🔷 Firestorm

Firestorm

We recently sat down with Dan Magy, co-founder and CEO of Firestorm.

They’re on a mission to democratize the air by re-imaging the way drones are built by making them radically affordable and mission adaptable.

They developed a method to 3D-print drones at the point of need, using a combination of shipping-container-based factories and localized supply chains.

Best of all, the drones are modular—from props to jets, AI to sensors, etc.

Of course we discussed that, but most of that is on their website, too.

So we also spent time going a level or two deeper:

• how Ukraine led to Firestorm

• the hyper-speed and hyper-scale of battlefield innovation

• examples of drone technical and tactical leaps in Ukraine

• emerging concepts-to-capabilities in the ultra-low-cost drone segment

• key insights that shaped (and evolved) their business concept

• competing in a crowded drone market

• product iteration through ‘crash-and-learn’

• rethinking force structure to have a credible mix

• The high-low mix and attritable mass

• The link between attrition, reconstitution, and risk

As you can probably tell, there are a ton of insights and golden nuggets crammed into this interview.

It’s an episode you don’t want to miss!

Check it out!

YouTube 

Apple 

Spotify

In That Number

$36B

The US has obligated more than $36B to procure capabilities for Ukraine or replace equipment drawn from US stocks.

TRIVIA

When did the world’s first 3D-printed drone fly?

A) 1991
B) 2001
C) 2011
D) 2021

On the Radar

Military space-to-Earth cargo delivery continues to progress. Startups Inversion Space and Outpost Space have secured more than $100m to develop reusable reentry vehicles for cargo. Unlike SpaceX’s Dragon transport capsule, these are being designed to store supplies in orbit, ready to be cargo-dropped on demand anywhere in the world within an hour. Don’t confuse this with Rocket Cargo, a space-logistics plan that is looking at how to use Space’s Starship to shoot cargo around the world.

• The Merge’s Take: “Shipping containers in space” has a nice ring to it, though we’d like to imagine the reentry would play out like a combat drop from Aliens.

The Pentagon’s second tranche of Replicator systems is slowly rolling out. One of the selections came from the Air Force, which proposed its Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) program. Four companies—Anduril, IS4S, Leidos Dynetics, and Zone 5—are competing to design ETV prototypes for a cruise-missile type platform capable of mass-production at low cost and high volume.

• The Merge’s Take: ETV is a break-neck speed program, so this makes sense. They awarded prototype contracts in June 2024 and will have a fly-off to down-select before the end of the year. Most of the vendors have been quiet—except Anduril. They just unveiled a new family of low-cost cruise missiles with 3-size variants—the largest is their contender for ETV (and thus, Replicator tranche 2).

What’s new in US hypersonics? Check out this progress report, which includes some systemic challenges based on the low-risk technical approach to the first generation of hypersonic weapons.

They Said It
“If you come to the Air Force Association meeting next week, you’ll see two full-scale models of the aircraft that we’re building: the first increment of uncrewed collaborative combat aircraft.”

— Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall

We’ll see you there!

Meanwhile, here’s a sneak peek of General Atomics transporting a real XQ-67A to the event.

Knowledge Bombs

• The Air Force may only field 25 F-35s in 2026

• RTX is working with Anduril and General Atomics to fit AIM-120 missiles on/in the CCA prototypes

• Anduril showcased its autonomy by flying a 4-ship of jet drones doing a counter-air demonstration

• Darkhive raised a $21m series A round for their drone-and-software pipeline product

• A Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet was spotted with an absolute unit of a missile loadout

• The Army awarded dual-10-year contracts for its company-level drone program (Anduril’s Ghost X and Performance Drone Works’s C-100)

• The Army completed its MOSA and flight evaluations for 2 drones in the FTUAS brigade-level drone program (Griffon Aerospace’s Valiant and Textron’s Aerosonde)

• Forterra raised a $75m series B round to accelerate their autonomous driving system (it’s used on the Marine Corps ROUGE Fires program)

• RTX was awarded a $1.2B AIM-120 contract, the largest ever award for AMRAAMs

• Russia putting used tires on top of aircraft successfully disrupted AI image-matching

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ANSWER
C, the world’s first 3D-printed drone flew in 2011. Because we know you’re curious, the world’s first 3D-printed jet-powered drone flew in 2015.