February 21, 2025 • 41 mins
In this episode of The Pilot Network Podcast, Adam sits down with Daniel Robinson, CEO of Red 6, to explore how augmented reality is transforming fighter pilot training. From flying the F-22 Raptor as the first-ever non-American exchange pilot to launching a game-changing aviation tech company, Daniel’s journey is nothing short of incredible.
They dive into:
✈️ How Red 6’s AR system is revolutionizing air combat training
⚡ The challenges of career transitions and building a tech startup
🎯 Why AI-driven adversaries could be the key to preparing warfighters for the future
🚀 What’s next for Red 6 and how pilots can get involved
This isn’t just another conversation—it’s a deep dive into the future of aviation training and technology. If you’re a pilot, aviation tech enthusiast, or just someone who loves innovation, you don’t want to miss this one. Let's fire up the burner and get into the merge!
https://red6ar.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:16):
Welcome back to another episode of the PilotNetwork podcast, the place where we connect
aviators with tools, resources, and stories tohelp them navigate their careers and lives.
My name is Adam Yuhan.
I hope you're having a great day wherever youare on the pale blue dot.
This episode is one that pushes the limits ofwhat's possible in aviation training.
(00:37):
We're sitting down with Daniel Robinson, CEOand founder of Red Six, to talk about how
augmented reality is rewriting the future ofair combat preparation.
If you think training is limited to expensivelive flights or static simulations, Red Six is
here to challenge that mindset.
Daniel's journey is incredible.
Growing up in a small coal mining town inEngland, making his way into the Royal Air
(00:59):
Force, and eventually becoming the first evernon American pilot to fly the f 22 Raptor in
the United States Air Force.
But that was just the beginning.
After experiencing firsthand the inefficienciesin military training, he set out to create a
revolutionary new way to prepare pilots forcombat.
With Red Six, Daniel and his team are bringingreal time dynamic augmented reality training
(01:21):
into the cockpit, meaning pilots can now engageAI driven adversaries and threats in real
airspace on real missions in real time.
If that sounds cosmic to you, you can imaginewhat it sound like a tanker guy to me.
This tech isn't just making training moreeffective.
It's making it scalable, adaptive, andinfinitely more realistic.
I saw the videos.
It's legit.
(01:42):
So buckle up because we're about to break downhow Red six is changing the game and why this
could be the biggest leap in training since theinvention of the simulator.
Let's get into it.
I hope you enjoy.
Daniel, thank you so much for joining the pilotnetwork podcast today.
I've found out about Red six through LinkedIn,and I had to reach out to you instantly.
(02:04):
I didn't even know your background story.
And then I watched it on YouTube at the FullSail Academy down in Orlando.
I was blown away.
And, thanks again for joining us.
Let's launch right in.
How did you become an aviator?
And then what was your background in aviation?
Because it is, truly one of the unique storiesthat are out there.
Yeah.
It's a funny one.
I I appreciate the time.
Thanks for having me on the show.
(02:25):
So I grew up in a coal mining community in theNorth Of England, an unlikely person to be over
here chatting on the pilot network.
I tell a story quite often.
There there wasn't much to do as a kid where Igrew up, but we had one movie theater, and I
fell in love with aviation through the movies.
The first one being Superman was the firstmovie I remember seeing with my dad with the
late great Christopher Reeve.
And when I saw Superman, I was just obsessed,and I'd stand outside actually trying to take
(02:48):
off like this.
And, you know, I'd wrap the the tableclotharound my shoulders to see if that would work,
and I'd put my underpants on top of my,trousers to see if that was the answer.
And my mom would always always say I'd berunning along every building I could fly and
jumping off, and then she'd be constantlycatching me because I was convinced I could
fly.
Obviously, that didn't work out.
The next movie I saw was Star Wars, and I Ikinda thought lightsabers were cool, but I
(03:10):
really loved Luke Skywalker and the x wing, youknow, and and the death star.
So that was really inspiring for me.
And, and then, obviously, like many of us, Isaw Top Gun when I was age 13, and I realized,
oh my gosh.
That's that's such a job.
And, and when I realized that was the job, I Ihad to figure out how to get myself from this
kind of unlikely environment in NortheastEngland to the Air Force Academy in The UK.
(03:32):
And I went to a pretty bad school in a in apretty bad neighborhood.
And so I I really it was kind of having thatsort of aim as a kid probably saved me because
it gave me something to focus on.
There's a lot of distractions around me at thetime, right, as you can imagine.
So I just got to work on doing that, and maybeone of the stories you you had in the full sail
and that will resonate with you with beinginspired by a teacher who told me I couldn't go
(03:55):
do that.
And, you know, as I tell the story, it was kindof, well, what do you wanna be when you grow up
class?
And I had to write down a piece of paper whereI was from in the early days.
We're not, you know, particularly high on noblejobs, but, you know, big coal mining community
and and the likes.
And I dared to write that I I want to be apilot pilot, and I gave him that piece of
paper.
And when he it was my turn to read it out.
He sort of brought me up to the front of theclass top of the class here.
(04:17):
I'll never forget.
He said mister Robinson wants to be a pilotpilot.
And he started all the kids started laughing atme.
He said, go sit down and write somethingsensible.
And I was a really sensitive kid.
Right?
So it it really hurt me.
And I I went sat down and well, what am I gonnado now?
And he was like, say, come on.
Carry up.
You know, you know, it's getting to the end ofthe list.
And I I wrote something down on the piece ofpaper and gave him it again, and and he kicked
(04:37):
me out of the classroom and made me do 10 lapsof the pouring the other playground in the
pouring rain because that second piece of papersaid, I I wanna be a fighter pilot as well.
And so he kind of ignited this spark of I Isuppose it was like defiance and then I'll I'll
show you sort of mentality from being a reallyyoung age.
So I had to figure out how to get myself fromthere to the academy.
And so the logical first step was I wouldbecome a milkman and get up at 04:00 four four
(05:01):
o'clock in the morning delivering milk piles onend.
And I did that because I get a grand total of£40 a week, which is about $50, right, in The
UK, which meant every two weeks, I could afforda flying lesson.
So I actually taught myself to fly from the ageof 14.
I won a scholarship to the Air Force Academy inThe UK, which was RF Cramwell.
So as I went through my studies, ultimately gotto Cramwell, got selected for a pilot slot.
(05:23):
And five years later, I took from start tofinish, I popped out of the training pipeline,
and I was flying tornadoes for The UK.
And I got combat ready in that sort of twothousand one night time frame, right about the
time that nine eleven happened.
I think it was just before as I recall.
And so I hit combat ready, and your timing iseither exquisite or terrible depending on your
point of view because, of course, theoperations, you know, is straight out to The
(05:46):
Middle East.
And so we were, you know, supporting thosesouthern, you know, flies on back to towards
out to the Gulf.
And really, my form of these viewers were wereflying the Tornado f three version, which was
an air to air platform.
My first true love, although it was it was kindof crappy when I look back at it, and I'm being
completely honest.
But but I still love the airplane nonetheless,and the people I was with were just fantastic.
And and that was an amazing sort of formativepart of my my career.
(06:09):
About three years in, I was I was pretty luckyin that the the squadron boss came to see me,
and he said, look.
This is pretty early on in your career.
Very early on, actually.
He said, but, you know, I'd I'd like torecommend you go to apply for what we call the
qualified weapons instructor course, weaponsschool, basically, over in The UK.
And, it was a gamble for me because I was I wasstill really inexperienced.
(06:30):
I was reasonable with the airplane, but I tookthe gamble.
I applied to the school and was accepted in avery, very sort of early age of stage of my
career, and I figured that if I made it throughthat, it would open up a bunch of doors and
opportunities for me.
And and and I did, by the skin of my teeth,make it through that course with some help from
some really benevolent instructors.
I'll I'll put it that way.
And, ultimately, you know, came out of that andand realized just how much I'd learned as a as
(06:54):
an aviator.
You spend your life going to that school.
You're told you suck for six months of sixmonths of pain.
You come out of it, and you realize you stillsuck, but you maybe don't suck as bad as you
thought you did.
So it was that kind of experience.
I came out and then went back to the frontline, and I was a a weapons officer on the
front line tornado squad in The UK.
And then a a moment materialized that wouldchange my life forever.
So I'd actually applied for an f 18 exchange tothe United States Navy to come fly Hornet with
(07:18):
a carrier because I just wanted to do whatMaverick did, right, and and come over and fly
with the carriers.
Never admit wanting to join the navy, but I Idid want the Hornet exchange.
So I applied for the Hornet exchange, and itkinda came down to the shortlist of three of
us.
And I thought I was pretty well placed to tomaybe get this exchange.
And we've been night flying in The UK, and thethe boss calls us in.
After night flying, we we all get to the bar inthe officer's mess in The UK.
(07:41):
The whole squad got to attention.
He said, hey.
You know, Dan's applied for this, F 18exchange.
He's on the shortlist, and that's the moment oftruth.
On this occasion, he has, in fact, beenunsuccessful for the exchange.
And I was trying to find a dentist.
I was devastated.
Right?
I was like, I I thought I got it.
And, b, I'm like, why would you do thatpublicly?
(08:01):
And, you know, humiliate me in front ofeveryone.
And then I'll start commisioning.
He kinda let me sit with this for a while.
And then he called the squadron to attentionagain.
He said, I haven't finished.
And he said, there's a reason he hasn't got f18 exchanges.
He's just been selected as the first ever nonAmerican f twenty two exchange officer to the
US Air Force.
And at that point, I I think I dropped myGuinness.
(08:24):
The squadron jumped on me.
They beat the crap out of me.
I was on the floor, and I came to you.
And they're all around me, and the boss wasstanding there.
And I looked up at him, and I said, is it true?
He said, it's it's true.
And he he pulled me up, shook my hand, andsaid, you know, very well deserved.
And he said something that was so prophetic tome at the time.
I never really understood it, but I do now.
He said, young man, this exchange tour willchange your life in ways that you don't even
(08:46):
understand yet.
And with about four weeks notice, I I left TheUK, moved to The States.
I'm sitting on the steps of the WashingtonMemorial in Washington DC looking out going,
how on earth has this happened?
Haven't gone from this coal mining community inthe North Of England to now about to land to
fly the, the f 22 at the US Air Force.
And and sure enough, a few would later, I wasdown at Tyndall, the TX course for the for the
(09:09):
raptor with some amazing human beings flying tofive twenty twos and still began my career
flying rappers in in the US Air Force Summit.
The timing was amazing for me because I Iwasn't just the the first non American.
I was one of the very early guys on the on theplatform.
I think the op the jet was just becomingoperational as I arrived at Langley.
So I was part of that initial operational,team.
(09:30):
It was really in the form of just taking suchan extraordinary capability that no one knew
about it, super classified, and, of course, theraptor was just slow far beyond anything else.
And suddenly coming from the tornado, it wasjust leaps and bounds.
So it was it was ridiculous.
And I I I was at Langley Air Force Base.
I went through the instructor program prettyquickly, and and then I was an IP on on the f
(09:51):
twenty twos at Langley for three years workingwith some of the most amazing human beings,
amazing pilots I've ever had the privilege toserve with.
So it was it was the most unlikely of stories,but, that's that's how I made my way over to
The US.
So maybe that's a, a good point to sort ofpause and ask questions, I guess.
Yeah.
There I mean, there's listening to your speech,I know there's so much more back.
(10:14):
And how you is pretty amazing in and of itself.
And knowing a bunch of guys who've flown bothand having refueled both tornadoes and f 20
twos, I got to see the the difference,obviously, from a spectator's position.
But, yeah, there is a there is a bit of adifference.
In fact, I'd liken the Tornado a little bitmore to the KC one thirty five and the age and
(10:34):
wisdom of the airplane and not as much whizbang stuff.
It's a pilot's airplane.
You actually had to fly it and fly it well andknow the airplane, whereas there wasn't as much
computer fun to be able to press and make it dothings that you couldn't imagine doing
yourself.
I I know that being an Airbus pilot now, it'slike, you know, instead of a what's it doing
now, it's, oh, it's doing that again kind of athing.
(10:55):
No.
There was a bunch of things that moved.
Flaps, slats, the wings moved.
Nothing was automated.
Everything was manual.
So you were constantly doing this.
So your hands moving things around.
Yeah.
A real a true, monkey in the cockpit.
Yeah.
Things go.
I think one of the one of the unique partsabout what you did is I I got to refuel people
and exchange programs for the for Americansgoing over to Australia, and I thought I mean,
(11:17):
they all loved it.
So it seems and just to kinda, touch on thatpoint for a second for the listeners out there
who are in still in the active military,whoever those opportunities, like yeah.
They can be a little a little bit of anoverwhelm, especially if you have family.
But I I don't know how if you have thatopportunity, you could not jump at that chance.
(11:39):
And for you to be able to do something likethat sounded like I mean, like, you you'll,
explain.
I wanna jump back into the story.
It did change your life in a way that, I mean,is exceptional and it's going to change
literally hundreds hundreds and thousands ofother people's lives of what you're doing now
with red six.
So after you finished flying the f 22 in the inThe US, And I one of my favorite parts of that
(12:04):
speech too is when you talk about how you fellin love with America and you fell in love with
being an American.
And, it was it but you had you had I'll justlet you tell it.
That that's where I the connection really tookroot, and I was like, wow.
This this dude is something different than, theCEO of a cool startup company and a fighter
pilot.
Like, there was a human side of the story thatI think turned you into what you've since
(12:28):
become and what you're doing going forward.
Yeah.
Well, I appreciate you saying that.
And it's a very human story.
Right?
And I think often when I tell a story, it'ssurprising because it's perhaps what I'm about
to share that resonates with people more thanflying cool jets and all that kind of stuff
because I really believe our keeping in invulnerability comes through human connection.
And so I I tried to tell a story as honestlyand as really as I can.
(12:50):
The truth is I I did fall in love with TheUnited States.
When I came over, I was the kind of cynicalbridge because we are.
Right?
We're just cynical and self deprecating, allthat kind of stuff.
That's how we do business.
But but I was surrounded by just amazingAmericans that really you know, when I first
got the raptor, I thought it was a little bitof jingoism, you know, USA, USA.
I realized actually they truly love and arepassionate about their country.
(13:12):
And and what an extraordinary I fell in lovewith that, and I fell in love with The States
and what it meant to be an American.
So I decided I was I was gonna stay, probablyannoyed quite a lot of people by not going back
to the The UK.
People didn't necessarily understand.
And then I'd grown up in a very tumultuousupbringing, in the North Of England.
And my dad at the time was really strugglingwith, pretty severe mental illness.
(13:33):
It was impacting the the the family andcertainly having a massive impact on me in the
latter days of my exchange tour, and I reallyneeded to sort of aim to it started a business
when I was younger that had grown to be apretty big employer in the little town I was
from.
We had, like, 200 people.
So and this is in the wake of the financialcrisis now, so that business was in a lot of
trouble.
So I decided I wanted to help him.
(13:54):
I needed a bridge between the air force andwhat I was ultimately gonna do next.
So I went to business school, and I was lookingup to go to Georgetown.
It's a great great university.
I had an amazing education there.
Again, met some wonderful people traveling allover the world, and that was a lovely part of
my life.
And then I kind of I'd had a love lifelong loveaffair with New York City.
Actually, the genesis of which was the Supermanmovie because I always loved Superman flying
(14:16):
around.
Right?
That's how I fell in love with New York.
And and and so I I knew I wanted to live in NewYork.
I didn't know what I was gonna do there, but Ifigured after going to business school, I'd,
you know, jump into New York and figure it out.
So I was lucky enough to get a a a good job infinance in New York, which I actually
discovered I hated and with a passion.
And really, you know, whilst I love the city, Imade some great friends.
(14:36):
I fell in love with the second sort of, I Isuppose, BFM was my my first love, right, is
what I love to do.
And my second love is Brazilian jiu jitsu,which is basically the same three-dimensional
problem solving.
Right?
So I was huge into Brazilian jiu jitsu and andgrew up under hands of Gracie in New York,
which is a massive privilege.
Well, we need to have other podcasts on thatbecause I've stopped rolling practicing two
(15:01):
little kids.
Kids always make you stop jiu jitsu Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They do.
One quitting point, And I miss it greatly.
But, yeah, I also the problem solving, I'm ahuge jiu jitsu fan.
Love doing it.
I wish, I someday, I'm gonna go back.
I'll be, like, 50 and only roll with the dudeswho don't wanna go crazy.
Yeah.
That's me these days.
For sure.
For sure.
No.
I love I love jiu jitsu.
(15:22):
It was a it was a bedrock of it kind ofreplaced that sort of a community camaraderie
of of having friends around me, but also thatthat three-dimensional problem solving that I
associated with flying in a BFM.
So, anyway, I was I was there.
And then, you know, November 2011, I get aphone call that would change my life forever.
I deluded to what was going on with my dad, andhe was he was still struggling.
(15:42):
And the business back in The UK was in a lot oftrouble.
And, he called me and he said, hey, son.
I think I'm about to lose everything.
I really need you to come home and help me.
And and and I I got a broken shoulder fromFriday.
And I said, let me this is a Monday night.
He said, let me, go to hospital tomorrow, takethe stitches out of my shoulder.
I'll be I'll be on the first flight back, andI'll be with you on Wednesday morning.
(16:05):
Just hold on.
And, we agreed.
And the last thing he said to me that nightwas, so now I'm not sure that's that's gonna be
soon enough.
And I thought he was referring to the thebusiness.
So I went to bed that night and and woke uptragically the next morning to the the news
that my my father had taken his life at nightand hanged himself, but he was gone.
And so you can imagine waking up to that news.
(16:27):
My life was flipped upside down.
I mean, lots to it, but I jumped on a flight,went home to The UK, and I had my mom and three
sisters in in my arms.
I had a the police around the house.
There was a lot of press around the housebecause my dad was pretty well known in the
area.
And and and I had I inherited a business thatwas on the verge of bankruptcy in the middle of
the worst financial crisis since the GreatDepression.
(16:49):
And I knew in that moment, my my life changedfor good.
So it was kind of I'd gone from flying raptors,being single, living in New York City, to
moving back to this village I'd had escapedfrom as a kid and literally moving in with my
mom and taking ownership of this business andand getting to work to lead what would be a
really difficult business transformationturnaround of the company over five very
(17:13):
difficult, tumultuous years.
I was basically taking care of everyone exceptmyself.
But in hindsight, you know, I I look to God nowand I think, well, you know, I'd been to
business school.
I'd had a great education in the UK militaryand the US military.
I'd had experience of corporate America andeverything I knew about what I didn't want
leadership to look like and what I didn't likeabout companies.
(17:35):
So I had all of these disparate skill sets, andnow I'd kinda been given the ultimate problem
of a business that was broken in very difficultcircumstances, both personally and
professionally, and and asked to turn itaround.
And in hindsight, it was the greatest educationI I was afforded in my life because we waited
into that fight headlong, and I managed toconvince the company to follow me through that.
(17:57):
And over time, we we clawed our way back to tosuccess and ultimately grew the company and to
exit the company in around the 02/2017 timeframe.
The end of that journey, it was a really deeplyprofound journey for me.
I'd taken care of everyone.
I'd I'd put my mom on a dating app.
She'd met someone again, and I was like, okay,mom.
I love you, but you're kind of my style livingat home.
Now I'm in my mid to late thirties.
I need to take care of myself again.
(18:18):
And she said, what are you gonna do?
And I honestly I didn't know.
First thing was move back to The States.
So I went back to New York.
And outside of my friends in jiu jitsu, Irealized it was really full of sad memories for
me being back in New York, a city I once loved.
The last time I'd seen my dad and andeverything alive.
So I need a new start.
So I packed I packed two bags and moved out toLA with a little more than half a game plan.
(18:40):
Really didn't know what I was gonna do.
Tried a few things when I was out here andspent a lot of time in the ocean learning to
surf, really thinking about what was going tobe next for me.
And I really that time was so precious to mebecause I got to to ask myself the the most
important questions, anchored around theconcept of time on this planet as a precious
(19:02):
resource.
If I knew when the end of my life was comingand because of, you know, losing my dad the way
I did really crystallize the value of time forme.
So if I knew when my time was coming, how couldI live as truthfully as possible?
And I basically gave myself two rules.
One one that I'd only work on problems that Iwas really passionate about that I thought were
important to humanity.
And secondly, I'd only work with people that Ireally deeply love and whose value systems are
(19:25):
closely aligned to my own.
I've been flying airplanes since I was 14, so Ihad to do something with aviation.
And so I started thinking about training andthe problems associated with military flying
training, both everything I had experienced inThe UK when I thought it was just a a UK
problem.
We couldn't get red air or adversaries to trainagainst.
And I just thought, you know, with the poorBrits, it's just a problem that the Brits have,
(19:49):
and they weren't.
It was exactly the same problem.
It's just a different scale.
And so we couldn't get adversaries to trainagainst, and we're using f 20 twos at a hundred
thousand dollars an hour to to train against.
It was asinine.
And And I realized that we had a deeplysystemic problem with training across all
allied nations because we we can't producepilots quickly enough.
(20:11):
We can't produce enough of them.
We can't absorb them onto the the frontlinequickly enough to get them experienced and it's
a useful war fighters program in 02/2009.
So I really started peeling that that thatonion apart and really digging into the
problems associated with training.
And I I came to the conclusion that there are Imean, you know this better than most, but there
are two ways that we really train pilots.
(20:31):
One is you put them in physical airplanes andyou have them fly against pilots in airplanes,
or you put them in simulators.
We we we can't scale the first.
Right?
We we we don't have the dollars.
We don't have the pilots.
We don't have the airplanes to provide theamount of live air training we need, that
frequency, and irrelevancy.
And secondly, on the other side of theequation, you've got simulation.
(20:52):
Simulation is good for repetition basedtasking, but it doesn't emulate the cognitive
loads that we're under as as combat pilots onon the front line where you're flying an
airplane that will kill you in the blink of aneye, you know, in your game, and you're pulling
nine or 10 g's in the case of the f 22.
And your brain just doesn't work the same.
Right?
So we want to protect those hours for our warfighters.
The question I asked myself was, how do we dothat as efficiently as possible?
(21:12):
Is there a third way and a way of thinkingabout that?
And the question I asked myself was, could Idrag simulation outdoors and get the best of
both worlds?
So what I mean by that is the ability to fly inreal airplanes, actually be up in the sky
physically flying an airplane, but createsimulated environments in which we can fly
whilst we're out there doing a thing for forreal.
(21:34):
In essence, what am I talking about?
I'm talking about bringing video gaming anddragging outdoors.
Right?
It turns out the Air Force have been thinkingabout some of the same things and this idea of
a live virtual constructive construct, whichis, in essence, aims to tackle the same
problems.
So live is real parts and real airplanesconnected together to virtual, which is real
parts and simulators on the ground, but kind ofbeamed up into the air.
(21:57):
Same constructive is in essence the same thingas a virtual.
We we trick the aircraft sensors into things tothem.
There's something it's driven by AI algorithmsin essence.
And the early work on that pioneered by the AirForce Research Laboratory and a program called
Slate looks really promising, but it'scurrently a 50% solution.
It's a 50% solution because it works in thebeyond visual range environment, the range of
(22:17):
which we're looking at radars and sensors, andwe can see a little dot on our scope and fly
tactics against it.
The moment you get to that within visual rangepiece of 15 miles in where you're starting to
look out of the window and and you're puttingthe proverbial gum shield in and going for a
fist fight, the the visual maneuvering wereassociated with movies like Top Gun and all
that kind of stuff.
The whole training ecosystem collapses.
Why is that?
Because there's no way of visually putting anentity into the field of view of the pilots and
(22:41):
having it behave in a manic commensurate with areal a real airplane flown by a real pilot.
Why is that?
Well, to do that, you'd need to make thetechnology, augmented reality work in really
dynamic environments outside.
Reality didn't do that.
And so if I could complete that ecosystem bysolving that problem, I figured we would usher
(23:02):
in the future of training by making this LVCidea fully realizable.
And that's for the the big high end tacticallevel fights.
But you take that all the way down the valuechain to how we think about physically
producing pilots.
Well, for us, you know, by the time we've takewe learn how to take off and land an airplane,
every one of your flights is with at least onewingman, which means an airplane, a pilot, a
(23:24):
fuel supply chain.
So massively expensive, capital intensive,asset intensive, and human being intensive.
But what if I could replace the need to providethose assets to to tow or train alongside by
putting augmented reality airplanes up into thesky?
So the ability to produce, we can accelerateproduction, we can produce more pilots, we can
(23:44):
produce them to a higher standard at a fractionof the cost of what we're traditionally connect
the dots from day one of how we think aboutflying training all the way up to large force
employments.
And so that was the thesis of it.
I had to get to work solving the the problem ofaugmented reality outside, and I need to test
airplane.
And there's a beautiful story, serendipitousstory of how that came to be.
(24:07):
That was the genesis of of my company, which iscalled Red six.
Yeah.
No.
I damn.
I'm letting you go because what you're sayingis gold, man.
This is great stuff because I think one of thethings that we as aviators always run into,
especially military, is the training piece.
There's always some sort of obstacle that we'regetting over, and it's sometimes it's so minor
(24:28):
or not even thought about.
You're talking about just this large constructof a training program for especially when you
do large exercise stuff.
If I'm going out and I'm doing a Pacifictraining or a Pacific exercise and we've got a
bunch of fighters hey.
If we gotta drag fighters across the ocean andtwo one of them breaks, everybody stays behind,
(24:48):
and we sit until the airplane's working.
Well, if it's a four ship of f sixteens thatwe're moving to somewhere down the line, and
they're gonna be stuck in wherever they'restuck for forty eight hours, the exercise is
going to eat either, a, get delayed or there'sbits and pieces that they start to have to they
have to break off.
Now I I and I'm sure you agree with me.
(25:10):
We always we want the real thing as much as wecan get it.
That we always want that, but that is notreality anymore.
We can't like, I've done I've done red flags.
I've done weapons weapon school employmentprograms.
They're awesome.
However, they're not foolproof.
There is a lot of stuff that goes into it.
And sometimes, airplanes, people get sick,fatigue happens.
(25:31):
You can't replace somebody when they walk up tothe jet, and they're unable to go.
It's too late.
This is an opportunity where you can actuallyfix those issues.
One of the things that you brought up in thepiece that I watched that I loved was the idea
of taking this from a tactical level fightwhere you're teaching somebody BFM and they're
rolling around in the merge, and then thecomputer, the AI's, algorithm figures out what
(25:56):
it did then, learns, and then you come back andyou can scale this up to simulate essentially
from supply chain logistics, what made it, whatdidn't make it to the front, all the way up to
what did your adversary pilot think when youturned one way in and he turned that way, and
then the next thing goes, well, we'll figurethis out.
We're not gonna do that next time.
(26:16):
So now the, blue air has gotta figure out howto fight that guy better the next time.
I thought that was that's next level.
That's the thought process that that reallyblew me away because that's how I see it's one
thing to figure out on the on the surfacelevel.
But to move it up to that, incorporating allbig air force involved into something as simple
(26:37):
as a four v four exercise that then grows to,holy cow, we can do this on the regular so we
don't have to waste money time.
We can become we have better efficacy in theactual training environment.
One of the things I wanted to backtrack andtalk about was AR.
Okay.
This is a complex a very complex topic.
Our AI, VR, all that stuff.
(26:59):
Your background wasn't in computer engineering.
Correct?
You're business minded.
Mhmm.
I think it's fascinating because I've tried tolearn this stuff, and it's not been very good.
How did you go from being, hey.
I got my MBA at Georgetown.
I'm smart business finance guy.
I've I've had this tragedy in my life, andthank you for sharing that story with us.
(27:20):
It's it is very touching and also compelling toknow that background.
And then I go and have this life altering sixyears of my life that that changed me as a
human being to going, okay.
I'm smart.
Now I'm going in a world where I am not soknowledgeable, and I wanna change that world.
To me, that is that's overwhelming.
(27:41):
How did you make that bridge that gap?
Look.
Well, first of all, I'm surrounded by brilliantpeople.
Right?
And I'm one of the cofounders of the business,Glenn Snyder.
I'll talk about Glenn here.
And I think one one of the most, you know,often overlooked qualities in human beings is
common sense.
And if you can get your ego out of the way andyou're not afraid to ask the five year old
questions, then quite often you find that youcan make a lot of progress just by asking
(28:04):
really obvious questions.
And so I try to practice that on a day to daybasis in that I am the class idiot generally in
that every room I'm in here at Red Six.
Right?
Everyone's smarter than me.
But I'm not afraid to ask the logical commonsense questions.
And that I found that actually quite often, itit allows you to penetrate a lot of the BS and
really get to the same thing everyone else isthinking about.
You have to be the technical person in the roomif you can, you know, just you understand the
(28:27):
the what and the why, then then there's a bunchof smart people around you that understand the
how, right, and how to to go do it.
So I think about that quite often.
But to to exactly that point in the early daysof the business, I was building the airplane,
the test airplane that you've seen on thevideos.
We have a couple of them now, but the book,Coote five forty, which is an amazing airplane.
My life walked this guy, Glenn Snyder.
He was one of, initially, a handful offounders, but only Glenn and I remained.
(28:50):
Glenn had pioneered some work in virtualreality, not augmented reality, and and to sort
of level set for the audience.
Virtual reality, I'll put a headset on.
I'm in an entirely virtual world.
Right?
I could be anywhere in the world.
I could be in space, whatever it is, buteverything is virtual.
Augmented reality is a much more nuancedproblem to solve because we seek to put virtual
entities into the real world around us.
(29:10):
So we see the real world, but we put syntheticentities into the real world as well, and
that's the power of AR.
Yep.
So when I met Glenn, he pulled off a worldfirst in race cars back in 02/2015 where he
connected two drivers in two real race cars onseparate tracks into a virtual world where both
drivers put a helmet on, and they got to racereal race cars behind the outside world.
(29:31):
Went off, and I and I asked basically twoquestions.
Right?
I'm overly simplifying, but in essence, couldwe do that in airplanes, not cars?
And we thought, yeah, we we thought sopossible, more difficult, but we think, yeah,
absolutely feasible.
The next question, quite obviously, because noone is going to allow pilots to fly around in
real airplanes in virtual reality, could we doit in augmented reality?
And, Glenn looked at me as, to your point asthe class idiot, and I I I he said, no, dummy.
(29:56):
I was like, why?
He said, because AR doesn't work outside or indynamic environments and the challenges we had
to overcome.
But the the power of asking why to my previouspoint is really important.
So I I was basically just a petrol and fiveyear old fighter pilot kept asking why until we
we kinda came up with this thesis that we couldapply to a very complex problem and approach AR
in a fundamentally different way to anyone elsethat that enabled it to work outdoors in
(30:21):
dynamic environments and critically andmarvelous backgrounds up in the sky while we're
going upside down and barrel rolling and allthe challenges of light and sunlight and
brightness and all that kind of stuff we'd haveto overcome.
And so that that was the genesis of the idea,and it was really a serendipitous meaning of
minds and whether you believe in the universe,god, whatever my the journey that I was on, I
(30:41):
mean, to that point, that moment in time forGlenn and I to meet.
And it's hard not to believe in a sort of fateof destiny because everything was kind of
pushing me towards this direction of just ifyou build it, they will come.
And so back then, a game changing technologyinto the world, I was actually creating a new
market that that no one was thinking about atthe time.
(31:02):
Then as I believe today that I'm I say thiswith absolute humility, but I I really believe
I'm right.
I believe we are right at Red Six, that thisvision is the is the right vision.
Because, ultimately, what do I see to yourpoint for the high end fight, every day of the
week, we should be taxing out at our baseslocally, not waiting for red flags or any
support.
We should do every single day of the week,taxing out as a four ship as a four ship of
(31:25):
blue air and training against whatever threatwe want against however many we want every
single day of the week.
And all of our red air in the future, if we getthis right, will be provided synthetically,
which means we can protect our assets, preservethe assets, and only be flying blue air.
Now there's there's the edge cases, right,where you can argue I want a little bit of, you
know, red air physical.
Yeah.
I get it.
(31:45):
But the point remains that there is a visionout there that's not as far away as people
think where every day of the week, we could beflying large force engagements against
whichever adverse we want at whatever scale wewant, and we need to be doing that every single
day of the week.
Why do we do that?
Because we ultimately want to deter conflict.
And to deter, we need to be credible.
To be credible, we need to be lethal.
To be lethal, we need to train.
(32:05):
It all comes back to training.
And I go back to the three pillars of training,production, how to produce pilots, massive
application there.
The absorption of pilots onto the frontline,enormous application there, and then
experiencing pilots.
You can go to very complex LIVs all the waydown to the past test trainers of to your
point, the first time as a fighter guy you gotanking is the first time you go tanking.
(32:27):
Exactly.
It's scary.
Right?
Yeah.
And and at night, I used to think about theamount of time we'd spend transiting out to the
airspace there and back.
That is time and resource that we don't gettraining in.
Well, now you can transit that to the airspaceand go, hey.
It's not a real one, but here's an augmentedreality tanker that looks and feels and acts
just like a real tanker, including the boommoving, including the lights, which are super
(32:48):
accurate to within a centimeter so the lightswill light up.
And you you can use that dead time to gettraining sets like tanking on the way out
there, doing it every day of the week.
So the first time you go to that tanking,you've seen it a hundred times before.
So and there's many other examples of that, butit's exactly the kind of the benefits of this
technology can can bring.
Yeah.
And to your point, when you say all that stuff,the only platform that I really know of that
(33:10):
gets real world, real training, and that linksup to what they're doing in a austere combat,
whatever environment you wanna put them in, isthe tankers.
Percent.
Training is no different than real world.
I mean, maybe there's onesie twosie missionshere and there that are slightly different, but
we're doing the same thing all the time.
Everybody else has to make it up.
(33:31):
They've gotta they have to make up some sort ofvirtual or Even airdrop, they don't get to drop
its dummy stuff.
It's not real.
They don't have adversaries shooting at them.
I saw the video.
I the the real air the the, ground air threatvideo was amazing.
Like, I can't c one thirty, Bubbas who get tosee that before they go somewhere can actually
(33:53):
see what they're looking at instead of think ofthe guys in Iraq who I remember there were they
did a spiral up and they were shot at eighttimes by a man pad.
That's the first they probably saw any of that.
I I guarantee it's the first time they saw it.
I have no idea what they're looking at.
And then when they go back and they debriefIntel, the debrief is pretty much useless.
I don't know what I saw.
I got shot at.
I was freaking out because the first time itever happened, the raw gear is going off.
(34:16):
I don't know what it was.
In this case, in this scenario and I've donethe virtual training for a ground air threat
for a tanker, which was a joke.
Right.
Now if I had that now first of all, we're notgonna get that kind of threat regularly.
But to be able to see that and be able tocomment on it is rather huge.
And to see it while I'm airborne is a wholeanother facet that I think is truly it is game
(34:40):
changing and and and and it's kinda mindbending.
I've seen the watching the video, it took me alittle bit to go, what is going on here?
And I think you've moved on from the cyberphase two, which I'm familiar with, into the
next facet of this.
Where do we see red six in the next six months,year?
Like, the the near term, midterm, and then longterm obviously is is, a projection across the
(35:02):
whole force and the DOD.
But where are we going in the near and andmidterm?
Yeah.
Well, not just the DOD, the allies as well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because one one of the things we're doing, weall have the same problems.
So, you know, it's like everything else.
You bring something new into the world, andthere's a rule called the law of diffusion of
innovation, right, where you get the innovatorsthat that are out there, like, inventing this
stuff.
That's kinda like the red six.
(35:23):
Then you look to the early adopters.
Right?
And it starts to catch with those people thatwill sort of stand outside of Apple Stores to
get the new latest iPhone.
It's those people you need, and we needinternal evangelists.
But, look, we've been really lucky with the USAir Force now to go through the SIPA one, SIPA
two.
We went to a civil phase three pretty quickly.
And then working with AFWERX, which you may befamiliar with, the the the set of supporters,
(35:43):
we've most recently just been awarded a a$30,000,000 stratified strategic funding
increase.
And so we're working on integration in the AirForce right now into t 30 eights to continue to
prove out the technology in the t 30 eightsahead of adoption.
We're we'll be working with Air Force SpecialOperations Command on integration into the MC
one thirty as well this year, which is reallyexciting.
We're also working with the OEMs, Boeing,integrating into the the t seven.
(36:08):
We'll make some further announcement here abouta couple of other partners here later in the
year.
One thing that is public that we're we're veryclose to flying is over in The UK right now.
We've integrated into the Hawk t two, which istheir jet training platform over there, which I
I flew the t one, now the t two.
We're gonna be demonstrating that in December.
So we we've got traction with multiplecustomers now.
(36:28):
We we've got a symbol for the navy.
We're gonna be integrating into a navy platformhere.
So we've got traction with multiple customersas we prove out and mature this technology.
It it's coming way faster than people think.
And we're working directly with the customer,but also with all of the major OEMs around the
world as well that all see the future utilityof augmented reality.
And that that point of, you know, earlier inthe conversation, I talked about, yes, we've
(36:52):
created a new technology, but what we've reallydone is create a new market.
And I think that that traction is starting toappear.
And so I think over the next six months to ayear, you're gonna see continued integrations
into a number of platforms, and you'll seehopefully adoption from from there.
So we have a very tangible pathway toultimately where we need to be, which is
multiple programs of record, and that's the endof the company.
(37:13):
And that's the direction we're heading in.
I I think I'm probably gonna butcher this, butI believe it was Neil Armstrong who said after
he landed on the moon that all the cool stuffin aviation had already been done already.
I have always thought I was like, all the coolstuff in aviation is done already.
When I sit back and think about it, I couldn'tbe further from the truth.
(37:33):
The stuff that is coming down the pipe, thestuff that's happening right now, and the stuff
that I got to experience in my career is trulygame changing.
I refueled Raptors that were ninety and ninetyone models when I was at Edwards.
And
the the very next week, I was flying over, Ithink it was Iraq.
I'm not sure if it was Iraq, Afghanistan.
And I refueled a February and a '99 modelStrike Eagle.
(37:55):
So the genesis and the change and and the rapidrate that all this stuff happens is so cool to
not only get to see, but to get involved with,to be able to talk to folks like you and share
your story both personal, which is inspiring toa lot of pilots, but the story of what's
happening inside the world that we don't get tosee the background.
(38:16):
We, you know, we see the final products, andwe're like, hey.
What's this?
And you know as well as I do.
Every pilot, the first time they get somethingnew is pretty skeptical of how it's gonna work.
Any piece of software, anything new in thesquadron, everybody's kinda like, wait a
second.
I'm old pilot.
Don't wanna change.
This to me is one of those markets andtechnologies that blows that right out of the
(38:37):
water because I wish I would have gotten to seeit in my time even though I'm not a combat guy
to be able to utilize or see people utilizingthis to be better.
Yeah.
We used to we call them the Lucas.
We when I was at McConnell, we used to callthem the Lucas assassins because the first time
they showed up, we're like, dude, they'retrying to kill us.
That's right.
Yeah.
And to have some people go out there and justin the tanker world, just to be able to have
(38:57):
that experience before they show up.
Well, even even I mean, think about it theother way around for the boom operators as
well.
The ability to generate AR fighters for theboom operators to be able to train on as well.
It's it's You It's there.
It's such a value proposition for you.
Yeah.
And they never get to see most of them neversee that stuff when they're at Altus because
the first time they see a fighter is after theyleave Altus because most of the Altus stuff is
(39:17):
centered around Altus and nearby platforms, andthey don't fly out to the West and the East to
go get those guys.
I wanna thank you so much for this time.
I wanna give you a a kind of a last pitch.
I also if you have any way people can contactyou who might be interested in they're leaving
the military, they wanna get involved with redsix.
I can see you guys growing at an exponentialrate, and it sounds like you're gonna need some
(39:40):
good people from who have experience to helpout with this program in the future.
So have at it.
Yeah.
Look.
We we always look at the good people.
I think info at Red6ar.com is is the right wayto get in touch with us.
My personal Instagram, if you we wanna followthe story as red six CEO Theo.
That's a good way to follow what what we'redoing.
Obviously, you can check us out on on LinkedInas well.
(40:01):
I I think this technology is to your point.
It's rare that a a technology comes along andfundamentally redefines how we do business.
We have a team of people here that are sodedicated and working so hard to deliver on
something that we passionately care aboutbecause we absolutely see the value of this
technology and such a transformational impactfor all of flying training across the world.
(40:23):
We're really grateful for the partners we workwith.
You know, as many of the ideas we've got forand use cases for the technology, we're
desperate to get into the hands of thewarfighters and get the feedback from the guys
and girls that are on the front line that aredoing the job for real because they're gonna
think of, like, 50 ways we haven't thought ofto use the technology as well.
But we do have a team of really, reallydedicated professionals that are working very
hard to deliver on something that wepassionately care about.
(40:44):
My ultimate end state is to see this in thehands of the warfighters and see us being the
most proficient lethal air forces, around theworld.
That's the mission of the company, and andthat's what we're doing here.
So really appreciate the chance to share thestory with you.
Really love love the conversation, and thanksfor giving me the opportunity.
Yeah.
Thanks again for joining us, Dan.
And as always, Apollo Network listeners outthere, you got a question, comment, concern,
(41:07):
complaint, critique, or otherwise, you can hitMatt or Matt or I up at hey, guys, the pilot
network dot com.
Keep the shiny side up, grease side down, flysafe,
figure, buddy.
Welcome back to another episode of the PilotNetwork podcast, the place where we connect
aviators with tools, resources, and stories tohelp them navigate their careers and lives.
My name is Adam Yuhan.
I hope you're having a great day wherever youare on the pale blue dot.
This episode is one that pushes the limits ofwhat's possible in aviation training.
(00:37):
We're sitting down with Daniel Robinson, CEOand founder of Red Six, to talk about how
augmented reality is rewriting the future ofair combat preparation.
If you think training is limited to expensivelive flights or static simulations, Red Six is
here to challenge that mindset.
Daniel's journey is incredible.
Growing up in a small coal mining town inEngland, making his way into the Royal Air
(00:59):
Force, and eventually becoming the first evernon American pilot to fly the f 22 Raptor in
the United States Air Force.
But that was just the beginning.
After experiencing firsthand the inefficienciesin military training, he set out to create a
revolutionary new way to prepare pilots forcombat.
With Red Six, Daniel and his team are bringingreal time dynamic augmented reality training
(01:21):
into the cockpit, meaning pilots can now engageAI driven adversaries and threats in real
airspace on real missions in real time.
If that sounds cosmic to you, you can imaginewhat it sound like a tanker guy to me.
This tech isn't just making training moreeffective.
It's making it scalable, adaptive, andinfinitely more realistic.
I saw the videos.
It's legit.
(01:42):
So buckle up because we're about to break downhow Red six is changing the game and why this
could be the biggest leap in training since theinvention of the simulator.
Let's get into it.
I hope you enjoy.
Daniel, thank you so much for joining the pilotnetwork podcast today.
I've found out about Red six through LinkedIn,and I had to reach out to you instantly.
(02:04):
I didn't even know your background story.
And then I watched it on YouTube at the FullSail Academy down in Orlando.
I was blown away.
And, thanks again for joining us.
Let's launch right in.
How did you become an aviator?
And then what was your background in aviation?
Because it is, truly one of the unique storiesthat are out there.
Yeah.
It's a funny one.
I I appreciate the time.
Thanks for having me on the show.
(02:25):
So I grew up in a coal mining community in theNorth Of England, an unlikely person to be over
here chatting on the pilot network.
I tell a story quite often.
There there wasn't much to do as a kid where Igrew up, but we had one movie theater, and I
fell in love with aviation through the movies.
The first one being Superman was the firstmovie I remember seeing with my dad with the
late great Christopher Reeve.
And when I saw Superman, I was just obsessed,and I'd stand outside actually trying to take
(02:48):
off like this.
And, you know, I'd wrap the the tableclotharound my shoulders to see if that would work,
and I'd put my underpants on top of my,trousers to see if that was the answer.
And my mom would always always say I'd berunning along every building I could fly and
jumping off, and then she'd be constantlycatching me because I was convinced I could
fly.
Obviously, that didn't work out.
The next movie I saw was Star Wars, and I Ikinda thought lightsabers were cool, but I
(03:10):
really loved Luke Skywalker and the x wing, youknow, and and the death star.
So that was really inspiring for me.
And, and then, obviously, like many of us, Isaw Top Gun when I was age 13, and I realized,
oh my gosh.
That's that's such a job.
And, and when I realized that was the job, I Ihad to figure out how to get myself from this
kind of unlikely environment in NortheastEngland to the Air Force Academy in The UK.
(03:32):
And I went to a pretty bad school in a in apretty bad neighborhood.
And so I I really it was kind of having thatsort of aim as a kid probably saved me because
it gave me something to focus on.
There's a lot of distractions around me at thetime, right, as you can imagine.
So I just got to work on doing that, and maybeone of the stories you you had in the full sail
and that will resonate with you with beinginspired by a teacher who told me I couldn't go
(03:55):
do that.
And, you know, as I tell the story, it was kindof, well, what do you wanna be when you grow up
class?
And I had to write down a piece of paper whereI was from in the early days.
We're not, you know, particularly high on noblejobs, but, you know, big coal mining community
and and the likes.
And I dared to write that I I want to be apilot pilot, and I gave him that piece of
paper.
And when he it was my turn to read it out.
He sort of brought me up to the front of theclass top of the class here.
(04:17):
I'll never forget.
He said mister Robinson wants to be a pilotpilot.
And he started all the kids started laughing atme.
He said, go sit down and write somethingsensible.
And I was a really sensitive kid.
Right?
So it it really hurt me.
And I I went sat down and well, what am I gonnado now?
And he was like, say, come on.
Carry up.
You know, you know, it's getting to the end ofthe list.
And I I wrote something down on the piece ofpaper and gave him it again, and and he kicked
(04:37):
me out of the classroom and made me do 10 lapsof the pouring the other playground in the
pouring rain because that second piece of papersaid, I I wanna be a fighter pilot as well.
And so he kind of ignited this spark of I Isuppose it was like defiance and then I'll I'll
show you sort of mentality from being a reallyyoung age.
So I had to figure out how to get myself fromthere to the academy.
And so the logical first step was I wouldbecome a milkman and get up at 04:00 four four
(05:01):
o'clock in the morning delivering milk piles onend.
And I did that because I get a grand total of£40 a week, which is about $50, right, in The
UK, which meant every two weeks, I could afforda flying lesson.
So I actually taught myself to fly from the ageof 14.
I won a scholarship to the Air Force Academy inThe UK, which was RF Cramwell.
So as I went through my studies, ultimately gotto Cramwell, got selected for a pilot slot.
(05:23):
And five years later, I took from start tofinish, I popped out of the training pipeline,
and I was flying tornadoes for The UK.
And I got combat ready in that sort of twothousand one night time frame, right about the
time that nine eleven happened.
I think it was just before as I recall.
And so I hit combat ready, and your timing iseither exquisite or terrible depending on your
point of view because, of course, theoperations, you know, is straight out to The
(05:46):
Middle East.
And so we were, you know, supporting thosesouthern, you know, flies on back to towards
out to the Gulf.
And really, my form of these viewers were wereflying the Tornado f three version, which was
an air to air platform.
My first true love, although it was it was kindof crappy when I look back at it, and I'm being
completely honest.
But but I still love the airplane nonetheless,and the people I was with were just fantastic.
And and that was an amazing sort of formativepart of my my career.
(06:09):
About three years in, I was I was pretty luckyin that the the squadron boss came to see me,
and he said, look.
This is pretty early on in your career.
Very early on, actually.
He said, but, you know, I'd I'd like torecommend you go to apply for what we call the
qualified weapons instructor course, weaponsschool, basically, over in The UK.
And, it was a gamble for me because I was I wasstill really inexperienced.
(06:30):
I was reasonable with the airplane, but I tookthe gamble.
I applied to the school and was accepted in avery, very sort of early age of stage of my
career, and I figured that if I made it throughthat, it would open up a bunch of doors and
opportunities for me.
And and and I did, by the skin of my teeth,make it through that course with some help from
some really benevolent instructors.
I'll I'll put it that way.
And, ultimately, you know, came out of that andand realized just how much I'd learned as a as
(06:54):
an aviator.
You spend your life going to that school.
You're told you suck for six months of sixmonths of pain.
You come out of it, and you realize you stillsuck, but you maybe don't suck as bad as you
thought you did.
So it was that kind of experience.
I came out and then went back to the frontline, and I was a a weapons officer on the
front line tornado squad in The UK.
And then a a moment materialized that wouldchange my life forever.
So I'd actually applied for an f 18 exchange tothe United States Navy to come fly Hornet with
(07:18):
a carrier because I just wanted to do whatMaverick did, right, and and come over and fly
with the carriers.
Never admit wanting to join the navy, but I Idid want the Hornet exchange.
So I applied for the Hornet exchange, and itkinda came down to the shortlist of three of
us.
And I thought I was pretty well placed to tomaybe get this exchange.
And we've been night flying in The UK, and thethe boss calls us in.
After night flying, we we all get to the bar inthe officer's mess in The UK.
(07:41):
The whole squad got to attention.
He said, hey.
You know, Dan's applied for this, F 18exchange.
He's on the shortlist, and that's the moment oftruth.
On this occasion, he has, in fact, beenunsuccessful for the exchange.
And I was trying to find a dentist.
I was devastated.
Right?
I was like, I I thought I got it.
And, b, I'm like, why would you do thatpublicly?
(08:01):
And, you know, humiliate me in front ofeveryone.
And then I'll start commisioning.
He kinda let me sit with this for a while.
And then he called the squadron to attentionagain.
He said, I haven't finished.
And he said, there's a reason he hasn't got f18 exchanges.
He's just been selected as the first ever nonAmerican f twenty two exchange officer to the
US Air Force.
And at that point, I I think I dropped myGuinness.
(08:24):
The squadron jumped on me.
They beat the crap out of me.
I was on the floor, and I came to you.
And they're all around me, and the boss wasstanding there.
And I looked up at him, and I said, is it true?
He said, it's it's true.
And he he pulled me up, shook my hand, andsaid, you know, very well deserved.
And he said something that was so prophetic tome at the time.
I never really understood it, but I do now.
He said, young man, this exchange tour willchange your life in ways that you don't even
(08:46):
understand yet.
And with about four weeks notice, I I left TheUK, moved to The States.
I'm sitting on the steps of the WashingtonMemorial in Washington DC looking out going,
how on earth has this happened?
Haven't gone from this coal mining community inthe North Of England to now about to land to
fly the, the f 22 at the US Air Force.
And and sure enough, a few would later, I wasdown at Tyndall, the TX course for the for the
(09:09):
raptor with some amazing human beings flying tofive twenty twos and still began my career
flying rappers in in the US Air Force Summit.
The timing was amazing for me because I Iwasn't just the the first non American.
I was one of the very early guys on the on theplatform.
I think the op the jet was just becomingoperational as I arrived at Langley.
So I was part of that initial operational,team.
(09:30):
It was really in the form of just taking suchan extraordinary capability that no one knew
about it, super classified, and, of course, theraptor was just slow far beyond anything else.
And suddenly coming from the tornado, it wasjust leaps and bounds.
So it was it was ridiculous.
And I I I was at Langley Air Force Base.
I went through the instructor program prettyquickly, and and then I was an IP on on the f
(09:51):
twenty twos at Langley for three years workingwith some of the most amazing human beings,
amazing pilots I've ever had the privilege toserve with.
So it was it was the most unlikely of stories,but, that's that's how I made my way over to
The US.
So maybe that's a, a good point to sort ofpause and ask questions, I guess.
Yeah.
There I mean, there's listening to your speech,I know there's so much more back.
(10:14):
And how you is pretty amazing in and of itself.
And knowing a bunch of guys who've flown bothand having refueled both tornadoes and f 20
twos, I got to see the the difference,obviously, from a spectator's position.
But, yeah, there is a there is a bit of adifference.
In fact, I'd liken the Tornado a little bitmore to the KC one thirty five and the age and
(10:34):
wisdom of the airplane and not as much whizbang stuff.
It's a pilot's airplane.
You actually had to fly it and fly it well andknow the airplane, whereas there wasn't as much
computer fun to be able to press and make it dothings that you couldn't imagine doing
yourself.
I I know that being an Airbus pilot now, it'slike, you know, instead of a what's it doing
now, it's, oh, it's doing that again kind of athing.
(10:55):
No.
There was a bunch of things that moved.
Flaps, slats, the wings moved.
Nothing was automated.
Everything was manual.
So you were constantly doing this.
So your hands moving things around.
Yeah.
A real a true, monkey in the cockpit.
Yeah.
Things go.
I think one of the one of the unique partsabout what you did is I I got to refuel people
and exchange programs for the for Americansgoing over to Australia, and I thought I mean,
(11:17):
they all loved it.
So it seems and just to kinda, touch on thatpoint for a second for the listeners out there
who are in still in the active military,whoever those opportunities, like yeah.
They can be a little a little bit of anoverwhelm, especially if you have family.
But I I don't know how if you have thatopportunity, you could not jump at that chance.
(11:39):
And for you to be able to do something likethat sounded like I mean, like, you you'll,
explain.
I wanna jump back into the story.
It did change your life in a way that, I mean,is exceptional and it's going to change
literally hundreds hundreds and thousands ofother people's lives of what you're doing now
with red six.
So after you finished flying the f 22 in the inThe US, And I one of my favorite parts of that
(12:04):
speech too is when you talk about how you fellin love with America and you fell in love with
being an American.
And, it was it but you had you had I'll justlet you tell it.
That that's where I the connection really tookroot, and I was like, wow.
This this dude is something different than, theCEO of a cool startup company and a fighter
pilot.
Like, there was a human side of the story thatI think turned you into what you've since
(12:28):
become and what you're doing going forward.
Yeah.
Well, I appreciate you saying that.
And it's a very human story.
Right?
And I think often when I tell a story, it'ssurprising because it's perhaps what I'm about
to share that resonates with people more thanflying cool jets and all that kind of stuff
because I really believe our keeping in invulnerability comes through human connection.
And so I I tried to tell a story as honestlyand as really as I can.
(12:50):
The truth is I I did fall in love with TheUnited States.
When I came over, I was the kind of cynicalbridge because we are.
Right?
We're just cynical and self deprecating, allthat kind of stuff.
That's how we do business.
But but I was surrounded by just amazingAmericans that really you know, when I first
got the raptor, I thought it was a little bitof jingoism, you know, USA, USA.
I realized actually they truly love and arepassionate about their country.
(13:12):
And and what an extraordinary I fell in lovewith that, and I fell in love with The States
and what it meant to be an American.
So I decided I was I was gonna stay, probablyannoyed quite a lot of people by not going back
to the The UK.
People didn't necessarily understand.
And then I'd grown up in a very tumultuousupbringing, in the North Of England.
And my dad at the time was really strugglingwith, pretty severe mental illness.
(13:33):
It was impacting the the the family andcertainly having a massive impact on me in the
latter days of my exchange tour, and I reallyneeded to sort of aim to it started a business
when I was younger that had grown to be apretty big employer in the little town I was
from.
We had, like, 200 people.
So and this is in the wake of the financialcrisis now, so that business was in a lot of
trouble.
So I decided I wanted to help him.
(13:54):
I needed a bridge between the air force andwhat I was ultimately gonna do next.
So I went to business school, and I was lookingup to go to Georgetown.
It's a great great university.
I had an amazing education there.
Again, met some wonderful people traveling allover the world, and that was a lovely part of
my life.
And then I kind of I'd had a love lifelong loveaffair with New York City.
Actually, the genesis of which was the Supermanmovie because I always loved Superman flying
(14:16):
around.
Right?
That's how I fell in love with New York.
And and and so I I knew I wanted to live in NewYork.
I didn't know what I was gonna do there, but Ifigured after going to business school, I'd,
you know, jump into New York and figure it out.
So I was lucky enough to get a a a good job infinance in New York, which I actually
discovered I hated and with a passion.
And really, you know, whilst I love the city, Imade some great friends.
(14:36):
I fell in love with the second sort of, I Isuppose, BFM was my my first love, right, is
what I love to do.
And my second love is Brazilian jiu jitsu,which is basically the same three-dimensional
problem solving.
Right?
So I was huge into Brazilian jiu jitsu and andgrew up under hands of Gracie in New York,
which is a massive privilege.
Well, we need to have other podcasts on thatbecause I've stopped rolling practicing two
(15:01):
little kids.
Kids always make you stop jiu jitsu Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They do.
One quitting point, And I miss it greatly.
But, yeah, I also the problem solving, I'm ahuge jiu jitsu fan.
Love doing it.
I wish, I someday, I'm gonna go back.
I'll be, like, 50 and only roll with the dudeswho don't wanna go crazy.
Yeah.
That's me these days.
For sure.
For sure.
No.
I love I love jiu jitsu.
(15:22):
It was a it was a bedrock of it kind ofreplaced that sort of a community camaraderie
of of having friends around me, but also thatthat three-dimensional problem solving that I
associated with flying in a BFM.
So, anyway, I was I was there.
And then, you know, November 2011, I get aphone call that would change my life forever.
I deluded to what was going on with my dad, andhe was he was still struggling.
(15:42):
And the business back in The UK was in a lot oftrouble.
And, he called me and he said, hey, son.
I think I'm about to lose everything.
I really need you to come home and help me.
And and and I I got a broken shoulder fromFriday.
And I said, let me this is a Monday night.
He said, let me, go to hospital tomorrow, takethe stitches out of my shoulder.
I'll be I'll be on the first flight back, andI'll be with you on Wednesday morning.
(16:05):
Just hold on.
And, we agreed.
And the last thing he said to me that nightwas, so now I'm not sure that's that's gonna be
soon enough.
And I thought he was referring to the thebusiness.
So I went to bed that night and and woke uptragically the next morning to the the news
that my my father had taken his life at nightand hanged himself, but he was gone.
And so you can imagine waking up to that news.
(16:27):
My life was flipped upside down.
I mean, lots to it, but I jumped on a flight,went home to The UK, and I had my mom and three
sisters in in my arms.
I had a the police around the house.
There was a lot of press around the housebecause my dad was pretty well known in the
area.
And and and I had I inherited a business thatwas on the verge of bankruptcy in the middle of
the worst financial crisis since the GreatDepression.
(16:49):
And I knew in that moment, my my life changedfor good.
So it was kind of I'd gone from flying raptors,being single, living in New York City, to
moving back to this village I'd had escapedfrom as a kid and literally moving in with my
mom and taking ownership of this business andand getting to work to lead what would be a
really difficult business transformationturnaround of the company over five very
(17:13):
difficult, tumultuous years.
I was basically taking care of everyone exceptmyself.
But in hindsight, you know, I I look to God nowand I think, well, you know, I'd been to
business school.
I'd had a great education in the UK militaryand the US military.
I'd had experience of corporate America andeverything I knew about what I didn't want
leadership to look like and what I didn't likeabout companies.
(17:35):
So I had all of these disparate skill sets, andnow I'd kinda been given the ultimate problem
of a business that was broken in very difficultcircumstances, both personally and
professionally, and and asked to turn itaround.
And in hindsight, it was the greatest educationI I was afforded in my life because we waited
into that fight headlong, and I managed toconvince the company to follow me through that.
(17:57):
And over time, we we clawed our way back to tosuccess and ultimately grew the company and to
exit the company in around the 02/2017 timeframe.
The end of that journey, it was a really deeplyprofound journey for me.
I'd taken care of everyone.
I'd I'd put my mom on a dating app.
She'd met someone again, and I was like, okay,mom.
I love you, but you're kind of my style livingat home.
Now I'm in my mid to late thirties.
I need to take care of myself again.
(18:18):
And she said, what are you gonna do?
And I honestly I didn't know.
First thing was move back to The States.
So I went back to New York.
And outside of my friends in jiu jitsu, Irealized it was really full of sad memories for
me being back in New York, a city I once loved.
The last time I'd seen my dad and andeverything alive.
So I need a new start.
So I packed I packed two bags and moved out toLA with a little more than half a game plan.
(18:40):
Really didn't know what I was gonna do.
Tried a few things when I was out here andspent a lot of time in the ocean learning to
surf, really thinking about what was going tobe next for me.
And I really that time was so precious to mebecause I got to to ask myself the the most
important questions, anchored around theconcept of time on this planet as a precious
(19:02):
resource.
If I knew when the end of my life was comingand because of, you know, losing my dad the way
I did really crystallize the value of time forme.
So if I knew when my time was coming, how couldI live as truthfully as possible?
And I basically gave myself two rules.
One one that I'd only work on problems that Iwas really passionate about that I thought were
important to humanity.
And secondly, I'd only work with people that Ireally deeply love and whose value systems are
(19:25):
closely aligned to my own.
I've been flying airplanes since I was 14, so Ihad to do something with aviation.
And so I started thinking about training andthe problems associated with military flying
training, both everything I had experienced inThe UK when I thought it was just a a UK
problem.
We couldn't get red air or adversaries to trainagainst.
And I just thought, you know, with the poorBrits, it's just a problem that the Brits have,
(19:49):
and they weren't.
It was exactly the same problem.
It's just a different scale.
And so we couldn't get adversaries to trainagainst, and we're using f 20 twos at a hundred
thousand dollars an hour to to train against.
It was asinine.
And And I realized that we had a deeplysystemic problem with training across all
allied nations because we we can't producepilots quickly enough.
(20:11):
We can't produce enough of them.
We can't absorb them onto the the frontlinequickly enough to get them experienced and it's
a useful war fighters program in 02/2009.
So I really started peeling that that thatonion apart and really digging into the
problems associated with training.
And I I came to the conclusion that there are Imean, you know this better than most, but there
are two ways that we really train pilots.
(20:31):
One is you put them in physical airplanes andyou have them fly against pilots in airplanes,
or you put them in simulators.
We we we can't scale the first.
Right?
We we we don't have the dollars.
We don't have the pilots.
We don't have the airplanes to provide theamount of live air training we need, that
frequency, and irrelevancy.
And secondly, on the other side of theequation, you've got simulation.
(20:52):
Simulation is good for repetition basedtasking, but it doesn't emulate the cognitive
loads that we're under as as combat pilots onon the front line where you're flying an
airplane that will kill you in the blink of aneye, you know, in your game, and you're pulling
nine or 10 g's in the case of the f 22.
And your brain just doesn't work the same.
Right?
So we want to protect those hours for our warfighters.
The question I asked myself was, how do we dothat as efficiently as possible?
(21:12):
Is there a third way and a way of thinkingabout that?
And the question I asked myself was, could Idrag simulation outdoors and get the best of
both worlds?
So what I mean by that is the ability to fly inreal airplanes, actually be up in the sky
physically flying an airplane, but createsimulated environments in which we can fly
whilst we're out there doing a thing for forreal.
(21:34):
In essence, what am I talking about?
I'm talking about bringing video gaming anddragging outdoors.
Right?
It turns out the Air Force have been thinkingabout some of the same things and this idea of
a live virtual constructive construct, whichis, in essence, aims to tackle the same
problems.
So live is real parts and real airplanesconnected together to virtual, which is real
parts and simulators on the ground, but kind ofbeamed up into the air.
(21:57):
Same constructive is in essence the same thingas a virtual.
We we trick the aircraft sensors into things tothem.
There's something it's driven by AI algorithmsin essence.
And the early work on that pioneered by the AirForce Research Laboratory and a program called
Slate looks really promising, but it'scurrently a 50% solution.
It's a 50% solution because it works in thebeyond visual range environment, the range of
(22:17):
which we're looking at radars and sensors, andwe can see a little dot on our scope and fly
tactics against it.
The moment you get to that within visual rangepiece of 15 miles in where you're starting to
look out of the window and and you're puttingthe proverbial gum shield in and going for a
fist fight, the the visual maneuvering wereassociated with movies like Top Gun and all
that kind of stuff.
The whole training ecosystem collapses.
Why is that?
Because there's no way of visually putting anentity into the field of view of the pilots and
(22:41):
having it behave in a manic commensurate with areal a real airplane flown by a real pilot.
Why is that?
Well, to do that, you'd need to make thetechnology, augmented reality work in really
dynamic environments outside.
Reality didn't do that.
And so if I could complete that ecosystem bysolving that problem, I figured we would usher
(23:02):
in the future of training by making this LVCidea fully realizable.
And that's for the the big high end tacticallevel fights.
But you take that all the way down the valuechain to how we think about physically
producing pilots.
Well, for us, you know, by the time we've takewe learn how to take off and land an airplane,
every one of your flights is with at least onewingman, which means an airplane, a pilot, a
(23:24):
fuel supply chain.
So massively expensive, capital intensive,asset intensive, and human being intensive.
But what if I could replace the need to providethose assets to to tow or train alongside by
putting augmented reality airplanes up into thesky?
So the ability to produce, we can accelerateproduction, we can produce more pilots, we can
(23:44):
produce them to a higher standard at a fractionof the cost of what we're traditionally connect
the dots from day one of how we think aboutflying training all the way up to large force
employments.
And so that was the thesis of it.
I had to get to work solving the the problem ofaugmented reality outside, and I need to test
airplane.
And there's a beautiful story, serendipitousstory of how that came to be.
(24:07):
That was the genesis of of my company, which iscalled Red six.
Yeah.
No.
I damn.
I'm letting you go because what you're sayingis gold, man.
This is great stuff because I think one of thethings that we as aviators always run into,
especially military, is the training piece.
There's always some sort of obstacle that we'regetting over, and it's sometimes it's so minor
(24:28):
or not even thought about.
You're talking about just this large constructof a training program for especially when you
do large exercise stuff.
If I'm going out and I'm doing a Pacifictraining or a Pacific exercise and we've got a
bunch of fighters hey.
If we gotta drag fighters across the ocean andtwo one of them breaks, everybody stays behind,
(24:48):
and we sit until the airplane's working.
Well, if it's a four ship of f sixteens thatwe're moving to somewhere down the line, and
they're gonna be stuck in wherever they'restuck for forty eight hours, the exercise is
going to eat either, a, get delayed or there'sbits and pieces that they start to have to they
have to break off.
Now I I and I'm sure you agree with me.
(25:10):
We always we want the real thing as much as wecan get it.
That we always want that, but that is notreality anymore.
We can't like, I've done I've done red flags.
I've done weapons weapon school employmentprograms.
They're awesome.
However, they're not foolproof.
There is a lot of stuff that goes into it.
And sometimes, airplanes, people get sick,fatigue happens.
(25:31):
You can't replace somebody when they walk up tothe jet, and they're unable to go.
It's too late.
This is an opportunity where you can actuallyfix those issues.
One of the things that you brought up in thepiece that I watched that I loved was the idea
of taking this from a tactical level fightwhere you're teaching somebody BFM and they're
rolling around in the merge, and then thecomputer, the AI's, algorithm figures out what
(25:56):
it did then, learns, and then you come back andyou can scale this up to simulate essentially
from supply chain logistics, what made it, whatdidn't make it to the front, all the way up to
what did your adversary pilot think when youturned one way in and he turned that way, and
then the next thing goes, well, we'll figurethis out.
We're not gonna do that next time.
(26:16):
So now the, blue air has gotta figure out howto fight that guy better the next time.
I thought that was that's next level.
That's the thought process that that reallyblew me away because that's how I see it's one
thing to figure out on the on the surfacelevel.
But to move it up to that, incorporating allbig air force involved into something as simple
(26:37):
as a four v four exercise that then grows to,holy cow, we can do this on the regular so we
don't have to waste money time.
We can become we have better efficacy in theactual training environment.
One of the things I wanted to backtrack andtalk about was AR.
Okay.
This is a complex a very complex topic.
Our AI, VR, all that stuff.
(26:59):
Your background wasn't in computer engineering.
Correct?
You're business minded.
Mhmm.
I think it's fascinating because I've tried tolearn this stuff, and it's not been very good.
How did you go from being, hey.
I got my MBA at Georgetown.
I'm smart business finance guy.
I've I've had this tragedy in my life, andthank you for sharing that story with us.
(27:20):
It's it is very touching and also compelling toknow that background.
And then I go and have this life altering sixyears of my life that that changed me as a
human being to going, okay.
I'm smart.
Now I'm going in a world where I am not soknowledgeable, and I wanna change that world.
To me, that is that's overwhelming.
(27:41):
How did you make that bridge that gap?
Look.
Well, first of all, I'm surrounded by brilliantpeople.
Right?
And I'm one of the cofounders of the business,Glenn Snyder.
I'll talk about Glenn here.
And I think one one of the most, you know,often overlooked qualities in human beings is
common sense.
And if you can get your ego out of the way andyou're not afraid to ask the five year old
questions, then quite often you find that youcan make a lot of progress just by asking
(28:04):
really obvious questions.
And so I try to practice that on a day to daybasis in that I am the class idiot generally in
that every room I'm in here at Red Six.
Right?
Everyone's smarter than me.
But I'm not afraid to ask the logical commonsense questions.
And that I found that actually quite often, itit allows you to penetrate a lot of the BS and
really get to the same thing everyone else isthinking about.
You have to be the technical person in the roomif you can, you know, just you understand the
(28:27):
the what and the why, then then there's a bunchof smart people around you that understand the
how, right, and how to to go do it.
So I think about that quite often.
But to to exactly that point in the early daysof the business, I was building the airplane,
the test airplane that you've seen on thevideos.
We have a couple of them now, but the book,Coote five forty, which is an amazing airplane.
My life walked this guy, Glenn Snyder.
He was one of, initially, a handful offounders, but only Glenn and I remained.
(28:50):
Glenn had pioneered some work in virtualreality, not augmented reality, and and to sort
of level set for the audience.
Virtual reality, I'll put a headset on.
I'm in an entirely virtual world.
Right?
I could be anywhere in the world.
I could be in space, whatever it is, buteverything is virtual.
Augmented reality is a much more nuancedproblem to solve because we seek to put virtual
entities into the real world around us.
(29:10):
So we see the real world, but we put syntheticentities into the real world as well, and
that's the power of AR.
Yep.
So when I met Glenn, he pulled off a worldfirst in race cars back in 02/2015 where he
connected two drivers in two real race cars onseparate tracks into a virtual world where both
drivers put a helmet on, and they got to racereal race cars behind the outside world.
(29:31):
Went off, and I and I asked basically twoquestions.
Right?
I'm overly simplifying, but in essence, couldwe do that in airplanes, not cars?
And we thought, yeah, we we thought sopossible, more difficult, but we think, yeah,
absolutely feasible.
The next question, quite obviously, because noone is going to allow pilots to fly around in
real airplanes in virtual reality, could we doit in augmented reality?
And, Glenn looked at me as, to your point asthe class idiot, and I I I he said, no, dummy.
(29:56):
I was like, why?
He said, because AR doesn't work outside or indynamic environments and the challenges we had
to overcome.
But the the power of asking why to my previouspoint is really important.
So I I was basically just a petrol and fiveyear old fighter pilot kept asking why until we
we kinda came up with this thesis that we couldapply to a very complex problem and approach AR
in a fundamentally different way to anyone elsethat that enabled it to work outdoors in
(30:21):
dynamic environments and critically andmarvelous backgrounds up in the sky while we're
going upside down and barrel rolling and allthe challenges of light and sunlight and
brightness and all that kind of stuff we'd haveto overcome.
And so that that was the genesis of the idea,and it was really a serendipitous meaning of
minds and whether you believe in the universe,god, whatever my the journey that I was on, I
(30:41):
mean, to that point, that moment in time forGlenn and I to meet.
And it's hard not to believe in a sort of fateof destiny because everything was kind of
pushing me towards this direction of just ifyou build it, they will come.
And so back then, a game changing technologyinto the world, I was actually creating a new
market that that no one was thinking about atthe time.
(31:02):
Then as I believe today that I'm I say thiswith absolute humility, but I I really believe
I'm right.
I believe we are right at Red Six, that thisvision is the is the right vision.
Because, ultimately, what do I see to yourpoint for the high end fight, every day of the
week, we should be taxing out at our baseslocally, not waiting for red flags or any
support.
We should do every single day of the week,taxing out as a four ship as a four ship of
(31:25):
blue air and training against whatever threatwe want against however many we want every
single day of the week.
And all of our red air in the future, if we getthis right, will be provided synthetically,
which means we can protect our assets, preservethe assets, and only be flying blue air.
Now there's there's the edge cases, right,where you can argue I want a little bit of, you
know, red air physical.
Yeah.
I get it.
(31:45):
But the point remains that there is a visionout there that's not as far away as people
think where every day of the week, we could beflying large force engagements against
whichever adverse we want at whatever scale wewant, and we need to be doing that every single
day of the week.
Why do we do that?
Because we ultimately want to deter conflict.
And to deter, we need to be credible.
To be credible, we need to be lethal.
To be lethal, we need to train.
(32:05):
It all comes back to training.
And I go back to the three pillars of training,production, how to produce pilots, massive
application there.
The absorption of pilots onto the frontline,enormous application there, and then
experiencing pilots.
You can go to very complex LIVs all the waydown to the past test trainers of to your
point, the first time as a fighter guy you gotanking is the first time you go tanking.
(32:27):
Exactly.
It's scary.
Right?
Yeah.
And and at night, I used to think about theamount of time we'd spend transiting out to the
airspace there and back.
That is time and resource that we don't gettraining in.
Well, now you can transit that to the airspaceand go, hey.
It's not a real one, but here's an augmentedreality tanker that looks and feels and acts
just like a real tanker, including the boommoving, including the lights, which are super
(32:48):
accurate to within a centimeter so the lightswill light up.
And you you can use that dead time to gettraining sets like tanking on the way out
there, doing it every day of the week.
So the first time you go to that tanking,you've seen it a hundred times before.
So and there's many other examples of that, butit's exactly the kind of the benefits of this
technology can can bring.
Yeah.
And to your point, when you say all that stuff,the only platform that I really know of that
(33:10):
gets real world, real training, and that linksup to what they're doing in a austere combat,
whatever environment you wanna put them in, isthe tankers.
Percent.
Training is no different than real world.
I mean, maybe there's onesie twosie missionshere and there that are slightly different, but
we're doing the same thing all the time.
Everybody else has to make it up.
(33:31):
They've gotta they have to make up some sort ofvirtual or Even airdrop, they don't get to drop
its dummy stuff.
It's not real.
They don't have adversaries shooting at them.
I saw the video.
I the the real air the the, ground air threatvideo was amazing.
Like, I can't c one thirty, Bubbas who get tosee that before they go somewhere can actually
(33:53):
see what they're looking at instead of think ofthe guys in Iraq who I remember there were they
did a spiral up and they were shot at eighttimes by a man pad.
That's the first they probably saw any of that.
I I guarantee it's the first time they saw it.
I have no idea what they're looking at.
And then when they go back and they debriefIntel, the debrief is pretty much useless.
I don't know what I saw.
I got shot at.
I was freaking out because the first time itever happened, the raw gear is going off.
(34:16):
I don't know what it was.
In this case, in this scenario and I've donethe virtual training for a ground air threat
for a tanker, which was a joke.
Right.
Now if I had that now first of all, we're notgonna get that kind of threat regularly.
But to be able to see that and be able tocomment on it is rather huge.
And to see it while I'm airborne is a wholeanother facet that I think is truly it is game
(34:40):
changing and and and and it's kinda mindbending.
I've seen the watching the video, it took me alittle bit to go, what is going on here?
And I think you've moved on from the cyberphase two, which I'm familiar with, into the
next facet of this.
Where do we see red six in the next six months,year?
Like, the the near term, midterm, and then longterm obviously is is, a projection across the
(35:02):
whole force and the DOD.
But where are we going in the near and andmidterm?
Yeah.
Well, not just the DOD, the allies as well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because one one of the things we're doing, weall have the same problems.
So, you know, it's like everything else.
You bring something new into the world, andthere's a rule called the law of diffusion of
innovation, right, where you get the innovatorsthat that are out there, like, inventing this
stuff.
That's kinda like the red six.
(35:23):
Then you look to the early adopters.
Right?
And it starts to catch with those people thatwill sort of stand outside of Apple Stores to
get the new latest iPhone.
It's those people you need, and we needinternal evangelists.
But, look, we've been really lucky with the USAir Force now to go through the SIPA one, SIPA
two.
We went to a civil phase three pretty quickly.
And then working with AFWERX, which you may befamiliar with, the the the set of supporters,
(35:43):
we've most recently just been awarded a a$30,000,000 stratified strategic funding
increase.
And so we're working on integration in the AirForce right now into t 30 eights to continue to
prove out the technology in the t 30 eightsahead of adoption.
We're we'll be working with Air Force SpecialOperations Command on integration into the MC
one thirty as well this year, which is reallyexciting.
We're also working with the OEMs, Boeing,integrating into the the t seven.
(36:08):
We'll make some further announcement here abouta couple of other partners here later in the
year.
One thing that is public that we're we're veryclose to flying is over in The UK right now.
We've integrated into the Hawk t two, which istheir jet training platform over there, which I
I flew the t one, now the t two.
We're gonna be demonstrating that in December.
So we we've got traction with multiplecustomers now.
(36:28):
We we've got a symbol for the navy.
We're gonna be integrating into a navy platformhere.
So we've got traction with multiple customersas we prove out and mature this technology.
It it's coming way faster than people think.
And we're working directly with the customer,but also with all of the major OEMs around the
world as well that all see the future utilityof augmented reality.
And that that point of, you know, earlier inthe conversation, I talked about, yes, we've
(36:52):
created a new technology, but what we've reallydone is create a new market.
And I think that that traction is starting toappear.
And so I think over the next six months to ayear, you're gonna see continued integrations
into a number of platforms, and you'll seehopefully adoption from from there.
So we have a very tangible pathway toultimately where we need to be, which is
multiple programs of record, and that's the endof the company.
(37:13):
And that's the direction we're heading in.
I I think I'm probably gonna butcher this, butI believe it was Neil Armstrong who said after
he landed on the moon that all the cool stuffin aviation had already been done already.
I have always thought I was like, all the coolstuff in aviation is done already.
When I sit back and think about it, I couldn'tbe further from the truth.
(37:33):
The stuff that is coming down the pipe, thestuff that's happening right now, and the stuff
that I got to experience in my career is trulygame changing.
I refueled Raptors that were ninety and ninetyone models when I was at Edwards.
And
the the very next week, I was flying over, Ithink it was Iraq.
I'm not sure if it was Iraq, Afghanistan.
And I refueled a February and a '99 modelStrike Eagle.
(37:55):
So the genesis and the change and and the rapidrate that all this stuff happens is so cool to
not only get to see, but to get involved with,to be able to talk to folks like you and share
your story both personal, which is inspiring toa lot of pilots, but the story of what's
happening inside the world that we don't get tosee the background.
(38:16):
We, you know, we see the final products, andwe're like, hey.
What's this?
And you know as well as I do.
Every pilot, the first time they get somethingnew is pretty skeptical of how it's gonna work.
Any piece of software, anything new in thesquadron, everybody's kinda like, wait a
second.
I'm old pilot.
Don't wanna change.
This to me is one of those markets andtechnologies that blows that right out of the
(38:37):
water because I wish I would have gotten to seeit in my time even though I'm not a combat guy
to be able to utilize or see people utilizingthis to be better.
Yeah.
We used to we call them the Lucas.
We when I was at McConnell, we used to callthem the Lucas assassins because the first time
they showed up, we're like, dude, they'retrying to kill us.
That's right.
Yeah.
And to have some people go out there and justin the tanker world, just to be able to have
(38:57):
that experience before they show up.
Well, even even I mean, think about it theother way around for the boom operators as
well.
The ability to generate AR fighters for theboom operators to be able to train on as well.
It's it's You It's there.
It's such a value proposition for you.
Yeah.
And they never get to see most of them neversee that stuff when they're at Altus because
the first time they see a fighter is after theyleave Altus because most of the Altus stuff is
(39:17):
centered around Altus and nearby platforms, andthey don't fly out to the West and the East to
go get those guys.
I wanna thank you so much for this time.
I wanna give you a a kind of a last pitch.
I also if you have any way people can contactyou who might be interested in they're leaving
the military, they wanna get involved with redsix.
I can see you guys growing at an exponentialrate, and it sounds like you're gonna need some
(39:40):
good people from who have experience to helpout with this program in the future.
So have at it.
Yeah.
Look.
We we always look at the good people.
I think info at Red6ar.com is is the right wayto get in touch with us.
My personal Instagram, if you we wanna followthe story as red six CEO Theo.
That's a good way to follow what what we'redoing.
Obviously, you can check us out on on LinkedInas well.
(40:01):
I I think this technology is to your point.
It's rare that a a technology comes along andfundamentally redefines how we do business.
We have a team of people here that are sodedicated and working so hard to deliver on
something that we passionately care aboutbecause we absolutely see the value of this
technology and such a transformational impactfor all of flying training across the world.
(40:23):
We're really grateful for the partners we workwith.
You know, as many of the ideas we've got forand use cases for the technology, we're
desperate to get into the hands of thewarfighters and get the feedback from the guys
and girls that are on the front line that aredoing the job for real because they're gonna
think of, like, 50 ways we haven't thought ofto use the technology as well.
But we do have a team of really, reallydedicated professionals that are working very
hard to deliver on something that wepassionately care about.
(40:44):
My ultimate end state is to see this in thehands of the warfighters and see us being the
most proficient lethal air forces, around theworld.
That's the mission of the company, and andthat's what we're doing here.
So really appreciate the chance to share thestory with you.
Really love love the conversation, and thanksfor giving me the opportunity.
Yeah.
Thanks again for joining us, Dan.
And as always, Apollo Network listeners outthere, you got a question, comment, concern,
(41:07):
complaint, critique, or otherwise, you can hitMatt or Matt or I up at hey, guys, the pilot
network dot com.
Keep the shiny side up, grease side down, flysafe,
figure, buddy.
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