Changing the landscape of US military procurement

[Ryan Robertson]

FOR DECADES THE NATURE AND SHAPE OF HOW AMERICA’S MILITARY DID BUSINESS WITH CIVILIAN CONTRACTORS LOOKED VERY MUCH THE SAME. BILLION DOLLAR BEHEMOUTHS AND YEARS LONG PROCUREMENT EFFORTS. BUT WHAT WAS ONCE THE STANDARD, IS CHANGING. 

AS THE U.S. MILITARY CONTINUES TO SHIFT ITS FOCUS FROM THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR TO MORE TRADITIONAL ADVERSARIES, LIKE RUSSIA AND CHINA, SO TOO IS THE WAY THEY’RE GOING ABOUT ARMING THEIR FORCES. LOOKING TOWARDS NEWER, SMALLER, FLEET OF FOOT OUTFITS THAT OFFER NEW IDEAS, WITH FASTER TURNROUNDS THAT WON’T BREAK THE BUDGET. OUTFITS LIKE MACH INDUSTRIES, AND THEIR 21 YEAR-OLD CEO AND FOUNDER ETHAN THORNTON. 

IT ALMOST SOUNDS LIKE SOMETHING FROM A HOLLYWOOD STUDIO; AN MIT FRESHMAN LEAVES SCHOOL TO PERSUE HIS AMBITIONS IN THE DEFENSE SECTOR, CONVINCING INVESTORS AND OTHER BRIGHT MINDS TO JOIN HIS MISSION. FAST FORWARD A COUPLE OF YEARS, A FEW BUMPS IN THE ROAD, AND SEVERAL LESSONS LEARNED, AND ETHAN THORNTON SAYS HE HAS MACH INDUSTRIES POINTED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. 

[Ethan Thornton, CEO & Founder, Mach Industries]“So think high altitude balloons. Think long loaded high altitude aircraft. Again, very bullish there. And that is probably work we’re closer to doing as a company. I can’t talk too much about that work, but very passionate there.”

[Ryan Robertson]

HOPEFULLY WHAT YOU CAN TALK ABOUT IS YOUR IDEAS ON HOW WE CAN GET THE AMERICAN MANUFACTURING PROCESS, NOT NECESSARILY TO CATCH UP WITH OUR ADVERSARIES, BUT TO YOU KNOW, PROVIDE THE AMERICAN MILITARY FORCE WITH A SIGNIFICANT PUNCH COUNTER PUNCH TO OUR ADVERSARIES. BUT IT ALL STARTS WITH OUR MANUFACTURING BASE. HOW DO WE FIX IT? IT’S WE BUILD BIG THINGS VERY SLOWLY. HOW DO WE BUILD SMALL THINGS VERY QUICKLY?

[Ethan Thornton, CEO & Founder, Mach Industries]

“So manufacturing for like arming Ukraine or for arming Taiwan looks very different than manufacturing design specifically for near peer conflict. And so I think for the first one, you need very, very large automated factories producing hundreds to or 1000s to 10s of 1000s of platforms a month, right? And that’s that’s pretty linear thinking that is going to be extremely challenging from electronics perspective. And I think if our targeting specific areas that we need to be investing in very heavily as a country, it is making sure that we have the flight controllers, the radios, the gimbals, all of the sensors we need to scale to those. Numbers, because we are going to need to scale to those numbers at some point in the next few decades.”

[Ryan Robertson]

WHAT’S IT GOING TO TAKE TO GET AMERICA INTO THAT MODE OF THESE ARE THE THINGS WE NEED TO START MANUFACTURING IN ORDER TO CONTINUE AMERICAN WORK. CONTINUING AMERICAN LIFE WHEN, WHEN THERE’S SO MANY DISTRACTIONS IN THE WORLD, HOW DO YOU GET AMERICA, THE AMERICAN POPULATION, FOCUSED TO THE POINT WHERE OUR MANUFACTURING REFLECTS ALL THESE THINGS THAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT?

[Ethan Thornton, CEO & Founder, Mach Industries] “I think the biggest bottleneck right now is actually that we aren’t, we aren’t procuring enough for these mature platforms that we are capable of manufacturing at scale. So yeah. I mean, at the limit, I think we need, we need to reform, like trade school education, right? We need to be become culturally obsessed with manufacturing, and we need to spend a ton of time vertically integrating the manufacture of rare earths, right? Like there are a lot of structural things, but I think right now more of the work needs to be done in procurement and then in the actual, just development of excellent platforms.”

[Ryan Robertson]

AS FOR PLATFORMS MACH IS WORKING ON, THERE ARE TWO. THEIR HUNTINGTON, CALIFORNIA FACTORY IS CURRENTLY MANUFACTURING THE COMPANY’S TWO PRIMARY PRODUCTS: A WEAPON NAMED GLIDE AND A SUPER-LIGHT, JET-POWERED UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE (UAV) KNOWN AS VIPER. VIPER IS RECOGNIZED FOR ITS ABILITY TO TAKE OFF VERTICALLY, ELIMINATING THE NEED FOR A RUNWAY, AND MACH CLAIMS IT COSTS UP TO 300 TIMES LESS TO PRODUCE COMPARED TO CONVENTIONAL UAVS.

WHERE DO YOU SEE MACH INDUSTRIES GOING IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS? AND WHERE DO YOU SEE THE AMERICAN, YOU KNOW, DRONE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY GOING IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS?

[Ethan Thornton, CEO & Founder, Mach Industries]

“So for us, specifically as a company, it’s bringing these two platforms to market. So they’re they’re both flying right, pushing through TRL levels and bringing those in production, getting them into the hands of of operators here in the US and abroad, and then doubling down, and we have a few next generation product bets we’re getting ready to make. And my goal is that by that kind of 2728 gate, that we have five to seven incredibly capable hardware products that we vertically integrated, that we can turn on the machines scale production and make 10s of 1000s of .”

[Ryan Robertson]

THEY ARE LOFTY GOALS TO BE SURE. BUT IF THORNTON AND HIS TEAM CAN CRACK THE CODE, AND DELIVER ON HIS VISION, THE IDEA OF HOLLYWOOD WANTING TO TELL THEIR STORY SUDDENLY WOULDN’T BE SO FAR-FETCHED. 

AND IT’S NOT LIKE THE STORY DOESN’T HAVE LEGS…OR OUTSIDER INTEREST. SINCE TALKING WITH ETHAN, MACH INDUSTRIES SIGNED A CONTRACT WITH THE U-S ARMY TO BUILD A NEW CRUISE MISSILE–AND IN A SEPARATE DEAL, MACH SIGNED A CONTRACT TO BUILD UAV’S FOR HEVEN DRONES, ANOTHER COMPANY WE’VE TALKED ABOUT HERE ON WEAPONS AND WARFARE.