The Vertical Space
The Vertical Space is a podcast at the intersection of technology and flight, featuring deep dives with innovators, early adopters, and industry leaders.
We talk about the radical impact that technology is creating as it disrupts flight, enabling new ways to access the vertical space to improve our lives - from small drones to large aircraft. Our guests are operators and innovators across the value chain: airframers, technologists, data and service providers, as well as end users.
The Vertical Space
#19 General James Poss: How drones are changing the battlefield
James Poss is a retired United States Air Force Major General and now Founder and Chief Executive of ISR Ideas, an intelligence and unmanned aircraft systems consulting firm. His distinguished 30-year Air Force career in military intelligence included combat experience in four wars. Before transitioning out of the military General Poss was the Air Force’s senior career intelligence officer.
In this episode you’ll hear General Poss talk about the military cultural imperatives that drove the adoption of drones in each of the branches of the US military, a brief history of military use of drones as far back as 80+ years ago, and how the capabilities of today’s UAS systems compared to the drones that General Poss used in the Gulf War and over the Balkans in the 1990s.
He shares what drone use cases the military has made tremendous progress on, and also the missions where sadly this is not the case. We also talked about the use of drones in the war in Ukraine, thoughts on where the military and commercial drone industries might be 5 and 10 years from now, trusted autonomy, military acquisition process, advice to entrepreneurs, and much much more.