Drones are re-defining modern warfare – and the U.S. is behind. On the latest Mission Matters episode, we sat down with Andy Yakulis, CEO & Co-Founder of Vector Defense, to discuss what it will actually take to achieve American Drone Dominance.
Vector isn’t just building drones. They describe their business model as “Modern Warfare as a Service.” Instead of waiting years to push hardware through traditional procurement pathways, they deliver integrated capability — technology, tactics, training, and battlefield feedback loops — under service contracts that tap into O&M funding.
We discuss:
Why the Pentagon’s $1B Drone Dominance initiative is the clearest USG demand signal for attritable systems yet
How “Drone as a Service” business model unlocks O&M funding (the largest color of money)
Lessons from Ukraine & Israel (and why it’s not copy-paste for the U.S.)
Building a China-free supply chain and re-industrializing American drone manufacturing
As always, please let us know what you think. And please reach out if you or anyone you know is building at the intersection of technology and national security.
You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, the Shield Capital website, or right here on Substack.
Transcript
Maggie 00:38
In this episode of the Mission Matters podcast, we sit down with Andy Yakulis, the CEO and co founder of Vector Defense, a startup building the future of American Drone Dominance.
David 01:22
For an acquisition nerd like me, I get super excited when I get to analyze and dig into a business like Vector. Vector has a pretty unusual business model compared to other startups we’ve had on the podcast. And describes Vector as delivering Modern Warfare as a service, providing war fighters with a full package of modern technology, Battlefield insights, tactics, techniques and procedure development, tactical integrated services and training, rather than solely tapping into research development, training and evaluation or RDT&E funding and procurement dollars, like most companies, Vector also receives operations and maintenance, otherwise known as O&M funding, for their products.
Maggie 02:09
Vector’s first product is Hammer, a long range FPV, that is first person view, drone capable of deep sensing and deep strike. As I’m sure many of our listeners are already aware FPV drones and other attritable software defined systems have proven to be an integral part of modern conflict. FPV drones now cause an estimated 60 to 80% of casualties on the battlefield in Ukraine. However, the US is woefully behind in FPV manufacturing and procurement as China dominates the FPV drone market.
David 02:41
However, late last year, Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, announced the $1 billion Drone Dominance initiative for the Pentagon to procure hundreds of 1000s of these FPV drones over the next two years. This signals a clear turning point in the Department of War demand signal for FPV drones.
Maggie 03:03
Since it was founded, Vector has raised more than $60 million, and they have an incredible founding team to execute on this vision. Andy, the CEO, spent 18 years as an Army officer, specifically as a helicopter pilot, with time spent at Special Operations Command, Army futures command and the Office of Strategic capital. His co founder, George Matus, began developing novel drone technologies all the way back in high school, and founded Teal Drones, a company he scaled into one of America’s leading drone manufacturers, winning the US Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance program of record, which is one of the first major US military programs related to small drones. Additionally, the founding team includes Matt Long and Larson Jensen, who also spent time in the Special Operations community as Navy SEALs.
David 03:51
This conversation covers everything from the current state of U.S. attritable drone capabilities to the challenges surrounding drone manufacturing and supply chains and how the lessons learned in Ukraine translate to the United States forces.
Maggie 04:06
All right. Well. Andy, thank you so much for joining us today on the Mission Matters podcast. I know one of the big reasons that we decided to do this podcast really trying to spread the word about one of the administration’s new initiatives, which is Drone Dominance, great name. So could you just tell us a little bit about Drone Dominance and the significance of this initiative?
Andy 04:30
Well, Maggie, David, great to be doing this with you. We’re really excited to to go after the Drone Dominance program, or what we call a DDP, the Drone Dominance program is exciting for a variety of different reasons. One, it’s this major demand signal that we’ve been waiting for for many years from the Department of War. You know, I think the relationship with me and David goes back many years. We used to always lament about how we had these unclear demand signals. From the Department. This is the first time where we have a multi year program, multi-year funding, and large budget dollars of congressionally appropriated dollars. And so obviously there’s a lot of risk still in the market, but the Drone Dominance program has taken away a lot of that uncertainty that we usually see in defense.
David 05:18
Yeah, and Andy. I mean, definitely thinking a lot about drones demand signal. What do you think it is like this time and moment today that is allowing the department to announce something like Drone Dominance? And then maybe, where do you think it goes from there?
Andy 05:39
Yeah, it’s a great question. You can’t talk about drones without talking about Ukraine. Obviously, Russia invading Ukraine in February of 2022 set off this revolution in military affairs, where we see drones or unmanned systems used in ways we’ve never seen before, where you can take a drone that used to be used for racing, strap a bomb to it and have this outsized, asymmetric impact on the battlefield. And we as a nation, we as a company, both have been paying very close attention to how unmanned systems, or drones, are used on the battlefield in Ukraine and Israel and all over the world, and the Drone Dominance program is a clear indicator that the Department of War has also been paying attention, and it is now time for America to show its dominance in all areas of technology. For this program, in the drone industry and as the dominant superpower in the world, we need to also have a very resilient supply chain, a very resilient, powerful, competitive drone industrial base, and that’s what this program is incentivizing, is more competition, so more vendors like Vector are competing on that battlefield to build the very best system for our warriors.
Maggie 06:58
I mean, there’s no doubt in my mind, right, the FPV drones have been just a tremendously powerful force in Ukraine. But I know a lot of critics point out the US military and our threat landscape is very different from the Ukrainian military. We have significantly more resources. So how do you see these systems translating to be powerful for US forces in conjunction with our other exquisite systems.
Andy 07:25
Well, there’s a lot to be learned from the war in Ukraine. Maggie, there is a lot to be learned for how the Israelis use unmanned systems on the northern border against Hezbollah and then throughout Gaza and more like an urban setting. What I always tell folks is, there’s not a copy-paste from Ukraine or Israel to the United States military. The United States military has a very specific doctrine, and they are going to use unmanned systems in the way that makes the most sense for them. That doesn’t mean that because the Ukrainians or the Russians use drones in a certain way that there’s not lessons to be learned from them. I think that’s where the innovation of our company and other companies like Vector comes to play is how do we take those lessons learned from the overlap of tactics with technology and apply that to the American military? A lot of what Vector does is not just the production and the manufacturing of an unmanned system, but how that unmanned system is tactically employed. And I think having both sides of the company come together, you know, I think a lot of that is coming ahead in this Drone Dominance program, and having both sides of our company come together is a defining characteristic of this company, but it’s also a defining characteristic of where we see the drone ecosystem going in the United States, where the United States military is playing a little bit of catch-up right now, to be honest, that’s what this program is designed to do, is to rally the drone industrial base. But also, the drone is sort of worthless if we don’t know how to tactically employ it, and so we need to do a lot more work. We, as a military and as an industry, need to make sure that we are leveling up our game on how to tactically employ unmanned systems.
David 09:05
So Andy, I definitely want to build on that. One of the things that you talked about early on with the company, and that really just couldn’t take my mind off of, is the approach you’re taking to the military, right? I think you call it drone as a service, or modern warfare as a service, getting in with the tactics, techniques and procedures, with the special operators and and the standing army as well. What has like tell the audience a little bit about your approach, because I think it is relatively unique to most venture backed startups engaging with the national security system.
Andy 09:47
Yeah, absolutely. David, so when we first met, I was still in the Army. I was at Army Futures Command. You were, and still are, a venture capitalist, but we were always trying to work on this concept of how do we streamline technology through the acquisition system faster? How do we make transitions easier? How do we make sure that we are this dominant technological superpower with our defense technology? And I’ve been working on this problem set for five, six years of how do you push technology through the procurement system faster, so it’s still relevant when soldiers get their hands on it. You know, when I was in the Army, we used to have this saying that we’d get a laugh at conferences. I just don’t think it’s funny anymore, where we give our soldiers yesterday’s technology tomorrow. And that comment has actually turned into a national strategic vulnerability. The technology exists — this is not a technology problem. We’ve got great, innovative companies and amazing entrepreneurs and engineers that can produce great technology. What I kept looking at was, well, this is a contracting problem. This is a procurement problem at times. This is an administrative bureaucracy problem. And I think when you’re fighting sort of a long, sort of bureaucratic process, when you’re fighting the status quo, sometimes it’s a good thing to take a step back and like, why even try to go this way? Is there another way to attack this problem? And that’s when the idea of Vector was sort of born, which is like: what if we didn’t try to sell a drone through the procurement system that could take five, seven, or ten years. What if we attack this problem totally different, and flip the whole concept on its head? And what if we sell a service? What if we sell integration and training? What if we sell the innovation ecosystem that we were developing with those that we are working with? And then, what if we could sell unmanned systems underneath a service contract. And the more that we studied the problem, the more that we studied the Federal Acquisition Regulation, the more we realized this was actually a pretty innovative go to market to achieve a couple of things at once. And if you think about the concept of attritable systems, an attritable system is a consumable piece of technology. When you consume that technology, you have this opportunity to update what was just consumed with a better product. And that sort of fits in this sort of approach of, well, if you’re on subscription contract, or if you’re providing drones as a service, as the drone attrits, why not provide a new, innovative drone than the one that you sold before? And so that’s been our approach ever since we started the company, over 18 months ago, which was actually to attack this as a service contractor, still building products, still selling products, but all underneath service contracts. And I’m proud to say, every drone, every component, every kit that we’ve sold to date has been underneath the service contract.
David 12:38
So you must have just a giant other direct cost contract line item, CLIN, within that contract, is that correct?
Andy 12:46
That’s correct. Yes, that’s That’s correct.
David 12:51
Awesome, because I think I mean, for a venture backed company, you do still have to be mindful of margins. And if you’re doing services, I presume, some somewhat of a time and material type contract, you’re not going to get the types of margins that you’re looking for, but I guess that’s where then the quantity of the types of systems that you’re looking to sell, the constant refresh rate. You could look at your TTP development as a bit of a moat over time.
Andy 13:22
That’s absolutely true, and you’re right on the margins with service contracts. But again, there’s no limit to the amount of systems you can sell underneath a service contract, and so you can sell large quantities of system as long as they’re below a certain price point. This doesn’t work for a tank or a jet fighter, but for attritable systems, the strategy makes a lot of sense, moreover, and I think this is what gets a lot of folks excited about the the business strategy here is, if you get into the different appropriations for what we call different colors of money, you have operations and management dollars, and that’s what we’re talking about right now, service contracts, leverage the O&M budget, which just happens to be bigger than the procurement budget and the R&D budget. But because we’re still building systems, there’s nothing that says I can’t go after procurement contracts as well. There’s nothing that says I can’t go after R&D contracts as well. And most defense technology startups are just in those latter two bins and leave the O&M budget completely alone, but that’s a huge untapped market that most companies aren’t going after, and there’s competition there that for us to go after. But Vector is attacking those three main buckets, those three main colors of money all at the same time, and a lot of times the work that we do on the service side can benefit the work we’re doing, going after different procurement contracts.
Maggie 14:46
Something else that I think makes a lot of sense with this as a service model. You know, when I think about SaaS software as a service, you know, the whole point behind that is that software is constantly changing, so you don’t actually want to buy one static piece of software and then use it forever. You want to pay kind of a recurring fee that allows you to always have the newest, latest, best technology. And I see that applying really well to the drone space. And I think we see on the battlefield in Ukraine, in Israel, people say these drones are changing basically every day. You might actually have to throw out all of your drones every three months, the DOTMLPF is changing all the time, and I’ll just define that for listeners. That’s doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, education, personnel, facilities, and policy. So how are you all keeping up with what is actually happening on the battlefield in the technology space, and how do you bring that back into the tech that you’re building today, into the TTPs and DOTMLPF that you’re discussing with your customers?
Andy 15:51
Yeah, well, let me say first, Maggie, it’s very hard. I mean, it’s very hard to keep up with how fast the Ukrainians are moving, the Israelis are moving. So necessity being the mother of invention, the Ukrainians have gotten so good out of innovating because their survival depends on it. They are constantly trying to find a new way to incorporate advanced technology and the unmanned systems they’re using to keep the Russians at bay, and they’ve done a fantastic job. And the fact that the lines have barely moved over the last four years is is evidence of that. And so we have gone to where the Ukrainians are. We have a team in Ukraine, we have a team in Israel, and we maintain a very consistent leader presence back to those two locations, you know, not to do anything operational, obviously, but to study the tactics, techniques, and procedures, to study the cross section of technology and the tactical implementation of that technology used on the battlefield, we now do a monthly report, which we call the Vector report, which is our learnings from the modern battlefield over that last month, of how unmanned systems or other modern warfare technology was used on the battlefield in different parts of the world, and so it’s been very, very challenging to incorporate all those lessons, to put that into a training course, or put that into the next generation of product development. We use training courses with the United States military to mimic that innovation cycle. And like I was saying before, it’s not a copy paste of what the Ukrainians are doing and what the Israelis are doing with unmanned systems, because the American way of war is different. But we take a lot of inspiration from those battlefields, applying it to your point, David and Maggie, to the DOTMLPF, and the cross section of how the American military will leverage unmanned systems from their doctrine all the way down to the facilities and the policy.
Maggie 17:49
What have been some of the biggest technical challenges that you all have had to work through as you’re trying to build these systems to operate on a realistic battlefield?
Andy 17:59
Yeah, it’s a great question. Maggie, unfortunately now, and I say unfortunately because we need to do better as an industry, but unfortunately now we’re still very much in a one-to-one, one pilot operator to one drone. The next phase of warfare, the next phase of the technological development for unmanned systems, needs to go from one to many. And so it’s kind of interesting, if you if you think back to the global war on terror, where we had multiple individuals piloting, operating, launching drones, predators, reapers and things like that. We are very much in a many to one. Now, for the most part, we’re in a one to one, one operator to one drone. We need to go to the one-to-many concept, and this is a technological challenge to be able to put enough processing power, enough autonomy on a drone, which can be done but a low enough price point. So the unit economics makes sense to realize this vision of what we call a triple mass, again, “triple” being the idea of consumable or throwaway technology, mass being we want to have large quantities of unmanned systems. The economics only work out if you can have just enough autonomy at the right price point on a low-cost system, so you can produce in mass, and the United States military can buy in mass, leveraging the right amount of autonomy and finding that balance, to not put too much R and D into a drone, but still have enough automation and keep the unit economics low enough so the Department of War can buy not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands or millions of drones. That’s really the technological challenge, right there.
Maggie 19:35
As we think about this constantly changing technology, as autonomy technology is getting better, electronic warfare, resilient communications is constantly changing and improving. How do you think about the government’s plan to stockpile hundreds of 1000s of these drones? How do we keep them updated and make sure that you know when the war fighter needs these systems, they have the most cutting edge version of them.
Andy 20:01
Yeah, so I think there’s actually two questions in that. One: how do we keep the stockpile current? How do we even have a stockpile? And then, how do we keep it current? To the first part of your question: we learned this lesson the hard way during covid, that our supply chain was not as resilient as we thought, and that’s everything from medicines to toilet paper, to the components that go into drones. And what we have done at Vector, you know, really, over the last 18 months, is to shore up our supply chain, to make sure every component is decoupled from China and, where we can, to lean on the domestic, the US supply chain, which is very, very hard to do when we, as an industry, are trying to create this decoupled, China-free drone supply chain almost overnight. That’s what the Drone Dominance program actually requires, and is designed to do, is to stimulate and energize the drone industrial base, making sure it’s clear and decoupled from China. You know, a lot of money needs to be poured into this ecosystem to make sure the price points can come down so we can realize this concept of economies of scale. Because China is just this manufacturing powerhouse, and they’ve got incredibly cheap labor over there, which is basically very, very challenging to compete on price. And so, you know, I applaud the Department of War for launching the Drone Dominance program, because this program is doing a fantastic job to energize the drone industrial base, to make sure we have the components decoupled from China at a low enough price point so that we can produce drones at scale. So I think that is happening. We need to see even more come from the Department of War and other agencies. But we’re really excited about where this is going on how to keep things current and up to date. I think this goes into our strategy, which is to have a very much more open architecture, a much more modular design. That goes into everything from how we design the drone, how we engineer the drone, how we manufacture the drone — all in a very open-architecture way. We like to say at times, we’re like the Android of drones, where a lot of other companies, for better or worse, are more like the iPhone of drones, very close, very proprietary. Our philosophy is, in order to capitalize on these constant innovations, just as you said, Maggie — the constant evolutions from one piece of software or hardware to the next. The only way to do that is to have a very open, modular architecture, and that’s how we design from the start.
David 22:32
Andy, I think that was really great. I would love to maybe dig in a little bit more on the supply chain and manufacturing and how you all think about that buy versus build conundrum that I think a lot of hardware companies go through right SpaceX, famously completely vertically integrated, and then others, you know, there is a robust supply chain, and you’re picking out different partners for the drone industry specifically, given that a lot of components come from China, I think some of the main ones include the motors and the batteries, and there being kind of a lack of an industry base for those types of sub components, I guess. How do you differentiate your product if you were to go to the same suppliers, that’s, you know, fairly in its infancy. But then too, like, you know, how do you make that decision about this is the thing we’re going to do in house, and this is the thing that we’re going to outsource to a domestic partner.
Andy 23:39
Yeah, another great question, and I think this actually takes us back to, like the evolution of Vector. When we first started Vector, we wanted to be a systems integrator, a tactical systems integrator of unmanned systems. We did not want to build anything, and we started working with a variety of partners and incorporating integrating their drones into different DOTMLPF, going through the DOTMLPF, incorporated them into different war fighting exercises for our customers, we would do mods, we would repackage into different strike kits. But our customers kept asking us to build very bespoke drones for them. They wanted different features that just didn’t exist on the market, so we started manufacturing our own drones in low quantities in probably the middle of 2025 but as we looked into the supply chain to your question, David, we realized that the components that were going into the drones either weren’t getting us the results we needed when we were buying off the shelf, or they weren’t meeting the compliance requirements for the Department of War, especially as they have refined the interpretation of the National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA compliance scrutiny has definitely grown over the last 18 months, and to that end, we have gotten much more vertically integrated over the last six months, out of necessity, because we had to, because. We could not leave any room for error on compliance. And you know, going back to last year, we thought we understood what was required for NDA compliance, and it wasn’t really until the last six months where we really, really dug in, where we hired some really, really top talent on supply chain. We really did a forensic analysis of our tier two, three and four suppliers, and made sure we understood, we understood exactly down to the resistor, transistor level, where everything was coming from. And so I kind of tell that arc of Vector of getting more and more vertically integrated to say, you know, there’s, there’s certain parts of the drone that we build ourselves, there’s certain parts of the drone that we just have great partners, and we’re really excited to actually announce two of our major partners. Both are domestic suppliers. One is a company, a battery company, actually, that was making batteries for a different purpose, and we brought them into the drone industry. We have actually done this with a variety of our different vendors, where we found vendors that were in adjacent industries, and we brought them into the drone industry, one, because they were decoupled from China, but two, to give us an advantage on supply chain, knowing that there wasn’t a lot of competition for that specific vendor. So we spent a lot of time analyzing the supply chain, a lot of time working with vendors, and a lot of time investing in there. And I think to more directly answer your question, David, is those items that require an increase, increase capital investment, ie, spinning motors that would take a little bit of a capital investment, a lot of time to stand that up. That’s a great that’s a great thing to buy and then assembly into your drone. A lot of the things we do on PCBAs. You know, we’re not printing our own boards here at Vector, but we do a lot of work to design our own boards as well, and that’s also a great thing to contract manufacture out. And so looking at especially the stage we’re at which we’re a post series A company, what makes sense from a capital investment side, what makes sense from an IP side. That’s really how we make our decisions thus far. But we also are taking a hard look at where do we need to have the most control over the components, either for the capability, for the consistency, for the quality and or for the compliance. That’s really what, what drives a lot of our decision making,
David 27:19
And I would imagine also like, what allows you to then scale?
Andy 27:25
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s also a strategic decision based off where the company is, either from a capital raising perspective or a revenue perspective. You know, you can do a lot when you’re on a large contract to further scale. And again, this is what the Drone Dominance program is doing for the industry. It is giving companies like Vector and some of our suppliers a chance to scale, because now they can see the demand coming, really, for the first time in a very long time. So again, we applaud the Defense Department or the Department of War for clearly showing that demand signal.
David 28:02
When you know, talking about this compliance stuff, I think something we hear a lot of from startups, or at least the idea of is who I’ll partner with a defense prime, right? People that have been here done that before you know, if there’s one thing that they’re good at, it is checking all of the boxes around compliance for working with the department. Can the same, is the same true for this particular program, or is there a little bit of a everyone’s at the same starting point, and it’s all about how you execute. So I guess short of the long on this question is, is is Vector partnering with any defense primes, and is that a part of your overall partnership roadmap?
Andy 28:46
It absolutely is. I don’t think you can be in the defense space and not look to the primes for partnership opportunities. And there’s a lot of folks out there that will throw shade on the primes. I’m not one of them. I think the primes are fantastic. They’ve done so much for this nation, and they’ve done so much for a lot of you know, innovative startups like Vector, as they become much more accepting of partnering with companies like like like Vector, because we provide a lot of value to them as well, a lot of the innovation and speed side. So yes, we have partnered with a number of primes. The primes are fantastic for a lot of the compliance, helping us navigate the regulatory environment for, you know, contracting pathways, and so we use them for things like that. And so an invaluable resource. And if there’s any startups out there, or budding entrepreneurs, I would always encourage them to reach out to the primes sometimes that’s a that’s the best way to get started is to is to be a sub for a number of years before you’re even a prime yourself.
Maggie 29:51
Andy, one question that I have is surrounding testing. One of the things that I’ve heard from a couple. Companies building in the national security hardware space is that it can be really hard to actually get access to test ranges where you can realistically test your systems the way that they need to be tested to be resilient in a place like Ukraine, a lot of times, electronic warfare in particular can be difficult to test because of the way that FCC and FAA regulate airspace and regulate the spectrum space. So could you talk a little bit about how you all have approached actually testing your systems to ensure that they’ll be resilient on the modern battlefield?
Andy 30:34
Yeah, it’s a great question. Maggie, I think we’ve been very fortunate in the testing domain. Early in Vector’s history, we jumped into testing as a service of electronic warfare as a service where we had access to very unique ranges here in the United States that did have their FAA and FCC certifications. And so we were able to kind of jumpstart a lot of testing there. One of the things I always asked when I was in the government to companies like a Vector, was, Are your products in Ukraine? Have you tested in Ukraine? And I feel like that’s almost table stakes at this point. Now, here in 2026 where, if you were going to approach the Department of War with a product they’re going to want to know, did you test this in some way in the Ukrainian ecosystem, there’s a lot of great Ukrainian test ranges off the front lines, and they’ve done a fantastic job of setting those up and providing pathways to being able to test your systems there in some very, very realistic scenarios. And so we’ve gone down that path. We’ve used a lot of domestic test ranges, and then, of course, we run a lot of simulation as well. I think the best way to test though, is with your end user. And this is where Vectors business model really comes into play, where a lot of times we get paid to test our products on a service contract with our end user. And that’s sort of part of the contract, and that’s part of what our end users expect is, is they want us to bring them the latest and greatest piece of technology that we think may, you know, give them some sort of exponential value, and they understand that it’s being done in a test environment, and they love that, they love being introduced to something new. And, you know, I think being very honest, and having that relationship with your end user, telling them, like, Hey, this is a prototype. This isn’t ready, but we really want your feedback. Tell us what you think, see if you can break it, see if it flies in this environment. Please give us that feedback. And so we do a lot of that as well.
Maggie 32:38
Something that I think is interesting about Vector. You guys are based in Utah rather than some of the other big defense startup hubs like LA or Seattle or Austin or even San Francisco. Can you just tell us about your decision to build the company there?
Andy 32:53
Yeah, sure. We actually started in North Austin. We still have a satellite facility in North Austin. We probably always will, for a variety of reasons, but we made the decision to move to Utah for a variety of reasons. Nothing against El Segundo or the Bay Area. I actually had a previous startup in the health tech space based out of Silicon Valley. Great experience, but there is this very different startup culture in the bay area or El Segundo than there is here in Utah. In Utah, it’s very collaborative, it’s very founder friendly. The Economics of running the business in Utah is very, very different than in California, and it’s much easier. The taxes are way better. What you pay employees in Utah is very, very different than in El Segundo. You know, it’s hard to make the unit economics work on the drone, on the labor, on the rent and all that overhead that goes into your facility if you’re in California, especially if you’re building attritable systems. And knowing that Vector would probably build hardware at some point, we wanted to be outside of California, just to make the financial aspect that much more scalable for us. The state Government has just been fantastic to us. They’ve been very welcoming Utah for testing. Back to your testing question, Maggie, is pretty fantastic. There’s a lot of BLM land here that we use for long range testing, and there’s a variety of different military bases here that we use as well, where we partner with the military to do a lot of live kinetic testing on our drones as well. And just having easy access to all those ranges has just made this a world class place to build and to test. You know, the summers get to sometimes 105 110 degrees, and the winters get to below zero. So we get to do a lot of environmental testing, high altitude testing around here as well to ensure that the products were put into the to the hands of the war fighter, have been tested in a variety of different conditions, so all of that kind of put together just just made a lot of sense for us, and we’re happy to call Utah Home, and it’s just been fantastic for the team.
David 34:55
Utah is a great place. Do you enjoy skiing there? I’m excited for the innovation. An ecosystem that’s burgeoning. I won’t tell the El Segundo people, you know, how you feel about them when I’m visiting out there later this week, but maybe moving to the international side. You know, you talked about Ukraine, sort of receiving a lot of lessons learned there and doing some testing as well. How do you think about the rest of the international landscape? Right? America still has very strong like foreign military sales, a strong technology culture selling, whether that’s to the Asian Pacific market, out to the Middle East, to other European partners, is it still too early, and right now, we’re just focused on getting this right here at home in the United States, or is Vector also thinking about international expansion.
Andy 35:49
We’re very much focused on the international market as well. Again, we’re excited for some interesting announcements we’ll make here in probably the next 60 to 90 days of some international markets that were opening up for the Vector team. What has been very interesting with the international market, though, that really closely ties into this administration is previously there would be a lot of U.S. aid to our partners and allies. And what this administration has done is sort of flip that script, incentivizing our partners and allies to do more direct contracts with innovative companies like Vector. The other thing that has been an interesting change in the international market is a lot of our foreign partners don’t want to buy all-up systems. They want to do in-country manufacturing, they have seen the same vulnerabilities to supply chain that we learned during covid. And what they’re more interested in is not an all-up system that Vector may build, but more so the components, the raw components, that Vector is designing, and then helping them stand up a world-class unmanned systems factory and drone Center of Excellence. And so everything from support in standing up in-country manufacturing, to teaching and training, their own version of DOTMLPF, their own version of tactics, techniques, and procedures for their military, that is what’s most interesting to our international partners, and that’s how we sort of attack the international market — focusing on those countries that are ready to move dollars toward those types of programs.
Maggie 37:27
Andy, you’ve had a long career, both in the military and national security space and now in the founder startup space. What advice do you have for founders who may not have your years of experience as they’re looking to build startups to support national security customers.
Andy 37:46
That’s a great question. Maggie, so I spent 18 years in the Army. The last five or six years were focused on this market — focused on how you build for defense — not knowing I was going to become an entrepreneur in the space, but I was just fascinated by the defense acquisition process, and so I thought I had a good handle on how to go to market. It’s way more challenging than I ever thought. You know, I look at all the advice I gave entrepreneurs when I was in the military, and I sort of shake my head at myself, because I really had no clue on how hard it really was for the entrepreneur. And so I say that to say, don’t start a company, period. Don’t start a company in the defense space unless you absolutely can’t not do it. And I use the double negative on purpose, like you have to lie awake in bed every night thinking about your idea, thinking about your startup, thinking about the market, thinking about how you want to do all of this, and if you can’t sleep because you’re so captivated by diving in and joining this coalition of entrepreneurs that are trying to build it for defense, then great. But if you have doubts, then it probably isn’t for you, because it’s hard. It’s a slog. Every day I relish in it. I enjoy it very much. I don’t think there’s anything else really worth doing, at least in my professional career, than building for defense. But you have to be ready for the challenge. You have to be ready for the highs and lows. And if you are, then it’s a very, very rewarding sort of industry to be in, but it’s not for the faint of heart.
David 39:19
Yeah, I think that’s well said, it’s definitely a labor of love, not so different than serving in certain ways, right? It’s a grind, and you’ve got to love it for all the right reasons. Beyond the things you’re listening to and reading about in the defense tech space, give the listeners a bold prediction, you know, an Andy special, if you will, on something you see playing out in the next year or five years, but obviously the more relevant to today, even better.
Andy 39:58
Yeah, so, um. I’m not an everyday reader, but I think a book that has changed my perspective and has influenced me a lot is Freedom’s Forge. And I think Freedom’s Forge 2.0 is coming. I think the involvement of the United States government, for better or worse, is going to change the defense ecosystem, especially in the unmanned space, in a way that we could never imagine. I’m seeing a lot of very interesting things come from the United States government, from direct investments into companies, MP Materials, Intel, L3, and a couple others. I think that’s a big signal of how involved the Defense Department wants to be to ensure that we have a Freedom’s Forge 2.0 to ensure that this re-industrialization actually happens, to ensure that we do have the industrial base, to ensure we’re ready for hopefully the next fight that never happens, to ensure that we’re ready for it. So I think what we have seen come out of this administration and the Department of Defense, or the Department of War, is just a signal of much more to come. And I think Freedom’s Forge 2.0 is coming in a big way, and we’re really excited to be a part of it.
David 41:15
Well, that’s awesome. Andy, I’m sure, and I hope that they write a chapter about Vector in Freedom’s Forge 2.0 but just for our listeners out there, that same author, Arthur Herman, he’s coming out with a new book called Founder’s Fire: From 1776 to the Age of Trump, set to release on the 21st of April this year. So I don’t think they’ll write about Vector in that one, but I’m sure, you know, Arthur will be looking you up pretty soon. So with that, Andy, thank you so much for taking the time to come on to Mission Matters. It’s awesome to hear about your story, to see veterans like yourself getting out there, you know, putting their time, their sweat, their energy, right, all their lessons learned, into building a company of consequence. We wish you the best of luck. I can’t wait to hear about how well you do in the Drone Dominance program, right, and that maybe in the very near future, airmen, soldiers, Marines, and sailors, etc, will all be flying your drone. So just awesome. Thank you so much.
