How intelligent, modular power enables defense and emergency-response missions at the edge
Guest: Sascha Dainat – Chief Revenue Officer, BKPK Power
Power is rarely the mission, but nearly every modern mission depends on it. Sascha Dainat joins Callye Keen to explain how BKPK is turning disconnected generators and batteries into an intelligent, modular system that teams can plan, monitor, scale, and adapt in real time.
Topics
- Expeditionary power as mission infrastructure
- Modular power for vehicles, camps, emergency response, and fixed sites
- Software, AI, and mission-level power orchestration
- Battery safety, transport compliance, and UN 38.3 certification
- Partnerships, cybersecurity, field validation, and production scale
Takeaways
- Better power infrastructure extends missions, reduces logistics burdens, and enables critical equipment at the edge.
- A modular platform can support a mobile team, scale into a forward camp, or provide backup power at a fixed site.
- Software-defined power gives operators a common picture of demand, capacity, priority loads, connected equipment, and system health.
- Compliance must shape the product from the beginning. BKPK designed around lithium transport limits, manageable pack weight, LFP chemistry, and certification.
- Power usually enables another system, making partnerships central to defense go-to-market.
- Power data can reveal equipment use and unauthorized devices, creating value for operational awareness and cybersecurity.
- Complex hardware should be designed for repeatable production before field demand reaches hundreds or thousands of units.
Timestamped Highlights
[00:01] - Expeditionary and software-defined power
[02:43] - Why power is boring until it isn’t
[03:30] - Fragmented power at a counter-UAS exercise
[05:08] - Treating deployed power as a system
[06:43] - Portability, output, modularity, and scale
[08:45] - Engineering and compliance barriers
[09:46] - Focus in defense and emergency response
[10:25] - Designing a transportable 4 kWh pack
[11:20] - UN 38.3 certification and LFP safety
[12:22] - Partnerships as a go-to-market strategy
[14:48] - Where AI fits into power systems
[16:30] - Planning missions with Orchestrator
[17:46] - Monitoring and analyzing power use
[19:15] - Connected-device visibility and security
[20:12] - Protecting physical and digital interfaces
[23:04] - Designing for mass production
[24:05] - Field validation with firefighters and defense partners
Resources & Links
Connect
“Power is boring until it isn’t.”
Subscribe to The Startup Defense for candid conversations with the founders, operators, and builders turning emerging technology into fieldable defense capabilities.
