construction firm in Orlando, Florida. And that's what took us, uh, to Florida. Mom was, uh, you know, a hundred percent mom, uh, day in, day out. Um, so, uh, yeah, that's what they did.

• 13:25Shawn Ryan?

  What were you into?

• 13:29Speaker 03

  Let's see. So when I was four years or in fourth grade, I wanted to be a professional basketball player. Uh, when I didn't make the travel team in sixth grade, quickly realized like basketball was not going to be my journey. Um, so I grew up swimming. Yeah, there weren't, you know, Yao Ming didn't exist when I was in, uh, or he wasn't playing professionally, didn't have a, you know, uh, an Asian NBA player, uh, back in the day. Um, and I wasn't very good, it turns out, but, um, thought I was good. Uh, got into, uh, so I'd always swam, uh, yeah, swam growing up and then, um, got into water polo. Um, so for me, um, middle school, high school, it was swimming,

• 14:10Speaker 03

  water polo, and then video games. You know, uh, there's some pretty intense video game playing in Seattle when it rains 300 days out of the year.

• 14:18Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:19Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet. You close with your brothers and sisters?

• 14:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Work, uh, with my brother, uh, him and I started, my older brother started the company, brought in my younger brother, uh, uh, during COVID, uh, to start the company. He was at MIT getting his MBA. Uh, COVID happened. I said, Nick, you know, why are you doing online school? Why don't you, you know, come join, uh, Ryan and I, uh, and work on this. And my mom holds it against me to this day that I got him to leave MIT. So she's not happy about it. Um,

• 14:50Shawn Ryan?

  No shit. So three brothers?

• 14:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, yeah, there's three of us. Yeah. Three brothers.

• 14:54Shawn Ryan?

  Three brothers running the company?

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Wow. Yeah. Working together and yes. Yeah. Enabling it. Yeah.

• 15:00Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome, man. That's very cool.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. There's pros and cons.

• 15:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  We get along with that. You can communicate really well with your siblings. Almost too well sometimes.

• 15:10Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Right on, man. Well, we got your, we got your interest in the SEAL teams?

• 15:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, um, 10 years old, saw, uh, two movies, Under Siege, uh, which I to this day claim is the greatest Navy SEAL movie of all time. Not sure what yours is, but Under Siege and The Rock. Um, so.

• 15:31Shawn Ryan?

  The Rock?

• 15:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. Where the Marines kill all the SEALs. Yeah. Not a good look, but, uh, you know, those two action movies. Um, like I said, under siege is is the, you know, my favorite, but um, that's what got me interested in it. Uh, and so, uh, then I asked my parents about it, right? I was like, this looks really cool. They're like, oh, right. They want you to read a lot. Uh, growing up, it's like, oh, you should read books. They got me books on it. Got me more interested in it. You know, they thought it was a phase and that it would go away. Um, and then, you know, I think in 10th grade, I asked them like, how can I, you know, be a Navy SEAL? Um, and they're like, all right, this isn't going away. And they said, you should go to college, uh, first. I said, well, can I go to college and be a Navy SEAL?

• 16:13Speaker 03

  They said, go to the thing called the Naval Academy. Um, and so, uh, yeah, I applied there, got it, and just kept the dream alive. So.

• 16:21Shawn Ryan?

  What, what age did that fascination start?

• 16:23Speaker 03

  Uh, the Naval Academy or?

• 16:25Shawn Ryan?

  Being a SEAL.

• 16:26Speaker 03

  Being a SEAL? Ten, ten years old. Yeah.

• 16:28Shawn Ryan?

  Ten years old?

• 16:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:30Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, you followed through.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it was, uh, I mean, yeah, it was my, my older brother. He, I remember, I was like, eleven, eleven years old at the time. It was winter in Seattle. And he's like, yeah, you gotta do cold weather training. Like, go sit in the snow and I'll spray you with a hose.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Eleven year old, you're listening to your older brother. You're like, all right, if this is what it takes.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  So, yeah.

• 16:55Shawn Ryan?

  Any family history in the military?

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Um, it, it skipped a generation. So, uh, on my mom's side, uh, my great grandfather was actually a doctor on a hospital ship in World War Two. Actually have a really cool picture of, uh, the Japanese surrender with Admiral Nimitz, uh, and it's a letter, uh, it's signed, uh, by Admiral Nimitz saying, you know, Captain Carroll, thanks for your service, uh, you know, uh, to the country during World War Two. Uh, my grandfather, uh, was also in the Navy. Um, he graduated, I think, the Naval Academy in like 1949, but then like skipped a generation. I wasn't close to, uh, my, you know,

• 17:36Speaker 03

  grandfather on my mom's side. And then on my dad's side, uh, his dad actually, um, fought in World War Two. Uh, he was a nationalist in China, fighting the Japanese. Um,

• 17:49Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, fighting the communists and then, uh, left China when, uh, the communists took over, left with Shane Kasek and, uh, moved to Taiwan. So.

• 17:59Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:01Shawn Ryan?

  Taiwan.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:02Shawn Ryan?

  That's a, that's a topic we'll probably cover later.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching band wake-up call at 5:55 and 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by PayPal. You know how a mom's bag has everything? Sunscreen? Snacks? A stapler? The new PayPal app is like that, but for your money. Shop, pay, manage your account, and earn rewards, all in one place. And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security, and pass keys, you're protected at every step. Download the new PayPal app to get started. See paypal.com/protectionterms.

• 19:07Speaker 04

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• 19:36Shawn Ryan?

  Well, so what was it like when you? I mean, it sounds like you come from an educated family. Your dad was? Was your dad an engineer?

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was an engineer, electrical engineer. Yeah, they're, you know, typical, typical Asian family. Push education really hard on you. Nothing. You'd come back, you'd get an A on a test and 96%. My dad'd say, "Why didn't you get 100%?" You get 100%, my dad'd say, "Was there extra credit?" And if there was 90%, "All right, good job." You know?

• 20:06Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Yeah. And your siblings sound like they're hard chargers, too.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think we're all, um... Okay, one of the things that was always, you know, be grateful, work hard, right? Um, you know, don't give up the opportunity that's been set in front of you guys like, don't let that go to waste. And so that was something, you know, ingrained in us from my, my parents and then from my, so they grew up in South America and then, uh, yeah, so just a sense of, you know, gratefulness and work hard and be thankful for the opportunity. And, uh, what they would tell us is you won the lottery being born in the United States of America and didn't really appreciate that till I would say I saw more of the world and right, joined the Navy and saw the rest of the world and like, yeah, I think if you're born in the United States of America, you have absolutely won the lottery in a very positive way. So.

• 20:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. But you sound like kind of an outlier in your family.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, uh, in the sense that I, I wanted, you know, I joined, uh, the SEAL teams and, you know, um, I think that was, you know, different for them, but, um, they're all, yeah, yeah. I think they've always been, uh, my mom's always pushed like a lot of be confident, um, like an insane amount of confidence in her, her kids and, uh, you know, Brandon, if you want to go to the NBA, you can, which is completely unrealistic. I was like, Mom, there's no way, right? She's like, oh, if you put your mind to it. But, um, no, that, uh, I don't know, my, my brothers, my older brother started a company, he sold it, uh, uh, to Qualcomm, but I would say we're, we're all hard workers, we're very

• 21:43Speaker 03

  competitive, uh, people. And so, um, yeah, and then, yeah, just like to have fun, be grateful.

• 21:49Shawn Ryan?

  Let's work it out.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:51Shawn Ryan?

  So you go to, so you decided you're going to the Naval Academy in 10th grade?

• 21:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, in 10th grade. Uh, went up for something they do where they invite, yeah, uh, yeah, 10th graders. Um, it's between your 10th and 11th grade. It's called summer seminar. Saw that place was like, okay, this is like, it's pretty cool, right? It's different. Um, still wanted to be a SEAL. Um, yeah. And, uh, applied, got in and, um, yeah, it's a, you ever been?

• 22:19Shawn Ryan?

  No, I've never been there.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  It looks beautiful. It's pretty awful on the inside.

• 22:23Shawn Ryan?

  Is it?

• 22:25Speaker 03

  It's a, it's a military school. It is not a typical college experience. Like I, it's, um, It's you make a ton of great friends, just like you do. And you know, the SEAL teams, I have lifelong friends from that institution, just because you go through joint suffering together.

• 22:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, I mean, I've never been there. I don't really know much about it, but I will say that the the the Naval Academy alum seem to be very tight and tied in with each other. How I mean, just curious, I mean, how does that compare with the SEAL teams? It seems tighter after service.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  I actually, I'll tell you what, like, I actually

• 23:07Speaker 03

  the Harvard Business School Alumni Association, I think, is like, like ridiculous in terms of the tightness. And then, yeah, the Naval Academy, you know, I would say is they're like pretty good, right? Again, everybody's got those shared experiences where you you can understand the walk that they have taken in life. And then then, yeah, I would say the SEAL teams, I don't think we do the best job of like an alumni association. But I also, but I think we do a good job, just like trying to talk to each other, trying to like, I make myself available to any, you know, any veteran, but like team guys specifically, it's like, all right, you know, someone gives me a call, I'm picking up and or they want to talk, I'll talk to them. So I'm very big on vets, helping vets, team guys, helping team guys.

• 23:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, me too. Yeah, I wish there was more of it, to be honest with you.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:55Shawn Ryan?

  But, you know,

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, teams are, they don't want, people don't want to ask for help, right? And that's, I don't like the teams especially, right? It's like, I'm a team guy, I'll figure it out type mentality is probably why they don't, you know, aren't more active in that in that alumni sense.

• 24:12Shawn Ryan?

  And extremely competitive.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  Yes, and extremely.

• 24:15Shawn Ryan?

  Very competitive.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:16Shawn Ryan?

  But, you know, I'm curious, I mean, what is, what is the pathway from a Naval Academy guy to buds or the SEAL teams?

• 24:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, um.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  Your, your junior year, you're, you know, when I was there, you go through, they still do it. You go through a SEAL screener, right? And this is Friday night to Sunday morning. It's, it's a hell, hell night, a hell 48 hours, whatever it is. It's run by the SEAL on the yard. They bring in a bunch of SEALs from the East Coast to help run it. And along with the, the seniors who were selectees for the SEAL teams. You go through that.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  That is, I mean, I don't know, we probably started with 120 people and you finished that screener with like 40 people. And so it's very much, yeah, it's, it's no joke in that sense. Then, based on your performance, you can get a SEAL billet. And so they didn't have, like, they used to have something called mini buds. Now they have something different. When I was going through, I got to go spend three weeks with SEAL Team Two in May, which was awesome. And so went, spent three weeks with SEAL Team Two. Actually, you know, my fun fact was that's where I got to know Tim Sheehy, Senator Tim Sheehy. Him and I were on the same SEAL cruise together.

• 25:43Speaker 03

  He actually lived a floor below me at the Naval Academy, but got to know him really well on that SEAL, we call a SEAL cruise. It was an awesome three weeks. We did, you know, combatives, we did, they were doing the, like, aggressive driving course down at Blackwater. And I was like, this is amazing. And I can, you know, and so then you go back, your senior year, you put in like your final application, final, final PT scores. Get your letter of recs, like we had a letter of rec from SEAL Team Two, commanding officer. Actually.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Master Chief Jay Mantey, I don't know if he was a SEAL Team Two when you were there at the time. So yeah, CMC. But then, yeah, so you put in the applications, you go in for an interview. I, I like, I was competitive. I did not get a spot right out of the Naval Academy. Most soul crushing day of my life up to that point. Right? You take your 10 year old dream and like throw it in the trash. I remember like, you know, they, they, they do, they tell everybody what they're doing, right? You go into this room with your 40 classmates and they say, you're going to be a pilot, you're going to be, they give you an envelope, right? And you open it up. Open mine up. You're going to be a surface warfare

• 27:02Speaker 03

  officer. Was crushed devastated, went back to my room, skipped my afternoon classes. I think I cried in the shower for like half an hour. And I was like, all right. You know, after I was done feeling sorry for myself, which was like, get a day to feel sorry for yourself. I was like, okay, well, let's figure out how to, how to keep the dream alive. So went to the fleet and, you know, but yeah, then I had to laterally transfer. How was the fleet? Um, I tell people, look, combat, buds, the SEAL teams is the most mentally and physically challenging thing in the world, hardest thing in the world. I tell people being a surface

• 27:45Speaker 03

  warfare officer was a suck on my soul. It was a spiritual torment. No, and that's just because like I, right? If you've ever had a job that you didn't like, like when people say like, oh, I hate my job. I didn't like my job. Like I did not like, like that job was not for me. And it's not to say there's anything wrong with that job. It's just like, I could not relate to that job. Now I did that job extremely well. And that was my mentality. Like post, you know, my mentality after getting denied the SEAL teams was like, you know, after you go through all the excuses in your head, it's like, all right, why weren't you picked up? It's because you weren't number one, you weren't the best. And so that became

• 28:27Speaker 03

  my mentality. It's like I, to avoid ever having to experience that again, I better be number one. I better be the best. That way no one can never tell me no again. So that was my mentality going on to the ship. Got my surface work. We deployed. I gave up 30 days of leave right after I graduated. I was the first person naval academy class of 2008 graduated May 23rd. I boarded my ship in Phuket, Thailand on May 27th. And was in the Arabian Gulf, conducting amphibious operations in like mid-June. And learned a ton.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  Learned like best leaders, like learned the best leadership lessons actually in in the fleet. Was a hard job.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  But you know, I'm very thankful for like, it's funny how things work out in life. I'm like, I'm forever grateful for getting to experience that year and a half on a ship.

• 29:25Speaker 03

  And like, just, you know, yeah, the the resilience it built in me and like the mentality that it built in me. Whatever. Like, yeah, it's just funny how things work out.

• 29:36Shawn Ryan?

  So how do you get into the teams from there?

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, so put in an application.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  You know, best day of my life up to that point. I remember in a parking lot. Right out, you know, right on the pier, right next to the USS Pearl Harbor. And I get a phone call from the detailer. Her name was Margaret, the officer detailer. Like, she's a legend in the SEAL teams, like was the detailer for like 40 plus years. She's like, hey, Brandon, like, just to let you know, you've been, you know, selected to go to BUDS and we'll work with your ship. Your ship's admin to like get you orders there. And I was like, thank you so much. I hung up the phone and I was in my car and I was just like, let out like, you know, screams of joy. Like, I was pumped to go there. So.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:29Shawn Ryan?

  How was it checking in?

• 30:31Speaker 03

  Um, it was awesome. I loved BUDS. Like, to the point, like, you're coming from the fleet to like, going to BUDS.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  It was, um. Yeah, I is one, I think it's. I love the ruthlessness of BUDS. I love the humor of BUDS. The instructors are the funniest people on the face of the planet. Like, I. I loved every second of it. Um, like it just not be like, that's where I wanted to be. And so like even in hell week, like I remember like USS Pearl Harbor was out on uh, the water. And I'm just like, oh my God. Like I'm not on that ship. Like, thank you. Blessed to be here. Blessed to be getting surf tortured. So. You don't remember. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, no, it was, it was great.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  What kind of, uh, I mean, do you have any tough time at BUDs at all? Do you have any hangups? Um, yeah. Uh, like there's always one thing I think for like everybody, even if like someone does things well. And this is the wild one. I, I had a, the tread took me four times, which like I'm embarrassed to say as a water polo player. All my water polo friends from the academy who were, uh, you know, SEAL officers also, they're like, what the hell is wrong with you? Why can't you tread the water? I was like, dude, I have no idea. Tread with the tanks? Yeah, tread with the tanks, right? Your hands out with the fins. And it was treading with the fins, which I think was like, it's a different motion.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  Um, and so, yeah, the instructors were baffled too. Cause look, I was coming in like first, second place on every swim. Um, and they're like, what the hell is wrong with you, Sang? Like you are a water polo player. And so anyways, I end up, you know, getting it on my fourth try. Actually, I was underwater and the instructors were like, come to the side. I'm like, I wasn't like, I wasn't sure. Like if they're like, you failed or not. And it's like, my head's underwater and hands are up. Um, they're like, get over to the side and like finally like ran out of breath. They're like, all right. And then you have to like swim across and like, you know,

• 32:40Speaker 03

  was dead doing it. Get out though. Like congrats, Sang, you passed, you know, uh, took you four tries. And I was like, and they're like, you know what you get for having, you know, you being a water polo player and it taking you four tries? I was like, what do I get? They're like, 1,008 counts. Go get it. And I just hopped on the pool deck and started doing 1,008 counts. You know, for the next whatever, two hours. So, yeah. Right on. Let's, we gotta cover hell week. Everybody wants to hear about hell week. So let's, let's hear about your experience in hell week. Yeah. Um, let's see, hell week one, uh,

• 33:19Speaker 03

  Loved the beginning, right? Loved Sunday night, loved breakout. Then like you get into it, right? I think it's Monday night, you feel really sorry for yourself. And at least that's what like I think it, I think it hits like 24 hours that high wears off and you're like, okay, I've been doing this 24 hours. You feel sorry for yourself. And I remember one of my friends was a brown shirt rollback, right? And so he's supporting and I just ran by, like I'm running to like Chow or whatever. And I was like, Joe, like, is this as crappy as it gets? He's like, yeah, brother, just keep moving forward. I was like, all right, good. But like, you know, that's when, yeah, I want to say majority of the class quits

• 34:03Speaker 03

  that Monday night because people are feeling sorry for themselves. Second thing that I would call out. So like after that, like then you get into the groove and like, you're just like moving forward. I love, I don't think people talk about like how ruthless it is under a boat with people. One of the things I loved was like seeing boat crews kick their, the underperformers out and like just the viciousness of it. Like when you like, you see someone ducking boat and like, like their teammates would just punch them in the back of the head and they would like fall over. Like, I don't think like, it is like, if you're not carrying your load, the instructors don't have to do anything, right? Your classmates are going to take care

• 34:44Speaker 03

  of you. So I love that aspect of it. Wednesday night was, I think it's Wednesday. Yeah, it's, we did camp surf. And I like, I don't know if people, that was, that to me was the worst evolution. So it was, you know, one in the morning and for four hours, there's like the wind is blowing, it's probably like 50 degrees outside, you're soaking wet. And we're digging a trench with our paddles. And every minute on the minute for four hours, we go hit the surf. And your body is so saturated with like salt water, so chafed. Every single time you jump

• 35:26Speaker 03

  in that water, it was like shock therapy. It was like a million needles, just like. Crushing my body to the point where you don't, right after Hellwick, you'd never want to get into the ocean again. It's because you have this like, like this, you were just tortured into recognizing, like, it's not comfortable getting in that water. So that's what I remember. And then fun thing we did around the world where you're on the boats around the entire San Diego or Coronado Peninsula. And one of the instructors brought out a boombox and they played the techno hit around the world, like around the world, around the world for the entirety of that, like 10 hour evolution.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  To the point where like, at one point, the music stopped and he goes, oh shit, like we ran out batteries, I'll be back. He paddles back, like comes back, you know, 30 minutes later with it, but he's like, I got new batteries, boys. And like, puts it on and you're just like listening it to again. So then I will say like, again, I love the instructor cadre. Matty Roberts was our first phase instructor. That guy is, yeah.

• 36:38Shawn Ryan?

  Guy's an animal.

• 36:39Speaker 03

  He is, uh, yeah, like one of the cool, you know, yeah, he, he told us, uh, he's like, look, if you guys are here after Hellwick, I'll tell you how I got the silver star and like told us that story. And to have that, you know, one of the things, again, amazing people, right? But that's your first phase instructor. A lot of people don't know, like he was nominated for the Medal of Honor and like you get to learn from that person. Like, how cool is that, right? And like, that is the guy who's putting you through the gauntlet. Like, I loved every moment of it. So, yeah.

• 37:12Shawn Ryan?

  So what did it feel like, you know, to graduate BUDS and SQT? I mean, when you, when you finally got your Trident?

• 37:19Speaker 03

  Um, it feels, it feels good, right? It's a good accomplishment. And then I would claim, like, the real work starts, right? And it's like, you know, I think the, the teams do a good job of that. It's like, look, congratulations, you know, um, you've, you've made it to the community. And now like, it doesn't get easier. It gets faster, it gets harder. Uh, the expectations are real. We're no longer in, you know, training environments. Um, you're, you're getting ready to go to war. Um, and so, uh, loved that. Again, I checked in SEAL Team Seven. Um, actually, you know, like one thing that I also Again, I don't think a lot of people appreciate this, at least, you know, probably the same for you when you guys were like going through it.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  But you, you experience just like in that community, you see a lot of death. Like more than any, like I've been to more, right? You go to a ton of memorials, like a lot of funerals. And you just, that's something that I don't think the public realizes like, oh, it's 21, 22, 23 year old. Young men are just, you know, in those first couple of years going to a ton. The week before we graduated SQT extortion happened.

• 38:34Speaker 03

  And one of our classmates, Brock, his brother Heath was on that airplane, right? And so it's like very real, you know, we check into SEAL Team 7. I think it's Mike Tatham, he, you know, was, you know, he died in R and R. You know, but he was deployed to Afghanistan during that time. And so you're just like, you're like, I thought that was kind of, you know, when I reflect back and think about it, that's something I don't think. Like thankful to be part of the teams, but a lot of people don't get to, you know, that's like one of the things that I think helps. Shape you as like a young man being around, you know, all of, you know, war, death, all of it.

• 39:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. What was it like checking into seven for you?

• 39:20Speaker 03

  Um, it was good. Again, those guys were deployed and so we had like two months of, I was going to schools. I went to tier one off-road, which was cool. Got to learn how to drive off-road vehicles. And then when the team got back, they're reorganizing. That's when I got to go deploy with, I got to augment development group. And so, and then, you know, after Pro Dev hit ULT and, yeah, that was a ton of fun, too.

• 39:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So you, you check in and you go right into. A dev group deployment.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, so.

• 39:58Shawn Ryan?

  And that is, that's like winning the lottery too.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, exactly. And, and, um, you know, can cover down on that. Um, but, uh, so to be clear, not part of SEAL Team Six, but, uh, got to augment them. Um, the SEAL Teams were sending junior officers out to basically get experience. Um, and so I spent, uh, three and a half months in Afghanistan,

• 40:24Speaker 03

  out of FOB Shank, uh, and, uh, Bagram. Um, and so I got to augment the troop that had killed, uh, Bin Laden. And I tell people like, look, I was like basically the squire, uh, for the ground force commander. But during that time, got to learn, it was a masterclass in ISR and targeting. The troop would go out in the night and conduct direct action raids. And then during the day, we were conducting kinetic strikes. And that's where, you know, I, I got to play, uh, you know, a really nice role as a junior officer, just coordinating those airstrikes, which was a lot of fun.

• 40:57Shawn Ryan?

  Did you get to go on any of the hits or?

• 40:59Speaker 03

  Didn't get to go on any of the hits, um, which was, you know, I get it, right? It's like those guys train up with, uh, you're a new guy, right? You're, you earn your way onto that, onto that mission. And I was a fresh Navy SEAL with a month and a half of, you know, at the team. And so, um, no, I didn't get to go with them.

• 41:21Shawn Ryan?

  What, um, so coming back, I mean, to see, to see the pinnacle of the SEAL Teams, like the pinnacle, especially with that, with, with who you deployed with, you know, year after the Bin Laden raid, I mean,

• 41:35Shawn Ryan?

  did that, did that create some, uh,

• 41:43Shawn Ryan?

  false expectations?

• 41:45Speaker 03

  Um, it's a good, like, yes.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  Like, right, a couple of times, my platoon commander, my chief commander, like Brandon, like, yeah, we're not, we're not damn neck, right? We're not DevGru. Like, we, we get those guys, only go out at night, right? Why, why are we going out during the day, guys? They're like, look, we gotta seize Tehran, this is our mission. So fortunately, on my deployment to Afghanistan with my platoon, we had a ton of air assets. So that remained the same. But that was a very unique thing for my, for like, our CLOmen in Afghanistan. But it wasn't, it wasn't to the point where I think it was, it was just part of that learning curve, right? I had seen what, you know, the top tier was doing. And then it's like, okay, like, look,

• 42:32Speaker 03

  it's a different mission, is kind of like what it was at the end of the day. It's not that, it's just like, you have to solve that mission differently than what DevGru was doing with their mission set. So, understanding that was, I think, like, you know, very quick to understand that one, like, look, like, this isn't, we have a different mission than DevGru. This is how, how we have to execute said mission. Where did you go? Where was your first, first deployment? So, first deployment was out of Taran Kow, Arusgon, multinational-based Taran Kow, sort of southeast. We would do helicopter assault force operations into Kandahar, into Arusgon, into Ghazni, into Zavol. And then we forward stage out of Ghazni, sometimes

• 43:17Speaker 03

  going, I want to say Paktika and Paktia. And gotta go, our mission was, we were paired up with the Eighth Commando Battalion, Eighth Kandak, Afghan Commandos, 900 Commando Battalion, every single mission at that time in the war. It was a 10 to 1 force ratio. We had to bring 10 Afghans out for every single operation. And so, we would bring 13, 14 guys and 130 Afghans. Holy shit. Yeah. Talk about like, moving pieces on the battlefield. Wow. Yeah. What'd you think about working with those guys?

• 43:57Speaker 03

  Uh, it was, nah, not, I did not, like, there's pros, there's cons. I would say, like, overall, I didn't enjoy it, right? It was, when you go out with that many inexperienced guys, it makes the mission more dangerous. It was very clear to us that, that, like...

• 44:19Speaker 03

  Probably like eighty-five percent of them didn't want to be there. Those guys would sit down in front of like target compounds in front of the fatal funnel. Like they they didn't value like, you know, self-preservation. And so now, again, there's probably like you bring one hundred and thirty out, there's like fifteen hard chargers and like you use those fifteen hard chargers. But it was, I appreciated the challenge and the complexity of the operations, multi-day village clearances. It was cool. We got all the air assets in the world, right? Our mission was, you know, hey, this is two thousand thirteen. America's not going to be here forever. Like, we have to train the commandos to stand up on their own. And so

• 45:04Speaker 03

  that was an interesting mission set. But we were also at that point, twelve years into a war, and it was clear to us, like, look, this is, right, it was like, don't get yourself killed, was like, kind of a mentality. Over, over this uncertainty was something that we thought about, like, get the mission done, don't get yourself killed. And like, yeah, take it to the enemy when when they show up. Was it pretty hairy out there at the time? Um, I don't think it was hairy. No, like, we got into some good firefights, which I'm like thankful for and like, I'm glad the team like had that deployment. And we got a rack up, like, some of the guys got to rack up some E K I A and I get credit

• 45:49Speaker 03

  for like some JTAC kills. But I think it's like one quarter or whatever. But the Let's hear about it. Now, the the JTAC stuff, let's see, there's this one, just like a, this was

• 46:06Speaker 03

  got our new JTACs, right? We have experienced JTAC, new JTAC, new JTAC, the lead JTAC on this operation. And I'm working with them. And there's this guy that's taking, you know, potshots at us, from probably like

• 46:21Speaker 03

  1300 meters away from a mountain, right? And it's like, hard to find them. They're moving. And it's indirect fires, right? Um, but we're like, all right, let's bring on C-130. Uh, and, um, drop some ordnance on this guy. And, uh, turns out the C-130 had not doped in their, their 30 mic, mic and like, uh, and so they're shooting at this guy. And we have a rover feed where we can see and rounds are just missing him. And the guy is running. Um, and he runs and like, are my, the new JTAC, I'm like, I'm like, what's going? And he's like, they keep missing. Like, why are

• 47:01Speaker 03

  they missing? And the, like, right? Cause he wants to take out this bad guy. Um, they, uh, he runs probably for about four and a half minutes, just like smoke going everywhere, like rounds coming in on him. Um, finally they drop a, I want to say it's called a Griffin GB39. Uh, it's a glide bomb. Um, cause the guy like stops under a tree, uh, and tries to like hide under the tree, but we, we had him on IR footage. And so that was, that was an interesting one. So, um, yeah, it was new JTAC's first, you know, JTAC kill. And so, yeah.

• 47:40Shawn Ryan?

  That was your first one?

• 47:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

• 47:43Shawn Ryan?

  How did that feel?

• 47:44Speaker 03

  Ah, indifferent. I'm like, yeah, I was, I just wanted to honestly, like, I just wanted the team to complete the mission. So.

• 47:52Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Where do you go from Afghanistan?

• 47:56Speaker 03

  Um, so let's see. Uh, while I'm in Afghanistan, my orders were to go, I want to say it was the SEAL Team Two. I had orders to go to the East Coast. Um, during that deployment, I get an email, uh, from one of my SQT classmates, another officer at SEAL Team Five. So say, Brandon, you want to hop on the phone? I was like, cool. So I hop on the phone from Afghanistan. He's in Coronado. He's like, hey, I've got family issues. Um, I have to step down from my platoon commander bill at Team Five. Um, he's like, do you want to take it? And, uh, I was like, oh, that sounds like awesome. Like, like, all right, I'll get to go right into a workup. Uh, or like, yeah, I was like, what's the catch? She's like, you're going to go right into a workup. And so I call my wife, said, hey, hon, we, um,

• 48:44Speaker 03

  We can either go to the East Coast, right? And like make that move and go through a pro dev cycle and do a ULT into a deployment. I was like, or we can stay in San Diego. And but here's the catch is like, I'm home for a week and then rotating right into ULT. And I was like, what do you want to do? And so she said, like, hey, let's, you know, like, she's like, I'm down for staying in San Diego. If you are, I was like, yeah, that sounds great. So got home, checked into SEAL Team Five, ULT started, so off to the races. I think out of a for two, I tracked this because actually the teams were making us track it at the time. Two years in a row, I was gone 300 days out of 365 days.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  Wow. Yeah. And I was, my wife's like, this isn't normal. I was like, I don't know. All our friends are doing it. It seems pretty normal. She's like, no, it's not. I was like, all right. So, um, but yeah, so checked into SEAL Team Five, did the workup, deployed to the Pacific. What are you guys doing over there? Um,

• 49:52Speaker 03

  there was a lot of joint partner operations during the time. So I think like, we were like, we sent a lot of people to the, yeah, the joint exercises. We sent Element to Korea, sent Element to the Philippines, sent Element to the Maldives, like all over the place. I personally, we went to, I went to Vietnam, I went to Singapore. We did the POTUS detail in Hawaii for President Obama, augmenting Secret Service. That was pretty cool. Yeah, it was, it was a really cool experience. All right, Don. Why did you get out?

• 50:34Speaker 03

  Um, I wanted like a number of like a whole host of reasons. I wanted to do something else. Um, I wanted to see like what could be done outside of the confines of the military. And I don't mean that like in a negative way, big, very blessed, excited, like I would encourage everybody actually, like I think the amount of accountability and responsibility you get in the military, like at such a young age is like one of the most amazing things. I would encourage people to do it, but I wanted to see like what could be done outside of a military system. Um, I knew what the career path looked like for officers. Um, like in the sense, right? It's like, okay, I, you could, I would have to go do an ops job

• 51:17Speaker 03

  before I could go screen and then you go screen, you be a troop commander and like you get, uh, you know, maybe one or two more pumps. Um, and then you're commanding and, you know, and then you're doing another staff job and then like a group commanding, like again, I got a lot of friends who are doing that. I just was not, you know, commanding a SEAL team was not something that I, I aspired to do. Um, I was like, I absolutely aspired to be a SEAL platoon commander, but, um, you know, I was interested in other things. So, yeah, wasn't happy how things were going in Afghanistan. That was, you know, um, yeah.

• 51:57Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know a whole lot of people that were.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. So.

• 52:02Shawn Ryan?

  So, shield AI, I mean, that, that, that popped on your, I mean, you wanted to do something before you left.

• 52:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. So again, kind of like a planner mentality. I, um,

• 52:16Speaker 03

  right? Want to be a SEAL since I was 10 years old. When I got accepted into business school, I was on deployment. I was based out of Guam. Um, and I was trying to figure out what I want to do next. Um, was it, hey, was I gonna do venture capital? Was I gonna do private equity? Was I gonna do hedge funds? Um, I was very like inspired by entrepreneurs. Uh, my dad was a small business, became a small business owner at age 50. My brother had sold, uh, a wireless power company to Qualcomm. Uh, I watched him, he was like 24 years old. Um, and so I had those like role models in my life and, um, I so eventually landed on and I think that fit my skill set, right? Leading teams, building culture.

• 53:01Speaker 03

  And so wanted to do something entrepreneurial. Was really interested in AI and autonomy, just as an engineer. That was, you know, of interest to me, like always followed technology. I remember, you know, thinking like, wow, would it would have been this 2014? I was like, it would have been really cool to have been part of that internet wave of companies. Like what's going to be the next wave like AI and autonomy is what I decided. And like lots of people were talking about it at the time. And then was trying to figure out what problems I wanted to solve. And typical entrepreneur story just kept coming back to the problems that I had faced.

• 53:42Speaker 03

  Right? Problems of military problems, problems of national security, global stability. You know, decided, you know what? These are actually really important problems. And I remember again, looked up to look, look up to Elon Musk as an entrepreneur. And he has done a lot of interstellar space travel. You have XAI, you had PayPal for, he didn't have XAI at the time, but he had PayPal for the internet. And I was like, what problems is he not working on? That are like actually really important for the future of humanity. And I warfare is like one of those like massive unsolved problems in human history. And so it's like, wow, is there, you know, could work on solving, you know, call it the problem of warfare.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  It was something that I was interested in also.

• 54:29Shawn Ryan?

  What, what, what problems specifically in warfare were you looking to solve?

• 54:35Speaker 03

  One of like deterrence, right? Like, and if you look at, um, why countries go to war, like why they don't go to war? Cause there are a lot of countries have grievances with each other, but they choose not to fight. Right? It's expensive, it's costly. And if you look at how America and has built this world order. It's like. It's because of our military leadership since, you know, 1945, um, right? For the past 80 years, there's been more global prosperity in the world because there's been more global stability in the world. That has been because of like the power projection of the US military. That's, um, right? Nuclear weapons deter nuclear war.

• 55:20Speaker 03

  The conventional weapon systems that have deterred conventional warfare have been our aircraft carriers, our submarines, our ships. Those have deterred largely state on state conflict up until, right? And up until Russia invading Ukraine, um, like major state on state conflict. Obviously there have been a handful of small examples. But it became, um, you know, it like, how can you continue to deter warfare just at the conventional level? And then also at the asymmetric level? And, you know, my belief is that AI and autonomy has a massive, uh, role to play in deterring conflict.

• 56:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, I would, um, we're going to get heavy into that. I would love to hear what you think the future of warfare looks like and if, if pilots, people on ships, commandos are obsolete.

• 56:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:16Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that a little bit later, but before we get too far into SHIELD AI, let's, let's take a quick break.

• 56:24Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 56:27Shawn Ryan?

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• 59:01Speaker 03

  Damn it!

• 59:04Shawn Ryan?

  If you've enjoyed watching, there is a lot more waiting for you over at Vigilance Elite Patreon.

• 59:12Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Brandon, we're back from the break. I need to work on my shooting. That was a little rough out there, but-

• 59:17Speaker 03

  Good break.

• 59:18Shawn Ryan?

  Good time, right?

• 59:19Speaker 03

  I mean, it was a little rough for me, too, but...

• 59:23Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, so I want to get into, you know, why you're here, Shield AI. So you started it in 2015?

• 59:30Speaker 03

  2015.

• 59:31Shawn Ryan?

  What was the vision?

• 59:33Speaker 03

  Um, look, I, uh, I believe in a world of autonomous systems. Um, I think they're gonna have a profound impact on humanity. Um, I, like, as it relates to the defense world, I just fundamentally believe that, um, autonomous systems are, like, swarms of autonomous systems are gonna be the most strategic conventional deterrent uh, of the 21st century. Um, and I think it's important for the US to lead, uh, here, and so wanted to start a company that realized, uh, this vision. I think there, there are, there are a couple people talking about it in 2014, Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, but, you know, what I was seeing was no one was really working on it, because it requires a lot of software expertise to actually

• 1:00:18Speaker 03

  build the AI and autonomy, and that's not what the traditional defense primes are known for. Uh, they're not known for their software systems. They're known for building the aircraft carriers, the submarines, the, the fighter jets of the world. Uh, but, you know, the best of AI and autonomy was all going to Silicon Valley at the time.

• 1:00:37Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what, so what is, I mean, I know you guys have a bunch of different projects, but, you know, what, what, overall, what is Shield AI?

• 1:00:46Speaker 03

  Um, so, uh, mission is to protect service members and civilians with artificial intelligence systems. In pursuit of this mission, we have been building and proliferating the world's best AI pilot. Easiest way to think about an AI pilot is self-driving technology for unmanned systems. Why is that important? It enables unmanned systems to operate without GPS, without communications, or while GPS or communications are jammed. Um, it enables them to operate without a remote pilot, and then it enables them, uh, enables the concept of swarming or teaming, uh, where they are able to share information with each other, read and react, and work together as a team.

• 1:01:27Shawn Ryan?

  And the, and so these, all the different stuff that you're making, the, these aren't piloted from somebody in Nevada or, or?

• 1:01:35Speaker 03

  No, they're, the, they are piloted by an onboard autonomy stack, an AI pilot. And the same, like, again, it's, if you've ever driven a Tesla or been in a Waymo where it's just navigating the streets, executing the mission of dropping you off from point A to point B, making decisions about what to do, same type of technology, uh, but for military applications.

• 1:01:59Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, damn. So, I mean, so what was the, I mean, that, that's like, it's just a huge

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Shawn Ryan?

  thing to take on, especially, you know, coming out of the SEAL teams. I mean, where, where do you even start with that idea?

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  Um, look, I think you start, you actually start with like the vision, right? And I asked myself, um, and then you work backwards from there. But, you know, in 2015, I asked myself, uh, what does the military of 2035 look like? And what is the role that AI and autonomy plays? I decided that AI and autonomy should be powering, commanding, maneuvering every single military asset under the sun. Um, and then you say, okay, well, how do we get there? Uh, like in BUDs, like in the SEAL teams, just one step at a time. Um, and so we started with a problem that I was super familiar with, clearing buildings. Uh, of threats. Um, and so our first product, we put an AI pilot on a quadcopter.

• 1:03:02Speaker 03

  Uh, and it would go inside buildings and structures completely autonomously, uh, looking for threats.

• 1:03:08Shawn Ryan?

  No shit, completely autonomously.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:03:10Shawn Ryan?

  Has that been deployed?

• 1:03:12Speaker 03

  It has been deployed to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, um, Ukraine. Uh, it's been widely deployed. Um, it's been used, like, I'm super proud of, of the product. The quadcopter market for the military back in two thousand fifteen to like two thousand. Honestly, like maybe even now is, it was a very small market. Um, so, but like the mission impact that we got to have, like, I'm very proud of. You know, the best of the best soft forces have used it on operations. It has absolutely brought guys home back safely to their families. Uh, super proud of that product. Couldn't build a large business from just that product and so had to expand.

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  Um, and we executed climbing the aviation, uh, food chain, which led us to, you know, autonomous F-16s, autonomous V-bats. Um, and, uh, uh, and now it's like, we're just making, like, we're working with every prime contractor to make their systems autonomous.

• 1:04:08Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, wow. I mean, what, what is it? I mean, so, you know, the, the, one of the interesting things about autonomous warfare or, you know, drones specifically is, is it's everything from clearing a building. I don't know if they have weapons capabilities on these, uh, quadcopters or not, do they?

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  Uh, they, like, we would not ship it with them, but folks have, um, figured out like how to strap their own things. But that's not like, we don't even make these quadcopters anymore, uh, cause we've had to folk like, in the same way Tesla doesn't make a sports car anymore. Um, we were used as a stepping stone to get to other markets, but, um, other folks have put things on these quadcopters.

• 1:04:52Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's, it's everything from, like I said, the small quadcopter that's clearing buildings to. I mean, the latest thing that you've made, I think, is with 2,000 miles, 2,000 mile range.

• 1:05:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Shawn Ryan?

  Help maneuvering in F-35.

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it weighs about 18,000 pounds. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:09Shawn Ryan?

  And that's just wild to even think about.

• 1:05:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Shawn Ryan?

  So, I mean, what, what's it like, you know, seeing your product, your innovation get implemented into the SEAL teams where you came from?

• 1:05:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, it was, it's like, what I care most about, it's not like the size of the company, it's not the valuation. It truly is like when our products make an impact for our customers, the warfighter, at the end of the day. That's when like, I get, you know, the hair stands up on my arms still, um, every single time, like, it doesn't matter. And like, the, the cool thing at this stage in the game is that is happening at increasing frequency. Um, and so I remember, look, we did a really cool test, I want to say this was back in 2017. The, the SEAL teams actually, they filmed it, they called it the John Henry test, because man versus machine. Um, and they sent the quadcopter into a house clearing problem, um, down at La Posta.

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  Uh, and, uh, they gave a SEAL squad the exact same problem. Um, quadcopter, right, and like, solve the, solve the problem faster. And at the end of this problem, this house clearing problem, there's a houseborne NID, which was like a way for the SEAL teams to say like, yeah, it doesn't matter. Like, that's, you know, you cleared the, the building, but you still get blown up. Um, and so seeing the reaction from the guys after that, they're like, okay, like, I can see why this is like a valuable capability. Um, even with all its flaws, and it had a lot of flaws back in 2017, 2018 timeframe, but they took it overseas, found utility out of it. Um, and so, you know, I was very proud of that product and actually working a lot with the, the army also was probably even a bigger user of the product than

• 1:06:49Speaker 03

  uh, the SEAL teams were. And again, this was like, early days innovation, holy smokes, the team must have been like 40 people at this stage in the game. Um, but like, again, proud of, like, no one had ever seen this thing before, no one, a lot of people had talked about autonomous systems, they put it in their 10, 15 year roadmap, and here it was completely, you know, going through these house clearing problems by itself.

• 1:07:13Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, I mean, do you, are you on site when they're, when these exercises are going on or?

• 1:07:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, we were, um, we were working hand in hand with these guys.

• 1:07:21Shawn Ryan?

  So, so what's it like when you see? Something that you've innovated, something that you've developed, outperform the same community that you came from. I mean, is there a lot of pushback? I would think that

• 1:07:38Shawn Ryan?

  it's taken a job, right? And so a job that, that there's a lot of, I mean, there's a lot of sweat, blood, tears, dedication, drive that goes, I mean, we just talked about, you know, your, your pipeline into the SEAL teams. I mean, it's, it's, you know what I'm, there's a lot of passion to become a SEAL and then to, to have you show up with a drone. That's like, watch this.

• 1:08:03Speaker 03

  Um, like, so one, it augments a mission. I don't want to say it takes a job. And I think everybody understands that. And the, and the thing that I think a lot of folks understood in the SEAL teams and SOCOM writ large was, hey, this thing, like, close quarters combat is a really cool thing to train to. It's a lot of fun doing it. It's also like one of the most dangerous things that a soldier, a SOF warrior like does in terms of a mission. And so like, again, clearing buildings, clearing tunnels, it sounds really cool until you start taking fire from the other side. And you say, look, how, is there a better way to do this? And that's where I think SOF has been a great partner, not just like from the quadcopter,

• 1:08:46Speaker 03

  but all the way up to like all of our products. Cause they're always asking the question like, is there a better way to do this? And so that's been just like a positive mentality. But yeah, it was, it was, it was fun doing the tests, the exercises. Again, they were great partners. Their innovation cell working directly with us. Very proud of like what we accomplished. But at the same time, like very is at small scale. And that's why we had to figure out how to like, build other products because they're just, not a lot of people unfortunately care about the SOF, you know, fighter or like the infantry soldiers. There's just, it pales in comparison in terms of like the amount of funding that's going towards other capabilities.

• 1:09:32Shawn Ryan?

  So was there, was there any, I mean, did they implement it immediately or did they?

• 1:09:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, they took, they took it over.

• 1:09:40Speaker 03

  To the battlefield, they used it, right? And you get feedback, right? It sucked in this scenario. Why wasn't it working here? And like, that's when like, team would solve bugs, solve problems, send it back, we fixed this. They'd use it, you know, again, it was successful in a lot of operations, unsuccessful in some, and that's just like the name of the game in terms of like, early stage, highly technical products. But yeah, again, what I'm like, I'm very proud of that product, because 100% used on some of the most important missions that this country does, and 100%, you know, brought guys back home safely to their families. And so I can't, like, can't go into those missions, but missions where H bids went off, S vests went off,

• 1:10:24Speaker 03

  those types of missions where it's like, if there had been guys inside that building, you know, like, we all know what that looks like. So, or you and I know what that looks like.

• 1:10:31Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. So you're always getting direct feedback from the field on how these things are going?

• 1:10:36Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:10:36Shawn Ryan?

  Can you talk about, if you can't talk about the specific missions and what they were for, I mean, can you talk about some of the, some of the, the successes and failures that you saw? The product doing?

• 1:10:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, just simply, it would, it would go inside these buildings, in terms of like, the S vest world, right? People were actually, drones had been hunting bad guys for 20 plus years, and all of a sudden, they, right, the Americans show up with a drone that goes inside buildings. And so, we have seen terrorists see this thing come inside a building and clack themselves off.

• 1:11:08Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 1:11:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:11Shawn Ryan?

  What were some of the failures? What were some of the things?

• 1:11:13Speaker 03

  You'd have trouble in like, highly dusty conditions. Our first generation product used the LiDAR, our first generation quadcopter. And so, LiDAR, when you're operating in dusty areas, it spins up a lot of, you know, particle sand in the air. And every single time that LiDAR is scanning, it's getting a reflection back from that dust. And so, that caused a lot of challenges, a lot of headaches in the early days, because simply, you know, that's where our customer was operating in these. Dusty desert-like environments where people lived in mud huts or there's just sand and you know or there's war zones where there's just like dust everywhere. And then when you fly a

• 1:11:55Speaker 03

  quadcopter that's spinning up all that dust, that would be a challenge. Going through really small doorways and tunnel systems was another challenge because when you like the wind vortices that these things are like when they're flying, it's sucking them into the wall because you're flying in such close proximity. And so that's just like a controls challenge that we had to solve. But those are like some of the headaches and problems that you have to solve where the customer uses it. They're like, oh, what the hell? It doesn't work, right? Customer at the end of the day just wants their product to work. And so the other good thing about that soft customer is that like they are, they're a very demanding customer, but they're also like

• 1:12:38Speaker 03

  understanding of where a product is and its maturity lifecycle.

• 1:12:42Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Interesting. I mean, how small are these things?

• 1:12:46Speaker 03

  Uh, these things were about two and a half pounds this big. Yeah. Size like it fit through a standard doorway. That was one of our product requirements.

• 1:12:53Shawn Ryan?

  So what would, what would, I mean, how would it be implemented? I mean, we were just talking about, you know, doing hits and all this stuff. And so

• 1:13:01Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:13:01Shawn Ryan?

  What exactly in the soft world? Cause that's all I can relate to.

• 1:13:05Speaker 03

  It was primarily used in call out operations. So right. It wasn't going to be used in a dynamic like HR mission or anything like that. But like when you have a deliberate target where you're executing a call out, where right, you can think of like for, for the non-military audience, like the FBI surrounding a house, like come out with your hands up, right? There's pros and cons to executing an operation that way. But during those types of operations, you execute a call out, right? People will come out of the building. It's like, well, let's go make sure everybody's out of the building. You send a quadcopter in or you send the quadcopter in first, those types of operations.

• 1:13:40Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. Damn. I mean,

• 1:13:47Shawn Ryan?

  What I mean, what, what did that, what did that wind up developing into? What was the next product?

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. So a couple of things. One, to the point where like, recognize really quickly that, hey, this market is vicious, small. Everybody thinks of quadcopters as toys. This is again, back in 2018, 1920, like, there's not real money flowing towards these quadcopter products. We said, hey, we have to figure out how to um, get on to more strategic, more, uh, yeah, strategic platforms, uh, strategic capabilities. Um, that's where a lot of the defense dollars were moving. So what we ended up doing was during the time, um, we decided, hey, we have to, we're gonna, we're gonna buy, uh, another platform. Um, so made that decision

• 1:14:36Speaker 03

  in late 2019, 2020, there was a couple of acquisition targets that we were looking at. Uh, ended up in 2021, buying two companies, both at the same time. Uh, one of the companies, Martin UAV, they made the Vbat. The other company, Heron Systems, they were working on AI and autonomy for fighter jets. Um, and so, um, what we were able to do is, hey, let's put the AI pilot on the Vbat, which is, again, you think of it as like a miniature Predator Reaper drone. Um, and then, you know, we wanted access to these programs where we could put AI pilots on to fighter aircraft.

• 1:15:12Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, so we'll get into the fighter aircraft here in a little bit, but I mean, how do these things? How do they think? I mean, is it literally like to the quadcopter all the way up to the, you just called it the Xbat?

• 1:15:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, yeah.

• 1:15:27Shawn Ryan?

  You know, how, is it just, you switch it on and point it in the right direction?

• 1:15:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. So for, for the quadcopter, there was a button on the side. You press it, it like, spin its rotors and like, take off from your hand and like, go inside the buildings. The way that like, it works from a technical perspective, and like, this is a simplification of it, but there's a series of software modules in every self-driving car or humanoid robot is working like this. Um, it, and like every one of Shield AI's products is working like this. Uh, the software modules that make up this AI pilot or this autonomy stack, uh, you have a state estimation module. State estimation is like, where in the world am I? You have a mapping module. It builds a map. You have a controls module. You have, right, that's like how to actuate motors.

• 1:16:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, your, your steering mechanisms. You have

• 1:16:22Speaker 03

  a reasoning model, what we call global reasoning. You can think of this as like the mission is the mission to go inside a building and clear out of threats is the mission to dogfight F16s is the mission to find surface air missile systems, like what the mission is. That's what the reasoning module is. Then you have like a path planning module, which is like, okay, what are the steps that I'm going to take to execute said mission? So those are the different software modules that make up an autonomy stack. The way that, you know, it operates without GPS, right? It's building a map of the room, its environment, whether it's using cameras, whether it's using LiDAR, whether it's using radars to basically

• 1:17:05Speaker 03

  build a map of its environment. And then it's estimating its position based on the map that it's built. Again, I think a lot of people try to like overcomplicate autonomous systems. At the end of the day, like you and I, we are autonomous systems and we operate the same way these, these robots do in the sense that we sense the world with our, you know, five senses, then we think about the world using our brain and then we actuate our, our muscles supported by our skeleton to maneuver around the world. When we come into this room, like we don't think about it this way, but like we've made a map of this room in our head and we can now navigate off of this map. I know that wall is, you know, 10 feet away. This wall is eight feet away, right? You're six

• 1:17:48Speaker 03

  feet from me. This, these autonomous systems are doing the exact same thing. And just like we learn from our experiences, these things are learning from their experiences. How do they, how do they learn from their experiences? Yeah. So one of the principal ways that we like developed a methodology called reinforcement learning. And so this was pioneered, there's probably like academic papers, I would say, like it became pretty famous with like AlphaGo, AlphaStar, where it was, they would put these AlphaGo, you know, beat a world champion at the game of Go, right? It's any reinforcement learning is really.

• 1:18:29Speaker 03

  And a good learning methodology when the number of variables or outcomes are massive, right? And they they multiple like trillions of outcomes, right? And which I couldn't bring up what the outcomes of the game of Go are, but right? It's, you know, it's almost uncountable. Yeah. Right? Same thing with like the game of Starcraft, which was Alpha Star. It's like the number of like moves are uncountable in terms of like the number of scenarios. That's where you find something like reinforcement learning really shine, right? In the real world, the number of moves that you have are uncountable. And so what you're doing is you're

• 1:19:09Speaker 03

  taking, you know, you'll you basically give it a goal and then behaviors that you believe are positive, you reinforce those behaviors, you reward those behaviors and then things that are negative, like you don't reward those behaviors and what you'll do is spin up millions of simulations where these things are just playing against each other millions of different times and they just continue to improve. And then you have your engineers, right? They architect this this training environment, this, you know, this, I think we've called it a dojo before, but they just keep learning from those experiences. You check in, you validate, you cross validate, you make sure it works in the real world. And that's how you're teaching these systems, anything from clearing a room to dogfighting

• 1:19:54Speaker 03

  to, you know, hunting surface-to-air missile systems to navigating, you know, yeah, any any unmanned system.

• 1:20:01Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Wow. I mean, what do you, what do you envision? I mean, you had mentioned, what does warfare look like in 2035? And I mean, obviously, it's a lot of autonomous systems.

• 1:20:13Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:20:13Shawn Ryan?

  What? Be a little more specific. I mean, what does it look like? I mean, we had talked about.

• 1:20:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:18Shawn Ryan?

  You know? I was just talking about, did you get any pushback from the SEAL teams of the SOF community about, you know, is this going to take our job? Which, you know, my perspective is, yeah, it probably will eventually take your job. But, you know, and that, you know, that sucks for somebody that's aspiring to be, you know, a SEAL, a Green Beret, infantry, whatever, right? But, I mean, for the, for the, you know, broader consciousness of the country and even the world, I mean, that's less people coming home in bags.

• 1:20:51Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:20:52Shawn Ryan?

  You know, it's, it's, and so I, you know, I mean, I mentioned at breakfast, I interviewed, you know, Palmer Lucky and kind of asked him the same question, you know, what does it look like? Is this going to replace all personnel military wide eventually? He says, no. He knows a hell of a lot more about this than I do, but, you know, when he's talking about, and you too, I mean, when you guys are talking about this stuff, I mean, it's making pilots obsolete. It's making, you know, Dino Mavrukas and other SEALs doing autonomous surface warfare vehicles, it makes a lot of naval vessels obsolete. I mean, the drone that, you know, the quadcopter, that's, that's taken somebody's, you know,

• 1:21:33Shawn Ryan?

  job and, and, and so I'm just curious, I mean, which I like, I want to, I just want to be clear, I think that's, that is a good thing for the nation. Less, less deaths on our own side and more is, is obviously better.

• 1:21:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:49Shawn Ryan?

  So, you know, what does, what is your vision? What does it look like in 2035?

• 1:21:53Speaker 03

  Uh, in 2035, so there's like, directly in 2035, humans still play a massive role. I think it's going to be a human machine team augmented by swarms of autonomous systems, but you are still going to have, like, it, it will not have proliferated, autonomous systems will not have completely proliferated by that stage of the game, um, in terms of like, uh, how militaries operate. Uh, still going to be a heavy reliance on humans for a number of different mission sets, uh, augmented by, often by like machines. If you look at like, I don't know what the time span is. I'm gonna like say a hundred years, simply because no one will be like,

• 1:22:37Speaker 03

  get upset at me for making a hundred year prediction. Yeah, I don't think you see humans playing a big role in warfare hundred years from now. I think that actually happens probably sooner where countries, you know, it becomes a, you know, robot on robot deterrence, um, where, right? And I think that's like, it's a good place, right? Where it's like, we're not, neither side you want to be sending, you know, young men and women uh, to fight each other, um, over, you know, often like what I would call like, you know, things that we shouldn't be fighting over. So I, I do think you'll see a lot of autonomous systems in 2035. I don't think they're gonna be executing every single mission that the Department of War, uh, executes on.

• 1:23:22Speaker 03

  Um, but there, I think people are gonna see like, holy smokes. In the same way, we in the soft community saw what, you know, the Reaper drones, the Predator drones could do for us from 2000, 2020. I think you're gonna see people say, holy smokes, look at what autonomous systems can do for us, you know? Um, we like need to double down, triple down, 10x down on like these, these types of systems because they're gonna have massive strategic impacts uh, on the battlefield. Happy to talk, you know, about why. Let's do it. Yeah. Um, I think, and like, this is why I believe autonomy, if I had to like, point out like the most strategic technologies in warfare for the past

• 1:24:06Speaker 03

  90 years, 100 years, it'd be like, um,

• 1:24:11Speaker 03

  our, our air power. Um, and behind that you have like, you know, our, our nuclear triad, our nuclear submarine is super important. Um, in the eighties, we, uh, developed stealth technology and GPS guided munitions. Um, then we adopted large drones from 2000 to 2020. Um, and I think the next evolution, uh, which is really a transformation is, uh, this proliferation of autonomous, uh, highly intelligent, uh, autonomous systems that are ubiquitous on the battlefield. Now, from like, again, an engineer, think about like first principles. And if you look at like, one of the principles of warfare, or actually like two of them, it's like mass and maneuver. Um,

• 1:24:52Speaker 03

  Mass, super important, right? Those who are able to apply mass and maneuver on the battlefield more effectively than others have always been more successful in the history of conflict, right? Larger armies, just with mass, often won wars from like 4,000 B.C. to frickin', you know, the 1800s, you know, then maneuver started becoming more important. And now it's like, how can you maneuver mass most effectively? Even when I was doing my first augment, I was with the ground force commander who conducted the bin Laden raid, he was kind enough to mentor me. And he's like, look, he's like, what we do at DevGru is like, really cool. He's like,

• 1:25:34Speaker 03

  but, he's like, we need our brothers or sisters in the army and the Marine Corps to bring the mass to the fight. You need mass to occupy terrain. You need mass to create stability. And like, you know, soft forces just don't bring the mass or the heft to the fight. And that's why you need the army and the Marine Corps to bring that level of mass. What autonomy does is it unlocks the concept of near infinite intelligent maneuverable mass, where you are no longer limited by the number of personnel you have, right? The number of warfighters that the United States could theoretically field, right? Call it able aged, you know,

• 1:26:14Speaker 03

  men and women from age, you know, 18 to 55, there's a finite number of people. You're like, with AI and autonomy and combined with, you know, industrial production, you can field million test the lead. That's why it's like the most strategic, AI and autonomy being the most strategic capability for the next 50 years.

• 1:26:38Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Damn. I mean, what, who are, who are your competitors? Not, not just domestic, but I mean, foreign competitors? I mean, we We seem to be, you know, from my perspective, on the cutting edge of all this autonomous warfare type stuff. But I mean, you know, everybody that I bring in here is talking about China, China, China, China's right on our ass, if not a little bit ahead. You know, with AI, with energy, with with autonomous systems, shipbuilding, all that kind of stuff. I mean, who are the who are the key players in the world?

• 1:27:17Speaker 03

  In the world? I think China is the the key player that that matters. Now, the good news is, the United States is remains best in the world at software, at AI, at autonomy. But like that, in no means we should be complacent. I think the Chinese are highly innovative. They are able to mobilize resources in a faster way than the United States can mobilize resources, at least state-sponsored resources. And their iteration cycle, like how quickly they go from version one to version two to version three to version four to version

• 1:27:58Speaker 03

  five, is much faster than the USA. And I've been in a number of classified briefings that actually show their ability to iterate and like, obviously, like, can't go into like, what those timelines are, what those capabilities are. But suffice to say, like, no one should feel good about it. Because like, as Elon Musk says, like, all that matters is your cycle time. All that matters is your iteration cycle. If you suck at something, but you can get really good at it really fast, then it becomes a problem. Like, it doesn't matter if if you're here, and if China's here and we're here, like, we shouldn't feel good if China's accelerating like this, and we're just kind of like, you know, you know, moving

• 1:28:39Speaker 03

  forward at a slower clip, because eventually they pass us. So, yeah, they're by far number one. And they, yeah, they understand the technology. They've made claims. They want to build a million drone-sized army, right? And that's we're seeing that more and more from countries throughout the world, basically stating that they're moving towards million-plus drone drone armies.

• 1:29:01Shawn Ryan?

  What, I mean, corporate espionage is a major problem, especially in the defense tech space, you know, with with Chinese nationalists coming into the country and getting into our schools and embedding into companies. And so I'm just curious, I mean, do you?

• 1:29:20Shawn Ryan?

  Do you take that seriously?

• 1:29:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:22Shawn Ryan?

  You're you're a major, I mean, you are. You and your company could be detrimental to China. Pretty much, I mean, we just talked about the the the the the drug trafficking going across the, you know. It you got a part in that, I mean.

• 1:29:42Shawn Ryan?

  You see where I'm going with those?

• 1:29:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, no, we take security like very seriously. It's um.

• 1:29:50Speaker 03

  It's. The hard thing is, right, you're in the intelligence community. A state sponsored actor is like a really hard thing to stop, right? If China can steal the plans for the Joint Strike Fighter, right? Um, it is a.

• 1:30:06Speaker 03

  It's like, what's the like, it's hard to stop someone that is truly determined to take. Um, no matter like what safeguards that you put in place. And I go back to like, right, and the SEAL teams would talk about speed versus security, right? And I like, I would tell my platoon, like, speed is a type of security, right? If you're iterating quicker, um, then that is going to make you like more secure, right? If you're just like, because, great, if a state sponsored actor is stealing something, hopefully it's going to take them a couple of years to like crack through encryption. And then all of a sudden, like, they're a couple of years behind, right? And they're just getting started. And hopefully by then you're on iteration 10, um, in terms of what you've been doing, right? And this is very similar to like, um.

• 1:30:51Speaker 03

  All right, Elon Musk not patenting anything from SpaceX because he's like, we just, he's assuming that, right? They're going to steal rocket plans at some point in time. And so what matters is just like moving faster, uh, than than the adversaries. Moving faster than the competition is what matters at the end of the day. Yes, you have to take like basic security, uh, protocols. And yes, you have to invest in security and you have to be aware. But like at a core first principles level, I think like what matters in business, what matters for our country, um, is an emphasis on speed over security. And I think the US actually has been, uh, more challenged in this world where it's always like compartmentalized move thing. It's security slows things down in a lot of ways sometimes where it's like, no, we have to be moving at speed.

• 1:31:36Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting, interesting.

• 1:31:39Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about the Xbat. I mean, we were talking about the the two companies that you acquired.

• 1:31:45Speaker 03

  The VBAT.

• 1:31:46Shawn Ryan?

  The VBAT.

• 1:31:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:47Shawn Ryan?

  The VBAT. What what is that?

• 1:31:50Speaker 03

  Uh, so the VBAT 180 pound vertical takeoff, launch and land aircraft, uh, does the mission of a Predator Reaper, uh, you know, fraction of the cost ISR and targeting mission. Does it differently than these larger group five? They call them group five drones. VBAT is a group three drone. Um, but essentially it is, um,

• 1:32:11Speaker 03

  yeah, conducting ISR and targeting. So we've deployed that thing to like our big wins have been in Ukraine. Uh, they have been, um, uh, in the Caribbean Sea, uh, most recently, uh, but that's where it's like provided massive value to our customers. Takes off and lands like a SpaceX rocket. That's like logistics footprint is tiny. Those are like some of like the the key AI piloted, able to operate where GPS and communications are jammed. That's where, right? On the Ukrainian battlefield, the Russia-Ukraine conflict where we've been able to have some pretty unique and rare success.

• 1:32:47Shawn Ryan?

  So these things vertically take off?

• 1:32:50Speaker 03

  Yes. Yep.

• 1:32:51Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, can you go into why that is so important?

• 1:32:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, so vertical takeoff, launch and land, uh, and this will, this goes to the the UAP that's in your, then that's in your backyard, uh, that we're going to talk about. But why is that important? It's, um, runways are massive infrastructure. They're massive targets. All right. And so in this, in like, you can't really hide a runway. Um, and then, so when a pure adversary like that's one of the first things that they're going to target. Actually, like the Ukrainians, um, when President Biden, uh, enabled them to use attackums into Russia, first thing the Ukrainians went after were runways, right?

• 1:33:37Speaker 03

  Actually, then with their special operation where they had a bunch of, you know, these are like FPV drones that they use to blow up Russian assets. Those, you know, they were targeting runways and the equipment on runways because they knew where all these things were because again, runway is very stationary. Uh, high value infrastructure, um, that can massively disrupt operations. Um, and so that's like, you want to, in this world where

• 1:34:05Speaker 03

  Warfare is incredibly dynamic where the enemies have long range missile systems that can hit your runways that where your adversaries know they're you look at their priority list of targets. Number one is runway, right? It's an aircraft carrier. It's a it's a stationary runway in the Pacific. That's the first thing they're going after because every adversary wants to take away the US and our allies like principal advantage, which is their superiority. So they're going after your runways. What vertical takeoff launch and land besides like getting out of runways allows you to be very tactical, very maneuverable. The Ukrainians and the Russians,

• 1:34:47Speaker 03

  they're moving their strategic equipment every 10 minutes because they're just sitting targets. So you have to be mobile. If you're tied to a runway, like you're not very mobile.

• 1:34:58Shawn Ryan?

  How would these? I mean, how would these be deployed? Would they are they?

• 1:35:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:03Shawn Ryan?

  How many of them?

• 1:35:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. So the VBats theoretically, like a swarm, you could use a swarm of VBats that would be like it becomes like an operational challenge to like actually deploy swarms like more of a logistics challenge than anything. But the way that like we're Ukrainians are using them, they're putting them in the back of Sprinter vans, going to a launch point, launching, moving, commanding the thing, landing it somewhere else. Right? Again, I don't think a lot of folks, if you haven't been over there, realize how dynamic the battlefield is at this stage in the game. It's it's just constant movement. Shouldn't move, shouldn't move, shouldn't move, but done like in the essence where it's like if you're not doing it, you're just getting your

• 1:35:49Speaker 03

  your target, your sitting duck. So you have to have this mobile equipment. You still have to have the ability to conduct ISR and targeting, but you're just limited, not just from like that runways are targets, but also the proliferation of surface air missile systems make large, exquisite aircraft very vulnerable, whether it's, you know, everybody saw our Stinger missiles or not are like they saw Ukrainians shooting down Russian helicopters with Stinger missiles. They saw that in 1980s in Afghanistan. They saw it again in Ukraine and just augmented by other surface air missile systems. It's really impossible like using.

• 1:36:31Speaker 03

  Large exquisite platforms, um, and even like too dangerous for man platforms to operate in these highly contested environments. And I, and I say contested, I mean, lots of surface air missile systems, lots of GPS jammers, lots of communications jammers.

• 1:36:48Shawn Ryan?

  When you, I mean, when they are deployed, are they, I mean, it's just so foreign to me. I mean, you know, you go to Bagram and you see everything.

• 1:36:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:36:56Shawn Ryan?

  You go to Biop and you see every, you see helicopters.

• 1:37:00Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:37:01Shawn Ryan?

  Fighter, everything, right? From C-130s to whatever, your fighter jets to Chinooks, Batshees, all of that. And so because of the vertical takeoff, I mean, a couple of questions. I mean, are they dispersed throughout the country?

• 1:37:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:17Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and, and onesies and twosies or, or?

• 1:37:20Speaker 03

  That, that's exactly right. Right? You're pushing capability to the lower echelons. And that's actually like, right? When I got to do my commando mission in Afghanistan, I had a full stack of air supporting me. And so I was able to have outsized effect on battlefield because a lot of incredibly strategic capability was pushed to a lower echelon element, right? A SEAL platoon in Afghanistan. Um, and so what these countries are doing, they're pushing this great capability to lower echelons. The chat, like it causes a lot of challenges for the adversaries, right? They don't know where they are because they're distributed. They're small. They don't have a massive infrastructure footprint. And so

• 1:38:00Speaker 03

  you're creating dilemmas, um, where a dilemma for the adversary being like, I don't know where the, you know, where these things are, where they're launching from, where they're landing from. Um, and that's like, it causes a lot of problems for the enemy if you don't know what your adversary is doing, right? If you don't know what the, the other guys are doing.

• 1:38:19Shawn Ryan?

  Are they dedicated to specific units?

• 1:38:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, they are. Yep.

• 1:38:23Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Okay. And so, I mean,

• 1:38:28Shawn Ryan?

  That could mean a whole array of different capabilities, you know, with, with one, you know, with your, with your product, the Ebat. And so, I mean, if, if, if you have one mission that's an ISR mission, you know, surveillance, detection, stuff like that, and then you have a kinetic mission, I mean, how do you, how do you tell the machine what you're gonna do? Like what the mission is?

• 1:38:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, so these, basically, right, the way to think about it is, um, you're training a system to learn a mission, right? And that becomes, you can think of it as like a library of missions, and then you're gonna check out said mission for, like, check out the book, uh, check out the mission from said library for what you're gonna be executing. So it's like the, you know, probably the easiest way to explain it, but it's not, you're not pre-planning a mission, right? But you're saying, this is the mission I want to execute. The good thing is, is like every single military mission has been written in pretty like good detail and description in like army field manuals and, you know, the infantry squad books, right?

• 1:39:36Speaker 03

  In like every air operations manual. These missions are well described, and the cool thing is like software engineers can take those descriptions and then turn them into, uh, you know, a software package, uh, you know, a software mission package.

• 1:39:49Shawn Ryan?

  And, and you guys do both?

• 1:39:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:52Shawn Ryan?

  Build the product, or you build the hardware and the software?

• 1:39:54Speaker 03

  Yes, we do, yeah.

• 1:39:56Shawn Ryan?

  Was it always like that?

• 1:39:58Speaker 03

  Um, it was, it was out of a necessity, right? When we wanted, uh, we started off with the quadcopter. We said, hey, are there any other quadcopters that can carry the sensors, the compute, and the package that we need to do to make a product? And the answer was like, no, those didn't exist. And so, um, we decided to, hey, we're gonna have to build our own quadcopter. So we built a hardware engineering team, um, built that product. And then when we decided to like move up the aviation food chain, um, a big reason for that was

• 1:40:29Speaker 03

  What like I could tell someone I could tell a four star general four star admiral or like, uh, you know, an under secretary all day, every day that this AI pilot that's flying a quadcopter, you can put it on F 16, but back in like 2018, 2019, everybody's like, nah, like, I don't believe that, right? Um, so we were like, hey, we need another piece of hardware to demonstrate that this AI pilot is transferable from platform to platform to platform. That led to the acquisition of the VBAT. We're like, okay, now we can put the AI pilot on the VBAT. Now you see the AI pilot running on a quadcopter. You see it running on a VBAT. Um, we bought, uh, Heron Systems and, you know, that won the

• 1:41:12Speaker 03

  DARPA dogfight and then we're first company in the world to fly the F 16 completely autonomously. Now you see the AI pilot running on an F 16. And since then, now we've put the AI pilot on 15 different platforms, one-way attack drones, unmanned ground vehicles, uh, you know, large target, uh, drones, jet-powered drones. Um, where I think everybody at this stage in the game in 2025, people realize, hey, the software is actually transferable, portable from system to system. And again, this is something that we architected our autonomy stack from the get-go, right? With that vision of a world of autonomous systems. And so, um, like Shield AI stands alone in our ability to integrate onto platform,

• 1:41:56Speaker 03

  platform, platform, platform really rapidly. One of the, like, one of the cool things we can take, we, we've integrated on, um, a variant of the Lakota helicopter. What used to take 40 engineers and like tens of millions of dollars in two years to do on our quadcopter, we can now do with a couple hundred thousand dollars, three engineers in three months, um, on something like a Lakota helicopter or something like, uh, you know, uh, a jet-powered drone.

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• 1:44:45Shawn Ryan?

  So when you're talking about, you know, drone storms with the, with the VBAC, I mean, these are big devices, big, big, big.

• 1:44:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're, they're, they're 180 pounds. They're, they stand like nine feet tall, I think. Uh, they're not, um, but again, they fit in the back of a sprinter man, like in terms of like, so they're, they're big. They're not like.

• 1:45:09Shawn Ryan?

  F-16.

• 1:45:10Speaker 03

  F-16 big. Yeah.

• 1:45:12Shawn Ryan?

  And so if you're gonna, if you're gonna do a, a swarm of these things, I mean, are these, do they all know what each other is doing?

• 1:45:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, they, exactly. They're sharing information with each other. Um, and so, um, again, building that map, sharing that worldview with each other, sharing positions, sharing friendly position, enemy position, the same way. Like if we were doing an operation together, I hop on a radio, I can share a lot of information with you. These things are doing the exact same thing.

• 1:45:41Shawn Ryan?

  Just faster.

• 1:45:42Speaker 03

  Just faster. Yeah.

• 1:45:43Shawn Ryan?

  A lot faster.

• 1:45:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Superhuman speeds.

• 1:45:45Shawn Ryan?

  Is it real time? Like is?

• 1:45:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're, we're doing.

• 1:45:50Shawn Ryan?

  It's getting ready to engage something.

• 1:45:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. We've done things with fighter jets. Like one of the things I've learned about air warfare is like, if you're doing like fighter jet tactics with whether like multiple fighter jets, like four of them in the air, right? Um, the coordination is actually like a really, really important thing in terms of like executing the tactics. Um, and it's a really hard thing even for the most experienced fighter pilots to pull off. Um, we've had lifelong fighter pilots at S.H.I.E.L.D. AI who are like, look, I could never get my fighter pilot squadron to do what this AI just did, right? Like it's wildly impressive, like the accuracy in the speed with which they are coordinating with each other, reading and reacting off each other. Wow.

• 1:46:37Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about the DARPA Alpha dogfight.

• 1:46:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:40Shawn Ryan?

  What was that?

• 1:46:41Speaker 03

  So DARPA Alpha dogfight, um, it was, uh, so go back to like, you had AlphaGo, you had AlphaStar. DARPA was like, I believe that we could do an AI pilot dogfight to show that, you know, basically, uh, great credit to DARPA is basically show that, uh, the value that these systems could be able to provide. Um, and so what it was is there's a number of companies that participated. It was AI pilot versus AI pilot, dogfighting in simulation, F-16s. The other good thing that I like about it is like it was unclassified, so we can talk about it. Um, and, uh, AI pilot versus AI pilot in simulated dogfights. Um, and, uh,

• 1:47:24Speaker 03

  what Shield AI ended up doing, right, um, what Heron Systems, a Shield AI company, ended up doing was we ended up winning, uh, the Alpha Dogfight where we defeated every single AI pilot, um, in these, this dogfighting, uh, competition, like it was like a ladder, right? Like you beat them, you move on, uh, a playoff bracket. Um, and then the winner, we got to go up against, um, a, uh, you know, an actual fighter pilot in simulation, uh, you know, a fighter weapons school pilot, a Top Gun, um, and I want to say we won 5-0 in that competition, right? And so what that did is basically say like, hey, you know, and DARPA did that to basically say like, look, this is why we should invest, uh, in

• 1:48:08Speaker 03

  this capability, this technology. Um, and it wasn't to say, hey, let's, you know, build autonomous F-16s, but as we build this next generation of uncrewed fighter jets, uh, you know, um, a lot of people call them collaborative combat aircraft, it's, we can actually have an AI pilot and autonomy stack, um, that is, uh, you know, running these aircraft.

• 1:48:33Shawn Ryan?

  Dude, I mean.

• 1:48:37Shawn Ryan?

  You're probably like most overachievers, but I mean, what does that feel like to see your company's innovations outdo everything? I mean, do you even take the time to self reflect and think about like the magnitude of what?

• 1:48:53Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, I don't just because it's like, you know, like it's like, I think it's really cool. Again, I don't. It doesn't, the thing that I just, it's when there's like mission impact. That's what is like truly does it for me. I don't say that as like a talking point, but it's like, like truly like when the products do something, that's what like I really care about. I, yes, like the innovation is cool. The capabilities are cool. I'm very proud of the team, but like you don't, unfortunately you see a lot of companies, right? In the military space that were just innovating for the sake of innovation versus actually building a capability that's going to make a difference on the battlefield. Um, and so that's like what I care about. I don't do enough reflection. I don't do enough. My wife's like, you never celebrate anything.

• 1:49:38Speaker 03

  I don't like, um, sounds familiar. There's, yeah, yeah, you get it, right? That I actually love the, uh, there's an old Kobe Bryant clip when they had one like game, like three of the NBA finals and like Kobe, we can't get a smile from you. It's like, what's there to be happy about? Like job finished, job's not finished. And that is like, you know, the, the mentality that I have, so.

• 1:50:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I, I am plagued by the same thing, although I will say last night when the expat got dropped off.

• 1:50:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:10Shawn Ryan?

  I was like, I can't fucking believe this thing. So I went home and I was like, told my wife, I was like, you got, you gotta come out here and see this with the kids.

• 1:50:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:18Shawn Ryan?

  We have America's aerial defense in offensive system that nobody knows about sitting in our fucking front yard right now.

• 1:50:27Speaker 03

  No, I'm, I'm.

• 1:50:27Shawn Ryan?

  You have to see.

• 1:50:28Speaker 03

  Super pumped to unveil it on your show.

• 1:50:31Shawn Ryan?

  It's just wild to me. It's wild, it's, it's crazy, but, um.

• 1:50:36Shawn Ryan?

  You want to talk about the expat?

• 1:50:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm happy to talk about the expat. Now that we're talking about it. All right, so expat, just some background. Shield AI, when we think about hardware, like, we want to build, hardware's, you know, really effing hard to build. It is because you're stuck with the design choices that you make for a long time. Software, you can quickly like iterate on the design choices that you make. There's certainly like there are challenges in architecting a good software system. But like same in hardware, it's just like harder to change things once you're bending steel and metal. So you have to get it right out of the gate. And then hardware is just like when you're dealing in the real physical world.

• 1:51:23Speaker 03

  Everything's harder. Sensors fail, right? Computers have challenges, right? Sensors will fail for milliseconds on like average and like. There's just so many hard things about building hardware. So Shield AI is very deliberate about the hardware that we build. Has to be absolutely transformative. For VBAT, VBAT was, hey, we're going to transform ISR and targeting, right? We need more intelligence. McChrystal, very famous for saying, intelligence drives operations. Like if we can transform ISR and targeting with VBAT, like that's why we decided to buy VBAT and go with it. But we're not looking to build 26 different hardware products out there. Like we are an AI and autonomy company.

• 1:52:05Speaker 03

  We build amazing aircraft and we have these great assets. We have a software engineering asset that's world class. We have a hardware engineering asset that's world class. And so we had to ask ourselves, okay, we've done VBAT, what's next? What's the next piece of hardware that we want to build? Do we want to build a one-way attack drone? Do we want to build a USV, a maritime platform? Do we want to build a hypersonic missile? And so after great deliberation and a great credit to our head of aircraft, head of our aircraft business, Armour Harris, came from SpaceX, came up with this thing.

• 1:52:46Speaker 03

  The X bat. Um, and so what is X bat? X bat is a first of its kind, vertical takeoff, launch and land, multi-role combat, strike, jet, you know, platform that it, you know, is AI piloted. Uh, it is the first airplane in the history of airplanes that has both, uh, it doesn't require runway and doesn't require a human pilot. It's AI piloted and it doesn't, it's vertical takeoff, launch and land. Um, and from that, there are a massive

• 1:53:26Speaker 03

  number of benefits to the platform. Um, one of the big benefits, right? If I talk to, uh, the geographic combatant commanders, right? These are the four stars admirals and generals running into PECOM, running UCOM, uh, that are posed with the strategic problem. How do you deter our adversaries? And if necessary, fight to defeat our adversaries. They would tell you like the value of X bat comes from the ability to create a massive number of dilemmas by having geographically distributed, long-range fires that can be launched from anywhere, uh, on the battlefield. Um, and so now we're, you know, an adversary like China

• 1:54:09Speaker 03

  has to worry about these fixed runways and a couple air, you know, the United States has 11 aircraft carriers. We have to worry about, you know, a couple fixed runways. Um, and, uh, and these aircraft carriers now all of a sudden, they have to worry about every, you know, 20 foot by 20 foot spot of earth on the planet. Um, and that is, you know, why does that matter? Now it makes basically forces them to redefine their invasion calculus. Uh, if you don't know where America's assets are, um, are especially our aerial assets, which are our number one conventional strategic deterrent. Um, it's going to force you to,

• 1:54:49Speaker 03

  yeah, rethink, uh, your war plans. It buys diplomacy another day. Um, on the like other side of the coin of what I would, you know, tell you about like X bat. Um, and this is like, again, I want to be super clear, like X bat is going to augment, uh, you know, fighter pilots for, you know, quite some time.

• 1:55:12Speaker 03

  But like when I look at something like the Joint Strike Fighter, it is an incredible capability. Like if you actually like dig into like what that capability offers the USA, it's amazing.

• 1:55:25Speaker 03

  But it requires runways, it requires hardened bunkers. It requires a $10 million pilot just to get like to be, you know, certified on flying it, right? Not even making them like an expert at that system, right? It's like I could put, you know, when we became Navy SEALs, we weren't expert Navy SEALs on day one, right? $10 million to make you, you know, base, you know, just dangerous enough with the aircraft.

• 1:55:50Speaker 03

  It is limited range. I want to say it's around like 550 nautical mile combat radius. And so if you want to employ Joint Strike Fighter in the Pacific where there are 1,000 nautical mile ranges, you have to have refueling tankers. And because of the threat environment, we've built autonomous refueling tankers, right? Which is another like expensive capability. You have built the refu- No, no, no, we did. Like the, the USA has built refueling tankers for these Joint Strike Fighters. And then the platform itself is $100 million. So when you look at the all in total cost of capability for the Joint Strike Fighter, again, amazing capability. It's wildly expensive.

• 1:56:33Speaker 03

  It's probably like estimated 200 million to 250 million dollars per aircraft. When you look at all these add on capabilities, not to mention the total lifecycle cost of it, the, you know, the hourly cost of operating at $35,000 an hour.

• 1:56:49Speaker 03

  Expat, vertical takeoff, launch and land, no runways.

• 1:56:55Speaker 03

  It is, you know, AI pilot, so no human pilot. It has a 2,100 nautical mile range with mission payload. And so you have, you know, massive range. We're targeting 27 and a half million dollars per pop on it with a $6,000 per hour operating cost for the aircraft. And so you're getting-

• 1:57:20Speaker 03

  Fifth, sixth gen capability at a fraction of the cost. And that's something that no one else is doing or offering.

• 1:57:29Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, wow. I mean, these, the, the VBAT beat the F-35, correct?

• 1:57:36Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no. The, no, no. So VBAT being the, the, and now VBAT, Xbat can get confusing. VBAT's the mini Reaper Predator. The Xbat in development, we're going to, we've got a subsystem prototype that's flying in 2026. Full system prototype flying in 2027, going to production in 2029. The AI pilot for that aircraft, we're developing AI pilots for this next generation of uncrewed fighter jets. And so we have not gone up against, you know, F-35, but we've gone up against our F-16s.

• 1:58:19Speaker 03

  And actual F-16s and F-16 versus F-16. And this was part of the DARPA ACE program, which was the next program from the DARPA Alpha Dogfight, where we've gone up against F-16 pilots. And yeah, we've, you know, we've, you know, AI pilot, like it wins.

• 1:58:37Shawn Ryan?

  Crushes it.

• 1:58:38Speaker 03

  So.

• 1:58:39Shawn Ryan?

  You ready to go take a look?

• 1:58:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And so we've got, you know, a model out there that excited to show you. It's really cool.

• 1:58:47Shawn Ryan?

  Let's do it.

• 1:58:48Speaker 03

  Let's do it.

• 1:58:59Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Brendan, what are we looking at here?

• 1:59:01Speaker 03

  All right. So this is, uh, this is the Xbat and the LRV, which is the Launch Recovery Vehicle for the Xbat. It's actually a scaled model, believe it or not. This is only two thirds the actual size to get it into trade shows and events. We are limited in terms of like the actual size. But, um, yeah, this is, uh, the aircraft that we are building, uh, currently. So, um, but yeah, this is our, our, our model that we take to events. helps people understand what we're building, the capabilities and you know gives gives them something visually to look at. But uh yeah, I uh I don't know this is actually my first time seeing it physically.

• 1:59:43Speaker 03

  I've only seen it uh in the photos from our team and no, it's uh like I I've told you, I've been doing this now for 10 years. You get it's hard, hard work, right? But I think this is like I get inspired by this thing like I I'm fired up to build this thing. I'm fired up to make it a reality for the warfighter. I think the capability is it is absolutely strategic. It's going to make a huge impact and it's like who who gets to work at the intersection of AI pilots and and fighter aircraft? And actually build an AI piloted fighter aircraft that is doesn't require a runway. So it's cool. Not very many people. Yeah. But uh so two 2100 nautical mile radius? With mission payload. Yeah, mission payload.

• 2:00:27Speaker 03

  So basically this thing can carry the same thing, uh same amount of payload as an F 18, F 35. Um it's carrying four AMRAMs uh internal. Uh it's got two uh a medium range air to air missile. Um so uh at the same so multi role. It's can be for air to air missions, air to ground missions, air to surface missions. It can be used for electronic warfare missions. Um it is, yeah, it's an incredible aircraft. Yeah, it looks like it. Yeah, I can I happy to walk around, tell you all about it, but. Let's do it. All right. Let's do it.

• 2:01:03Speaker 03

  So one of the cool things um we're actually using um the F 100 engine uh is the engine that is used in F 15s, F 16s. One of the really cool aspects about it um is it is a it's a multi plane thrust vectoring engine. Uh which is also the only US airplane, US jet in existence that has multi plane thrust vectoring. So the F 22 uses 2D plane thrust vectoring. Um I want to say it's the Russians have this. Russians or Chinese have an aircraft that has multiplane thrust vectoring.

• 2:01:41Speaker 03

  But basically what that enables is increased maneuverability, some low-speed maneuvers. I was looking it up the other day. It enables something like, I want to call it like the Pugachev Cobra maneuver. It's something they may have shown in like Top Gun 2 when, you know, they're like, holy crap, what the hell is that? That type of stuff, so.

• 2:02:02Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:02:03Speaker 03

  I know someone's got to check me and it's going to be some other maneuver, but like, you know.

• 2:02:08Shawn Ryan?

  The internet will sort it out.

• 2:02:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, the internet will sort it out.

• 2:02:12Shawn Ryan?

  So is this how it launches?

• 2:02:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it launches from this position and it also recovers from this position. One of the things we had, so the LRV is also really cool. It's got this called a blast shield. But one of the things that they were discovering with F-35 when it was taking off from aircraft carriers, because they have a vertical takeoff or short takeoff, launch and land, but the engine was burning holes into the flight deck. And so that was just like a massive problem with the aircraft. This meant to deflect, you know, when we go afterburner on it and just the heat that's being generated from the engine

• 2:02:59Speaker 03

  when we're taking off or when we're landing. So, but yeah, it launches, lands like a SpaceX rocket again. Our head of aircraft, Herman Harris, I feel like he was just built for developing this aircraft, but worked as a principal engineer on the Falcon 9, launch and land, and then was doing Starlink, Starshield, working with Elon, and just wanted to work on the air layer and build next-generation aircraft, so, yeah.

• 2:03:28Shawn Ryan?

  That is amazing.

• 2:03:30Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:03:30Shawn Ryan?

  What is that hole in the front?

• 2:03:32Speaker 03

  So that's the intake up there, so air intake for the engine, and...

• 2:03:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's what it is.

• 2:03:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, not much more to it.

• 2:03:44Shawn Ryan?

  Where do the, where do all the weaponry?

• 2:03:47Speaker 03

  So you've got internal and hard points on the, on the other sides of the wings there. Those are the weapons bay for, again, carrying basically any weapon, any, you can carry LoRASMs, long-range anti-ship missiles, you can carry air-to-air missiles, air-to-ground missiles, you can carry bombs. Again, very much think of it as like, you know, the same thing that you would find on a fighter aircraft in terms of its weapon payload. The unique thing and like one of the differentiating things about this, besides being vertical, takeoff, launch and land, but if I were to compare it to like some of the other new CCA capabilities that you're seeing built, those aircraft are using business jet engines

• 2:04:29Speaker 03

  and so they're, they can't generate the electrical power to run fifth generation, sixth generation sensor suites and electronic attack payloads. And so electronic warfare being a massive aspect of the battlefield today, right? Jamming enemy GPS, jamming enemy communications, things that something like the F-18, still have your electronic attack abilities and so you're still playing a role in the fight. You can act as comms relay. Yeah, this thing is.

• 2:04:56Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean electronic warfare, like jamming capabilities?

• 2:04:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, jamming, jamming, GPS jamming, the communications on other enemy platforms.

• 2:05:09Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:05:11Speaker 03

  One of the other cool things, so we like to say this thing hauls ass and sips gas, right? It can fly for 2,100 nautical miles with full mission payload, but it's flying, cruising at 55,000 feet altitude, which is higher than any other like aircraft, like definitely like in its, in its class, right? And why is that important? It actually allows your air-to-air missiles, it improves the kinematics on them, which makes for, you know, the easiest way to say it is like longer-range weapons. And so now your missiles can actually go further because they're, you know, they're actually, the air is less dense up there. They're able to, they're not, you know, using as much gas when they're being fired.

• 2:05:53Speaker 03

  Um, and I don't think a lot of people appreciate, but like in air-to-air combat, air-to-air warfare, like what matters is your sensor range, what matters is uh the range of your missiles. Um, it's not, you know, as cool as like dogfighting is, it's not, you know, within visual range, dogfighting anymore. It's, you know, F-35 is amazing because it can see everything before it gets seen. Um, and it can attack those things. Same thing uh with this aircraft.

• 2:06:21Shawn Ryan?

  That is crazy.

• 2:06:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, powered by Hive Mind, Hive Mind being our AI pilot. Um, again, just been working on Hive Mind for the, the past 10 years and so. The mission sets, like we were talking about in the studio, being like that library of checked out missions, but um continue to work on classified, you know, classified level missions for air-to-air uh uh missions, air-to-ground missions um for this aircraft.

• 2:06:47Shawn Ryan?

  Fifty-five thousand feet, twenty-one hundred miles, nautical miles with a payload. How fast does it go?

• 2:06:54Speaker 03

  Um, we're cruising, uh cruising at Mach point eight-five. Um, we're expecting that you'll be able to dash supersonic. The problem when you dash supersonic is that your, your signature goes up. Uh, people now and um, right, this thing is meant to be uh pretty, pretty low observable in terms of uh what the enemy's looking for. So, yeah.

• 2:07:18Shawn Ryan?

  And it land, so when it lands, it lands just like this?

• 2:07:21Speaker 03

  Lands just like this, takes off, lands, don't want to say, like, yeah, we took inspiration from, you know, SpaceX. Uh, you know, catching the thing.

• 2:07:31Shawn Ryan?

  So it just, it, it lands like, it goes in reverse and just lands right there, hooking up, ready to roll again.

• 2:07:37Speaker 03

  We've got a lot of experience doing that with the Vbat. And actually, believe it or not, Vbat's a harder thing to launch and land than something like this because. Like in in armor will tell you it's like look Falcon nine you have all the thrust in the world. Um, and like you put that thing wherever you want on the planet centimeters like VBAT. And like you have perfect weather conditions VBAT you're operating in the worst weather conditions you don't have a lot of thrust. Um, it's a it's a big challenge XPAT you have an incredible amount of thrust from like a technical challenge aspect of this is VBAT and this is Falcon nine you have XPAT like right you know next to Falcon nine again that that multi plane thrust vectoring allows us to put this thing you know wherever we need to put it so.

• 2:08:17Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:08:18Speaker 03

  But yeah, no, it's um, right, it's, I mean, not only it's you can now make every ship and aircraft carrier you can make non-standard vessels aircraft carriers, right, you can put these things on cargo ships, island chains. It just becomes a really intractable thing for the adversary to track which.

• 2:08:40Shawn Ryan?

  Can go everywhere.

• 2:08:41Speaker 03

  Everywhere, anywhere. Yeah, right, we're in, we're in a field here, right, you go into a forest clearing, we were joking around, you put this thing on, you know, pickleball court if you want, like every pickleball court in the world is now uh your runway, so.

• 2:08:54Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:08:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:56Shawn Ryan?

  That is awesome. I mean, could you, could you imagine a a drone swarm of these bad boys coming after your ass?

• 2:09:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, this thing is um, no, and that's what, look, we're, we're very much working on the behaviors, the missions of multi-agent XPATs uh flying around augmenting, you know, fighter pilots augmenting the mission, um executing the mission independently. Um, it's like I said, I think this, for me, this is like an inspirational aircraft. I'm like, holy crap, this is, this is like one of those, it's, this is a cool thing to build, like, you know.

• 2:09:33Shawn Ryan?

  One of those moments.

• 2:09:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, like if you wanna be at the intersection of AI, national security, building cool, you know, jet aircraft, um, SHIELD AI's, you know, a great place to do it, so, no limit, you know, on in terms of the ambition and the imagination here, so.

• 2:09:53Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations.

• 2:09:54Speaker 03

  Thank you, I appreciate it. I'm excited to, you know, watch this thing on your show. I think that's like, you know, that's a cool thing. I know a lot of people watch it. I think it's, um, you know, I'm, um, thanks for letting us bring it onto your property. I'm sure your neighbors were like, what the hell is this?

• 2:10:12Shawn Ryan?

  They're a little worried about you.

• 2:10:13Speaker 03

  What Sean got going on right now?

• 2:10:15Shawn Ryan?

  They're like, what the fuck is going on?

• 2:10:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:10:19Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, man. Congrats. That is... This is the kind of stuff that just makes me proud to be an American. Like, that is the future of aerial warfare. That is...

• 2:10:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, it fundamentally will transform air warfare, right? Again, no more, Earth is our runway, AI piloted. Um, it's, uh, it's a mean machine that I think, to the point of it's gonna deter our adversaries by diplomacy another day, so...

• 2:10:48Shawn Ryan?

  I'll say, I'll say. Wow. Awesome. I want to see a launch.

• 2:10:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so, right, we'll bring you out to the... Happy to bring you out to the first flight. I think it's only appropriate that...

• 2:11:01Shawn Ryan?

  Dude, I would love that.

• 2:11:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, so...

• 2:11:04Shawn Ryan?

  I would love that. Cool. Thank you.

• 2:11:07Speaker 03

  Absolutely. No, thanks, Sean.

• 2:11:13Shawn Ryan?

  Do you feel it?

• 2:11:16Shawn Ryan?

  That something's off?

• 2:11:25Shawn Ryan?

  What if none of this is real?

• 2:11:30Shawn Ryan?

  For decades, wars have been fought in silence. No bullets, no bombs, just influence. They're called psychological operations, PSYOPs. What if it's all designed for you?

• 2:11:49Shawn Ryan?

  Find out who's really pulling the strings.

• 2:11:53Shawn Ryan?

  I'm Sean Ryan, and this is Target Intelligence PSYOP, an Ironclad original. In this eight-part audio experience, we uncover the ghosts in the machine.

• 2:12:05Shawn Ryan?

  Buy it today at PSYOPshow.com.

• 2:12:14Shawn Ryan?

  I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world. And so, one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter. And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign Superbad. She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show.

• 2:12:58Shawn Ryan?

  And some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind blowing. And so, I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. So, it's gonna be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free. We're not gonna spam you. It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two, if we release two shows. The only other thing that's gonna be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that.

• 2:13:42Shawn Ryan?

  But, like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up, links in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.

• 2:13:57Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Brandon, we're back from the break. And, uh, what an amazing piece of machinery you've got out there that is, I can't wait to see the launch.

• 2:14:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, it'll be sick.

• 2:14:07Shawn Ryan?

  And the land.

• 2:14:08Speaker 03

  You gotta come out for it.

• 2:14:09Shawn Ryan?

  Hard enough to see that thing land. But, uh, you know, one thing we didn't cover is the Vbat flew 130 sorties so far in Ukraine.

• 2:14:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably, I mean, by the time this airs, probably a lot more. But, um, yeah, one of the, um, again, things that I'm like super proud of having that mission impact, um, our Ukraine story is like, I think it's, one, our, our results are unique. Um, but the, the story's kinda interesting in that in 2020...

• 2:14:41Speaker 03

  Three, the British pushed out a bunch of V-bats to the Ukrainians. We told them, hey, HiveMind, our AI pilot, it's not integrated yet. You're not gonna like, if GPS or communications is jammed, like, it's not gonna work. Um, because we were, again, we had bought that company in late 21, and we're still in the integration process of the AI, uh, with the aircraft, um, and making it a hardened capability. British gave it, they're like, look, we just want to get equipment assets out to the Ukrainians. There's a major push coming in the spring. Um, and so, uh, they pushed out V-bats. They pushed out lots of equipment. Um, jamming happened, V-bats failed, right? As we told them it would. Ukrainians basically said, hey, come back when you have this fixed. We still believe in the

• 2:15:23Speaker 03

  capability. Um, came back in, uh, June, May-June of 2024. Um, and they're like, look, we're gonna put it through an electronic warfare testing regimen. Uh, went up against this three, four days of every jammer. They had seven jammers, GPS communications, running max power, V-bat flying within 50 feet, no impact on it, right? Because we had integrated the AI pilot on, on board this time. Um, they, they kind of strung us along here and said, look, like, all right, great that you passed the test. And this was unique. No one had, like, no one's ever passed this test. It was, they were trying to make us fail. Um, uh, with all these jammers. They said,

• 2:16:06Speaker 03

  okay, great, we'll put in letters of request to the US government if it actually proves its worth on the battlefield. And we're like, well, you guys didn't tell us about this, but we're said, okay, let's look, we're here to make mission impact. Um, first operation ever flew, uh, GPS communications was jammed. I don't think people realize that it's completely jammed in Ukraine, uh, on the battlefield. And so every mission that we've done, GPS and comms has been jammed. Um, but our first mission that we did, um, actually fun, the, the, the, the interesting part of the story is, like, one of the interesting parts, um,

• 2:16:42Speaker 03

  One of the assumptions we made was that we asked them like, look, we're going to, you know, near the front is GPS going to be jammed on takeoff. They said, no, like, it's not going to be jammed on takeoff. So we go out to operate and lo and behold, GPS is jammed on takeoff on this mission we're supposed to execute. Vbat starts flying in another direction, right? Because of GPS jamming, because we had assumed it was going to be available just for takeoff. And what ends up happening is like six hours of our team driving through Ukraine, kind of like the movie Interstellar, when they're like going through the cornfields, trying to capture the drone. Like, that's what our team did. They land it. Ukrainians like, yeah, I didn't think it was

• 2:17:25Speaker 03

  going to work on the battlefield. Like, well, you guys gave us a bad assumption. Within 24 hours, team worked it. They came up with a software solution, right? It was just like basically changing an assumption. Tested it in Texas, pushed the software update to Ukraine. Next day, we said, hey, give us, you know, we want to retake this mission. Execute the mission. Do fine on takeoff. Executing the mission. Comms GPS jam the entire time. Target in SA-11 Bukovell Surface Air Missile System. Ukrainians call in HIMARS airburst round, destroys the Bukovell second, targeted second SA-11 Bukovell Surface Air Missile System. HIMARS misses due to GPS

• 2:18:07Speaker 03

  jamming. The effectiveness of US weapon systems is really poor in these GPS jammed environments. So that leads to letters of request from the US government and then President takes office in right stops, you know, funding, which is, you know, again, like, I'm fine with the decision as like an American taxpayer, I understand it, right? As S.H.I.E.L.D. AI, we're like, oh my God, we're at the finish line. And then like, you know, we're about to deliver capability. Thankfully, Europeans step up to the plate. They get Vbat aircraft over there. And then we go through training with the Ukrainians, January to March, and since April, they have been absolutely lethal

• 2:18:51Speaker 03

  with the system. And so.

• 2:18:56Speaker 03

  God, there was like a two week period where we were executing four to six strikes every day or enabling four to six strikes every single day destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars of Russian equipment. It's a capability that they had never had long range ISR and targeting before. They were fighting a very tactical fight, but now with this capability to penetrate deeper into enemy held territory while GPS, while comms is jammed, they were finding targets that they had been looking for for six, nine months they couldn't find. And so again, super proud of the impact that we've played there. And, you know, as we think about, you know,

• 2:19:38Speaker 03

  when we talk to them now, they're like, man, if we had been able to put up a bunch of these on our border, right? And knowing that every single VBAT is tied into some sort of long range weapon system, you could deter your adversaries. And so as we look to, you know, the Pacific, that's something that we think about a lot. We see that out of, you know, a country like Taiwan that is absolutely trying to deter adversaries. It's like, well, you have to have the equipment that the adversary respects to deter them. And so, you know, I'm thankful that like VBAT is one of these things that has been battlefield proven and to the point like what I'm just gonna hammer home in on again, like there aren't other US companies doing this. Like they are not having success in these GPS and comms jammed

• 2:20:22Speaker 03

  environments. It is a very hard problem. I actually would say that there's only two companies in the world, and I can't name the other company that's actually finding success there. It's Ukrainian company in these environments. And that's from reporting from, you know, you know, call it the warfighters out there in terms of like actually executing the ISR and targeting mission. Now tactically, when you're talking like fiber optic connected quadcopters, where the GPS, like where you're tethered to something and you can fight in the, you know, one to 10 kilometer range. Yes, there's like a lot of tactical innovations happening on that end, but at like the strategic operational level, I'm proud that Shield AI stands alone.

• 2:21:06Shawn Ryan?

  Man, again, congratulations.

• 2:21:09Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 2:21:12Shawn Ryan?

  Lot of hacking, you know, and so is this is would this be a system that China could hack into? You know, if we were using it for an offensive.

• 2:21:22Speaker 03

  Um, it'd be incredibly difficult like it would be incredibly, incredibly. I wouldn't say it'd be tactically feasible to actually like execute. You'd have to be like proximal to um, the, the command station where these things you'd have to know where they were flying, whether it's VBAT, whether it's XPAT. Um, and then you have to like get through encryption. It's just not like the way to take out these systems are gonna be kinetically using surface-to-air missile systems. And that's actually like, look, we've lost VBATs to surface-to-air missile systems in Ukraine. And I remember like, you know, we get a report back, hey, you know, S300 shot down a VBAT. I'm like, all right, million-dollar missile, you know,

• 2:22:01Speaker 03

  for a $750,000 aircraft. I'll take that trade. Um, and so, uh, that's, you know, that's gonna be the way that you see these systems that are able, drones that are able to survive that electronic warfare because they have an AI pilot on them, because they have our, our hive mind running on them. The only way that you're gonna be able to take them out is gonna be kinetically.

• 2:22:22Shawn Ryan?

  Now, when you're talking about jam communications and jam GPS, I mean,

• 2:22:27Shawn Ryan?

  I would, I mean, you know, all the way back to the quadcopter, you know, all this autonomous stuff that can think on its own and, and, and, and conduct missions. I mean, is there any?

• 2:22:40Shawn Ryan?

  Do we need communication with these devices?

• 2:22:43Speaker 03

  Uh, like, if you want the best performance, you're gonna want, the communication is like very beneficial. In the same way, like if you, like top, it's like, if we were a SEAL, SEAL element, if you were a fire team leader and I was a fire team leader, if we have established communications, we can operate much better together, right? If you're across a mountain ridge and you're saying, hey, Brandon, this is what I'm doing, like I can then adjust my tactics, behaviors on like what you're seeing, what you're observing. Um, in the absence of communications, I have all the trust, faith and confidence that you're gonna be able to execute, right? That commander's intent, um, without it, and then you'll adjust your tactics, your behaviors, your mission based on, you know, new information

• 2:23:26Speaker 03

  uh, coming through. And so the autonomous systems work the same way. Communications, when it's, when you're in a jammed environment, you can think of it as like swiss cheese. Sometimes you can find pockets if you're only working with low, you know, low amounts of data, you can push that data out even though you're operating in a jammed environment. Um, and so we'll compress a lot of that data and that allows you to actually push it out so that these systems can even, you know, interact like as a team better with each other.

• 2:23:54Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay. I didn't mean, I mean, yeah, that's a good, that's a great point. So, so the jamming isn't only from human to machine, it, it, it is also from machine to machine when they're flying as a team.

• 2:24:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:24:06Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting, interesting. I mean, what do you see, what do you see these things, what, what, what is the expat gonna replace?

• 2:24:15Speaker 03

  Um.

• 2:24:16Shawn Ryan?

  Or is it just?

• 2:24:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:24:18Shawn Ryan?

  Another weapon in our arsenal?

• 2:24:19Speaker 03

  I think, again, I, I, I don't like to, I really, like, people get sensitive to, to the word replace, right? And I, and I don't think things replace things for like a long, long time. Um, it doesn't mean that it never happens, but it takes like, you know, self-driving cars, right? Where it's gonna replace drivers at some point in time. I don't think that happens for, you know, 20 plus years. Um, so in the meantime, like, it's just augmenting in like, augmenting that human team.

• 2:24:51Speaker 03

  Whether it's jet aircraft, whether it's basically mechanisms to deliver long-range fires. So that could be, uh, you know, anti-ship missiles launched from a ship that could be, um, you know, fighter bomber aircraft, it's doing the same mission, it's that strike mission, um, or a air-to-air mission, uh, just differently. And so that can be with human pilots, augmenting them. And I think that's how it'll go in the early days. And, you know, from there, yeah, if you extrapolate, you know, the rate of innovation around AI and autonomy, I think you get to like really interesting places, again, down the line where you start to replace some of these systems.

• 2:25:31Shawn Ryan?

  Do you, I mean, is there gonna be any?

• 2:25:36Shawn Ryan?

  Will these machines fly along in the meantime, in the interim before that happens? Which I'm sure it will.

• 2:25:41Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:25:42Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, will there, will there be? Will they co-mingle with, with human pilots?

• 2:25:47Speaker 03

  Hundred percent. Yeah, they'll, they'll augment and they'll be part of that human machine team. They will um augment uh the pilots. I, you know, look, I think something like, and that will be like the first iteration. Then uh the US military start experimenting with like, okay, let's just have these systems run on their own and execute missions. But like, if you, like, I think the mission is going to dictate like what the uh the force requirement is. In the sense like you're gonna see missions that dictate, hey, we wanna send in a package of like, you know, see what happens. Um and they can run certain missions independently and then certain missions as human machine teams.

• 2:26:26Shawn Ryan?

  Could you, could you give me an example of what a, what a mission set would look like where it is, you know, human pilots and expats together?

• 2:26:36Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, I think it's good, like, look, again, I think it's gonna be the threat environment. And so if you're going up against like the worst threat environment imaginable, like, so I would say like, you could imagine a strike mission where, you know, intelligence estimates that there's a limited number of um surface-to-air missile systems, but there's a complexity to the type of mission in terms of the effects that they wanna have where it's like you wanna put pilots up in the air. And then there could be a mission where it's like, look, it's a simple mission, but it's a target that is like hell for any aviator because the number of surface-to-air missile systems in the area are a ridiculous amount.

• 2:27:18Speaker 03

  We know they're mobile. We don't know exactly where they are. You might basically go stimulate that environment by sending, you know, unmanned systems first, things like the expat first.

• 2:27:29Shawn Ryan?

  Got you. Got you. Is there any stealth capabilities to it?

• 2:27:33Speaker 03

  Um, it is, it's shape, it's design is inherently low uh observable, um meant to have a very small radar cross-section. Stealth is, there can be stealth coatings applied uh to it, but we wanna get the capability out fast. And like one of the ways to do that is just like not worry about the, the stealth aspect of uh the capability to start. Like, like true stealth coatings.

• 2:28:00Shawn Ryan?

  As far as DC is concerned, I mean.

• 2:28:05Speaker 03

  Are our politicians on board with this? Are you getting a lot of? Yeah, yeah, I think they're very much, I think not only the politicians, but also senior DOD leadership, one, I think they're very much bought into the concept of collaborative combat aircraft, right? These uncrewed jets that are being built by lots of people. I think, you know, for us, the combination of Hive Mind and Exbat really stands out in the sense that, again, no one's ever seen an aircraft like this before. It's pretty unique. And then like, it's, it's non-obvious in terms of like, the immediate benefits that it has for the warfighters, essentially that logistics aspect of it and like the, just

• 2:28:50Speaker 03

  the tactical employment of it, putting it anywhere, right? It fundamentally redefines how air warfare is executed when you start eliminating the need for runways. Everything has always been like constrained by that one thing. And so I think politicians very much understand that. And absolutely, like the, the combatant commanders and, you know, senior military leaders understand that. And it's, look, I think, yeah, they're, they're excited about it. There's a, there's a lot of enthusiasm, support for the capability. The challenge is, is that no one had ever conceived of something like this.

• 2:29:34Speaker 03

  And so it's kind of like this unplanned product that you're like, wait a second, like, okay, how do, what impact does this have to, you know, the rest of our systems as this thing comes online? Not to mention the fact that, you know, SHIELD AI is funding the vast majority of its development. And so it's, it's just kind of, you know, that will be one of the challenges. It's like, okay, well, how does, how does it affect current DOD resourcing plans as this capability comes online?

• 2:30:05Shawn Ryan?

  How fast can you manufacture these?

• 2:30:07Speaker 03

  Um.

• 2:30:11Speaker 03

  We want to ramp to, uh, like, we want this aircraft to be this generation's F-16, right? I think there's something like 4,000 F-16s out there. I think you're gonna see more because lower cost, lower life cycle costs, AI piloted, much easier to adopt and implement into a force structure. 2029, targeting 50 aircraft, but ramping, you know, between 300 to 500 aircraft. Again, it's, yeah, that's right. And that's gonna be done over a number of years to get to. But, um, and the demand for the aircraft is gonna play a role, uh, in that. But, um, it's the customer reception, right? We're, we've gone public with it today.

• 2:30:50Speaker 03

  We've been engaging the customer now for eight, nine months and the reception has been wild. In terms of, like, again, pretty, it's a non-obvious way to solve a lot of problems that were never really, you know, articulated as problems. It's like, what would you do with an air force that didn't require a runway? Right? Where air force is, right? You know, what does this mean for, uh, the Navy and Marine Corps? Where your, your, your, your strike power is no longer limited to an aircraft carrier? Where you can have Marines on, uh, island chains with, um, this type of, you know, organic capability. It just redefines so much as we think about air superiority and like how that's employed.

• 2:31:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's a lot, it's a, it's a lot to think about.

• 2:31:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I would claim it's like, you know, up to the point where like, people, it's almost, I think it'll be as transformational as like when we decide to launch airplanes from ships, right? Like, right before World War II, someone had the crazy idea like, hey, let's try to launch one of these airplane things off a ship, right? And then what did that do? That basically defined the military force structure of the United States for the next 80 years.

• 2:32:05Shawn Ryan?

  So. Damn. Do you think we'll see these? Loitering for defense, loitering about around FOBs, loitering around the border of the country. I mean,

• 2:32:19Speaker 03

  Um, I don't know if there'll be loitering like I, I, I, I think of it as like they'll be used as power projection in the same way that um, our, our aircraft carriers are used as power projection. And so I don't see them, right? When, when, when an adversary or a country is being belligerent to another country and the United States wants to do something, what do we do? We park an aircraft carrier off of its coast and we're, we're flying sorties and saying, hey, check yourself before, you know, you wreck yourself. Um, and I think that'll be similar. It's hard for me to see us using like that type of platform in terms of like local, you

• 2:33:04Speaker 03

  know, I say domestic, like air patrol, domestic border security outside of like, I don't know, the Caribbean Sea is a pretty interesting place right now, but yeah.

• 2:33:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, Brandon, we'll wrap it up the interview and um, you know, one thing that I just want to ask is, is, you know, for, for Gen Z, for the upcoming generations, I mean, what inspiration do you have for them being somebody who's an innovator?

• 2:33:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think, um, look, my recommendation would be like be bold, be courageous. Um, like you've got, you know, one, you know, precious life and just like make the most out of it. Uh, and don't be afraid to, to swing for the fences or be part of a team that is swinging for the fences. Like in no way are you going to regret that. Like I regret zero of my time in the Navy, even, even on a ship. Like I'm very thankful for that time. I'm thankful for uh, my time in the SEAL teams, like the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it. And then, you know, S.H.I.E.L.D. AI, like thankful for it. And like I'm, for me and like what I'm encouraging,

• 2:34:12Speaker 03

  yeah, I want to encourage that from, for my kids, like be confident, be courageous, be bold, swing for the fences. Like, uh, why, you know, what do you, what do you have to lose? Um, is, you know, my mentality and I would be my message for, for, you know, this next generation.

• 2:34:27Shawn Ryan?

  Love that. Love that. Well, Brandon, I just want to say it was an honor to interview you, man. And, and um, just wow. Congratulations. It's.

• 2:34:40Shawn Ryan?

  Awesome what you're doing.

• 2:34:41Speaker 03

  Thanks Sean, I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on the show. Thanks for letting us bring in the expat to your, you know, to your facility and, you know, apologize for the complaints from the neighbors.

• 2:34:52Shawn Ryan?

  No, no, I mean, it's like I said out there when we were, when, when, when, when you were giving me the tour of the aircraft. I mean, this is you, what you're doing, what you've built is, is, is, it just makes me proud as hell to be an American. So, thank you.

• 2:35:08Speaker 03

  Appreciate it. Thank you.

• 2:35:09Shawn Ryan?

  Cheers.

• 2:35:22Shawn Ryan?

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