In December, the Defense Department issued a request forinformation to gauge the defense industry's ability to develop more than 300,000 drones "quickly and inexpensively" by 2027.

Over the next year, the Department plans on spending up to$1 billion to fulfill their need to acquire a large number of the "very best of low-cost American-made drones," according to a December 2025 press release.

On this episode of the Aerospace & Defense TechnologyPodcast, we learn about a new tool that could help manufacturers optimize the way they design and create new drones. Austin Spiegel, CTO of Sift, is the guest on this episode to explain how their "unified observability platform" to explain how drone manufacturers can leverage their platformto optimize their design, validation, manufacturing and overall engineering processes from prototype to operations.