The Drone Ultimatum

The war in Ukraine, defense tech, procurement, and private capital are colliding in real time, and most people in the West are missing what matters.

Mentions:
Disinformation by Ion Mihai Pacepa (Wikipedia)
Match in a Haystack (Film Trailer)
Porcelain War (Prime Video)
Winter on Fire (Netflix)

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Follow Perry Boyle
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MITS Capital Website

In this episode, we sit down with Perry Boyle and Denys Gurak, founding partners of MITS Capital, one of the most active Western capital allocators into Ukraine’s defense and dual-use ecosystem. We break down the on-the-ground state of the war, how Ukrainian buying works across decentralized units, and why cost and scale now decide outcomes. Then we get specific on what tech is actually useful, where NATO approaches break down, and what a “war economy” looks like when innovation has real urgency. We close on the geopolitics: why China’s role is central, why energy infrastructure matters, and what this conflict signals for the future of security in Europe.

Austin Gray, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Blue Water Autonomy, returns to the show to break down what it actually takes to build large unmanned ships that can operate for months without touch maintenance.

We get into why Navy shipbuilding cycles keep drifting into multi-year design spirals, and how unmanned platforms change the math on payload, endurance, and scale.

Austin walks through the USV market landscape, including the split between “real ships” vs smaller craft, and why peace-time TAM and price-times-quantity matters for defense startups.

We also cover the Navy’s acquisition reorg and what it means for autonomy buyers on the inside. The conversation closes on carrier strike group integration, loyal wingman concepts for destroyers, and why missile capacity and sustainment are the real constraints.

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Blue Water Autonomy

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Olaf Hichwa joins the podcast to break down the reality of modern drone warfare, FPVs, and why small drones now drive the majority of battlefield casualties.

Drawing on direct exposure to Ukraine and deep experience building real systems, Olaf explains why drone-on-drone combat, cost-imposing weapons, and industrial-scale manufacturing matter more than hype around autonomy or directed energy.Olaf is the co-founder and CTO of Neros Technologies.

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Neros Technologies Website

We discuss why China’s component ecosystem still outpaces the West, how U.S. drone dominance efforts are evolving, and what actually works in contested EW environments.

The conversation also digs into ITAR, exportability, component-level industrial base gaps, and why deterrence depends on building weapons that actually function at scale.This is a grounded, unfiltered look at where drone warfare is headed and what the defense tech ecosystem keeps getting wrong.

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Congressman Pat Harrigan (NC-10), former Army Special Forces officer and defense manufacturer, joins the show to talk about why he ran for office after the fall of Afghanistan and what that moment signaled to adversaries. We dig into the economics of modern conflict, why the West keeps ending up upside down on cost, and how cheap mass systems are changing the battlefield.

Rep. Harrigan explains “Skyfoundry,” a new approach aimed at building US drone production capacity without betting everything on uncertain future appropriations. We also break down how authorization, appropriations, and reconciliation actually work, and what the $2.5B small UAS injection could mean for industry.

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Scott Sanders is the Chief Growth Officer at Forterra. Scott joins us to talk about counter-UAS, unmanned systems, and why scaling hardware is fundamentally different from software.

We cover USVs and UGVs, recent fundraising across the defense industrial base, and what companies like Anduril and Rheinmetall reveal about today’s acquisition environment. Scott explains how DoD acquisition really works, from program offices to government relations, and why early demo failures are a normal part of delivering real capability.

The conversation closes on C2 integration, tactical communications, and what it would take to rebuild a durable U.S. defense ecosystem.

Episode 59.

Forterra: https://www.forterra.com/

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