Autonomous Warfare: Dr. Rob Smith, COO of AV

The next frontier of warfare is not being fought by soldiers on a battlefield. It is being fought by autonomous systems that detect, decide, and deliver precision strikes across air, land, sea, space, and cyber, faster than any human can process. AV is one of the companies building that future. A two billion dollar public autonomous systems company, AV has secured a half billion dollar counter UAS award for its Locust laser weapon system, 137 million dollars in autonomous aircraft programs across the Army and Navy, and a growing portfolio of programs spanning loitering munitions, electronic warfare, cyber, space, and intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. Its Locust laser weapon system went 20 for 20 against advanced threats on the USS George Bush aircraft carrier and has achieved 100 percent success rates at White Sands. A new facility in Salt Lake City is being built to produce Switchblade loitering munitions at a scale capable of generating two billion dollars in revenue from that facility alone. And AV's partnership with NASA produced the first helicopter ever to fly on Mars. Dr. Rob Smith, AV's chief operating officer, is the leader bringing the operational discipline, manufacturing scale, and strategic rigor required to turn that innovation into a company targeting three and a half to four billion dollars in revenue by 2030.

On this episode of The Reboot Chronicles Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Rob Smith, COO of AV, to unpack how the defense procurement model is shifting from long cycle cost plus contracts to 30 day delivery expectations, why AV sits in a unique sweet spot between trusted defense prime and high velocity disruptor, what it takes to build autonomous systems that work 100 percent of the time in the most demanding environments on earth, how AI is reshaping battlefield decision making, and what happened when Rob Smith got a job at Lockheed he had no business getting on paper and used it as the defining leadership reboot of his career.