April 10, 2025 • 16 mins
Justin "Hasard" Lee is a F35 and F16 test pilot who makes social media content that focuses on the life of a fighter pilot. We discuss the future of fighter pilots as drones become more advanced in this clip taken from Ep. 170.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So I feel like I may get some pushback for this,
but I feel like the days of the fighter pilot
may be numbered, you know what I'm saying. I feel
like we're going to we're seeing the implementation of drone aircraft.
I mean, they've got a drone tanker out there refueling aircraft.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I feel like, and you know, you can tell me
if I'm way off base or whatever, but I feel
like what's going to happen is right now, we have
our our air force is mainly man pilots, and we
have drones that help out with ISR, with you know
that surveillance and stuff like that. At some point, I
feel like it's going to become one pilot man pilot
with their three other drone aircraft flying with them, and
(00:40):
they're kind of controlling whatever's going on. And then at
some point we're going to be like, why do we
even have the guy up there?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Just pull him out.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
That's too dangerous, you know, because if he gets shot down,
now we got to go rescue him, and there's all
this other stuff. We could just put a drone up there.
Do you see that happening? Do you see a day
when kids are like grandpa. He was the last fighter pilot,
you know.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
I mean someday for sure, I think, you know, at
some point, I don't know when that that will happen.
But it's not even close right now, not not even close.
You know, combat is the most dynamic environment in the world,
so when we go I think I think the biggest
misconception that people have about flying fighters is it's this
(01:23):
like one v one cage match. You're just going up
dog fighting. I mean, top gun pretty much did that.
Four aircraft going into this uh you know this threat country.
You know, that's that's crazy. We go in with one
hundred different aircraft and each aircraft has their own specialty
and it's not even aircraft like, it's multi domain. So
you're talking about space, cyber, you're talking about guys on
(01:46):
the ground, you're talking about ships, missiles, all these things
integrated tightly, and things go wrong, and it really takes
a person to be able to be creative with their
solution to you know, there's going to be some fallout
to bring this you know, team together to be able
to solve the tactical problem. And the enemy, on the
other hand, they're doing everything they can to disrupt your
(02:08):
decision making. So you know, if you're going against a
drone that really only knows how to attack one way,
they're going to find a way to attack that. And
I think a lot of these tech companies are figuring
this out. So like Tesla with their you know, automated driving.
You know, they were saying five years ago that we're
going to have fully autonomous vehicles. They're even their autopilots
(02:29):
called full self driving. It definitely doesn't do that. Maybe
on a highway, definitely, not through a city, Definitely not
through a shopping center. And that's without an adversary. What
if I were to tell you, all right, I need you.
I want you to design software to be able to
take a car from LA to New York through New York,
and then I gave you, I said, I need you
(02:50):
to prevent that vehicle from getting there. You could do
whatever you want. You can spray paint the lines into
concrete barriers, you could use lasers to their cameras. You know,
I'm sure you could find a way to prevent it
from getting to that destination because it's exponentially more difficult
to do that.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
So I think.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Humans and AI drones. You know, I think the future
is us working together. We have some huge strengths that
we're able to overcome, and one of them is being
able to creatively solve problems. Computers aren't great at doing that.
They mostly use linear regressions, so they're going to, you know,
just see what happened in the past and then forecast
(03:30):
that for the future. So it's really us finding ways
to work together, which is really difficult. You see that
with a lot of autopilots on commercial airlines right now.
So the autopilot will kick off at the worst time
and say, oh, I'm overloaded, I can't do this. Here's
the pilot, and the pilot meanwhile, has gotten complacent because
they're used to the autopilot doing that. So now they
have to step into those crazy situation and solve it
(03:52):
for the AI. So so in terms, so instead of
seeing you know, all the AAI and tech companies saying
and there's there's one tech ceo about six months ago
who said, uh, basically, fire pilots are going to be
obsolete in five years.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
That's that's not how fast the DD operates. There's no way.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Out that any amount of money that's not going to happen.
And I guess there's some proponents on the fire pilot
side that that says, we don't need drones, we can
do it all ourselves. And I'm I would say probably
in the middle. We're going to go out with these drones,
but we're ultimately going to be in charge of it.
So you can help mitigate risk. Maybe we'll stay a
little bit further back and give the drones a little
(04:33):
bit higher threat missions in there, but you absolutely need
a pilot in the loop. And to say, you know,
right now we have like m Q nine predators there.
You know, pilots are flying from trailers in Vegas. I
would say that anything is jammable. So if you need
a signal to go from that trailer in Vegas all
the way to you know, the the Yellow Sea, there's
(04:56):
a lot of different avenues that you can use to
jam that signal. So these drones or aircraft are gonna
have to be able to make decisions on their own,
and we're not even close to them being able to
make all the decisions that a fighter pilot or you know,
any person can make on the fly. I would say
not even not even a quarter of the way there,
(05:16):
So maybe maybe in twenty one hundred.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
You know, if I wow that far out, huh, if.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I was a betting man, maybe twenty one hundred is
going to be the last of the fighter pilots. And
as we get closer and closer, drones will do more
and more things, but not even close.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Do you think it'll move Do you think it'll move
into AI driven aircraft or do you think it'll become
remotely pirate piloted aircraft first? I feel like it would
become remotely piloted first, because why risk putting a guy
out there if we don't have to. Oh we have
that right now, we have the MQ nine's, So yeah,
but an MQ nine is not enough sixteen.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, okay, remotely piloted fighters.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, That's what I'm talking about on
like a different level. I don't know, I just I see.
You know, you mentioned in one of your other videos
you talk about the S curve of like technology being
going through it's like cycle of development and stuff like that,
And I feel like we're where you're talking about, at
the beginning of that S curve, where a lot of
the mistakes are being make being made, a lot of
(06:22):
the money's being used right now because we got to
get a good foundation of understanding and like capability, like
technological capability, before we can you know, push on to
the things that we really want to do. I mean,
would you agree with that? Do you think we're at
the beginning of this rather than like farther along like
some people believe.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
For sure, we're at the very infancy of this, especially
when it comes to combat, especially when it comes to
you know, it's yeah, especially when it comes to combat,
we're at the infancy. We're at the very beginning of
this s curve. So as opposed to trying to replace
fighter pots with this you know, this technology that isn't
fully developed, I would be a strong proponent of trying
(07:06):
to find ways that it can help to augment the
fighter pilot. And so yeah, that might be one pilot
going out with a couple of drones being able to
control them. You know, I think that's pretty useful. I
think since the beginning of probably of the computer, So
i'd say the you know, probably the F sixteen, first
electric jet. They did a lot of things in that
(07:26):
aircraft that helped to automate things for the pilot.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
One of them.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
You know, with the with the flight control system, they
had auto trimming, so it would auto trim wherever you
wanted to go to one G.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So I mean that, you know, you.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Know, I'm sure they had to deal with F four
pilots saying, you know, you're not you're not a real pilot,
you're not a man, you know, flying that thing. You
don't have to trim the thing. So now with the
F thirty five, we've taken you know, a big step
forward where it's able to automate a lot of the
data management so that the pilot can really cleanly see
the information and data. So I think, you know, you know,
(08:05):
if I were king for a day, I would be
investing heavily in AI but as a way to augment
you know, pilots and use the best thing that we
have is our brains to be able to make creative decisions.
That's what I would do. With maybe the ultimate goal,
you know, in twenty eighty, we're talking, you know, super
far away of fully replacing them, But if you're trying to,
(08:25):
if you're trying to replace them right away, I think
it's going to turn out like you know, the missiles
in Vietnam where you know, they took the gun off
the F four and they just had you know, air
TOIR missiles on them, and they didn't work as well
as they thought it would work.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
So I think that, you.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Know, if you try to go in with a fully
autonomous fleet, you know, that's what's going to happen right now. So,
you know, just just having lived this life for for
a while, I don't think we're even close to being
able to go to a fully autonomous you know, air force.
And I'm a big proponent of technology. I think that's
you know, technical is augmented me. I'm able to fly
(09:03):
one hundred times faster than I can run, carry a
hundred times more, you know, much more capable than I
could without this you know machine around me. But it's
it's a whole different animal if you want it to
do all this stuff on its own.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, I think, man, in the next twenty years, the
changes in technology that AI is going to bring is
going to be mind blowing.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
That's why I don't know, I don't know. I don't
know if twenty one hundred is I think that might
be too far out. I think I feel like it
could be sooner than that, just because of the rapid
pace of technological developments. You know, it's going to be
weird where something like that, like flight is going to
become like a novelty. You know, like why would I
why would a human ever fly a plane? That's crazy,
(09:47):
that's crazy talk, you know. Yeah, Elon must have the
same thing about cars. He's like in I think he said,
in like one hundred years or whatever, people are going
to look back and be like, I can't believe we
allowed people to drive these monster machines themselves, these like
death machines, you know what.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
The thousand people a year die from that, I think, Yeah,
one of the leading causes of death.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, so it's like the perspective we have on it's
gonna be it's way different than the people of the
future when they look back and be like, what, like,
why would you ever do that?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
That's crazy talk.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah, It's like, you know, you had to hunt your
own bison with with like a spear. You know, that's
that's crazy to think about right now. So yeah, I
mean twenty one hundred might be you know, I would
say twenty one you know, and who knows.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
There's so much uncertainty.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Involved with this, I'm just trying to illustrate the point
that you know, it's going to be a lot of time,
and it's gonna be that S curve where you know
it's good, the inflection is going to go up.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
We're going to make some really.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Seamless teams between AI, you know, wingman and aircraft, and
then maybe you know, twenty eighties or something, it's going
to be like, you know, we're gonna you know, there's
going to be our grandchildren are going to have this
conversation of like, you know, you're really not cutting it
as a as a pilot anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Maybe we can just get rid of you.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
But to think, you know, these tech companies are getting
billion dollar valuations saying that they can get rid of
fighter pilots in five years, that's that's not going to happen.
For example, F thirty five flu X thirty five flu
in two thousand and one, it didn't get IOC initial
operating capability till twenty seventeen. That's like sixteen year cycle.
(11:27):
I think the F twenty two was like a fifteen
year cycle. You know, the development for these aircraft is crazy.
It takes a really long time to be able to
do that, and like in the DoD, the decision cycles
to be able to change things is much slower. So
maybe maybe a company like Apple or Google or Tesla
could make a fighter in maybe twenty forty that can
(11:51):
replace the fighter pilot. But imagine you know, having to
go through the DoD and being able to go through
the bureaucracy and then being you know, seeing the last
you know, fighter pilot. You know, I would say, you know,
if I if I were to bet, I'd say, twenty
one hundred isn't isn't too bad?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, Yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
It'd be It'd be not unlike SpaceX coming in and
being like, hey, we're just going to build our own rockets,
you know, like you guys did all this over here.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
That's cool.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
We'll take what we know from that and just our
own perspective, you know, coming coming at it from a
completely different perspective rather than these career military people or
career like engineer government engineer people working on a project.
When you bring in a civilian sector side, they're just
going to look at it in a different way, and
you know, I don't know, maybe they will come in
with some crazy could you imagine at Tesla, what would
(12:42):
it look like, could be like an X wing fighter
or something like that, because they'll bes is a big NERD.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it would be it'd be great.
And that's I think. I think that's really where the
DD is headed. I think in it was really the
nineteen nineties that all the primes got you know, merged,
and we went from like thirty primes to like three.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Locked you mean, what do you mean by primes?
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Primes are like North of Grumman all these different air
all these different companies that made different aircraft. So there's
like thirty different aircraft manufacturers in the eighties and in
the nineties we consolidated to really three major primes like Lockeed, Boeing,
and North of Grummen. So basically, you know, you have
three different companies. Boeing specializes in the big planes, Locked
(13:30):
in the fighters, Northrop in the bombers, so you really
know where the contract's going. So compare that to the
civilian industry where you have you know, Apple, you have Google,
you have all these different companies competing. Same with the
car manufacturers. Competition is a great thing. And so I
think really the DoD recognized this at least in the
late two thousands, and they've been really trying to bring
(13:52):
in more civilian companies. That's that's what I was doing
with the Defense Innovation Unit. They're like, all right, we
have a lot of problems within the DoD. How do
we bridge that gap and just get civilian companies to
solve these problems for ten times cheaper. We don't need
a you know, million dollar toilet seat, Like, how do
we how do we get these guys to to just
do a commercial off the shelf type application. So I
(14:15):
absolutely think that that's the future. The difficulty is, you know,
classified stuff really stokes, stove pipes things, So yeah, that
makes it really difficult for you know, you know, just
an LLC to to go and try and you know
build a new missile or something like that.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, for sure, you like what you're talking about where
you're saying, like, how can we use this off the
shelf stuff and make it work? Because that's really how
we won like World War Two and these older wars
is because none of the stuff was like so crazy
technologically advanced, like a lot of a lot of this
stuff was just easy stuff like ay Ford can make
this pretty easily. Let's just have them, you know, let's
(14:55):
have them do it. And and I like what you're
talking about with the competition. You know, if we're talking
about the car side, you have your big, big car manufacturers,
you get your Forward, your GM and stuff like that,
but there's so many like little tiny car manufacturers in
the civilian market. Those aren't your only choices. You don't
have to go with one of those. So yeah, I
think that could only bring Again, it's all about perspectives.
(15:17):
If you're looking at defense stuff, you want to bring
in multiple perspectives because there may be a big something
that you're not seeing because you're you've only been looking
at it from one way. And you bring in a
smaller company that's one working in a different environment because
they may not have the fiscal abilities that a giant
corporation does, or they may have different kind of technologies
that they're working with. They may see something completely different
(15:39):
because of their perspective. So that's really good and it's
good to hear that the government and the military understands that,
and they're putting together like whatuld you call it the defense.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
What is it? The idea Defense Innovation Unit?
Speaker 1 (15:51):
What all did you guys work with in that.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Or what you could talk.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
We work with the physiological monitorings, so there's a whole
bunch of different programs going on and the
So I feel like I may get some pushback for this,
but I feel like the days of the fighter pilot
may be numbered, you know what I'm saying. I feel
like we're going to we're seeing the implementation of drone aircraft.
I mean, they've got a drone tanker out there refueling aircraft.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I feel like, and you know, you can tell me
if I'm way off base or whatever, but I feel
like what's going to happen is right now, we have
our our air force is mainly man pilots, and we
have drones that help out with ISR, with you know
that surveillance and stuff like that. At some point, I
feel like it's going to become one pilot man pilot
with their three other drone aircraft flying with them, and
(00:40):
they're kind of controlling whatever's going on. And then at
some point we're going to be like, why do we
even have the guy up there?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Just pull him out.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
That's too dangerous, you know, because if he gets shot down,
now we got to go rescue him, and there's all
this other stuff. We could just put a drone up there.
Do you see that happening? Do you see a day
when kids are like grandpa. He was the last fighter pilot,
you know.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
I mean someday for sure, I think, you know, at
some point, I don't know when that that will happen.
But it's not even close right now, not not even close.
You know, combat is the most dynamic environment in the world,
so when we go I think I think the biggest
misconception that people have about flying fighters is it's this
(01:23):
like one v one cage match. You're just going up
dog fighting. I mean, top gun pretty much did that.
Four aircraft going into this uh you know this threat country.
You know, that's that's crazy. We go in with one
hundred different aircraft and each aircraft has their own specialty
and it's not even aircraft like, it's multi domain. So
you're talking about space, cyber, you're talking about guys on
(01:46):
the ground, you're talking about ships, missiles, all these things
integrated tightly, and things go wrong, and it really takes
a person to be able to be creative with their
solution to you know, there's going to be some fallout
to bring this you know, team together to be able
to solve the tactical problem. And the enemy, on the
other hand, they're doing everything they can to disrupt your
(02:08):
decision making. So you know, if you're going against a
drone that really only knows how to attack one way,
they're going to find a way to attack that. And
I think a lot of these tech companies are figuring
this out. So like Tesla with their you know, automated driving.
You know, they were saying five years ago that we're
going to have fully autonomous vehicles. They're even their autopilots
(02:29):
called full self driving. It definitely doesn't do that. Maybe
on a highway, definitely, not through a city, Definitely not
through a shopping center. And that's without an adversary. What
if I were to tell you, all right, I need you.
I want you to design software to be able to
take a car from LA to New York through New York,
and then I gave you, I said, I need you
(02:50):
to prevent that vehicle from getting there. You could do
whatever you want. You can spray paint the lines into
concrete barriers, you could use lasers to their cameras. You know,
I'm sure you could find a way to prevent it
from getting to that destination because it's exponentially more difficult
to do that.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
So I think.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Humans and AI drones. You know, I think the future
is us working together. We have some huge strengths that
we're able to overcome, and one of them is being
able to creatively solve problems. Computers aren't great at doing that.
They mostly use linear regressions, so they're going to, you know,
just see what happened in the past and then forecast
(03:30):
that for the future. So it's really us finding ways
to work together, which is really difficult. You see that
with a lot of autopilots on commercial airlines right now.
So the autopilot will kick off at the worst time
and say, oh, I'm overloaded, I can't do this. Here's
the pilot, and the pilot meanwhile, has gotten complacent because
they're used to the autopilot doing that. So now they
have to step into those crazy situation and solve it
(03:52):
for the AI. So so in terms, so instead of
seeing you know, all the AAI and tech companies saying
and there's there's one tech ceo about six months ago
who said, uh, basically, fire pilots are going to be
obsolete in five years.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
That's that's not how fast the DD operates. There's no way.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Out that any amount of money that's not going to happen.
And I guess there's some proponents on the fire pilot
side that that says, we don't need drones, we can
do it all ourselves. And I'm I would say probably
in the middle. We're going to go out with these drones,
but we're ultimately going to be in charge of it.
So you can help mitigate risk. Maybe we'll stay a
little bit further back and give the drones a little
(04:33):
bit higher threat missions in there, but you absolutely need
a pilot in the loop. And to say, you know,
right now we have like m Q nine predators there.
You know, pilots are flying from trailers in Vegas. I
would say that anything is jammable. So if you need
a signal to go from that trailer in Vegas all
the way to you know, the the Yellow Sea, there's
(04:56):
a lot of different avenues that you can use to
jam that signal. So these drones or aircraft are gonna
have to be able to make decisions on their own,
and we're not even close to them being able to
make all the decisions that a fighter pilot or you know,
any person can make on the fly. I would say
not even not even a quarter of the way there,
(05:16):
So maybe maybe in twenty one hundred.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
You know, if I wow that far out, huh, if.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I was a betting man, maybe twenty one hundred is
going to be the last of the fighter pilots. And
as we get closer and closer, drones will do more
and more things, but not even close.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Do you think it'll move Do you think it'll move
into AI driven aircraft or do you think it'll become
remotely pirate piloted aircraft first? I feel like it would
become remotely piloted first, because why risk putting a guy
out there if we don't have to. Oh we have
that right now, we have the MQ nine's, So yeah,
but an MQ nine is not enough sixteen.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, okay, remotely piloted fighters.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, That's what I'm talking about on
like a different level. I don't know, I just I see.
You know, you mentioned in one of your other videos
you talk about the S curve of like technology being
going through it's like cycle of development and stuff like that,
And I feel like we're where you're talking about, at
the beginning of that S curve, where a lot of
the mistakes are being make being made, a lot of
(06:22):
the money's being used right now because we got to
get a good foundation of understanding and like capability, like
technological capability, before we can you know, push on to
the things that we really want to do. I mean,
would you agree with that? Do you think we're at
the beginning of this rather than like farther along like
some people believe.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
For sure, we're at the very infancy of this, especially
when it comes to combat, especially when it comes to
you know, it's yeah, especially when it comes to combat,
we're at the infancy. We're at the very beginning of
this s curve. So as opposed to trying to replace
fighter pots with this you know, this technology that isn't
fully developed, I would be a strong proponent of trying
(07:06):
to find ways that it can help to augment the
fighter pilot. And so yeah, that might be one pilot
going out with a couple of drones being able to
control them. You know, I think that's pretty useful. I
think since the beginning of probably of the computer, So
i'd say the you know, probably the F sixteen, first
electric jet. They did a lot of things in that
(07:26):
aircraft that helped to automate things for the pilot.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
One of them.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
You know, with the with the flight control system, they
had auto trimming, so it would auto trim wherever you
wanted to go to one G.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So I mean that, you know, you.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Know, I'm sure they had to deal with F four
pilots saying, you know, you're not you're not a real pilot,
you're not a man, you know, flying that thing. You
don't have to trim the thing. So now with the
F thirty five, we've taken you know, a big step
forward where it's able to automate a lot of the
data management so that the pilot can really cleanly see
the information and data. So I think, you know, you know,
(08:05):
if I were king for a day, I would be
investing heavily in AI but as a way to augment
you know, pilots and use the best thing that we
have is our brains to be able to make creative decisions.
That's what I would do. With maybe the ultimate goal,
you know, in twenty eighty, we're talking, you know, super
far away of fully replacing them, But if you're trying to,
(08:25):
if you're trying to replace them right away, I think
it's going to turn out like you know, the missiles
in Vietnam where you know, they took the gun off
the F four and they just had you know, air
TOIR missiles on them, and they didn't work as well
as they thought it would work.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
So I think that, you.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Know, if you try to go in with a fully
autonomous fleet, you know, that's what's going to happen right now. So,
you know, just just having lived this life for for
a while, I don't think we're even close to being
able to go to a fully autonomous you know, air force.
And I'm a big proponent of technology. I think that's
you know, technical is augmented me. I'm able to fly
(09:03):
one hundred times faster than I can run, carry a
hundred times more, you know, much more capable than I
could without this you know machine around me. But it's
it's a whole different animal if you want it to
do all this stuff on its own.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, I think, man, in the next twenty years, the
changes in technology that AI is going to bring is
going to be mind blowing.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
That's why I don't know, I don't know. I don't
know if twenty one hundred is I think that might
be too far out. I think I feel like it
could be sooner than that, just because of the rapid
pace of technological developments. You know, it's going to be
weird where something like that, like flight is going to
become like a novelty. You know, like why would I
why would a human ever fly a plane? That's crazy,
(09:47):
that's crazy talk, you know. Yeah, Elon must have the
same thing about cars. He's like in I think he said,
in like one hundred years or whatever, people are going
to look back and be like, I can't believe we
allowed people to drive these monster machines themselves, these like
death machines, you know what.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
The thousand people a year die from that, I think, Yeah,
one of the leading causes of death.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, so it's like the perspective we have on it's
gonna be it's way different than the people of the
future when they look back and be like, what, like,
why would you ever do that?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
That's crazy talk.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah, It's like, you know, you had to hunt your
own bison with with like a spear. You know, that's
that's crazy to think about right now. So yeah, I
mean twenty one hundred might be you know, I would
say twenty one you know, and who knows.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
There's so much uncertainty.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Involved with this, I'm just trying to illustrate the point
that you know, it's going to be a lot of time,
and it's gonna be that S curve where you know
it's good, the inflection is going to go up.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
We're going to make some really.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Seamless teams between AI, you know, wingman and aircraft, and
then maybe you know, twenty eighties or something, it's going
to be like, you know, we're gonna you know, there's
going to be our grandchildren are going to have this
conversation of like, you know, you're really not cutting it
as a as a pilot anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Maybe we can just get rid of you.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
But to think, you know, these tech companies are getting
billion dollar valuations saying that they can get rid of
fighter pilots in five years, that's that's not going to happen.
For example, F thirty five flu X thirty five flu
in two thousand and one, it didn't get IOC initial
operating capability till twenty seventeen. That's like sixteen year cycle.
(11:27):
I think the F twenty two was like a fifteen
year cycle. You know, the development for these aircraft is crazy.
It takes a really long time to be able to
do that, and like in the DoD, the decision cycles
to be able to change things is much slower. So
maybe maybe a company like Apple or Google or Tesla
could make a fighter in maybe twenty forty that can
(11:51):
replace the fighter pilot. But imagine you know, having to
go through the DoD and being able to go through
the bureaucracy and then being you know, seeing the last
you know, fighter pilot. You know, I would say, you know,
if I if I were to bet, I'd say, twenty
one hundred isn't isn't too bad?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, Yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
It'd be It'd be not unlike SpaceX coming in and
being like, hey, we're just going to build our own rockets,
you know, like you guys did all this over here.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
That's cool.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
We'll take what we know from that and just our
own perspective, you know, coming coming at it from a
completely different perspective rather than these career military people or
career like engineer government engineer people working on a project.
When you bring in a civilian sector side, they're just
going to look at it in a different way, and
you know, I don't know, maybe they will come in
with some crazy could you imagine at Tesla, what would
(12:42):
it look like, could be like an X wing fighter
or something like that, because they'll bes is a big NERD.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it would be it'd be great.
And that's I think. I think that's really where the
DD is headed. I think in it was really the
nineteen nineties that all the primes got you know, merged,
and we went from like thirty primes to like three.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Locked you mean, what do you mean by primes?
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Primes are like North of Grumman all these different air
all these different companies that made different aircraft. So there's
like thirty different aircraft manufacturers in the eighties and in
the nineties we consolidated to really three major primes like Lockeed, Boeing,
and North of Grummen. So basically, you know, you have
three different companies. Boeing specializes in the big planes, Locked
(13:30):
in the fighters, Northrop in the bombers, so you really
know where the contract's going. So compare that to the
civilian industry where you have you know, Apple, you have Google,
you have all these different companies competing. Same with the
car manufacturers. Competition is a great thing. And so I
think really the DoD recognized this at least in the
late two thousands, and they've been really trying to bring
(13:52):
in more civilian companies. That's that's what I was doing
with the Defense Innovation Unit. They're like, all right, we
have a lot of problems within the DoD. How do
we bridge that gap and just get civilian companies to
solve these problems for ten times cheaper. We don't need
a you know, million dollar toilet seat, Like, how do
we how do we get these guys to to just
do a commercial off the shelf type application. So I
(14:15):
absolutely think that that's the future. The difficulty is, you know,
classified stuff really stokes, stove pipes things, So yeah, that
makes it really difficult for you know, you know, just
an LLC to to go and try and you know
build a new missile or something like that.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, for sure, you like what you're talking about where
you're saying, like, how can we use this off the
shelf stuff and make it work? Because that's really how
we won like World War Two and these older wars
is because none of the stuff was like so crazy
technologically advanced, like a lot of a lot of this
stuff was just easy stuff like ay Ford can make
this pretty easily. Let's just have them, you know, let's
(14:55):
have them do it. And and I like what you're
talking about with the competition. You know, if we're talking
about the car side, you have your big, big car manufacturers,
you get your Forward, your GM and stuff like that,
but there's so many like little tiny car manufacturers in
the civilian market. Those aren't your only choices. You don't
have to go with one of those. So yeah, I
think that could only bring Again, it's all about perspectives.
(15:17):
If you're looking at defense stuff, you want to bring
in multiple perspectives because there may be a big something
that you're not seeing because you're you've only been looking
at it from one way. And you bring in a
smaller company that's one working in a different environment because
they may not have the fiscal abilities that a giant
corporation does, or they may have different kind of technologies
that they're working with. They may see something completely different
(15:39):
because of their perspective. So that's really good and it's
good to hear that the government and the military understands that,
and they're putting together like whatuld you call it the defense.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
What is it? The idea Defense Innovation Unit?
Speaker 1 (15:51):
What all did you guys work with in that.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Or what you could talk.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
We work with the physiological monitorings, so there's a whole
bunch of different programs going on and the
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