Articles by Dhruva
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Dhruva Rajendra reposted thisDhruva Rajendra reposted thisThe US Army was in a rush. It awarded General Dynamics contracts for automated artillery shell manufacturing. What happened may surprise you. Or maybe not. THE NEED: Support Ukraine and replenish U.S. ammunition stocks quickly. The new Mesquite, Texas, factory was supposed to produce 30,000 artillery projectile bodies each month. THE EARLY WARNINGS: The equipment came from Turkish manufacturer REPKON, which had experience supplying equipment for older artillery projectiles made with different steel. The Army and GD knew the steel requirements were different, yet approved moving forward before the complete process had demonstrated it could produce shells that met the Army’s requirements. Remember, they were in a hurry. By June 2025, GD had missed six scheduled qualification tests. Equipment for another line continued shipping even after the first line’s equipment failed contract requirements. Remember, they were in a hurry. THE FAILURE: According to news reports, workers described: 🔹 Robots drenched in oil caught fire picking up 1,800°F metal. 🔹 Robot collisions and dropped steel. 🔹 Cracked shell bodies. 🔹 Presses requiring sledgehammers. 🔹 Safety gates failing. The inspector general’s findings were stark: $469 million spent establishing the facility, with no projectile metal parts meeting contract specifications as of March 2026. THE RECOVERY: 🔹 GD is replacing most of REPKON’s flow-forming equipment with proven machining equipment similar to that used at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant. 🔹 GD is reportedly committing $200 million of its own money to complete the project. 🔹 GD has teamed with Deterrence, a startup applying AI and robotics to manufacturing. Its approach combines production data, automated inspection, and operators’ knowledge to identify problems earlier and improve how equipment works together. 🔹 The revised Mesquite plan calls for two production lines targeting 20,000 projectile bodies per month, down from the original 30,000. GD expects production to begin in 2027. These are meaningful corrective steps. The next milestone is proving the rebuilt process can safely and consistently produce bodies that meet specifications. THE LESSON: Learn from this. Prove the process before expanding it. Hurry or no hurry. Address safety problems quickly. Listen to the people working with the equipment. When necessary, stop what you are doing and fix the problems. We take the hit, improve, and move forward. I expect this next effort to go much better. Hurry is the brother of bad design and poor quality. But hey, Tesla also had a rough start with the Model 3 back in 2016. It worked through production bottlenecks, and the car became the best-selling premium vehicle in the U.S. in 2018. #manufacturing #defense #Army #GeneralDynamics
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Dhruva Rajendra reposted thisCongratulations to the entire Firehawk team! Will Edwards Bradley Schneider Ben Allen Dominic Jezierski K. Austin DeLorme Ken Masson David H. David Young Cassie Miller Robert R. Angel Mesa, MBA, MSDhruva Rajendra reposted this🚨 Firehawk was awarded $24M through the Department of War’s IBAS program to expand domestic production of propellants and accelerate readiness for the M1128 155mm base bleed system. Propellant production remains one of the most significant bottlenecks in U.S. munitions manufacturing. Current legacy cast-and-cure processes are slow, labor-intensive, and difficult to scale at the levels required for DOW’s modern operational needs. Firehawk’s program with the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition & Sustainment - Industrial Base Policy directly addresses this challenge through a 22–month, $24 million effort designed to deliver a rapid, scalable, and cost-effective propellant manufacturing capacity.Firehawk awarded $24M to strengthen U.S. munitions industrial baseFirehawk awarded $24M to strengthen U.S. munitions industrial base
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Dhruva Rajendra reposted thisDhruva Rajendra reposted thisThere has been a lot of handwringing about exquisite vs #attritable vs expendable in defense weapon systems, and I get it -- this framework appeals to human nature's desire for linear, clear-cut mechanisms to explain hard problems. But reality has shown us that anything we put in play in combat is "able to be attrited" -- the very definition of the word "attritable." Literally, if we own it, and it isn't buried under a mountain, we should expect to lose it in a peer conflict -- whether we employ it, or whether it is sitting on an apron or at a port, or whether it is on a shelf in a warehouse somewhere CONUS. Russia, Ukraine, Epic Fury -- in each instance, the players lost weapon systems that I think they probably never expected to lose back when the acquisition plans and requirements were drawn up. I think Forterra's variables make sense as a rubric for acquisition planning, but the reality is that the manned weapon systems we bought 40 years ago will operate for another 40, and we will continue to buy new manned weapon systems. The reality is that there are effectiveness trades made when buying more affordable systems -- unmanned or manned. The only real metric that matters, regardless of whether a systems is ruled "attritable" vs "non-attritable", is REPLACEABILITY. Everything will be killed or degraded in numbers we can't truly appreciate until it has happened - expensive or affordable, manned or unmanned, more effective or less effective - attrition sees all equally. What we start with on day 1 matters less than what we end with on day 30 or day 180 or day 365. We tend to view this type of attrition as a black swan, something unimaginable or something that couldn't possibly happen to us here with the greatest military in the world. But we are wrong, and both operations and acquisition need to quickly come to grips with this reality. We are experiencing our first situation where today's operators (CCMDs) have been unable to achieve POTUS objectives in a conflict because the acquirers and requirements writers 10-15+ years ago screwed their future users. Can we achieve the required level of effectiveness at day 180 as we had at day 1, but with more of a low-low mix than a high-low mix? Not sure, but that is the task we have. https://lnkd.in/es48HcJX
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Dhruva Rajendra reposted thisDhruva Rajendra reposted thisA big thank you to the organizers of Reindustrialize for putting together an outstanding conference -- Austin Bishop Gregory M. Bernstein and their colleagues at The New Industrial Corporation. Great talks by Bryon Hargis Matthew Steckman Chris Power Dhruva Rajendra and Valor Equity Partners' Antonio Gracias. I left feeling optimistic. Not because the challenges facing North America and the West are small, but because so many thoughtful people are focused on solving them.
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Dhruva Rajendra reposted thisThis is a strong step forward for the ecosystem. Standardizing the payload electromechanical interface is needed to unlock speed, flexibility, and real scalability for operators. What’s especially important here is how this came together—this specific design was driven by industry, not dictated top-down. The companies actually building and integrating these systems are best positioned to define what works in practice, and that kind of approach is far more likely to see rapid adoption across platforms and payloads than a government dictated spec. Credit to the Neros Technologies team for leading this effort. Proud for Kraken Kinetics to support the APEX ecosystem and contribute alongside the broader partner group.Dhruva Rajendra reposted thisToday, drone-to-payload integration requires coordination and custom design work between manufacturers. A new payload means new tooling, new integration work, and weeks of engineering for each platform-payload pair. Complexity only increases – and on the front line, warfighters are handicapped in what payloads they can choose from, and how fast they can swap between them. We’ve built APEX to fix this. Adaptive Payload Exchange (APEX) is an open-source and low cost standard for modular payload integration on small drones, including our Archer platform. It’s designed for simplicity, flexibility, and manufacturability – so that operators using APEX-enabled drones can easily swap conventional, fiber, repeater, and future developed payloads in the field. For industry, APEX enables low cost, simple integrations with a focus on FPV drone platforms and payloads. For government, APEX delivers faster fielding, lower cost per capability, and more flexibility mid-mission for operators. The full spec including mechanical drawings, electrical gerbers, and software specifications will be live on our Github in early June. Neros Archer platforms delivered this year under Phase II of the Drone Dominance Program will be APEX-enabled and payload partners Kraken Kinetics, Kela Technologies, Northrop Grumman, CX2, and ModalAI have already committed to adoption. If you’re interested in learning more, reach out to info@neros.tech.
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Dhruva Rajendra reposted thisDhruva Rajendra reposted thisSPEED IS DETERRENCE — AND WE’RE OUT OF TIME. There’s a moment in every serious room when the conversation shifts — when policy stops being abstract and the stakes become real. That moment hit yesterday at MITRE’s Beyond Barriers: Acquisition on a War Footing summit in McLean. Day One brought together senior acquisition leaders, operators, and industry to confront a hard truth: our adversaries are fielding capabilities faster than our system was built to deliver. Office of the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition & Sustainment, Honorable Mike Duffey, captured it well — an 85% solution today beats a perfect one too late. ADM Richard Correll, commander of United States Strategic Command, reminded us that acquisition itself is deterrence. I had the privilege of moderating the panel on “Rapidly Fielding Capabilities for Warfighters.” The insights came from the panel, not the podium. Margaret Boatner, Executive Vice President at the Aerospace Industries Association, highlighted a core contradiction: we expect industry to surge production while limiting their ability to build capacity into contracts. Matt MacGregor , Co-Founder of the Creative Defense Network, cut deeper — the biggest barrier isn’t policy. It’s institutional fear. That doesn’t get solved with memos. Dhruva Rajendra, Founder & CEO of Deterrence, brought urgency from the manufacturing front: deterrence today is about production capacity, not stockpile size. And we need to modernize and automate at scale. From the Pacific — projected live on the big screen and fully engaged in the discussion — MG Jeff VanAntwerp, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific, and Tianchi Wu, Executive Director for Future Plans and Concepts at U.S. Army Pacific, grounded everything in operational reality. Demand doesn’t wait for process—China isn’t waiting for our red tape, and we skip DOTMLPF-P at our peril. This is what right looks like: operators, industry, and government aligned — some in the room, some beamed in from across the globe — and accountable for speed. Thanks to Dr. LeAnne Noelani Howard for keeping us on track and MITRE for hosting. #DefenseAcquisition #BeyondBarriers #NationalSecurity
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Dhruva Rajendra reposted thisDhruva Rajendra reposted thisSPEED IS DETERRENCE — AND WE’RE OUT OF TIME. There’s a moment in every serious room when the conversation shifts — when policy stops being abstract and the stakes become real. That moment hit yesterday at MITRE’s Beyond Barriers: Acquisition on a War Footing summit in McLean. Day One brought together senior acquisition leaders, operators, and industry to confront a hard truth: our adversaries are fielding capabilities faster than our system was built to deliver. Office of the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition & Sustainment, Honorable Mike Duffey, captured it well — an 85% solution today beats a perfect one too late. ADM Richard Correll, commander of United States Strategic Command, reminded us that acquisition itself is deterrence. I had the privilege of moderating the panel on “Rapidly Fielding Capabilities for Warfighters.” The insights came from the panel, not the podium. Margaret Boatner, Executive Vice President at the Aerospace Industries Association, highlighted a core contradiction: we expect industry to surge production while limiting their ability to build capacity into contracts. Matt MacGregor , Co-Founder of the Creative Defense Network, cut deeper — the biggest barrier isn’t policy. It’s institutional fear. That doesn’t get solved with memos. Dhruva Rajendra, Founder & CEO of Deterrence, brought urgency from the manufacturing front: deterrence today is about production capacity, not stockpile size. And we need to modernize and automate at scale. From the Pacific — projected live on the big screen and fully engaged in the discussion — MG Jeff VanAntwerp, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific, and Tianchi Wu, Executive Director for Future Plans and Concepts at U.S. Army Pacific, grounded everything in operational reality. Demand doesn’t wait for process—China isn’t waiting for our red tape, and we skip DOTMLPF-P at our peril. This is what right looks like: operators, industry, and government aligned — some in the room, some beamed in from across the globe — and accountable for speed. Thanks to Dr. LeAnne Noelani Howard for keeping us on track and MITRE for hosting. #DefenseAcquisition #BeyondBarriers #NationalSecurity
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Dhruva Rajendra reposted thisDhruva Rajendra reposted thisThis week in El Segundo, we convened the second NAVY x DEMAND SIGNAL — West Coast edition. The focus was on how the Navy Rapid Capabilities Office, PAE RAS, and the Navy Munitions team are accelerating autonomy, munitions and weapons production, and rapid fielding — and what industry and capital must do to meet the moment. We’re deeply grateful to the leadership of the Rapid Capabilities Office, PAE RAS, and the Navy Munitions team for the clarity and specificity they brought to the discussion. Thank you to Vice Admiral Seiko Okano, Rebecca Gassler, Andrew M., Holli Galletti, Justin Fanelli, Jim Juster, Bill Golden, Jerry Daley, Dr. Jarred M Conley, Daniel Pines, Andrew Privvett, Nicholas Bergeron, and Rachel Riley. We also want to thank the builders and investors who showed up ready to engage seriously. Special thank you's to our speakers, including Chris Power (Hadrian), Dhruva Rajendra (Deterrence), Mike Flanigan (Seasats), Will O'Brien (Ulysses), Peter Mirisola (Saab), shail giroux (Singularity), Aabid Razvi (Overmatch), and Michael C. M.. We are also grateful to our presenting sponsors: Booz Allen Hamilton, including Steven Escaravage, Brian MacCarthy, and Jennie Brooks; and The Pedersen Foundation and Kara Hourihan for their financial support. Lastly, this series would not exist without our amazing co-hosts: Jordan Blashek (Endless Frontiers), Morgan Hitzig (Venrock Associates), Jeremy S. (Harpoon VC), Blake S. (Overmatch Ventures), and Jay V. (Aero X Ventures). The decisive decade ahead will be won by those who can translate demand into deployed capability at speed and at scale. We must ensure America wins the race for the maritime domain. Next stop: Austin. #Navy #DefenseInnovation #DemandSignal #Autonomy #Munitions #IndustrialBase #AmericanManufacturing
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Dhruva Rajendra reposted thisSo excited to see the awesome work Sai and Jonathan! Let’s go!Dhruva Rajendra reposted thisSix months ago I waited three weeks for my CPA to reply. Today, it’s instant. ⚡ Introducing Deduction.com. ⚡ 💰 Today, you might pay $1,000+ for a CPA, wait weeks for a response, and still only hear from them once a year when it’s time to file. ⏱️ OR you spend 90 minutes fighting through forms on TurboTax (that’s if you get everything right the first time). We built a compliant tax firm and developed Taylor, CPAI — an AI Tax Accountant — to reimagine the consumer tax experience: 📌 Fast responses 📌 Proactive guidance all-year 📌 100% guarantee on every return 📌 CPA review on high-impact decisions and every filing 📌 Email, chat, or call — just like you would with an accountant Today we come out of stealth after our first successful Closed Beta filing season, where Taylor, CPAI prepared and filed real returns for investors, tech employees, founders, creators, and professionals. Shoutout to our team and investors for grinding these past six months: One Way Ventures (Lex, Eugene, Semyon), Creator Ventures (Sasha, Caspar), along with participation from Alpine (Edward), Intuition (Hugo), Rocket Lawyer founder Charley Moore, and angels from OpenAI, Robinhood, and more. 👉 Taylor, CPAI is live via email today — along with Chat Beta. Get started at deduction.com or email taylor@deduction.com. Just like an accountant. 🤝
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Dhruva Rajendra liked thisDhruva Rajendra liked thisAli Hussain quit his Oxford PhD in 2 months. Today his startup is valued at $400M. No CS or finance degree. He studied comparative politics and history at Cornell. Heres what actually happened in between. He grew up working the register in his dads convenience store in St. Paul. His father immigrated from Karachi and built that business from scratch. Ali won a Marshall Scholarship. Enrolled in a PhD at Oxford. Two months in, he quit. Said it straight: I realized this is a terrible idea. Not because academia was hard. Because it was slow. He wanted agency now not in ten years. So he did a stint at BCG to learn how businesses actually run. Then took a pay cut to join Latch — a 10-person startup — as its first ops hire. Six years there. Watched it scale to tens of millions in revenue. Learned the stuff no classroom teaches: how venture financing works, how product actually gets built, how to sell. In 2023 he took all of it and started Tabs — an AI platform that automates billing and revenue recognition for finance teams. Two years later: $91M raised. $400M valuation. 200+ customers, including Cursor and Statsig. $1B+ in invoice volume running through the platform. 5x YoY revenue growth. The degree didnt build this. The six years of getting his hands dirty at the right company did.
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Dhruva Rajendra liked thisDhruva Rajendra liked thisSome students leave an impression. Others become part of the vision. About 15 years ago, when Jason Shuman was a student, he and I worked closely to help shape the vision for our entrepreneurship program: create an environment where students collaborate, help one another, build businesses, and then come back to help the next generation of Canes. We endeavored to put as many Canes out there, succeeding in the startup world. Jason has lived that vision. After building multiple businesses, he is now a partner at Primary Ventures, a New York-based VC firm, yet he continues to return to the classroom every semester to inspire, mentor, challenge, and set high expectations for our next generation of Canes. And, true to form, Jason stayed after class to spend time with several students, always willing to share his experience and make himself available. I am incredibly grateful for Jason, for his continued commitment to our students, and for his enduring love of the U. This is what the University of Miami Business School is all about: building relationships that last a lifetime and paying it forward. Thank you, Jason. 🧡💚 #MiamiAdvantage #HyperPersonalization #LifelongCareerSuccess
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Dhruva Rajendra liked thisProud to have worked alongside the HERCULES TECHNOLOGY GROWTH, Pinegrove Credit Partners, and Silicon Valley Bank teams on this $150M financing for Allen Control Systems. The pace of innovation in defense technology continues to accelerate, and Allen Control Systems is addressing a critical challenge facing the U.S. and its allies: protecting personnel and infrastructure against increasingly sophisticated unmanned threats. This transaction is a great example of what can happen when exceptional founders, differentiated technology, and aligned capital partners come together around a mission with real strategic importance. Congratulations to Luke Allen, Steven Simoni, Mike Wior, Michael Thompson, and the entire ACS team. Were excited to support the next phase of growth and look forward to what lies ahead. #DefenseTech #NationalSecurity #InnovationEconomy #VentureDebtDhruva Rajendra liked thisOn behalf of Hercules Capital, Pinegrove Credit Partners, and Silicon Valley Bank, we're thrilled to support Allen Control Systems as it tackles the critical need for C-UAS technologies across the United States and its allies. It was great working alongside Mike Wior, Luke Allen, Steven Simoni, Michael Thompson, Laura Komkov, Bradford Meacham, and the entire ACS team. Looking forward to what's ahead. Blake Hardin, Caitlin Cloud, Chris Gallagher, Craig Caukin, Dax Williamson, John Eggbeer, Kieran Davis, Mike Devery, Noah Carville, Steve Kuo, Zach Martin
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Dhruva Rajendra liked thisDhruva Rajendra liked thisToday we are announcing a $468M credit facility from Export-Import Bank of the United States to fund a massive ramp in satellite production here in America. For a New Prime like Astranis, it's a huge vote of confidence from the United States Government. “Astranis is delivering mission-critical infrastructure to customers around the world at unprecedented speed and scale,” said EXIM Chairman John Jovanovic. “We are confident this is just the beginning. Under President Trump’s leadership, EXIM will continue to help the United States stay ahead of the curve in developing the industries of the future and boost American competitiveness around the globe.” This means we have capital to build more satellites in the United States and get them into orbit faster. As we sign new customers, this helps us move from contract to satellites in orbit at the speed our customers need. Astranis's satellites serve a huge unmet need. This year we've signed some of our biggest and most important deals yet. Earlier this month we announced a partnership with stc group for a dedicated satellite for Saudi Arabia. We have more than $1B in contracts to deliver, and now we can ramp up production to meet this demand and do our part to help re-industrialize America. Thank you to EXIM for backing us. Now, back to building for the Expansion Era.
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Dhruva Rajendra liked thisDhruva Rajendra liked thisA ceo will always be MJS - member of the janitorial staff. No matter how big the company gets. Stay lean. Go fast. Time to build.
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Dhruva Rajendra liked thisDhruva Rajendra liked thisThis news from Austin’s Aeon Industrial does not surprise me. Tech This Out has been following Aeon for a while now and I recently sat down with CEO Naweed Tahmas inside the company’s Austin facility as they are getting ready to expand in City of Cedar Park. His message was clear: America needs more than great defense technology. It needs the ability to build it at the scale and price modern threats demand. Now Aeon and Destinus have been selected as finalists in the US Army’s ASTRA intercept competition—one of just 30 teams chosen from across the U.S. and allied nations. Their proposed system combines layered interceptors and distributed fire control, with the goal of giving the Army more affordable depth against air and missile threats. Hear Naweed explain the mindset behind it: you shouldn’t have to choose between innovation and scale. Austin’s defense-tech story keeps getting bigger. And more important. #TechThisOut #AustinTech #DefenseTech #NationalSecurity #Manufacturing #Aerospace
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Dhruva Rajendra liked thisLuke Fischer the optical reports you and SkyFi make available are so important to ensuring the world operates with truth and visibility. It’s all about deterrence.Dhruva Rajendra liked thisOver the last year in Xinjiang, China built replicas of F-35s, F-16s, Patriots, and Japan's AEW&C at a testing range used for military rehearsals. I've written before about China's Area 51 style flight-test base in the same Lop Nur desert complex, where they expand hangars and runways to test their own next-gen aircraft. A short hop away, they've now laid out the replicas of ours. Thankfully, Brady Africk published another great article highlighting how China is rehearsing against the exact aircraft and air defenses that Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and the US rely on. In that same stretch they've kept harassing the Philippine Navy, locking fire control radars on Japanese fighters, and running drills around Taiwan. Now they are complaining about a US arms package to Taiwan that includes air-defense munitions, while they've built fake versions in the desert to attack for training. The best part: all of this is visible with commercial imagery. Bringing awareness to more people is the mission at SkyFi.
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Dhruva Rajendra liked thisDhruva Rajendra liked thisNumeral just raised a $100M Series C, led by Insight Partners and Salesforce Ventures. The company is a good example of what a great business can look like in a post-AI world. Sell the outcome, not the commodity. Most tax software sells you tools. The customer is still responsible for making sure everything actually gets done. Numeral sells compliance. Customers aren't buying another dashboard or workflow. They're buying registrations completed, returns filed, taxes remitted, certificates validated, and the guarantee. Sales tax is fairly high risk. Numeral’s pitch is that AI and automation do the operational work behind the scenes, backed by human expertise / in the loop. Sales tax was the starting point. Today Numeral supports sales tax, VAT, GST, and 90+ countries. It’s the single pane of glass for indirect tax, vs. trying to coordinate a patchwork of geo specific solutions (eg a solution for Europe, another for Asia) Instead of asking founders and finance teams to become experts in tax software, Numeral lets them hand off the problem. Numeral is a long-time sponsor of my podcast The Peel, a huge congrats to Sam Ross, Matt DuVall, and the entire Numeral team!
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Dak Hardwick
Defense sales - #FMS and #DCS - to U.S. allies and partners are critical to the long-term health of America's defense industrial base. A comprehensive review of the defense sales system by the Aerospace Industries Association has led to detailed recommendations that would make important improvements to the process. With actions for the entire U.S. government security cooperation system, these changes would bring more predictability, efficiency, and transparency across the entire enterprise. Many of these issues are long-known challenges, and AIA has weighed in on them before. It's time to turn evergreen challenges to enduring solutions. Kudos to Emma Hamilton for pulling these together with AIA's members. #defensesales #defensetrade #DCS #FMS #TSFD #TRFD #exportcontrols
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Colter Carambio
Thank you to the ETI | Emerging Technologies Institute for hosting us! In all of the discussions at the show, the challenge of relying on "human APIs" to orchestrate disparate data sources emerged as a common theme, illustrating one of biggest challenges that many organizations face. Do you agree? Disagree? Check out Tad Mielnicki's post on the subject: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eti2ATvi
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Justin Hafner
📣 Big News 📣 Today we are announcing Ateklo Inc. newest venture and our partnership with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The next generation of national security capability will not be built by machines alone. It will be built by people and intelligent systems working together. Ateklo Inc. is proud to launch First Light Works alongside Rosc and Gaven Capital. Ateklo is partnering with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to bring DARPAConnect to Portland on September 3, giving Maine’s innovators direct access to representatives from all six DARPA technical offices. This is the beginning of a larger effort to make Maine a national gateway for defense innovation and a proving ground for applied Human-Machine Collaboration. Proud to be building this alongside Kevin Compher, Conor J. M., Sonny Ganguly, Owen McCarthy, and Peter DelGreco. Read the full announcement: https://lnkd.in/gugDBb55 #HumanMachineCollaboration #DefenseInnovation #DARPA #DualUse #Maine
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