INSIDE: the company building unmanned fighters

E10 - Blue Force Technologies
Mike and Tim chat with Andrew “Scar” Van Timmeren from Blue Force Technologies to hear about their experience in the defense tech sector and how they are trying to punch above their weight class-by building an unmanned fighter jet drone.
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Links
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Blue Force Technologies blueforcetech....
Scar’s LinkedIn / andrewvt
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Show Notes
(01:05) intro
(03:03) Scar intro
(05:52) BFT
(13:01) spicy take on digital engineering
(15:28) BFT's SBIR experience
(24:56) funding gaps
(25:47) valley of death
(34:47) end user vs. customer are not the same
(36:18) Fury
(37:35) practice squads
(43:27) mission-specific vs multi-role engineering
(46:30) autonomy and atrophy
(48:28) speed of business vs govt
(50:10) the ask - security and over-classification
(52:03) Mike's spicy take
(52:55) outro

[@devinjones1119]

Great interview. Love the channel and podcast. I will say Blue Force’s website doesn’t appear to be greatly optimized for mobile devices. There are scaling/figment issues when trying to view the site on a smart phone. Comment is intended to help as I hope their efforts are successful.

[@carlfischer4163]

PAKO your varity of guests and subjects never disappoint. Always enjoy. Thanks

[@pf_n1ps]

Congrats Andrew and BF. I look forward to perhaps learn more abt you guys in SAMPE? Very nice discussion guys.

[@kidcasco1966]

So awesome! I wish you talked about flight control and AI (subs and managing subs under the SBIR). It sounds Like Blue force is fundementally about structures.

[@gregm5585]

These pods never disappoint 🛩️

[@andrewgordon790]

Great interview!!! Thank you for this in depth information. Cheers 🍻

[@shanemitchell8278]

Great interview. Would love to see what the plane/drone is capable of with no squishy human to hold it back.

[@funnybike1740]

I would like to offer why not use high hour f16 engines that have been removed and can no longer be used for manned flight in aircraft like these. Also drones used in one way trips. Inspect them and if usable use them. They are costed out and if they have problems so what. Just a thought

[@peterboy209]

Take the X-31 to the next level (unmanned)... 👍

[@lcskibird8883]

What engine was selected? Careful not to make the 1st team obsolete.

[@crisppusa]

Robots can be beat.?

[@jimbaughman4005]

Good info!
good info!

[@RKW1138]

Did Blue Force Technologies take part in the DARPA AlphaDogfight trials back in 2020 or is Fury not an extension of the ACE program?

[@TheMergeMedia]

no, that was a software-simulated experiment. BFT is focused on the hardware to host the software