4.6 • 12 Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2024
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
The Russia-Ukraine war has ushered in a new era of unmanned combat. Investors and the Pentagon are betting that AeroVironment can produce deadly drones at an industrial scale.
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0:00.0 | Here is your Forbes Daily Briefing for Monday, October 7th. |
0:05.0 | Today on Forbes, this US company is cashing in on Ukraine's war |
0:10.0 | with killer drones that fit in a backpack. |
0:14.0 | On a hot August morning in the foothills of the Santa Susanna Mountains north of Los Angeles, |
0:20.0 | Wahid Nawabi, the CEO of Dronemaker Aerovirment, is bouncing down a dirt road in a Chevy Traverse. |
0:27.8 | Somewhere in the skies overhead, one of his company's gull-winged Puma Electric Surveillance Plains is hunting Nwabi and a Forbes reporter |
0:35.8 | riding with him, and it's doing so quietly and autonomously. |
0:41.0 | The trim affable Nwabi shares the screen of a tablet computer that shows an aerial view of the |
0:46.4 | grassy canyon they're driving through, relayed from the Puma. |
0:50.8 | 1300 of these very small planes have been supplied to Ukraine for the price tag of |
0:55.2 | $318 million. |
0:58.2 | It uses computer vision to navigate, comparing landmarks to internal maps as it zeros in on a target it can |
1:04.9 | autonomously seek a tank rocket launcher or in this case a white SUV. |
1:10.0 | Their capabilities aerovirament deployed in Ukraine last year |
1:15.0 | to overcome Russian jamming of GPS signals and communications links. |
1:20.0 | Noabi, pointing to the vehicle the riding in, which now appears on the tablet display, |
1:24.8 | outlined in a white box, says, quote, look, it found us. |
1:30.8 | In the Russo-Ukraineian War, what might come next is a pinpoint strike from something else. |
1:35.8 | The deadly Switchblade, a weapon central to Nawabi's ambitions to make Aerovirment a multi-billion |
1:42.1 | dollar company in the next three to five years, |
1:45.0 | up from 717 million dollars in revenue in its fiscal 2024. Switchblade is a loitering munition, an expensive type of one-way kamikaze drone designed to circle the battlefield awaiting a good opportunity to obliterate its target. |
2:01.0 | Both the Russians and Ukrainians are using them in a war where |
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