A panel of executives from four defense- and space-focused companies described what they see as near-term U.S. military priorities and the technologies and industrial capacity needed to meet them, emphasizing “scale,” autonomy, and production readiness as modern warfare evolves.
Shift toward attritable systems and autonomy
Benjamin Wolff, Chief Executive Officer of Palladyne AI (NASDAQ:PDYN), said the Pentagon’s “words of the day” are “low cost, economical, attritable weapons,” arguing that the U.S. is increasingly forced to pit expensive “exquisite” systems against cheaper threats. Wolff said his company is focused on swarming software for drones that enables “one soldier to be able to manage a fleet or swarm of drones,” not just to avoid collisions, but to allow autonomous, real-time collaboration through a mesh network that shares sensor data across nodes.
Threat environment: hypersonics, missile defense depletion, and “Golden Dome”
Phil De Sousa, Chief Financial Officer of Voyager Technologies, pointed to the emergence of hypersonic missiles in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and said the U.S. has experienced “a significant depletion” of missile defense stores over the past two years. He described replenishing those inventories as difficult because a supply chain built over decades is being asked to ramp over months.
De Sousa said Voyager is investing in capacity to support both existing and next-generation missile defense programs, citing the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) and “Golden Dome” missile defense initiatives. He said Voyager views missile defense opportunities tied to Golden Dome as about $2.8 billion in defense and national security potential, with about $2.0 billion representing opportunity for Voyager, and “half of that” tied to NGI, which he described as a program of record with Lockheed Martin. He added that next-generation efforts were underway before the Golden Dome branding, but said a new additive element is the concept of a space-based interceptor, which he said is seeing “a lot of activity” and “traction.”
Chris Donahue, President and CEO of Applied Energetics, framed Golden Dome as requiring “a whole of industry approach,” covering threats beyond missiles, including drones and hypersonics, and said scaling and “autonomy at the edge” are foundational to delivering such an integrated system.
Key technologies: edge intelligence, SIGINT processing, and scaled directed energy
Panelists returned repeatedly to two themes: scaling production and decentralizing command and control through autonomy. Wolff said scaling to “thousands of drones in the air” is infeasible with one-to-one human control, and argued that machine intelligence must reduce operator cognitive load so humans can focus on “go, no-go” decisions.
De Sousa highlighted signals intelligence and reconnaissance as critical, saying traditionally collected intelligence can become stale after being brought back and processed in secure facilities. He said Voyager has made “significant investments” in AI and machine learning to support edge processing and complement its SIGINT business.
Donahue said the U.S. administration narrowed critical technology areas from 14 to six, and that “scaled directed energy” remained on the list with an added emphasis on scalability. He argued the historical limitation of lasers has been deployable scale, and described Applied Energetics’ approach using an ultrashort-pulse laser architecture: a 100-watt laser divided into thousands of pulses compressed to trillionths of a second to generate peak power “measured in the billions of watts” inside electro-optic sensors. He said the system is designed to defeat sensors at a wide range of altitudes.
Government procurement: more private investment, later-stage funding, and proof in relevant environments
Wolff said the government is increasingly interested in companies investing their own dollars to develop capabilities and then selling solutions, with less appetite for reimbursable contracting models of past decades. He cautioned investors to look for evidence of real demand—such as R&D contracts, OTA activity, or small initial volumes—rather than rhetoric.
Donahue, who said he co-founded the nonprofit Silicon Valley Defense Group, described a shift in DoD innovation funding over the past decade from “tens of millions” to “billions,” but emphasized that funding tends to accelerate once technologies are proven in relevant environments. He contrasted shrinking early-stage research budgets (6.1 and 6.2) with much larger and growing funding pools at higher readiness levels (6.3 through 6.7), arguing the Pentagon is effectively outsourcing early-stage risk to private capital.
Wolff also warned that defense tech investing carries significant risk and said he believes the sector is in a “defense tech bubble,” predicting many venture-backed companies will not reach sustainable revenue.
Space as a defense domain: layered architectures, human presence, and early “space data center” steps
Wolff said Palladyne has an Air Force contract intended to demonstrate how its drone-based AI interfaces with a space-based sensor network, with the goal of adjusting drone mission parameters in real time based on satellite observations.
De Sousa argued for the strategic importance of human presence in orbit, citing China’s Tiangong space station and describing Voyager’s Starlab effort as intended to replace the International Space Station as a research environment. He also discussed early experimentation related to in-space computing, saying Voyager owns the Bishop Airlock on the ISS and has deployed a data center mounted on it to collect and process data at the edge, while cautioning that scalable monetization may not be immediate.
Chris Edmonds, Chief Financial Officer of Redwire, described space defense as a layered architecture across GEO, LEO, and VLEO, including Redwire’s SaberSat concept operating close to the Kármán line. He also said Redwire is monitoring the “space data center” concept and sees a potential role for its roll-out solar arrays as a power source, while noting challenges such as heat exchange.
In audience Q&A, the panel discussed missile interception geometry and the difficulty of midcourse engagement, noting current interceptor basing constraints and that the administration’s interest in space-based interceptors has become a notable element of the Golden Dome concept. The panel also touched on lunar opportunities, with De Sousa citing Voyager’s minority investment in Max Space related to inflatable habitats as a longer-term play.
About Palladyne AI (NASDAQ:PDYN)
Palladyne AI Corp., a software company, focuses on delivering software that enhances the utility and functionality of third-party stationary and mobile robotic systems in the United States. Its Artificial Intelligence (AI)/ Machine Learning (ML) software platform enables robots to observe, learn, reason, and act in structured and unstructured environments. The company's software platform enables robotic systems to perceive their environment and quickly adapt to changing circumstances by generalizing from their experience using dynamic real-time operations without extensive programming and with minimal robot training.
