Beyond the Sky: Counter-UAS Tech, Interagency Coordination, and the Preparedness Gap with Brett Feddersen

Brett, that was a really great overlay of what you guys are doing at Defense Solutions and what the results are.

And one of the things, of course, that we are always interested in at Q2 Impact is interagency coordination and training.

So when it comes to that interagency coordination piece, You know, is the training keeping pace with the threat? Is it lagging? You know, and where do warfighters and operators most often fall short when they're actually implementing mitigation activities?

Yeah, so excellent question.

I will give kudos to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who took a concept of a training course and within eight months actually had one on the ground physically training state and local law enforcement.

That's light speed in the government's efforts to do anything from concept to actual production in that time frame.

I will say there is a pipeline choke point, though.

We have over 18,000 law enforcement departments in the country.

Obviously, our country is extremely large.

And if we want to get to the vision and goal of integrating drones that can safely operate across our communities, but still be able to protect the communities from those nefarious actors or those drone threats, then the pipeline must open up much faster than what it currently is.

It's limited by instructor size and system availability within the Department of Justice.

It can be expedited and opened up the pipeline through several different means, whether it's taking the curriculum and opening up satellite campuses or accrediting vendors, you know, training schools out there that are already training law enforcement.

to help teach the class and maintain oversight over it.

But we have been asking Congress simply to fund the schoolhouse, enable the FBI to increase their amount of instructors and the equipment that's available so that the pipeline can grow and actually kind of get the assessment piece through.

They did a great job For the World Cup, they actually trained 60 officers at the schoolhouse ahead of the World Cup.

But again, the threat hasn't been satiated across the country, right? So we need to be able to train our local law enforcement who can actually impact the threat at local levels without having to kind of have a bureaucratic arm over top of them.

And do the mother may I piece if they're trained by the FBI or the curriculum that the FBI has or trained through DHS schoolhouse or, you know, then they get the vendor training specific to the equipment that they buy.

Then I think we're moving in the right direction.

But that pipeline for training has to keep up.

One of the challenges the industry has is staying ahead of the drone threat.

We've been, I don't want to say lucky, it's definitely been a deliberate process for companies to identify what the next emerging threats are in both conflict zones or in criminal networks like cartels and making sure that the systems adapt to that.

We've been able to do that quite well.

I think it's one of the reasons that defend is positioned as a leader in the industry when it comes to that.

But you also need to make sure that that education goes with the technology and kind of permeates its way down to those officers.

So the need for recurrent training will be there.

Brett, that was a really great overlay of what you guys are doing at Defense Solutions and what the results are.

And one of the things, of course, that we are always interested in at Q2 Impact is interagency coordination and training.

So when it comes to that interagency coordination piece, You know, is the training keeping pace with the threat? Is it lagging? You know, and where do warfighters and operators most often fall short when they're actually implementing mitigation activities?

Yeah, so excellent question.

I will give kudos to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who took a concept of a training course and within eight months actually had one on the ground physically training state and local law enforcement.

That's light speed in the government's efforts to do anything from concept to actual production in that time frame.

I will say there is a pipeline choke point, though.

We have over 18,000 law enforcement departments in the country.

Obviously, our country is extremely large.

And if we want to get to the vision and goal of integrating drones that can safely operate across our communities, but still be able to protect the communities from those nefarious actors or those drone threats, then the pipeline must open up much faster than what it currently is.

It's limited by instructor size and system availability within the Department of Justice.

It can be expedited and opened up the pipeline through several different means, whether it's taking the curriculum and opening up satellite campuses or accrediting vendors, you know, training schools out there that are already training law enforcement.

to help teach the class and maintain oversight over it.

But we have been asking Congress simply to fund the schoolhouse, enable the FBI to increase their amount of instructors and the equipment that's available so that the pipeline can grow and actually kind of get the assessment piece through.

They did a great job For the World Cup, they actually trained 60 officers at the schoolhouse ahead of the World Cup.

But again, the threat hasn't been satiated across the country, right? So we need to be able to train our local law enforcement who can actually impact the threat at local levels without having to kind of have a bureaucratic arm over top of them.

And do the mother may I piece if they're trained by the FBI or the curriculum that the FBI has or trained through DHS schoolhouse or, you know, then they get the vendor training specific to the equipment that they buy.

Then I think we're moving in the right direction.

But that pipeline for training has to keep up.

One of the challenges the industry has is staying ahead of the drone threat.

We've been, I don't want to say lucky, it's definitely been a deliberate process for companies to identify what the next emerging threats are in both conflict zones or in criminal networks like cartels and making sure that the systems adapt to that.

We've been able to do that quite well.

I think it's one of the reasons that defend is positioned as a leader in the industry when it comes to that.

But you also need to make sure that that education goes with the technology and kind of permeates its way down to those officers.

So the need for recurrent training will be there.