Silicon Valley design-led thinking outperforms legacy defense primes
“And when we talk about what is Silicon Valley adding to the whole mix, if you will, you say, why is Silicon Valley, sort of better in some way? I lean into the design led thinking. And design led thinking is human factors, human thinking from the very beginning. That's what it means at its core. In a Raytheon, you're a services contractor. You have the military that decides what they want you to build. They put them all down in, like, a thousand requirements. They hand you a bunch of requirements, and you just build a system that meets the requirements.”
Epirus technology eliminates the threat of fiber-optic drones
“And then it gives you a really nice defense against fiber optic fiber optic drones that you've seen these in The Ukraine now. These guys are about the drones that Tethered. Tethered. Yeah. They're dark we call them dark drones because it could be fiber optic. In the future, it could be, autonomous drones that just don't use any sort of RF or any sort of global positioning or any of that in order to see where it's at and to navigate. ... But those types of drones are just as susceptible against artifacts as a regular remote controlled drone.”
High power microwave systems are inherently safe for humans
“I'd stand in front of the main beam, not for like an hour, but I'd stand in front of the main beam for like fifteen seconds and go zap me. It won't do anything. It won't it wouldn't do a thing to me. ... We happen to use frequencies that are so low, they're close to kind of RF. They're still microwave. They're considered microwave, but they're almost in the RF or radio frequency band of waves, and those waves pass harmlessly through us. Those are the kinda radio towers and stuff like that. The very, very long wavelength, very, very, low frequency waves.”
Gallium Nitride enables a new class of directed energy
“It's this really remarkable semiconductor like silicon. Silicon is a semiconductor. It's a remarkable semiconductor that can amplify signals and withstand huge, huge power densities way, way, way better than traditional semiconductors or things that we've used before in the past. And that is really what's unlocked kind of a new class of directed energy, a new class of electronic warfare, a new class of a whole bunch of different systems that leverage that kind of technology, the gallium nitride technology.”
Leonidas uses high power microwaves to neutralize drone swarms
“What we're doing, with the Leonidas at EPRIS is creating basically a close in weapon system, but using electromagnetic bullets versus physical bullets to kind of provide that last line of defense. And one, it can provide a very nice last line of defense against leakers. We talked about those. Really nice line of defense against swarms. Like, the gift I gave you was a 49 shoot down, but that doesn't mean we can't shoot down 500 or a thousand or more.”
Traditional missiles are too expensive for cheap drone defense
“But what we're seeing now is a a whole new chapter. It's the the stuff that's built at the big primes are not sufficient for this new fight. ... I mean, you're talking about shooting a $2,000,000 missile to Get a $10,500 drone. Right. Exactly. What you're talking about. Yes, sir. It's not sustainable. It's just not even, like, appropriate. It's like, would you ever take a huge gun or a huge I don't know what you wanna do if you don't say gun like net or what some cage would you have a cage for a lion with the bars this far apart?”
Leonidas functions as an adjustable electronic force field
“In a simple way, it's sort of like the first version that the human race of a of a force field that anyone's ever created. ... Our system isn't quite to that level of sophistication yet. But as far as a version one of a force field that is a close in protective field that sends out these very, very, very high, high powered electromagnetic interference waves that when the drone if you imagine, here here's the field that we're putting out there. As the drone gets into this electromagnetic interference field, it might stutter, the camera might stop working, then it gets deeper and deeper, closer and closer into the intensity of the electromagnetic interference, and eventually, the computer just can't operate.”
Modern warfare shifted from hunting lions to trapping mice
“For the last decades, the primes have been focused on, let's say, going out and hunting a lion or lions, like big, big beasts. You know, they have to bring in the big nets, the big guns, the big whatever that they need to go hunt lions. The problem we see today are like mice and little mice that are running around. And what we're doing with our big rockets and our our big defensive systems are using the same thing we would go up against lions against mice. Mhmm. And it's really that fundamental.”
