Heather “Lucky” Penney: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Aerospace Advantage
Podcast brought to you by PenFed. I’m your host, Heather “Lucky” Penney.
Here on the Aerospace Advantage, we speak with leaders in the DoD, industry
and other subject matter experts to explore the intersection of strategy,
operational concepts, technology, and policy when it comes to air and space
power.
In a recent speech, the head of DoD Acquisition, Dr. Bill LaPlante, laid out a
pretty ambitious goal for the U. S. defense community. We are going to need to
have more political will to mobilize. Now, his comments were focused on
munitions. He explained that Putin is spending between 10 and 15 percent of
Russia’s gross domestic product on defense.
Now, that’s commitment. And as LaPlante commented, he’s tripled his
production across the board. This is not what other people have done, including
us.
Nor is the production threat restricted to large countries. Laplante highlighted
that the Houthis are doing technical things that only the advanced countries can
do, and they’re producing them at scale. So, if we overlay that in [00:01:00] a
China scenario, it’s clear we’ve got serious issues that risk us, the U. S., from
being outproduced on the war materiel front. And it’s especially in munitions.
And that’s why Laplante concluded, every U. S. and allied defense company
should be saying what it would take to go five times my production rate.
So, what would it take to go five times? That’s a massive scale. So, with those
comments as a scene setter, we’re going to dive into this topic and help answer
Dr. Laplante’s question about how the U. S. industrial base could expand its
production capacity while also working to deliver new capabilities that allow
aircrew the ability to secure a broad range of combat effects. And, to be clear,
it’s no mystery to our regular listeners. We’ve been talking about munitions a lot
in recent episodes.
But that’s because we are in total agreement with what Dr. LaPlante said
regarding the need to press aggressively for a new innovation and production
paradigm. We cannot be complacent, building a few hundred munitions a
month, when the air tasking order will call for tens of [00:02:00] thousands over
that same period of time.
We know our stockpiles are at a record low levels, so we need to get real about
rebuilding and sustaining to meet this new demand signal. So, joining us today
to discuss this is Anduril’s Steve Milano from their Strike and Air Dominant
sector and our very own Major General Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem.
So Steve, thank you so much for being here.
Steve Milano: Yeah, thanks for having me, Lucky.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: And Stutz, you too. It’s always a pleasure to have
you.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Of course, lucky. It’s great
to be here again. We’re going to have some fun with this one. Very interesting
topic by the way.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Oh, no, it totally is. And one that’s near and dear to
our hearts because we like to make things go boom.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Yes, we do, don’t we?
Heather “Lucky” Penney: All right, so first and foremost. You know Stutz,
what we’re really talking about and what I think Dr. Laplante is talking about is
a real world appraisal of what it would take to from a materiel perspective, to
fight in a major theater conflict. We talk a lot about the technologies and the
CONOPS, but this is about the actual stuff that blows things up.
So, given the alignment that we’ve seen between China, Russia, Iran, and North
Korea [00:03:00] there might be concurrent conflicts specifically designed to
stretch us to a breaking point. You grew up in the last decade of the Cold War,
so help us get our heads around what that world looks like. This is kind of a
back to the future moment.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): It really is. Yeah, lucky.
Let’s do a little history with this and I’ll get to your point. And, at the end of this,
we have to think about, uh, where we were, for example, 30 years ago with
Desert Storm, which was, the last large scale, operation that we had.
And, you know, we’re talking about hundreds of sorties, thousands of bombs
each day. And we were living off some really big stockpiles from World War II,
Korea, and so forth. And, uh, when we fast forward about 10 years to OEF, we
had what 90 percent of that was, perhaps precision munitions, not that old
stockpile kind of stuff.
And really, the numbers of sorties weren’t that much, I mean, compared to
Desert Storm. And we’ve been in a period [00:04:00] of time now for 30 years
where the numbers have been really low, but when we talk about a China
Taiwan scenario, we’re going back to that Cold War size level of sorties.
Maybe, you know, we’ve done some studies, a very good study recently where
we’re talking about maybe more than ten thousand aim points the we have to
service. And our analysis says we’re going to run out of, munitions probably in
about a week if we don’t do something about that.
So, really the demand for a truly a peer conflict is something, we haven’t
experience for quite a while.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, 10,000, uh, aim points. That is a significant
amount of aim points and it requires an even greater number of munitions.
Steve, I’d like you to weigh in here. What are your thoughts regarding this
picture that Stutz is painting?
Steve Milano: Yeah. I agree that like, as you came out of the Cold War and we
entered into kind of the, Gulf era and then the GWOT kind of following that, it
drove requirements for munitions and kind of different ways from and from a
[00:05:00] perspective of like needing the, uh, the munitions to do different
things.
But ultimately it drove the same behaviors and kind of the ecosystem. So, the
requirement systems were the same. The modalities through which the services
engaged with industry were very much the same. And so despite the fact that
there were larger inventory requirements and buildups, leading into the Cold
War and then coming out of it, and the fact that we were kind of churning
through, uh, different munitions sets, uh, through GWOT. It still had, we still
had the same mechanism that was rep replying that was replenishing those,
those capabilities.
And so what I think that we saw was essentially the creation of like these black
holes of requirements for the very exquisite capability, but not necessarily the
continuation or maturation of like, how do we deliver, munitions in a way that
actually meets the current need. Whether that’s numbers, exquisite capability or
some blending of the two.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Exactly, Steve. And so in GWOT, we weren’t
dropping a whole lot of weapons. Um, we were still, we were refining, I think, a
lot of the [00:06:00] weapons that we did have regarding precision munitions
and also decreasing the size of the explosive capability.
So, there was minor incremental changes, but I think from a production
capacity, that’s really where we took for granted the fact that we weren’t
expending a tremendous amount of munitions, and we were really cutting down
on those yearly buys. And that has an impact on what industry is going to size
to. What they’re going to build their plants in their facilities for and also all the
raw materials and how they’re going to mobilize their entire army of suppliers,
right?
All the mom and pop shops that build the small things that then they then put
together on the factory floor. Stutz, you helped run the war during Southern
Watch and Afghanistan. So, from this targeting munitions perspective, what
were your considerations?
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, when we got to
Operation Enduring Freedom, as I was saying earlier, you know, we were now
in a GPS guided munition age and that’s what we’re [00:07:00] ramping up to
buy, but we we didn’t have the ability in the first couple of weeks to really
deliver those effectively. Uh, we couldn’t find maps and we didn’t yet have
devices that could actually tag locations. And so, here we were in a new age
dropping a GPS guided bombs. Later, incredibly effective, much preferred. But
once again, you look at, as you said Lucky, you go back, after Desert Storm and
you didn’t really have a constituency for munitions. So in the Air Force across
the Department of Defense as well, if there is a need to pull some money to pay
for something else, it came out of munitions.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: And there was no cost to the operator because we
just weren’t expending them at a high rate.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Correct. There was no
demand signal on that at the time. So, it really required, somebody thinking
ahead to what could happen. And as you know, in the nineties and early 2000s
there wasn’t the thought that we’re going to have a peer [00:08:00] adversary.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Oh it was the “end of history.” It was a unipolar
world. There was never never going to be another bad guy.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): So, here we are. There
was a quote just recently in the news. A personality said, “hey, industry has got
to step up and build a surge capacity.” Well, unless the military is going to buy
munitions, there’s no incentive to keep a very expensive surge capacity on
board. So, we’re looking at a very different future where we need to have the
stockpiles of munitions to do something better than a week.
Otherwise, uh, a peer adversary like China is going to just outweight us in terms
of.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, they’re going to outproduce us and outstock
pilots. I mean, we were talking, um, before this recording about, uh, the change
of paradigms where we moved from a stockpiling mentality that we had during
World War II, in Korea, and Vietnam because those people lived through the
early years of World War II where we did not have those stockpiles. We did not
have those reserves.
[00:09:00] And today now it’s just in time logistics, right? Just in time delivery.
But that’s not how war works. War is inefficient. So, if you want to be effective,
you have to build that up, but we are not, we’re not sized for that and we’re not
budgeted for that.
Steve Milano: I think that we live somewhere on that spectrum though. From
the stockpiling modality all the way to the just in time iterations, like, you have
to live somewhere where your munitions are able to be surged quickly. And that
you can stockpile the needs so that you have the munitions necessary to be able
to satisfy the early, you know, the early expenditures.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: While you search that production.
Steve Milano: Exactly.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: How do we build that elasticity into our
production? I mean, traditional industry primes are not, that’s just not how they
function. It would take years for them to facilitate, to train the workforce, to
build up the raw materials, to do all the things they would need to do to really
meaningfully make a step change in their production.
Steve Milano: You have to take the exquisite nature out of the materials, the
processes, and [00:10:00] the manufacturing modalities to be able to allow
industry to respond in a meaningful way so that you can provide that
adaptiveness. If a factory takes 12 months to build, well then the munition takes
12 months plus whatever the time is to actually build the thing. So, as you take
out the complexity of sourcing the materials, the complexity of testing, the
complexity of like just putting the things together, you create this ability to kind
of move more quickly throughout the process of development, production and
fielding of systems.
And you can be more responsive to requirements as they change.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, how did Anduril decide to enter this part of the
industrial base equation? Because you and your team, you’re relative
newcomers. What made you think that you could make a difference in
overcoming this munitions challenge?
Steve Milano: So, you framed it pretty well. And we like to say that, look at the
munitions that we have. The existing munitions portfolio that the Air Force and
other services are planning to go to, war with, if necessary. And we look at the
quantities and the ability to procure and that combined [00:11:00] with the
timelines for replenishment created an environment where we will be out of
munitions in a relatively short period of time. Less than a week by some
estimates and by the study that, that you all have done.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Which, by the way, we’ll put in the show notes. It’s,
I mean, it’s an evergreen study, Affordable Mass by Mark Gunzinger.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Right.
Steve Milano: Yeah. Yeah, great, great piece of work. I really enjoyed reading
through that. So, we saw the existing environment, we saw where the industry
was on. We knew what we could do, right? Anduril is a company, it’s in our
DNA to solve hard problems. This looked like a really hard problem. We were
told kind of early on that this was, you know, this was something that was going
to be challenging. And if we were going to do it a different way by self
investing, by doing the things where we test early and kind of, you know, fail
fast is kind of the model.
Um, that it was going to be challenging and it was, but it’s the type of
challenging that, uh, that Anduril in general finds really rewarding. And so, uh,
dive into it, understand what the problems [00:12:00] and complexity are. And I
think that we have some, some novel, constructs, but really it’s about just doing
the things that we knew needed to be done in the industry.
Um, and that is investing ahead of the need, creating modular manufacturing
modalities. Those types of things that enable you to be responsive. So, you look
at the model of the existing industrially industrial base and you pivot and you do
things that are differently. Sometimes that different is painful.
Sometimes you don’t get the reciprocity from the services, but you do what’s
right. You start delivering and that’s kind of where we’re at now we’re starting to
see some of those early investments of time, resources, effort, and
communication pay dividends in the representation that the services are coming
to us. Particularly the Air Force looking at us and saying, this is a model that we
want to replicate.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So Steve, you talked about reciprocity from the
service, and that’s really kind of the demand signal that the Air Force Munitions
Directorate would place on industry, right? This is, these are the types of
munitions we need, what we need to [00:13:00] buy. I’m guessing what they’re
asking for is a lot different from what they have wanted in the past decades.
Is there an inflection point where you saw the demand signal change? And is
that reciprocity, is that demand signal really meeting what you think where it
needs to go in order to get us healthy again?
Steve Milano: I don’t know that the demand signal has necessarily changed
dramatically, which may be surprising. Because I, I’ve lived and worked with,
the Armaments Directorate, in the Air Force for a number of years now and I’ve
worked through different integrations of an attempt to try and, accomplish this
agile munitions requirements development and fielding, over the past, 10 years
or more.
I’m certain that there’s going to be listeners that say, I was working this 20 years
ago. Okay.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: It just goes to show how hard the problem is, right?
Steve Milano: Exactly. Exactly. So, I don’t think that demand signal that we’re
receiving is much different than we’ve received in the past. I think the
environment is changing to expose the ability to actually get after problems that
we knew needed solutions.
And so I think that the Air Force and other services really [00:14:00] are
looking at this and saying, this is a time and place where we’ve got commercial
industry and tech startups and international industry that’s willing to come
together and actually help solve this problem. And we’ve also got this
confluence of regulatory revisions that are happening where we’re actually able
to do things faster, buy things quicker.
And so, the acquisition environment is better than it’s been. It could always get
better. But the demand signal has been fairly sufficient and it’s getting, it’s
getting more and more clear as it gets more and more informed. And we start to
get some cycles on that iterative process about what works for us as industry.
What works for delivering capabilities to the services and how that process can
become more efficient beneficial
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, you’ve also, earlier mentioned that Andrews
looking at this problem from a different perspective. When you evaluated the
challenge of how you surge production, how did you create responsive industry
when it comes to munitions production. What’s different in what you saw? As
opposed to how industry has traditionally been approaching this challenge.
Steve Milano: So, there’s [00:15:00] a pretty common, terminology designed
for manufacturing, so I don’t mean to say that.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Let’s geek out! Let’s go all the way!
Steve Milano: So, so when, when, I hear design for manufacturing. I can’t help
but hear it as like a bumper sticker that I feel like a lot of defense industry
partners will like throw around is this is something that we’re doing because it
sounds good. It sounds like something that you want to hear. Well, I’m
designing for manufacturing, so obviously it should be easily manufactured.
That’s not always the case. So what design for manufacturing actually looks like
it needs to look like is that I understand the sensitivities of everything that I’m
doing before I ever cut metal. Before I ever do anything in a factory, before I
lay out a factory floor plan, I know what my design is going, what impact my
design is going to have on the future materials that are necessary, the processes
that are necessary, the testing that is necessary. Because all of that impacts my
ability to surge capacity, turn around and be flexible to the needs of
requirements and capacity.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Well, Steve, let’s, uh, talk
[00:16:00] about network operations. We know that Anduril’s well known for
things like it’s lattice software, which, helps tie sensors, processing power, and
the effectors themselves across the battle space. Yeah, I’d have to contrast that
with the past where we had the idea of a missile having its own seeker. It was
executing a pretty organic, uh, kill chain. I mean, you could say that an F 16
closed the kill chain loop all by itself. But you and your team are taking a very
different approach. Mind explaining that approach and then what that means for
production?
Steve Milano: Yeah, start on the, I think, the operational side first.
The problem’s not an easy one, because I, grew up developing systems that were
reliant on the probability of single system kill, right? The ability for one system
to be able to track to a target and be able to engage that target and get the
intended need. So, the idea that you could disaggregate that and [00:17:00]
actually get a more cost effective, effect whether through the system of systems,
is something that I’m still wrapping my head around. But the enablers that we
have in place today that didn’t exist 10, 15, 20 years ago are allowing us to think
about problems differently.
And so as we think about those problems differently and we network capability
across multiple systems, we no longer need the exquisite seeker that can do all
of the things that were necessary. And so I won’t go into the specifics of an
individual seeker, but as you do kind of different modalities in a single, you
know, in a single space.
You’re going to create an environment where the complexity of testing goes up,
the complexity of materials goes up, and so your production aspects are
impacted by that. But also, it doesn’t give you the flexibility as an operator to be
able to scale the, to scale the effect that you’re actually looking for. You’re
always going to get the effect that you get out of a single system kill type of of
system. Whereas if you’re if you’re disaggregating that into a heterogeneous mix
of things [00:18:00] that you’re sending out, you’re able to share kind of those
different modalities.
And so one may have a laser seeking modality, one may have RF, one may have
IR, and just being able to share across the different, the assets across the
everything that’s in that ecosystem in that salvo. Will allow you to, uh, will
allow you to have a greater mission effect than the single system.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and also when you’ve got the different
modalities, um, individually packaged, right? You don’t have to layer modalities
on top of each other in that specific munition. You’re decreasing costs. So,
you’re creating resilience across that salvo. So, the family, when you’re shooting
it out there, and let’s just be honest, it’s ammunition.
So, it’s a one way deal, right? It’s not coming back. So you need to make sure
that you maximize your cost per effect. Um, and so it also, it decreases cost
within that family of systems when it’s a heterogeneous salvo like that.
Steve Milano: That’s absolutely correct. And that’s the way that we look at it is
like the net, the net cost of the effect that you’re trying to achieve.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): And we’re also talking
about geographic space. I mean, [00:19:00] these, these pieces of that kill chain
can be very well separated in, in space, right?
Steve Milano: Yeah, I think that’s another aspect that we’re slow to respond to
as a as an ecosystem, both industrialized and service. And, and what does
autonomy and having all of these autonomous things in the air do for you?
Because, we’re talking about munitions today, but really what we’re talking
about is autonomous air vehicles, whether that’s a larger CCA, smaller
munitions. If it’s in the air, it is a node. If it’s a node, you have the ability to
connect to it. So, I don’t know that we’re necessarily taking advantage of that
adaptive web that we’re creating to the greatest effect. And I think that we’ll see
that over the next handful of years that the maturation of the linkage of those
effects is going to give us greater CONOP ability.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Yeah.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: I know. So I’d like to dig in that a little bit more,
Steve, because, uh, obviously with the lattice software of Anduril, I mean, AI is
a huge player in that.
So, could you speak more to how you see the family of systems evolving
[00:20:00] regarding the networked nodes, if you will, uh, not just within the
munitions, but across the portfolio?
Steve Milano: So mission autonomy, the way that it’s baked into munitions
today is, it’s kind of a service in the software and it’s not doing service to the
munitions that or the capability that you’re offering up. Where you think about
software as it’s running on, uh, any individual munition. It is a, it’s an aspect of
what the munition is actually trying to go do, but it’s not a mission system
today.
So like as, as the way that we think about advanced effects, the way that we
think about munitions is that, mission autonomy is a mission system. And it’s a
domain space that you can interact with. It’s a domain space that you need to be
able to take advantage of. And so as we integrate this into the base layer, we’re
taking behaviors from other places and integrating them into munition systems
and sharing those behaviors back and forth.
Lucky, I think, I think that you actually saw a demonstration out.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: I did. I did. That was, that was pretty awesome. I
mean, like, so one of the things [00:21:00] that’s very interesting about your
approaches, you’re not having to reinvent that mission autonomy for every
individual platform that you have out there.
You’re basically taking that, foundation, that baseline, and that’s going to
increase your effectiveness overall because you have a lot more data points, but
it also going to decrease the cost because you’re amortizing it.
Steve Milano: That’s right. That’s right. And it does become a little bit of an
acquisition, uh, not problem, but it’s something that, that I think we, we need to
like look at because we buy software. Or the defense industry provides
software, the services buy software, but how they acquire software for different
systems is different. So, mission autonomy is, should be viewed as the mission
system for all of these platforms.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): So, let me, go back to the,
I guess you’d say CONOP. How does the approach you’re talking about evolve?
You know, depending on the threat environment, there’s going to be times when
jamming is extreme and that’s the jamming of links that bring all this together.
Other times [00:22:00] will be more permissive. So, how do your munitions
architectures adjust given those variables?
Steve Milano: Yeah, it it’s physical and software, right? So, the modularity that
we, that we bake into all of our systems, both at the software packet level and at
the hardware level enables us to adapt to those different those mission spaces.
And I think that the modularity allows us to pick and choose and provide
option, optionality. So, that you can go and achieve the effects that you’re
looking for. For a given mission, but also having the software baseline and
understanding what the understanding what your integration capability is so that
you have that flexibility across all of those hardware platforms, is what gives
you is what gives you that flexibility.
So, we’re only able to be adaptive and responsive to those requirements as they
change because we built it in as part of our foundation.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): You know, one of the
keys to enhance production is not to overdesign everything. Of course,
[00:23:00] you want to meet the operational demands, but anything more than
that’s going to boost cost and drive timelines, right?
Steve Milano: Yeah, that’s right. And as we talked about, having the modularity
to be able to pick and choose four different mission sets and being able to
disaggregate, a very complex seeker into an, on average, lower cost seeker per
effect. The same thing is true for the cost of your munition stores.
So, having the modularity allows you to buy X number of secret modalities, X
number of payloads, X number of propulsion systems and being able to switch
them in and out. And that’s a little bit of an oversimplification of kind of the
Lego bricks that built up capability.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): I like this approach.
Steve Milano: I’d love for it to be that simple and we’re getting there, but yeah,
it’s something that we’re, we’re working towards, but having that flexibility
allows you to, you know, not have to keep everything on the shelf all the time
and be able to keep costs low. Because then when you really do need that
exquisite capability, you have the ability to plug it in, but you don’t need tens of
thousands of them on the shelf and use them for what they’re really intended for.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Good point. Good point.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: [00:24:00] Speaking of developing all of that, let’s
pivot back to the Air Force. A few years ago, they launched their Enterprise
Test Vehicle effort, which sought to harness a lot of these design attributes
we’ve been talking about. And you were part of that program. So, I don’t think a
lot of people really know what Enterprise Test Vehicle is and how it started,
because it certainly evolved against something so much more.
Steve Milano: Yeah, absolutely. And a shout out to anybody listening that’s
worked on these efforts in the past that will appreciate the, the little bit of
history here. Uh, but the Enterprise Test Vehicle is not the first time that the Air
Force has looked at this kind of agile weapons development and employment.
Uh, so the GB, GBUX program, the Global Precision Attack Weapon Program,
all had fits and starts where they added to the baseline of what eventually
became the Enterprise Test Vehicle Program. And what that is essentially a, uh,
an autonomous air vehicle that is designed to prove out, uh, mission systems
that will ultimately be fielded in a future capability.
The Enterprise [00:25:00] Test Vehicle Program is broken up into design cycles
where we add iterative capability into the platform. And prove out those
different mission systems that ultimately lead to a capability. And where
Enterprise Test Vehicle, the Enterprise Test Vehicle program has gotten, uh,
this right, where others have not been able to see it all the way through to
completion, is that, this program has an end state operational effect in mind.
That they’re working towards and it’s the affordable mass missile. And so, that
iteration and what those mission systems actually look like are going to be parts
of the design cycle that get iterated into the platform, flown, tested, iterated on
before we actually move into production.
The, uh, the Enterprise Test Vehicle Program will yield this affordable mass
missile that will then be modular manufacturing capable. Insensitive to different
supply chains, so I should, we should be able to move, the affordable mass
missile production to anywhere in the world. Not have counterdependent and
[00:26:00] codependent supply chains so that you don’t have that same type of
pressure that you have across the munitions base now where if I ramp up one
program, it impacts another.
So that’s one of the core themes of actually delivering this affordable capability.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: I did not know that. That’s super interesting. So, is
this, is this something that we could share with partners and allies in terms of
the industrial base and production?
Steve Milano: Yeah, the intent of being the baseline intent of the Enterprise
Test Vehicle Program is to expand. Expand the manufacturing footprint in an
expeditionary basis, and the design modality is such that it’s designed for export
ability. There’s nothing in the baseline platforms and having the modularity in
the mission systems allows us to kind of work independently, share those
resources with our partners and allow them to develop their own mission
systems and integrate into that ecosystem.
And so, again, not easy going back to the Lego building blocks, and now we’re
talking about different blocks from different players. But, um, but [00:27:00]
that’s the end goal of what we’re working with the Air Force to try to
accomplish here.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, you need to make sure that all the interfaces
and data message sets and all of that, all those standards are interoperable.
Steve Milano: That’s right.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: As well as physically integratable, right?
Steve Milano: Yeah, there, there is a software aspect of it and there’s a
hardware aspect of it. Both are, equally difficult. If you’ve ever been in Asia and
tried to buy a light bulb for a US lamp, you’ve run into the type of hardware
interface problem that, we’re up against.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Or traveling to Europe and you got to go buy the
brick of the different, uh, electrical sockets.
Steve Milano: Exactly, right.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Oh, that’s right. That’s
right.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So if, I was to go out on a flight line, what would
an ETV look like?
Steve Milano: Ah, yeah, so the employment of an enterprise test vehicle in its
current instantiation is going to be a cargo airplane launch.
So, like a C 17 or C 1 30. It will be extracted from the back of the cargo aircraft
via parachute. And it’ll, uh, it’ll hang under parachute until it gets to [00:28:00] a
certain altitude and then, uh, a number of, a number of these Enterprise Test
Vehicles, affordable mass missiles, will uh, be deployed from the bottom of the
carriage system. They’ll gain stable flight and they’ll fly off and perform their
mission.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, kind of like Rapid Dragon?
Steve Milano: So, Rapid Dragon was the test instantiation for the actual
carriage system and the release to prove that, uh, I could, you could take off and
land with something on board. You could take off an air drop something, uh,
out of the back that the carriage system actually worked, that you could deploy
an existing system.
Uh, but going back to the availability of munitions, why Anduril got into the
munition space, uh, is that if you were to load existing munitions onto a Rapid
Dragon. That pallet becomes very, very expensive. And so, if you’re looking at
the effect per pallet, you’re, you would like to be able to transition that down to
a lower cost thing.
And so, the Enterprise Test Vehicle Program has a target of $150,000 per base,
uh, base [00:29:00] munition.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Well, Steve, I really want
to get to the stuff that’s really interesting for, uh, Lucky and I. Which is, uh,
opening up that can of beat them up, you know, special delivery to the bad guy.
Uh, no, where, where do you currently stand in your munitions portfolio?
What do you, what are the main products you’re working on?
Steve Milano: Yeah, so, this past year or earlier this year at AFA, we went
public with our Barracuda line of, um, autonomous air vehicles. Those are air
breathing, cruise missile type capability, our Barracuda and our Barracuda M,
which is the munition variant.
The Barracuda 100 is, roughly 70 inches long, 6 inches in diameter, the range of
about 140 miles. And its form factor is kind fitted for, rotary wing, soft insertion
type of thing, uh, those types of, uh, utilizations. Our Barracuda 250 is slightly
bigger than that, uh, greater than 200 nautical miles of range. Similar size,
[00:30:00] 72 inches, about seven or eight inches in diameter, kind of in that
STB2 like form factor.
And then our Barracuda 500, the larger, 144 inch, eight to 10 inch, form factor,
500 nautical mile endurance. That’s base platform for our, Enterprise Test
Vehicle.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): All cool stuff.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. So, again, within the Barracuda family, it’s
both scalable in size and range, uh, and, and explosive payload. But you also
have that foundation of software, right? So, you’re, you are taking this Lego
approach to the Barracuda family.
Steve Milano: That’s right. Anduril at its heart is a software defined, hardware
enabled company. So, um, so everything that we do and it’s tough for me to say
that as a munitions person. Like I said, I’ve only, worked munitions my entire
career.
So, but I do believe that, what it, what actually enables us to go fast is that
everything is software defined. And so having vehicle management systems,
guidance navigation, and control that’s common across, not just [00:31:00] our
autonomous air vehicles, but all of our platforms. We get that learning that we
talked about earlier across the different platforms and the families of systems so
that no one program is burdened with the learning or the investments necessary
to prove out any one capability.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): And it’s interesting that
the family that you just described, I mean, it spans quite a broad range of
tactical situations, right?
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, absolutely. So, this entire approach from the
family of systems to how you, you share software across a variety of different
programs, that’s got to be challenging, not just from a programmatic approach,
cause you’re, crossing different programs and different services, but for the
testing approach as well. So how are you testing these products? How are you
testing the software?
Steve Milano: So, the way the Andrew approaches development is essentially
to develop and test ahead of need. And so a lot of our baseline is, uh, is looking
at the sensitivities of what we know the capability set is going to need to be
delivered. And so we will [00:32:00] pivot, test, and do these things that are
necessary that we know that are necessary to deliver the end capability.
And then once we’re referring back to the programmatics, once we’re on
program, once we’re executing on a specific ground, contract. It’s easy for us to
tailor from that, baseline that we’ve already proven out. One of the things that
we, tend to do very well and quickly is, we fell fast, we test fast, and we, we test
again and test again.
And so, we have our own test ranges. We have our own pilots. These are the
things that enable us to go very quickly in a lot of these test isms. But doing
those things ahead of, need, flying the software capability, flying these
different, in these different environments allows us to do that learning at a much
faster pace.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, are you seeing the government accepting your
test points, even though it wasn’t done underneath their oversight?
Steve Milano: So, I’m going to answer two questions. One that you asked, one
that you didn’t ask, uh, and the answer is so far, yes. In the early stages, as we
start to develop some of these capabilities, they’re actually very appreciative of
[00:33:00] our ability to move quickly and and kind of offer solutions.
And the test architecture is kind of one of the one of the things that we do well.
And one of the things that moves that helps us move quickly. But it is really just
the nature of going quickly, working, but working and partnering with, the
customer organizations. And to answer the question you didn’t ask, which was
how do you actually move quicker through those processes and those test
processes?
The answer’s kind of the same. it’s partnering early. It’s having those
conversations because there’s a legitimate need for the Air Force Equal
Organization. For example, uh, the legitimate need for NSA certification of
certain capabilities. There’s a legitimate need for FAA certifications for test
ranges and safety.
And so as we go through those processes, it’s not about how do you work
around them or how do you bypass them? It’s that how do we in this new
environment of having to go faster than the traditional acquisition and fielding
process has allowed. How do we work with you to go faster? How do we bring
the same innovative vigor that we have in our design and testing protocol
[00:34:00] to these processes that have tended to slow programs down in the
past?
Heather “Lucky” Penney: No, I’ve always said that the third offset is really
about time. Whoever is able to move fast and iterate more quickly is who’s
going to win the combat advantage because no longer does the US have a
monopoly on innovation and engineering.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): So, I’m very curious, what
aircraft have you certified these munitions on from Anduril?
Steve Milano: So, for the Barracuda 100, we’re targeting kind of the rotary
wing aircraft. It’s flying on our test ranges right now. Certification wise, we’re
working through that process with the Army for rotary wing aircraft. As well as
some fixed wing.
For the Barracuda 250, intended for internal carriage, external carriage on fixed
wing. We’re working through kind of the wickets of the UAI integration and all
of your typical kind of safety protocol and those types of things. So, flying that
platform as well, but, certification wise, it’s not quite there.
But we’re working through those processes and the Barracuda 500, has been
launched at our test site. We flew it, about two months ago [00:35:00] now, off
of one of our externally carriage cells. We were talking about earlier about how
the cells will kind of come out of the back of a C 17 ish thing.
And so, we launched off of the back of that. And so, as far as direct certification
on existing platforms, we’re working through that. That is a timely process. And
it goes back to what I was talking about before is that we’re learning a lot about
what the safety review boards require to get certified. Some of the things there’s
good findings and bad findings and there’s there’s ways that we can help them
with their process.
There’s ways that they can help us with our process. What I found is a very
receptive community to changing processes where there’s room to, to actually
change and accelerate. So, hopefully 25 is flush with announcements of, you
know, declared operational capability.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): We’re looking forward to
that. Neat stuff.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, let’s talk then about production and the
production enterprise, right? We’ve read articles Anduril’s plans for hyperscale
manufacturing and arsenal. So, what does [00:36:00] that mean when you,
rubber to the road. What does this mean?
Steve Milano: So, hyperscale manufacturing starts at the very base of how
you’re doing things. So, if you come out to our headquarters in Costa Mesa,
what you will see is a modularized manufacturing cells. And so it is this low
scale early manufacturing setup. That scale is the same thing that you will see at
our 5 million square foot Arsenal One facility that should be announced in
2025.
The location of where that’s going to be, we’re not waiting for that, to actually
be built and up and running in 2025. We’re actually already breaking ground on
the initial manufacturing capability that will be done by the end of 2025, but
that ground breaking has already occurred.
And so, we’re leaning into build fast. We need space to go build these things.
That’s you can’t get away from physics. It takes space to build munitions. Go
figure. And so, we’re leaning ahead in building those things out. But what we’re
[00:37:00] proving out now is, the design sensitivity that I mentioned earlier
that we can understand.
Do we have the model for manufacturing scalability set in our smaller facility?
That we can just duplicate that again and again, again, incorporate learnings as
we go through the process. And so, we’ve gotten a lot of good learning out of
these initial builds. We understand our processes and we’re feeling really good
about how we hyperscale into these new facilities.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Well you’ve got some
good learning. It sounds like it’s hard, to put this all together. So, what are some
of the big lessons so far you’ve learned?
Steve Milano: The big lessons that we have learned so far in the munitions
manufacturing realm is that don’t automate too quickly. Understand your
processes, understand where your actual sensitivities to production workflows
and the impact that it has on your ability to deliver.
Look at your material handling and supply chain organization. Just in time is
great. Just like we talked about the just in time delivery of [00:38:00] munitions,
just in time delivery of material is great sometimes. But if you have unexpected
long leads, those types of things, so the way that we’ve developed our approach
is such that it, it’s adaptable to the elasticity of the supply chains, the elasticity
of demands and requirements and being able to stretch and flex within those.
So, not documented or not overly automating, the process too early on.
Understanding where you have that flexibility and that allows you to, allows
you to be nimble and then you can start to move quickly once you have a
baseline for repeatability. I think that was one of the early things that, uh, I can’t
take credit for that.
We have a lot of great people that work at Anduril, but I believe it because I
built a lot of missiles in my life. And I’ve seen, uh, I’ve seen automation come
too quickly. Having robots running around the factory is really interesting.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): This is so interesting what
you’re saying.
Steve Milano: It’s, it’s really interesting and it’s counterintuitive to say, nope,
nope, get rid of the robots. And actually, you know, humans faster and better at
doing this. Um, but sometimes that’s the case. Maybe it’s not, it won’t always
[00:39:00] be the case, for different processes. But understanding that and not
having this kind of sunk cost fallacy of just like, nope, we invested in this
testism and we’re going to use this test thing.Or this manufacturing modality, or
it looks really neat.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: The shiny factor isn’t always the reason to go do
something, right?
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): That’s true.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: It’s interesting how you say that humans end up
being the most adaptive and cross taskable, right? Uh, you can train someone to
do one task and then also then retrain them to go do something else entirely
different, or even do those same tasks, but just in a different way. So it’s
interesting, you also mentioned the need to be flexible, and that’s going to be
key as we move into future munitions. I, I view munitions as having a much
more rapid modernization cycle and innovation cycle than, for example, larger
aircraft.
Uh, and so in many ways they could be the leading edge of capability. And I
think that a lot of what you’ve been talking about is doing that. So, in the real
world environment, like Ukraine or the Houthis or new capabilities that we’re
seeing fielded by China. How are those shaping your thinking and what are the
key trends that we [00:40:00] should watch in this modernization cycle and cat
and mouse game?
Steve Milano: Yeah. We talked about it a little earlier in the flexibility and
requirements generation. So, so, you’re making me think really hard about how
to articulate this efficiently but the idea that munitions tend to be at the forefront
of the necessity of cutting edge technology is true, but the requirement cycles
are the same as larger, longer period, acquisition programs.
And so how do you square that corner, right? And part of that is having some
adaptability and flexibility in how you define and execute on requirements. And
so that learning that we get from seeing what’s happening kind of Ukraine with
the Houthis and around the world and kind of like that responsiveness that we
get, it helps us understand the requirements we’re willing to take on and how we
negotiate those with the services.
And so, as we get into these different contracting mechanisms and as we have
these relationships with the different services. It’s, it’s defining. You may want
this capability now, but what happens if [00:41:00] this one real world situation
changes? Now does that completely change your requirements baseline?
Because I don’t want you to be locked in to me delivering something for a war
that’s over.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): No, that’s a tremendous,
tremendous, character, benefit, from your company is that you would, because
you’re so global, innovative, that you bring that back to that discussion, kind of
a negotiation.
And there are a lot of bad lessons, you know, that are being learned from
Ukraine that folks are maybe, uh, persuaded by and they’re just not relevant
necessarily in the next turn. In the battle space.
Steve Milano: Yeah. it’s a great point. And it’s something that we were keeping
our eye on, but I think that more importantly, as a nation we’re keeping our eye
on. Is that just because lessons are being learned, doesn’t mean those are the
lessons that we need to carry into the next peer fight.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Well said. Very well said.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: No, it’s really interesting about how we need to be
more flexible in our requirements in terms of the requirements generation for
you to be able to design to, because typically what we hear from industry is we
need stable [00:42:00] requirements. Because engineering change orders and in
requirements creep ends up driving a lot of cost and driving more time into the
design and the development and the production.
And so, how do we then become more responsive to the changing, to the
changing battle space? At the same time, providing the right signals to industry
and the right resources to industry in order to enable you to be there and to scale
at the rate that we need?
Steve Milano: Maybe this is where another area where Anduril is uniquely
positioned as you know, as an early and it’s a nontraditional company coming in
with kind of a tech startup type of mentality of things.
The way that we look at problems is to look at problems and solve for that
problem. Not necessarily wait for that problem to be contracted because like, by
the time you’ve waited for the problem to be contracted, the operator is like,
well, I’ve already solved it with the things that I have, right?
There’s a bubble gum and shoelace type of solution that they’ve already figured
out. And then 10 years later I show up with this, that [00:43:00] solution. That
just doesn’t work. And so I don’t think that it’s in our DNA to like, operate that
way and I think, that leaning ahead of the need, investing ahead of the need,
doing the things we as Anduril kind of like, just do naturally is going to be
what’s necessary.
So, uh, I don’t know that, we’re going to have too much of a problem with
identifying kind of this fluid requirements space and like having to adapt to
these fluid requirements, uh, derivations. I think that the, in general, the defense
industrial base will have to adapt to that because we live in an ecosystem and
not everyone in that ecosystem is on board with flexible requirements
generation.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Build it and they will come. And actually, that’s
really what Kelly Johnson originally did with U2 and the SR 71 and, but we’ve
migrated a long way away from that. And it sounds like we need to get back to
that because, you know, unsolicited, proposals, I think we need to be open to
that.
If we’re going to enable companies like yourself to be able to move fast in that
way.
Steve Milano: It would allow us to take the risk, right?
Heather “Lucky” Penney: It rewards the risk takers.
Steve Milano: That’s [00:44:00] right.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Problem solvers.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): So, you know, we’ve had a
great discussion here, but I have to ask you, where do you want the company to
be in about five years?
And, you know, if we look at where are you going to be along the way, how can
we grade you? What should we be looking for? Uh, five years from now.
Steve Milano: Yeah. So five years from now. The existing programs we talked
about, the Barracuda systems, in full rate production, and seeing what that
scalability and that actual, like, increase to scale looks like across our existing
facilities and what our Arsenal 1 will look like. If we’re able to adapt to those
requirements, because the requirements we get today are not going to be the
2029 requirements, and so as we’re reflecting back, will we be able to look and
say there’s about 15 different variants that they pumped out of the same factory
and they didn’t skip a beat?
I think that that’s going to be the scorecard that we should be measured against,
at least for the Barracuda line. The other thing that I think that would be, um,
would be good to kind of look at any organization like Anduril, but Anduril in
particular in my advanced effect organizations [00:45:00] organization, um, is it
where else can we apply these modalities?
So, is the air-to-air domain right for this type of revolution in requirements,
generation, production, and those types of things? Where are also the really hard
problems in the munition world that we can go after. So, in five years, if we’re
looking back and the only thing that we’ve done is disrupted the Barracuda, you
know, the air breathing, uh, munitions capability set, that’s interesting.
But probably doesn’t, make a dent in the overall problem that we have. So, I
think that if we look back in five years, I’d like, I would have liked to have said
that, we have a holistic, we built a holistic plan about how we help the industrial
base. But the way that we iterate and change and do things, I think that if
anything I predict today is going to be different five years from now, you’re
going to be like.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Yeah, no, I hear that.
Well, we’re going to be watching, we’re going to be watching and, uh, really
hopeful because you are an incredibly innovative company.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. And the Air Force is on really on the verge
of total transformation. So, this is really exciting. And thank you for being here
today.
Steve Milano: Yeah, I appreciate you having me.
It’s [00:46:00] great.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: With that, I’d like to extend a big thank you to our
guests for joining in today’s discussion.
I’d also like to extend a big thank you to you, our listeners, for your continued
support and for tuning into today’s show. If you like what you heard today, don’t
forget to hit that like button and follow or subscribe to the Aerospace
Advantage. You can also leave a comment to let us know what you think about
our show or areas you would like us to explore further.
As always, you can join in on the conversation by following the Mitchell
Institute on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. And you can always
find us at MitchellAerospacePower. org. Thanks again for joining us and have a
great aerospace power kind of day. See you next time.
Okay. All right. That’s
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): fantastic, dude. I
Heather “Lucky” Penney: totally want to come out and see one of those are
some, I know
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): we’re always trolling for a
visual aid. So
Steve Milano: we, uh, well, I’m not sure if I should say where, which window I
look out, but if I look out a window, I can, I can see trucks moving around and,
and, uh, I call them, uh, the mini arsenals [00:47:00] because while arsenal one
is the, you know, the big, the big factory, the big 5 million, 5 million square
foot.
Uh, facility that’s being built. Uh, it’s the same. Kind of like instantiation. So
there’s other facilities that are being built up for this capability. And it’s, it’s
really interesting to see how quickly we move
Heather “Lucky” Penney: there. I used to have a coworker and actually flew
with them. Uh, predator Doherty. Oh yeah. So, so predator used to say, cause
you know, you’re only as smart as your last trip to the plant because things were
always changing and, and, and to get to talk to the folks that are actually doing
the work, um, and, and interface with the engineers.
And so the opportunity to come out and see everything that you’re doing, um,
So I’ve been down to the test site in the middle of nowhere, Texas.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): I wouldn’t say nowhere, it
takes a little to get out there. No, no.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, okay. I’m a Westerner, right? So like, I love,
I love the desert. It was great. But I mean, if you were like three, four hours
away from Midland, Texas, you’re pretty much nowhere.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Yeah. But every 16 has
their [00:48:00] own brisket recipe. And it involves some form of alcohol. I’m
on board.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yes. I am on board. And we may or may not serve
that
Steve Milano: on a regular K 5 food record out there at our test site. Well,
Heather “Lucky” Penney: you just, you just uncovered my absolute favorite
food, so there we go. Oh, there
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): you go. No, it’s, it’s really
exciting to see what you’re doing.
Yeah,
Steve Milano: it’s been a lot of fun. Like I said, I’ve been in this industry for 16
years now and just like the amount that I’ve learned in the year or so that I’ve
been at and roll not quite a year. We, we, uh, we
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): were at
Steve Milano: a
Heather “Lucky” Penney: reception, sorry, go ahead. Yeah,
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): we were at a reception,
uh, and Andrew was there, had some, uh, um, mock ups and that kind of thing.
It was amazing how it, the crowd was bristling with, you know, just this energy.
And of course you had your iconic leadership there. Everybody got gathered
around to listen to the, the, uh, you know, the font of everything. And, you
know, it was really fun to be in that environment. Very youthful, very energetic.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah. The youth [00:49:00] was what I was going
to talk about. Like going out to the test site, it was really exciting, not only to
see Um, to see the test site, to see, to see the artifacts and to watch the
demonstration, but interfacing with engineers, like, they’re all like, I don’t know,
17. Oversteating. But it’s, but they’re young and they’re vigorous and they’re
exciting.
It was kind of like how I envisioned the Apollo program was back in the day,
right? Because all these kids are, you know, working 20 hours they’re at a test.
essentially a deployed location, right, uh, for, for a portion of the time, because
not all the families are moving out there. And it was just, it was just really
invigorating and, and hopeful, to be honest.
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): It’s interesting.
Steve Milano: Yeah. It’s, it’s definitely an environment, right? Yeah. There’s the
environment needs to be right. And it attracts the right type of people. Uh, yeah,
it’s a lot of fun.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us. Yeah,
Steve Milano: this is great. Thanks
Maj. Gen. Larry “Stutz” Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.): Lucky. That was great.