Over the last 4 years, lots of people have asked me "why Forterra" or "why do you care about the ground domain so much." Well, we came from the infantry and despite the hype around drones/maritime, wars are still decided on the ground. It is the dirtiest, most dangerous layer of warfare where human beings have always had to be the blunting force. So @JoshAraujo and I wrote a paper about it (yes, ex-Marines can write.) forterra.com/why-we-build

To build the Arsenal of Freedom, American companies must move fast—and move at scale. Thankfully, the patriots of Austin, Texas, have answered the call. AMERICAN WORKERS. AMERICAN MADE.

what is the drone speed where this is no longer effective?

When the people who knew how to make the machine work are gone, the machine stops working

If you're in Austin during NEXT FRIDAY, September 18th, come hang with the @allencontrol engineering team at Pinthouse Brewing: partiful.com/e/wQTjyG1opMNn9… Free drinks until they're out! (Non-technical persons are also welcome)

"If you come on the podcast, you secure a massive funding round." - @StevenSimoni Correlation doesn't equal causation, but @HavocAi_USV, @valaratomics, @neros_tech, etc. have all come on the podcast with big news to share just months afterwards. Coincidence? We think not.

We better figure out how to build drones at scale fast or we are doomed to be a vassal state, as you posted

Come build Bullfrogs with us in Austin. We are hiring like mad for all roles but especially MANUFACTURING: jobs.ashbyhq.com/allen-contr… We pay great and take care of our people. APPLY!

In other news: Bird population is at it's all time historical low, scientists say. 😉

This is the kind of marketing y’all should be doing. Why aren’t y’all showcasing it engaging multiple drones?

Literally a long dirt road, on a moving truck, show it track down and engage drones coming for it. Boom: wars over boys

Statistically, how many collateral damage civilian casualties can be expected for every case of 7.62 ammo shot into the sky at drones?

100 suspected cartel drones shot down at US border in August alone — Fox 'Counter UAS tech, including sophisticated lasers, used to take down drones'

Our latest Bullfrog model broke containment 😱 Luke Allen KILLED by his own Allen Control System 😭

🚨 HEZBOLLAH DRONES MAY NOW HAVE NIGHT VISION The IDF is investigating Hezbollah’s use of FPV attack drones with apparent night-vision or thermal camera capabilities. Hezbollah published clips this week showing drones with what appear to be thermal cameras. Two IDF soldiers were killed this week in nighttime explosive drone attacks.

Drone defense is 100x more valuable to the United States than drone production. Much has been made of the Army ordering the disbandment of a Ukrainian-focused, lessons-learned drone battalion. While people are right to question the cessation of learning from the modern battlefield and whether that is a wise calculation, it is undeniable that the political employability of the modern drone fight is very low for the United States. What do I mean by political employability? You can have all the right technical solutions in the world, but if they are not politically employable and you can never functionally use them, it’s a wasted investment on behalf of the American taxpayer and a waste of time for our troops. The likelihood of America choosing to engage in a fight like Ukraine’s is hard to imagine. Operating in an environment where we lose 200+ Americans a day to drones is not a reality the American people are ever going to accept or underwrite. We will nuke our adversary before that happens, which is itself almost impossible to imagine. That is precisely why it is even harder to imagine America engaging in a Ukrainian-style, backs-against-the-wall fight, because under those circumstances, the impossible outcome becomes increasingly probable. However, the Army’s “back-to-basics approach” seems equally questionable. I don’t believe there is a “back to basics” approach for our military, because five years from now, I genuinely question the political employability of all conventional forces, across all branches. It is a real question whether forward-deployed forces will be considered political assets rather than political liabilities. With our current capability sets of high-cost, exquisite, low-depth munitions, I increasingly see them only as liabilities. As the United States ostensibly works to rebuild credible deterrence, Iran is currently teaching us that under protracted circumstances, the United States is functionally and credibly deterred. That fact is yielding poor outcomes that are not acceptable to me or to the American people. In the world that is to come, we have to be able to play a near-flawless defense over years before we can even think about playing a productive offense for months. That goes for abroad as well as at home. That means the name of the game for the United States is developing a new “back to basics” approach. The critical building block is low-cost drone and ballistic missile defense. Layered on top of that are low-cost, fully autonomous offensive systems. Notice the themes: low-cost and autonomous. Protecting people from the battlefield by removing them from the battlefield. The military and homeland defense we need is not what we have now. We can do this, but it requires a rapid departure from what we’re doing and the way we are doing it. We just crossed $40 trillion in debt. It’s time for hard and necessary decisions to be made in the Pentagon and in Congress: get rid of the hardware and thought philosophy that have not helped us win the last 30 years of war, and start acquiring politically employable hardware and developing the thought philosophy that will help us actually deter war over the next 30 years.