 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. It is a noon hour on Thursday, folks. Ted Rolston here at downtown Honolulu, overlooking Waimanala Beach, actually, with our Think Tech Hawaii studio. With our show, Where the Drone Leads, where we bring to our trusted public and our audience. We bring stories and information and developments taking place in the world of drones. And that's why the show is called Where the Drone Leads because the drone and its utility, its capabilities can lead us in all kinds of directions. And today, speaking of directions, we have a guy who's actually pulled off the road somewhere in Southeast United States. We have Mac McKevitch with us here from Instant Eye Robotics, manufacturers of the Marine Corps standard small UAS and products that are used by others as well. Mac, first time on the show. Thanks for pulling off the road, so we don't have a traffic hazard situation here and we caught you in between assignments, but thanks for joining us. Mac, welcome on the show. Well, I appreciate you having me, and I'm glad to be here. Okay, I wish we could actually see your mouth moving, a lot of things, but we'll assume that's what's actually taking place. We see a static picture of you here. Maybe in the future sometime, we can actually get you on the show because our folks out here in the Pacific are using your systems and have used them before and will be using them more in the future. So we need to get you out here, I think, and actually sit at this table so we have the actual persona and the voice at the same time. Anyway, Mac is the Director of Tactical Operations at PSI Robotics or Instant Eye Robotics is now the name of the section of the company out of Andover, Massachusetts, that makes an extremely competent and capable set, family set of small UAS that are useful at the squad level, platoon level, even the company level, and maybe individual soldier level. So Mac, you've been watching this grow for some time from the initial technology that PSI brought together to where you are now, and now is with the Marine Corps having ordered some humongous number of these UASs, one for every squad. Exactly how will the Marine Corps take this system on board and how will it turn it into mission functions within the Corps, Mac, how will that occur? Well, the way that I understand it by working with PMA 263 is they're gonna integrate the Mark II Gen III Alpha Zero into the squads. Similar to the way the Army is integrating the Mark II Gen IV Echo Zero, there's similar projects called the Squad ISR Project. And what they're trying to do is get that ISR capability out to the tactical ledge so that it can control ISR effects. It's no longer an effect that has to be controlled by a field grade officer or a company grade officer. So we're pushing that low cost, reliable ISR down to that tactical ledge. And both the Marine Corps and the Army are doing it. The Marine Corps is just moving a little bit faster at this point. That's interesting. So let me just interpret that for some of the audience who might not be familiar with the ISR operational terms, but you said about three major transitions in how ISR is being managed in that one short paragraph of statement. First of all, for our audience, this is what Mac's talking about. This is a Gen III Instini Gen III system with a three camera head on it. And it's adaptable to several different payloads that work from electro optical principles and other forms of infrared and near-infrared sensing. So we got a fairly competent sensor package on a small man-packable pound-and-a-half unmanned air system, the Gen III that Mac's referring to. But what you said that was really interesting is the role of collecting information, ISR, which stands for intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance information. Moving that from a central command function out to the tactical edge, that is the people who actually need the information, the people working task forces or teams deployed, they're the ones who need the information that addresses what's going on in their particular area. And so what you're talking about is that transition from where a central organization had to manage that now to where the unit itself has the capability of managing the ISR that affects its operations. That's a major transition. It is, it's a major transition, Ted. It's a paradigm shift from keeping, from having a very expensive, high-flying asset, and now you're pulling something down at the squad and platoon level, whether that be a special operations element or a conventional force, it's huge. With the advances in technology we're making between where and our 10x camera and integration with different video players such as ATAC or tactical video viewer, it's really moving forward fast. So this is actually the social effects of this within the squad platoon company structure is gonna be interesting because now the squad or the platoon is gonna have a level of information and a frequency of update of that information that they'd never seen before. So somehow the operational elements that are gonna consume and use this information as best they can to their own needs still have to relay that back to a more central orientation so that the company level knows what's going on. So there's a information management function that has to go along with this new capability that's now in the hands of the people at the front. So training, Mac, getting people to think of how to run this kind of a new dynamic environment is gonna be an interesting challenge, isn't it? It is, it's just gonna be a shift in the way they currently do things. So with the advent of the mobile ad hoc network or the MANA, it's easy to capture large amounts of information at the squad and platoon level and push that back and using a MANA such as NW2C, which is like, consider that like a broadband dial up or a broader band algorithm such as TSMX, which would be like your high speed DSL, you can push those products from the tactical edge back to the decision makers. And those waveforms or algorithms will be resident in the computers and radios at the tactical edge. So that's what's gonna support that back call of information to the decision makers. So once again, decoding that very structured and complex message, the ability to collect information at the front, at the edge by a really competent system such as this has to be matched by a communication system that can get that information to be consumed locally at the squad or platoon level, but also conveyed back to wherever central decisions are being made. So there's a communications framework and a communication structure required to support this new form of collecting information. So we've got the J6s of the world have something to cheer about here as well because now they're having to think about new communications protocols and such, which means there's gonna be needs to think about communications in a denied environment in a jammed environment. The whole picture of how the battlefield communications is taking place is gonna be altered by the ability to generate the essential information at the front, at the edge, at the tactical edge rather than through a central operation like it has been before. So to me, this is just fascinating that we're moving in that direction. And maybe it's a copy of what's taking place in society in general with the use of cell phones and the use of, I mean, a phone isn't a phone anymore. It's a computer, it's a sensor network, it's a memory box, it's everything. And so this dynamic environment, which is gonna result in higher level of information, serving the users faster and better, we now have to figure out how to make decisions based on that because the decision-making process we are used to doesn't quite anticipate that level of rapidity or that level of local collection and consumption of information. So we've got some, this is interesting, Mac, and I just really enjoy talking to you on this issue because it's gotta be such a high value, but there's so many dimensions to it that capturing it and figuring out which one to go with first to get the maximum effect out of this is quite a challenge. All brought about by drones that you guys invented at PSI. Ted, what I'd like to do is I'd like to hit back on the point you were hitting just a little bit earlier. And I can tell you from my personal experience being retired and a special operator, I can remember taking pictures with a 35 millimeter camera in the woods at night and developing film and pushing that back for exploitation. And then fast forward a little bit, we have computers and we have digital cameras. And now we have our quadrotor V2List UAF is collecting that actionable intelligence right there, tactical edge. And what we're trying to do is when we're trying to embed, wait, not trying, we are embedding our aircraft into those architecture nodes of the future. So the gen four you have there in the counter with you is capable of entering a mobile ad hoc network so it can be communications relay or push information out over that. So that's a really important point. In addition to the sensors that we think of and typically people think of cameras or maybe IR sensors or something like that, something like this, the gen four that you bring up, it can carry a lot of payload. This is the light lifter or a pound and a half or two pounds and the heavy lifter will carry four. That's a lot of capability in the electronics world. So in terms of radio relays, bent pipes, different types of sensor mechanisms, the domain of the sensors increases quite a bit by the ability now created for us to carry those kinds of payloads and the endurance of 15 minutes, 30 minutes is getting up there where these things become an essential part of the communications network. So like you said, you mentioned 35 millimeters and developing it in the woods and sending the hard copy back. Well, we've come a long way and it kind of makes you wonder how much fodder can it go in terms of the technology injection into this game? And it's interesting, again, something like these particular drones right here have inspired that need for the technical management of the information and then of course the social management of it and the decision making. So I just wonder, Mac, if you think the ability to make decisions, the cognition process, this sort of thing, is that catching up and keeping up with the ability of these central networks to operate? I do, I do. It's just, it's management of information. So it's the operator or the soldier, the airman of the Marines ability to turn on or turn off what he needs to hear or see at a certain point in time to affect that decision making loop. So if his quest at that point is a visual cue, then he can go to an end user device such as a droid or an iPhone and consume that data, who satisfied one part of his decision making loop and then maybe go to an audio piece where he's talking to somebody. So a lot of it is teaching our younger soldiers and our younger leaders how to consume data in this new environment. And it can be challenging, but you can do it. That's really cool. And we work in the humanitarian assistance disaster relief domain quite a bit here at the University of Hawaii Applied Research Lab. We're a URK, a Navy URK dealing with Pacific Command. And the same issues you're talking about, the collecting of information, the management of it and the decision making that comes from it apply in the world of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief as well. We have sea level rise, we have the temperature rise, we have the effects of that on agriculture and on how a culture has to think about its own territory as those territories get smaller. So there's the same issue of collecting information about your environment. In this case, it's not necessarily a combat environment, but it's a dynamic environment nevertheless. And getting that information consumed locally, as well as at the big decision making centers somewhere remote in the rear area, that applies commonly in both. So it's really interesting in the sense that the same systems, the same sensors, the same communication networks, even the same expression products and the same decision making can apply in both. So to us, it's fascinating to see both of those play out. And of course, there's the domain of force protection, which is sort of in between. We've done some work with your products and the PAC Fleet folks here in terms of man overboard discovery. We've done some work with marine debris and torpedo recovery and such. So what you're doing at the tactical level also has applications in these support areas and in the humanitarian area. So let's talk a little bit more about that after we get back from our one minute break. Crazy world, so far up in the confusion, nothing is making sense. We're back folks. Ted Rawlson here and Mack. Let me pronounce that last name right, Mack. Mackovitz, that close enough? It's pretty close, right, Mack? Yep, sure it is. Right, okay, of Instani Robotics standing by at a truck stop at somewhere in the southeast. You figure out what state you're in? Mack, we got you? Yep, I'm here. Okay, good enough. Anyway, so Mack's first time around the show, director of tactical operations for Instani Robotics who have been developing the cutting edge of information gathering for the Army and the Marine Corps and other services as well. They're using drone and STEM-based robotics. And that is, we're just talking before the break about how the occurrence and the capability of these small systems is changing the social flow of information and the way information managed in the tactical arena. And it certainly is gonna be changing it if it hasn't already in the firefighting arena, in the public safety arena, and the humanitarian support because these same systems and the same methods of using their information can be commonly shared and developed in both. So Mack, in your work with the customers, how would you take an idea you might have and convey that to the customer and then have them react to that and tell you what they really need? I mean, developing missions for these systems is a very important part. We can't have the technology get out ahead of the mission. How do you keep that all tied together? It's quite dynamic, depending on the audience you're talking to, whether it be New York City Fire Department when you're talking to them about how to use an incident to size up a situation, whether that be hazmat or a high-rise building on fire to protect the first-in-engine company. You're speaking with Customs and Border Patrol about how they protect the Southwest sector or serve a high-risk warrant and how do we apply to their mission set to a national mission force to a conventional force from doing base security in Iraq to doing force protection in North Africa. You just have to sit and listen, talking to the customer or the end user and then take all those words and put them into how the incident works and how we can weave that into their mission set or their use case scenario. Okay, well, we'll have an opportunity next week. Next week is the Pacific Command Science and Technology Conference and there'll be a lot of folks coming by and at UH we have several of the systems that come from you and what we'll be doing is working with the customers coming by and talking about what their needs are exactly as you said. And then we have to take the next step. Okay, now if we have a function that needs a new payload we'll have to figure out what that payload sensor set might be, how the information is collected, how it's recorded, how it's transmitted and we'll be doing a lot of that. So what I see coming out of this continued activity if we are successful at it is projects that the students in the engineering department and the other aspects of the university can pick up and turn into payloads, turn into mission management functions that serve these missions. So we'll be doing I hope in our best way the same thing you're doing back with the folks at Fort Bragg and such and by the way, I think you might have had a discussion with Boston Police a couple of weeks ago and we do need the phone number of the folks at Boston to connect with our folks here in Honolulu Police Department. So we'll stand by for that information from you. So you have a chance to interact with these users and customers and you have a chance to go out and show them what has been developed to work their problem. I would just enjoy from a distance what you must be getting into you coming up with pretty creative ideas that these guys are having and then you get a chance to turn them into something that might look like it's close to their solution and then they must take it the next step as they do testing. So you're in this continual feedback loop and very dynamic because things can be changed so quickly at this scale. Absolutely, yes. And you hit the nail on the head a little bit earlier. Academia is key. Physical sciences and INSC and I more importantly at this point, it's a very, very analytical organization. We have brilliant engineers from our mechanical engineers to our electrical engineers to the management. The people are just brilliant and their ability to take herbal input and turn it into a payload or turn it into a product that the guys can use. I've never seen that before in the industry and they're quite responsive. Right now it's matching requirements to where we're going with the aircraft and that's the big thing right now. There's a lot of requirements out there and we have to match them up to where the aircraft are going and the big place we're going with the aircraft is our all digital fleet and we kicked that off with our soldier-borne sensor and that went through testing last week and that's a really capable little aircraft. The cool thing about that aircraft is we're gonna retrograde the capabilities of that back into our gen four and our gen three. So what you'll be seeing is aircraft that are AES-256 encrypted with video and C2, you're gonna see your waypoint navigation, your GPS denied, you're gonna see reduced signature. By that I mean quieter aircraft. There's a whole bunch of advances that are gonna be coming out this summer, early fall that's really gonna blow away the user community. So what you're gonna do is take that basically all digital capability and back feed it into this gen three and this gen four which there'll be obviously a reduction in power consumption. There'll be an increase in reliability, increase in functionality and capability all tied together with that digital framework and that'll improve the communication range and it'll improve the video range. So what we'll see is a major step in capability going forward that then the customers will quickly consume and turn into some advantage that they see. And now we're starting to talk about beyond line of sight, we're talking about night ops, we're talking about things that are truly opened up by that digital and technical capability. So now we have another step in the game of taking that capability increase and turning that into mission value and ultimately into save lives or faster operations lower cost operations, higher reliability, team operations that these things are interesting in terms of what values come from this technology. And again, I go back to your great analogy, 35 millimeter taking the pictures and then printing them into forest and sending back the hard copy all the way to where we are now. So the answer to the question I asked while we're gonna go next, you answered it. We're gonna go with a digital basic framework and increase the total capability by that incorporation. Absolutely. And some of the key points is that the guys are working on right now. And again, I can't compliment our engineering staff enough. Those guys do Yeoman's work and over 50, 60, 70 hour weeks and that's not necessarily just on the Department of Defense side. It's on the first responder side or the law enforcement side. They're, we're very reactive. So somebody advances that we really have to push out between now and the fall will be that true GPS and non GPS flight ES 256 encryption, completely digital aircraft. And then our aircraft are gonna be full-time ELI-R. By then, I mean, traditionally, on the aircraft you have there on a table with you, there's three cameras, organic cameras, the aircraft that we consider flight cameras. You have a forward look and a 45 and a straight down. That complete pod is gonna be replaced with a two-camera pod. And it'll have a 13 megapixel EO camera and then a lepton 165 120. And it'll be coaxing Gimbald. And so the user will be able to consume video. He'll be able to take stills, high definition stills. He can set a complete waypoint mission that the aircraft can fly. And the key selling point on top of all of that is our all weather capability. So we don't care about wind, rain, snow, dust, doesn't matter. Our three and our four, you know, they can hang out and winds excess of 30 miles an hour. Our gen five, the little guy, he can hang out and winds around about 20 miles an hour. So we have really robust aircraft that don't care about environmental too much. And now we're throwing a whole bunch of added capability in there. You certainly are. I mean, I was been involved with this and I for about five years, as have you. And the changes were stretched out a bit initially. They come together pretty quickly. And then when something like this electronic package comes in, that is such a wholesale change in capability it needs the younger people, not people like me to get in there and actually capitalize on that. But what we're talking about, what you're telling me is that we're gonna be changing this camera package on here and replacing that by a two hole camera as opposed to a three bore and have increased capability at the same time as well as the encryption and the heavy duty backhaul to some central location. So once again, a lot of change. And that's important for me to know about when we talk to our customers next week at Pacific Command in terms of what missions they might envision and how we can turn those missions or those desires they have into operations. Let's talk about one that we heard of about two weeks ago. Underway inspection. Vessels, naval vessels have to reduce speed to zero, take some time, get out of formation, lose position and then put a guy in a bus and chair and get them all off to go do inspection of structure or electronic systems, whatever they may be. If we can take, if we can use this system as you described with the electronic all digital framework and perform the inspection underway without having to break the ship down to zero speed, maybe aim it into the wind as you might think or reduce speed somewhat, but keep going, keep trucking, keep moving and get the inspection done without putting a man up at a loft and get the same information, what a value that would be. I never thought about that, but Daz and Bray mentioned that to us a couple of weeks ago when he was stopping by here. So let's take that on as an example. How would we then take that particular mission need and convert that into a test or convert that into a modification we might need to actually go perform that? Well, Ted, that's a very good point. And I have a soft spot in my heart for Navy because my father-in-law started that on diesel subs back in the 50s. So I empathize with keeping formation, staying on asthma and keeping the boats underway. So the key thing right here that you're talking about is making sure that the vessel doesn't have to change its current mission to perform an inspection and we can do that. We've already flown off Coast Guard cutters, ribs. We've flown off of the hard deck of an SDV so the SEALs can do a beach reconnaissance. So the boat can maintain speed and course and direction and formation. You just have to launch it into the wind and you get up and once you get up there, you can look at everything you need to do and you can bring you now, currently with the gen four you can bring that right back down to the back deck, the aft deck of the boat and take that imagery with our... When we go to the digital one, once everything is digital you not only will have video of what you just flew of the mass section or whatever you're trying to look at on a vessel, you will have those high definition stills. Each of those stills is you can review them in flight. So if the boat's underway and the aircraft is up there and you're taking picture of suspected damage, you can do picture within a picture during flight to see if you've got the appropriate picture so the technicians can make the appropriate assessment to what damage if any there is. So we're on the threshold of getting that capability and that'll be coming this year. What we'll do next week is collect as many ideas as we can from the users, let them be as open-minded and as wildly thinking as they can with holding these two things in their hand, what would they want to do with it? And we'll make a list and bring them all together and we'll sit on then later on, Mac and figure how we're going to attack them. We'll have a Mac attack on these problems. So Mac, thanks a lot for coming on the show. We have run to the end of our time and the first time around the show, thanks a lot for coming in from the truck stop in somewhere North Carolina or someplace and thanks for taking time out from work to talk to us here. Very important information for us as we get ready for the Science and Technology Conference next week and folks, we'll see you next Thursday.