Speaker A
Basically, Congress said, "Look, you come to me with the top 10 list of things that you didn't know about last year and you do now, and we'll give you money to bridge from today to low rate initial production." Most people are just trying
Mike McKay discusses U.S. military innovation challenges, bridging tech gaps, and the evolving role of drones and AI in defense.
Key Takeaways
- Bridging the funding gap ('Valley of Death') is critical for defense tech startups to survive and scale.
- Congressional programs like APPIT provide essential financial support to accelerate military tech adoption.
- Effective communication and understanding of military needs are vital for startups to succeed in defense markets.
- Drone and AI technologies have rapidly evolved, requiring continuous adaptation by the military and policymakers.
- Real-world military experience combined with policy insight offers valuable perspective on defense innovation challenges.
Summary
- Mike McKay shares his extensive military and congressional experience, including deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan and work on Capitol Hill.
- Congressional funding initiatives like APPIT aim to bridge the 'Valley of Death' for defense startups transitioning from prototypes to production.
- The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) received significant funding to focus on Department of Defense priorities, especially combat and command needs.
- McKay highlights challenges startups face in navigating government acquisition, business development, and communication with military customers.
- He recounts early experiences with UAVs like Puma, Wasp, and Raven, noting their limitations and the evolution of drone technology.
- The podcast touches on the shift in U.S. defense strategy towards the Pacific and concerns about defending areas like the Taiwan Straits.
- McKay emphasizes the importance of bottom-up warfighter-driven innovation and the role of Congress in supporting rapid tech adoption.
- He describes his post-military work helping startups engage with government and improve their market positioning within defense ecosystems.
- The discussion includes reflections on real-world operational use of drones and autonomous systems in modern warfare.
- McKay’s unique career path bridges frontline military experience, congressional policymaking, and defense innovation facilitation.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
to catch up to basically what AI is, and it's progressed light years since the last time they had that conversation. So I think with drones, it's the same thing. This week on the Drone Wars podcast, we have Mike McKay, an all-things National
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Security expert. So Mike, tell everybody a little bit about who you are. Who is Mike McKay? Oh, I'm not going to get too deep. How much time do you have? How much time do you have? There's lots of
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things. No, um, grew up here in New York City, out in Queens. I went to the Marine Corps, ended up in the Marine Corps at boot camp about a month after 9/11. I joined the
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Infantry, went to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 with like the regular head, you know, regular helmet head grunt infantry. Came back off that deployment, joined a unit called Force Recon at the time, kind of the Marine Corps' answer to
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SOCOM. Not really, it was different. And then, so, uh, we did Afghanistan in 2007, 2009, 2011, every deployment completely different. The first one was kind of like being in the Infantry again. The second one was very black
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helicopters and night raids, and by like 2011, we were like dressing in local gear, twoot long beard, like eating goats off the side of the road, like just rolling up on a goat her, like, "Hey, can I get a
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couple of those goats?" And then I came back from that, uh, went up to the Hill in uniform, did the Congressional fellowship program, worked for the chairman at that time, the ranking member or the vice chair of the committee because I think
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the Republicans were in the majority at the time, who ultimately became the chairman of the Defense Appropriations. And so when I first met you, I think it is. Yeah, absolutely. And when a lot of these programs that we're talking about
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now, the Hellscapes and the Replicators of the world, actually had really early beginnings even then when they were looking at, you know, as the NDS flipped to take a look at the Pacific. At that point, we even talked about here in
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distance, we were like, there's no way we could defend the Taiwan Straits right now. So, um, was on the Hill then, went and did Congressional Affairs for the assistant secretary for special operations for a year, then what
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ultimately ended up in the Pentagon as the chief of staff for the special operations and what's now a regular warfare office. Retired from the military, went back to work for the chairman of Defense Appropriations. We did a bunch of
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cool stuff there. I think most famously, popularly looking for funny words here, um, it's late in the day in New York here. It is late in the day New York. We did the APPIT program. So, uh, we got back from
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the Reagan National Defense Forum, was probably 21. I know Chairman's a simple guy, right? When it comes down to big brain, big thinker, but like really just a simple guy, uh, really what you would ask for in a commander. He's like, "I'm sick
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of hearing about this Valley of Death thing. Go fix it." Okay, cool, let me get on that. And what came out of that, with the help of like a lot of people, was APPIT program. Um, we did. How does that fit
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work? Explain it to people really quickly. Yeah, so in the defense ecosystem, there's a term called the Valley of Death. Right? You get a young startup, kind of innovative company. They make a one-off widget usually through like an
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SBIR, the Small Business Innovation Research program, or like they're working with DIU and OT and other Transaction Authority. So they get this prototyping money, they make one-off thing, it's super cool, everyone agrees that they want it. It's not until that
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thing is done, validated, that you can start moving into the process to be bought at scale. And that gap in there is about two to three years sometimes. And this is where companies fall into the Valley of Death. They got a thing
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everybody wants it, but there's no money. And guess what? They go out of business. They end up taking adversarial capital because they don't know anything about that, and the Chinese are trying to get their technology or or any other or they
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get bought by somebody else, and we lose that technology or that company. Um, so what APPIT does, it's Congressional money, it's completely congressionally provided. It's starting to come into the budget now, but it wasn't at first,
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and basically Congress said, "Look, you come to me with the top 10 list of things that you didn't know about last year and you do now. I will give you money to bridge from today to low rate initial production." Yep, so we did that, uh,
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we threw a whole lot of money, about to the tune of a billion dollars, at DIU to get them refocused on mission set DOD top priorities, but specifically in that initiative, there was about $200 million of new money that
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focused DIU towards the combat and command. So they're getting that Warfighter bottom-up drive, which was the whole goal of doing that. Uh, I wrapped up with the Chairman's office. I went and spent the year of 23 to get the NDA done
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with Senator Joni Ernst. Uh, she was running the Emerging Threats and Capabilities subcommittee at that point. Had to blast there. Uh, ended up with her in Israel on October 10th, so three days after the war started in Israel.
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We were there on an Abraham Accords codel. We had a bunch of members with us bipartisan. Uh, we had hit a couple other spots in the Middle East, and then the war started, and we found our
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way into Israel and met with all their leadership. And then ultimately BB about three days after the war started. Uh, after that 20 plus years in government, um, a Venn diagram of smoke over the bureaucracy wanted a little something
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new. Um, and over that period that I was working in Congress, I probably worked with 200 plus businesses. I was like, how do I work with the government? How do I get funded? Why is this so hard? And I
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just said, you know, there's a model here to work with really small seed pre-Seed companies to help get them in the game and work through everything from early BD, how do you engage with Congress to stuff on the UN like the big
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boy side of life, the outward operations, how do you get on a panel to speak at one of these events? You know, how do you make sure that your website and your media marketing advertising is actually talking to your customer because you
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find out you make a really great widget, and you think someone in the DOD needs it, but you might be wrong. It might be the wrong Mission Setter. You just don't even know how to talk to them and speak the same
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language. There's a lot of translation in there too. So I've been doing that for about a year and work with a portfolio of great companies, and I'm motivated to still be in the game. It's great. I mean, I think what's super interesting is
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real world experience, right? During GWT, transitioning to the Hill, understanding how the machinery of the Hill and the Pentagon work, and then translating that into a career. It's very unique in this field, right? I mean, I don't know a lot of
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other people who've been able to pull it off quite like you can. Like talk about that. The only compliment I'm getting you today. Talk a little bit about how, like obviously the main topic here is drones, the autonomy, like how does Congress see it? How does the Pentagon see it? Like where, give us a state of the union. Yeah, you know what I mean? So I remember when not really too much in the deployments back in 2009 and
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2011, like we had UAS systems, the really early UAV systems, Puma, Wasp, Raven. We used them for ISR most of the time. Guys didn't know how to fly them. Uh, we just ended up crashing them. Uh, they were
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not that they were cheaply made, but they weren't durable. So you do, you know, 5, 10, 20 runs, and it's a wrap. But because it was a programmer record, it's like they weren't reliable at the time. So like
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they just kind of go on a box there.
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they just kind of go on a box there wasn't this like widescale application of it so then kind of fast forward 2016 I was in Northern Iraq with uh a jedberg team and a Seal Team prepping for the siege of mos and we'd go out on
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the flot in the morning with the peshmerga the Kurdish uh partner Force up there and we just kind of go up in like World War I style go right up to the lines and kind of you know defend
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the line and see what Isis was doing for the day and we started seeing early early appearance of drones on the battlefield and these were the quadcopter types straight up straight down and we didn't know at the time they
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were DJI they probably were um but they would go up they do ISR on us they do Recon on us and then they kind of go back down and what we started seeing over that time period is that we
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realized not only were they do using them for ISR but they started getting their mortars in Bing on our position Tighter and so they figured out how to use those to spot their mortars with those drones and at that point because
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of the job that I was doing and I was tied back to the higher command back in Baghdad I wrote what was called a Jons a joint urgent operational need statement I said hey the bad guys got drones out
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too right your Jan's helped Citadel get first stuff into Iraq I love it so yes when they tried to blow up Andy christensen's car so so right I have that picture on my phone so so this was okay so this was
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early 2016 let's call it January February March right so we wrote that initial Jan and we we pushed that back to the higher level command and and for for us nothing really happened I remember dudes that were in the unit
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with us that were like look I'm just going to call my mom and have my duck shotgun sent out here 100% I can pop these things yeah there you go right eyes in the team were like look man you
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get me a good duck shotgun I'll take that thing out out of the sky but we had no counter uas Paul the S dude started being like well oh you know they RF could we build like a directional RF
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Jammer and they'd be like you know taking like broomsticks and trying to figure out like directional stuff so everybody was real new with it a ton and and then I rotated out and Andy came in that picture that you showed was the
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first time to anyone's knowledge at least to my knowledge that a hand grenade was deployed with commercial drone yeah on his vehicle and that happened in October of 2016 so I mean flash to bang I wrote the first report
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on it in February March by October they had weaponized and and and that's not a surprise right this is coming out of the same exact people who have been taking every piece of cheap Chinese technology they could get their hands off for the
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last 20 years and making it a bomb right so like we knew that was coming um and then right so then now now I'm on the hill coming off of that we did the I did the deployment in Africa not not really
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too much there kind of big drone stuff group five stuff we had the base that we were setting in agadez that's now I think fogner group owns it or whatever um but it wasn't until I got to the hill
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I met you and a lot of other people that were really had some novel ideas about where this space was going to go and that's that's across the Spectrum right uas counter uas uh the AI systems and the automatic Target recognition that
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kind of all go into it and I started having these conversations I was like oh man this thing this thing's just taken off but at the same time what we saw was when the Biden Administration came in I remember specifically one of the
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first things that Deek Hicks started talking about was AI ethics and I had a huge problem with that right because I'm like this is the United States of America we're the most ethical fighting force on the planet like we teach rules
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of laws of war laws of UNC contact Rules of Engagement I mean we hold our people to a standard we have 20 years of experience as as if you do something Criminal illegal unethical downrange we will PR so it's like that didn't sit
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right with me and then the tune changed to from ethical AI to kind of more trusted Ai and I like okay we want to know if we're going to use these systems that they do the thing that we think
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they're going to do because now we're putting them into a combat situation and I think that really started moving the conversation forward to where we started that early acceptance of these as part the formation and at the same time you
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have like all the guys who write books like uh you know Pete singer August Cole Paul Shi were like no no no no we can't we don't want to get there we don't want to get to the Terminator the the drones
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can't fight that war for us and I think there was a a real conversation at the time of how far one do we push the R&D two how far do we probably talk about what we're developing and then three how much do we
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field and then well what was it February 22 Ukraine kicked off everything everything's out the window I mean it went full speed at that point and now I think we're all struggling to catch up so your initial question was what is the
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hill think about this this is an AI situation with most people on the hill and I'm not talking about like the professional staff members who have this portfolio they live it and breath it too but the members who are just Tas
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saturated with everything it's the same kind of conversations they're having about AI right most people are just trying to catch up to basically what is AI and it's progressed Lighty years since the last time they had that conversation so I think with drones it's
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the same thing when we start talking about you know automatic Target recognition systems the the communications platforms that are required the spectrum of trying to do counter uas right from you know the identification of a threat the tracking
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and um like like marking or or recognition of what that threat is and then the defeat of that and the multimodal right is it RF is it Optical sensor what's your defeat like one of the technologies that we saw real early
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was epis they had the leonitis system and they're still struggling to get that thing fielded because people don't know what to do with that so you got a congress that's really really trying to catch up at best the dod started an
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emerging technology policy office and I figured like oh they'd put people in there to like really deal with this but still everyone sh struggling where when your technology starts pushing boundaries and you're out there right switch blade 600 or even 300 was a good
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example that when Ukraine just popped off and that thing hit the ground for the first time everybody's like oh that's real okay everyone struggled so I think just like Ai and everything else people are struggling to catch up so
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across the spectrum of how we train organize and employ our forces the lessons being learned right now in Ukraine are light years away from where we are the lessons being learned in Israel are light years away from what
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the folks are being taught right now could potentially have to go do this so from having the capabilities to knowing how to employ them and having the doctrine and and the the military war fighting understanding that this is just part of the formation
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and it's as ubiquitous as a rifle or a hand grenade we are not anywhere near where they're at in Ukraine and Israel and that's what that's what concerns me is that you're seeing the ttps and the technology from Ukraine show up in in
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Molly in Myanmar yep his buas deployed him quite effectively I saw this Myanmar thing today like it is it is cut and paced out of Ukraine and Israel and Myanmar and it's like we one of the lessons we can and
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should have learned from the gwatt is information and knowledge on how to do these things proliferates at light speed right you can get that thing out and ttps that we're seeing in one place of the world get to somebody else
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because they have a network and they pass information they don't have any bureaucracy so that information's out there and everybody else is adapting to it and it just seems like we're so slow and cumbersome as the US and the way we
Speaker A
adapt to things now look there there's some good examples out there uh the Army started US Army Special Operations Command started a course called Rusk is it great I don't know I haven't been through it or evaluated the curriculum
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but it's better than nothing because you go back to other services and they haven't even started that conversation yet so uh the technolog is moving incredibly fast the tgps and the Lessons Learned are moving even faster and I
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just think we're struggling to capture all that at the moment drone Wars is recorded from firestorms Global HQ in San Diego from our custombuilt studio inside one of our hero products a modular industrial grade manufacturing facility designed to be deployed
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anywhere in the world within 24 hours for on demand drone production each week on the podcast we bring you cutting edge insights from Top industry leaders sharing the breakthroughs and Technologies they're working on the hard lessons they've learned and bold
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predictions that they have for the next 5 to 10 years in autonomous systems and advanced manufacturing enjoying the show so far then be sure you like And subscribe so you never miss an episode now back to to the show I was driving by
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Pendleton last week and there were Bradley's moving around in the Hills none of them had anti-drone grills installed I mean this just has to be table Stakes at this point till we redesigned the whole vehicle I know and
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and and the Mad Max stuff right we were talking about like Isis 2016 I mean we were hitting them with stuff and they were making Mad Max trucks right they were like armoring them themselves you look at Ukraine and Russia right now I
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mean they're building cages on the outside to make him drone proof I me they're adapting in the same way that we asymmetrically right that you'd see is that the issue is that we're seeing asymmetrical Technologies deployed like not in an asymmetrical manner they've
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basically been just like a pull it across forces and it's like a fundamental change for how we think battle should be fought is that is that one of the issues or like what do you think the problem is it's probably multifaceted it is and
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one of one of the things is is our is is just our speed of adoption right our speed of adoption is what right everybody's like oh we have an innovation problem [ __ ] we don't have an innovation problem we have the
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smartest most creative human beings on the planet that live in history of the world in the history of the world and have right you go back you go back in the history of warfare right you go back to to Billy Mitchell who came out of
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World War I that said air Warfare will dominate the future and he said it so much he got court Marshal out of the air core at the time because nobody believed that air dominance was going to be a
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thing you have Rick over you have Kelly Johnson I mean you have people who personify and we have that today I mean we just had a room full of these people that want to invent create things and they want to provide capabilities we
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have an adoption problem where the way we do things whether it's the way we buy things or we Implement new ttps into our formation it's just really slow um Talk to some folks and probably you know same or similar people that you talk to
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coming out of Ukraine they're adapting daily to a new battle space in front of them where we used to have this idea that the front line or the line of contact was defined by 120 mm mortars 80 mm mortars 60
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mortars armor and then what you had in your organic weapon system and the bad guys never had 120 mortars at least not in the last 20 years they haven't right in the chwat they didn't so we knew that
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we owned the battle space today you're seeing 10 15 kilometers of Front Line because that's how far they can get their drones right the the folks who are fighting in the trenches today are like Back to the Future World War I in the trenches but
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with all the considerations that there is a constant threat from above now that they have to consider all the times in the ttps you know the kids that are going through the school infantry for the United States Marine Corp right now
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are not being taught how to go fight there and it's all fun in games it's like oh we'll get there but that's a Ukrainian thing or whatever we'll learn but the fact of the matter is is that the Russians step one foot drop one
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missile inside Poland and now it's NATO Article 5 and now we all got to go and the Sons and Daughters of America have to go to the Eastern front and fight in Ukraine they're not prepared to go do
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that right and it's an adoption issue and it's hard to change Doctrine and ttps we even live that in the GWT fortunately we were lucky that we had a good feedback we had the team before us would download us on what happened and
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we would constantly learn but I just don't think that's happened we're going to see really quickly here uh you know we're filming this in November when the North Koreans hit the flot we're going to see how good the
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Russians brought them up speed but that should be really important for us to watch because you know these are these are their best soldiers or some of their best soldiers and these folks have been trying to fight a war a very certain way
Speaker A
and now they're going to have to adapt at lightning speed or they will be cut to pieces I mean it' be interesting yeah I mean you know fortunately for us the the North Koreans from time to time will
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put stuff out you know for like propaganda videos these are these are really infantry formation big military kind of folks I mean I'm sure they have special operations you like this is formation military real um uh you know
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fire and maneuver kind of stuff if they get destroyed yes in in Ukraine it's going to be very telling that we can then be a bit self-reflected and say well what what are we train are we still training
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our guys basic blocking and tackling fire and maneuver Squad Infantry tactics and does that still survive and it's not going to be a question of you know speculation if if you have 10,000 de North Koreans That Couldn't adapt to
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this new Battlefield because they hadn't been living it for a year and a half we're better than the North Koreans don't get me wrong but like we may suffer the same fate if we end up Article Five and and over there which
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scares [ __ ] out me you know the ukrainians are licking their chops I mean the depending on who you believe they're knocking out over 1,500 Russians a day which is just unbelievable and they're using 10 to 30,000 drones a month depending on who
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you talk to to pull this off so let's let's focus in on that manufacturing for a second you and I walked the hill two weeks ago and this is the first time I've heard uh Congressional staff not talk about the s-day problem which was
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we had enough autonomous systems for a week they said we have a sixh hour problem right is the message getting through to Congress do you think or is it very sparsely making its way through I I think it is um I think the narrative
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has has started to turn um we again back in you know 2018 it was we need new cool things right it was the big defense Prime aren't thinking outside the RFP in front of them right having that very defined
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from the dod requirement that we need this widget we need it built like this which one of the five of you can yeah build it for the best price and we're like well you're not being Innovative right and you know Palmer lucky comes on
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the scene and he's like I'm not even gonna ask you what you want me to build I'm just gonna chill show you what you're right very very Henry Ford right if I asked people what they wanted they'd say I want Faster Horses yeah
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like a faster horse right they get cars out of that right so you know um I think it's starting to turn I think people are understanding I think you know and as maybe played out as it is now I think
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going back to the concept of the arsenal of democracy people really can Envision those Detroit factories and cranking cranking out the the World War II machine in the way that they did and people are saying that's not a new cool
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widget that scale now we're not even close to that I said I said back at the beginning of this year I did a panel for um someone I don't even remember but it was I said look replicator is not about
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new cool stuff it's about who can make stuff at mass at scale as fast as possible and that's always been the narrative are they there I don't know is is the generation because we have a generation now of diu x kind of starting
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it through your diu today and your um your your your Works companies that have come up to the soft works and a this is a whole new generation of companies the question is can they adapt Che to the modern environment
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from great you made a cool thing that we didn't know we need we agree that we need it now can you make a thousand of them a month right that's the next evolution in our new generation of companies that they that they need to
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adapt to and I think that's the problem that replicator can and should be focusing on solving so look in your crystal ball y right what do a good outcome look like and what are the outcome what's the outcome that troubles
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you with how we adapt autonomous systems uh in the west so I would like to see a leveraging of all technology against all technology okay and the way I the way I Envision that is there shouldn't be a
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military today like we just have to like be very real that today there shouldn't be a military tactics or doctrine manual that's printed because if you've printed it it's already obsolete we should be using the lessons learned that we have
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plenty of what tons and tons of experience of people who have stayed connected to the wars in Israel and Ukraine to pipe that data back to bring back the case studies and every unit that goes out on a training op they're
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going to National Training Center they're going to the next event they should be working off the newest download of the newest update of the newest tdps you can do that with an llm there can be a software and it doesn't
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say get away from Doctrine or just go out there and do whatever you want but it should be informed by what's actually going on in the world if we actually consider we're going to fight there that's what best case looks like to me
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is that the new technolog is coming in and we're away from necessarily like I like this widget A10 mq9 pick your thing it's not about that thing is is it meeting need for today companies will become more agile and the units that
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deploy these things are all going to become more agile because we have the technology on on board and on hand to be able to do that we just need to like apply it all all against each other the
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worst case scenario is we're getting ready to go into another Administration transition right the the concern is how long does that trans how long does that transition last how long does it take for them for the new team coming in to
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say I like this I like this I like this let's keep that let's change that because tick tock tick tock can't stop the clock right 2020 seven is coming right the day if anybody still believes in the Davidson window this is where
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we're going right xiin Ping's got Milestones out there 2049 they have to do this right like We Can't Stop their progress towards whatever they want being the CCP so the the more delay that we have in our process is what really
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concerns me right now right now this is where I'm at I'm on bad guy watch right now we've had a presidential election and we have a lame duck president right now regardless your party your politics or anything it's fact of the matter we
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don't get a new president until noon on January 20 right now if I'm advising seing ping if I'm advising Putin now is your opportunity to Grant everything you're you think you can get that you wouldn't try under this new president so
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they have to do that assessment and now we're on bad guy watch to see what Iran's up to what North Korea's up to because we're in a very dangerous period here because the question is would Aid Joe Biden on his way out potentially
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commit the United States to World War II or do we just let that [ __ ] go whatever it is and on the back end of that the US is at a much different place geopolitically if in the next 90 days we
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completely use lose Ukraine if in the next 90 days Iran rolls out their nuclear weapon that they've been building for however long now they just want to rub it in our face if in the next 90 days we wake up tomorrow and
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China just took Taiwan without a shot fired because they put up an a blockade that's a very different American World standing and in the next couple months that's where I'm concerned and I truly believe in the best deterrence is is a
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strong National Security infrastructure and today we're not in the place at least publicly in what what the dod says I think to deter any those activities so I think right now in the next 90 days is a very sketchy time
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period um I hope coming out the back of that we realize that we really do have the ability to Tamp down the the conflict the stress the the um the friction I think around the world with a strong us presence strong allies and
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partners and an industrial base that can actually produce overwhelming results and everybody goes back to being like not today right and I think we can get there that was awesome Mike where can people find you if they want to like
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follow you or talk to you online don't follow me no uh no I got a I got a presence on LinkedIn um I uh I try to post on there I try to keep it real and provocative and and I not provocative
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I'm not trying to stir up [ __ ] but like there's stuff that I hear from people that I work with that don't necessarily have the voice to be able to say hey this is [ __ ] up because they get
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blackballed because they have a company like I can get away with a lot more so you know I just try to I just try to Echo what I'm hearing from from people out in the small companies that are
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really trying to do the right thing so I'm on LinkedIn I'm running around I'm at events come up say hi and what's your company called or what's your company website uh yep so I got a small LLC that
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I uh work with early stage businesses and help them do all the things we just talked about it's uh cognite slat CG n t.
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.io that's fancy I don't speak Latin anymore I'm just kidding no um thanks for coming today thanks for listening to the Drone Wars podcast each week we bring you fascinating conversations with leaders shaping the future of air sea
Speaker A
land and space Technologies catch new episodes every Wednesday wherever podcasts can be found until then we'll see you next time [Music]
Topics:U.S. military innovationdefense startupsdrone technologyAI in defenseDefense Innovation UnitAPPIT programValley of Deathcongressional fundingspecial operationsmilitary acquisitions
