We didn’t get enough out of him the first time round, so Karl is back to dive a bit deeper into the challenges and opportunities around the FPV capability. And not least how FPV racing can support a lot of the lines of development required by militaries to successfully adopt this emerging technology.

In a wide ranging conversation, we get down into the weeds of how defence needs to develop skills and competencies, whilst exploring the real world capabilities of FPV drones. We also discuss recruitment, and explore how this technology might affect future orbats for fighting forces.

Naturally, some push back can be expected to any new technology. Karl discusses some of the objections commonly shared in this field, as well as the arguments to combat them.

What is clear is that the technology can’t be ignored, but there is a lot of work to be done to understand how best to employ this capability. What is fascinating is the sport of FPV drone racing has a lot of synergies to what defence is trying to do in this space, not least as a mechanism to drive understanding, showcase operational capability and foster the skills and experience that will be vital for successful deployment.

• Tom Constable: www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ 
• Colin Hillier: www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/

• Karl Eze: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karl-eze/

• MIDRT: https://www.midrt.com/
• Website: www.warfighterpodcast.com/
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/
• YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtg
• Twitter: twitter.com/WarfighterPod

The Military International Drone Racing Tournament (MIDRT) 2024 is a major event in London from September 16-20, bringing together military personnel skilled in first-person view (FPV) drone racing. The event includes a tournament, conference, exhibition, and hackathon, attracting top experts in UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) technology. It serves as a platform for allied military forces, industry leaders, and innovators to exchange ideas on the future of battlefield drone applications. MIDRT aims to advance military drone racing and small-UxS technology.

The Warfighter Podcast is back for very special mini-season looking at FPV (First Person View) drones and their impact in the modern battlefield.

Even the most casual observer of recent conflicts will be aware of the impact that low-cost, consumer drones and home-built FPVs have been making across conflict zones. It’s likely that their impact is here to stay and militaries are mobilising for the use of these drones, as well as working out how to counter them.

Karl Eze formally served with the British Army and is now the founder of a company that specialises in the development and deployment of unmanned systems.

Karl provides a background to the evolution of FPV drones and discusses how the skills and capabilities are being developed through drone racing, and events such as MIDRT - Military International Drone Racing Tournament, which is being held in London this month.

We cover as much as we can is a short period, as the evolution of FPV drones is clearly a fascinating area, which we hope to uncover over the next couple of episodes.

• Tom Constable: www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ 
• Colin Hillier: www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/

• Karl Eze: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karl-eze/

• MIDRT: https://www.midrt.com/
• Website: www.warfighterpodcast.com/
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/
• YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtg
• Twitter: twitter.com/WarfighterPod

The Military International Drone Racing Tournament (MIDRT) 2024 is a major event in London from September 16-20, bringing together military personnel, skilled in first-person view (FPV) drone racing. The event includes a tournament, mini-conference and exhibition, attracting top experts in UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) technology. It serves as a platform for allied military forces, industry leaders, and innovators to exchange ideas on the future of battlefield drone applications. MIDRT aims to advance military drone racing as a vehicle to train remote pilots and enhance STEM knowledge.

Email: [email protected]

We are pleased to invite two heavyweight guests for our final episode of the season.

Coming out of the shadows, we speak to Matt Chuter - our sponsor at Babcock. We were keen to learn more about how the latest evolutions in the battlefield are shaping the Crucible Teams thinking about the future design for Army collective training. 

Matt also reflected on some of his personal highlights from this season, including Jenny McArdle on the future of Land Training, Andy Gales discussing TES, and Ethan Wilson on the Grey Zone. (Links to the episodes below)

And who better to invite back than Col Arnel David. Now in a new post, and overachieve as per usual, we were keen to hear about his latest challenge and works.

The discussion is wide ranging, and we couldn’t do the subject of his PhD justice in a short time, but we do cover the following:

• Exploration of ‘Prototyping Warfare’ and its benefits over traditional strategies.
• The impact of clinging to comfortable but outdated assumptions on military effectiveness.
• How militaries cling to comfortable assumptions.
• How do we make a case for change in the absence of a significant credible threat?
• What role government procurement plays in facilitating the rapid conversion of new ideas into capabilities.
• Key recommendations for military leaders and policymakers to ensure their strategies are adaptable and effective in a fast-changing strategic landscape.

We suggest listening to this on ¾ or ½ speed, as Col Arnel likes to talk at the speed of his thinking!

• Tom Constable: www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ 
• Colin Hillier: www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/

• Col Arnel David: www.linkedin.com/in/arnel-david/
• Matt Chuter: www.linkedin.com/in/matt-chuter-7bb1878/

• Episode with Jenny McArdle: www.warfighterpodcast.com/s2-e1-the-future-of-land-training/
• Episode with Andy Gales: www.warfighterpodcast.com/s2-e8-tesmiles-definitely-not-laser-tag/
• Episode with Ethan Wilson: www.warfighterpodcast.com/s2-e9-grey-zone-conflict/
• Website: www.warfighterpodcast.com/
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/
• YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtg
• Twitter: twitter.com/WarfighterPod

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it’s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

Strap in. For our penultimate episode of the season we tackle what might seem like a simple question, but proves to be expansive - What does it mean to deliver realism in Training? 

We are joined by Anthony Pittman who, as well having a lengthy service in the British Army where he lived and breathed training, is currently the Director for Development & Optimisation at Babcock.

Always a contentious subject, (which we’re sure is the start of some mess brawls), we don’t hold back from the difficult questions. Anthony deals with each point elegantly, tackling diverse subjects such as:

• What is Realism anyway?
• Is there an optimum level for Realism?
• Could we cope with greater Realism?
• Doesn’t adding Realism always cost more money?
• Do we have enough scientific rigour to understand training effectiveness vs Realism?

We knew 40 minutes wouldn’t be enough for this subject, so no doubt we will return to it in the future. Anthony wraps up the discussion with his vision for what improved realism means for the future of collective training.

Excellent food for thought and very topical with all the work going on in this area at the moment.

• Tom Constable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ 
• Colin Hillier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/

• Anthony Pittman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajpittman/

• Website: https://www.warfighterpodcast.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtg
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WarfighterPod

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it’s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

We’re coming back to our favourite topic - how do we get innovative ideas off the ground and into the market for exploitation by the frontline. In past episodes we’ve discussed the ‘Valley of Death’ and the challenge described in the book ‘Crossing the Chasm’.

This episode we speak to Owen Thompson, who deals with this every day in his role as CEO at Cambridge Future Tech - a Venture Builder that works with deep-tech startups across diverse markets. Owen has had two successful careers to date: Firstly as a Typhoon pilot for the Royal Air Force and then appointed to senior positions in a leading defence prime when he left the forces.. So he brings a unique perspective for defence centric technologies.

The capital markets for startups have historically been slightly allergic to funding defence startups, but with the realisation that sustainability is closely related to security, attitudes are changing. We see this with investments in companies like Palantir and Anduril which have the potential to create huge change in the Defence industry.

In what becomes a wide ranging discussion, Owen talks about his experience with new technology startups trying to make a difference in Defence, how they met these challenges and potential routes for funding and getting innovation to the users through the commercial maze that government procurement often is.

• Tom Constable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ 
• Colin Hillier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/

• Owen Thompson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/o-thompson/

• Website: https://www.warfighterpodcast.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtg
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WarfighterPod

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it’s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

This week the Warfighter Podcast takes a small tangent - it’s not all running around with a dagger between our teeth. We are pleased to welcome Sae Schatz, who has an extremely diverse career so far, formerly serving as the Director of the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative, a published author and expert in learning sciences.

Before joining the civil service in 2015, Sae worked as an applied human–systems scientist, with an emphasis on human cognition and learning, instructional technologies, adaptive systems, human performance assessment, and modelling and simulation.

Whilst we’ve discussed platforms previously, this episode it’s all about the learning ecosystem - how we can start to develop it and foster improved collaboration across learning communities.

Sae offers a challenging vision for what might be possible, demonstrating a number of areas which are yet to be fully exploited across the learning community. Not just a theorist, she leaves us with some practical examples of how we start to develop this vision, with a discussion around the common challenges for organisations and how we need to think differently about how individuals learn most effectively.

Plenty of food for thought and some very relevant points for many of our listeners. Thanks for coming on the podcast Sae!

• Tom Constable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ 
• Colin Hillier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/

Sae Schatz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saeschatz

• IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC): https://sagroups.ieee.org/ltsc
• IEEE ICICLE (Learning Engineering): https://www.ieeeicicle.org
• Modernizing Learning book: https://adlnet.gov/publications/2019/04/modernizing-learning
• Engines of Engagement book: https://bit.ly/EnginesOfEngagement

• Website: https://www.warfighterpodcast.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtg
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WarfighterPod

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it’s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

Yet another guest that we’ve been dying to get on since last season. We are pleased to welcome Ethan to the podcast to talk about the work he’s been involved in to understand and model the ‘grey zone’ in modern warfare. Ethan previously served as an Intel Analyst with the US Navy, and now works for Plexsys Interface Products, supporting the simulation and modelling of complex environments.

Defined as ‘activities by a state that are harmful to another state and are sometimes considered to be acts of war, but are not legally acts of war’, this subject proves to be both fascinating and broad ranging.

We start by discussing the challenge of conducting multi-domain training, especially the space components and the exponential nature of the problem, which in turn presents computational and processing challenges.

The discussion turns to the rapidly evolving nature of warfare, with most recent conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, especially the prevalence of low cost drones and persistent surveillance.

While we don’t come to any firm conclusions, the discussion proves how much we have yet to do, and how quickly we might need to develop training systems in the near future to prepare for these emerging threats.

• Tom Constable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ 
• Colin Hillier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/

• Ethan Wilson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanwwilson/

• Website: https://www.warfighterpodcast.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtg
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WarfighterPod

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it’s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

On a subject we’ve wanted to cover for a while, we are pleased to welcome Andy Gales, who kindly agreed to come and give us all the details about the British Army’s Tactical Engagement System. Which isn’t a single system at all, but several systems integrated together to deliver critical Instrumented Live training for the British Army.

Andy has lengthy experience with the various flavours of TES, from his time in the British Army, as well with his current company Cubic Defence, which supports key elements of the in-service capability today.

A huge subject, that’s much more complex than it might first appear. But Andy does a great job taking us through the early evolution of the technology, the benefits and limitations of laser based systems, the impact of synthetic wrap and new ideas such as Roundless TES.

In all a fascinating look into an area that seems simple, but is actually wonderfully complex with many opportunities for future innovation in Land Training.

• Tom Constable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ 
• Colin Hillier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/

Andy Gales: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-gales-1896b32a/

• Website: https://www.warfighterpodcast.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtg
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WarfighterPod

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it’s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

Virtual simulation has been around for a while now, and there has been some great leaps and bounds in its fidelity - mainly through the adoption of commercially available technologies that run on standard (albeit high-end) computer hardware.

One person who was there during the early emergence of these technologies was Pete Morrison - previously CEO and now Chief Commercial Officer at Bohemia Interactive Simulations. During his tenure, BISim was one of the few companies to successfully repurpose an off-the-shelf gaming engine for military applications. Today Virtual Battlespace is deployed with most of the NATO and partner nations for training militaries, as well as numerous military and government organisations globally.

Pete provides a short potted history of the development of COTS gaming (making us all feel old) and how the applications have grown up in the defence industry to deliver some critical training applications.

But where from here? Pete goes on to speak about the development of virtual technologies for test & evaluation, as well as the future in a world of AI driven warfare - where AI presents us with dilemmas, how can simulation help us to de-risk this?

Building an experimental future framework using simulation will require the convergence of a number of existing technologies, to support the development of future combat systems.

• Tom Constable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ 
• Colin Hillier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/

• Pete Morrison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morpj97/

• Website: https://www.warfighterpodcast.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtg
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WarfighterPod

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it’s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

In the run up to I/ITSEC 2023 we are very grateful for Hadean agreeing to sponsor a special episode in two parts.

Firstly, we are very pleased to introduce Royal O’Brien, Global CTO for Hadean. Royal has a considerable track record with the likes of Amazon, The Linux Foundation and a host of games related companies, including foundational work on the O3DE platform and Open Metaverse Foundation.

Not dodging the hard questions, this interview gave us the chance to ask a burning question - Is the Military Metaverse dead? You might think we’d regret asking this of Royal, but he then took us on a whirlwind tour of all the novel technologies and challenges facing military simulation and training. Including subjects as diverse as managing huge datasets, leveraging generative AI, true interoperability beyond the current standards, and integrating the human in the loop.

This discussion reminds us of the huge challenges the military users and industry have to harness these recent developments, which only seem to be accelerating.

We are also joined by Andy Fawkes and Marty Kauchek from Military Simulation & Training magazine, who provide a look ahead to I/ITSEC and point out the things to watch out for if you’re heading out that way.

• Tom Constable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ 
• Colin Hillier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/

• Royal O’Brien: https://www.linkedin.com/in/obwando/
• Andy Fawes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyfawkes/
• Marty Kauchak: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marty-kauchak-nola/

• Website: https://www.warfighterpodcast.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtg
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/WarfighterPod

Hadean is a UK-based spatial computing company that is modernising the military simulation ecosystem with a new way to understand the operating environment for training, strategy and readiness. Their technology provides the AI-powered spatial compute infrastructure that integrates allies, domains, systems, and technologies to deliver a common operating picture, bridging physical and virtual worlds.

Trusted by the British Army and wider UK Ministry of Defence, the Hadean Platform draws on distributed data and leverages novel AI and Large Language Model (LLM) integrations to synthesise coherent, singular, large-scale and complex simulations that are capable of managing millions of entities and dynamically replicating real-world scenarios.

They enable out-of-the-box simulation and orchestration capabilities that are easy to develop, deploy and integrate with any system; from legacy simulators through to bleeding-edge AI and LLM solutions. The platform is primed with a core distributed pattern of life simulation that scales civilian behaviour and services to support essential training flows (such as After Action Review) and a graphical interface to provide deep-dive insight into specific simulation behaviour. 

As a result, the Hadean Platform delivers next-generation multi-domain training, decision support, test and evaluation, and wargaming and helps generate battle-winning decision advantage for the end-user.

Customers and partners include the UK MoD and British Army, BAE Systems, Cervus, 4C Strategies, ST Engineering.