The Vertical Space

#99 Jia Xu, SkyGrid: Opening the sky for autonomous flight

• Luka T • Episode 99

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In this episode, we welcome back Jia Xu, CEO of SkyGrid, to discuss the future of autonomy and shared airspace. SkyGrid is building a trusted airspace and operational integration platform to enable safe, secure, and efficient autonomous flight.

Jia highlights where the main bottlenecks and complexities exist across autonomy, advanced air mobility, and shared airspace, and how the industry can move forward. We cover regulatory frameworks such as Part 108 and Part 146, the role of data services, and how SkyGrid is positioning its technology and products to help enable safer and more efficient aviation.

Jia:

So, the question here is we only have so much cognitive bandwidth, both on the operator side and the A NSP side, and now we're asked to do tremendously more complex and larger volumes of operations. So how can we do that? Well, the only way to do that is through responsible safe, addition of human machine teaming and automation, not taking the human out, but to augment their capacity in significant ways.

Jim:

Hey, welcome back everyone we hope you had a great end of summer. In this episode we're absolutely delighted to welcome Jia Xu. CEO of Sky Grid. Sky Grid's mission is to create the world's most trusted airspace and operational integration platform, harnessing, cutting edge technology to enable safe, secure, and efficient autonomous flight for all. I first met Jia as we were preparing for our first episode with him, our 12th back in April of 22. Now he's on our 99th episode in September of 25. If you haven't done so yet, go back and listen to Jia's first episode after listening to this one, and you'll hear an extraordinarily articulate, thoughtful, and informed person and industry leader. And now you get to hear this aviation thought leader express his views on what has changed the industry since 22, where we are today, and how he sees the future on a number of industry topics, but especially on the shared aerospace and the future of autonomy. Many thanks to Jia for joining us and to our guests we hope you enjoy this and the previous episode from Jia as you profitably innovate in The Vertical Space. Jia Xu is a proven leader in building at the intersection of electrified, autonomous, and accessible flight, currently serving as the CEO of SkyGrid, where he leads the organization towards his strategic goal of transforming the aviation sector through the integration of unmanned aircraft. Prior to SkyGrid, Jia worked as the CTO for unmanned aerial Systems and Urban Air Mobility at Honeywell Aerospace, where Jia led strategic technology and product development and engineering execution. Before joining Honeywell, Jia worked as a chief architect for UAM Systems at Airbus, where he built operational architectures and data-driven business cases for UAM vehicles and networks. He also held leadership positions at the Rand Corporation. Where he drove its advanced technology portfolio in ai, machine learning UAS, and autonomy. On the air vehicle side, Jia, worked on UAS design at General Atomics and taught aerodynamics as an adjunct lecturer at Stanford. Jia received his PhD in aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford. He also holds master of science degrees in aeronautics from Imperial College, London, and in international relations from the London School of Economics.

Luka:

Jia, welcome back to The Vertical Space. It's really great to have you back.

Jia:

It is fantastic, to be back. The only, regret that I have is that it's taken, so long and what a amazing couple years it's been for the industry and for The Vertical Space and for Radius as well. just really grateful for all the things that you do for the community here.

Luka:

Yeah. And, we're approaching our 100th episode, so o Time does fly the centennial. That's right. Jia, have you changed your opinions on the things, that very few in the industry agree with you on some of your contrarian thoughts and bets?

Jia:

It is actually probably changed a little bit since, I, I will say aerospace is a really like large space, for lack of a better word. I, started, in this world on the aircraft design side, and then I went to Honeywell and did kinda all the onboard systems, safety critical systems. And that's how I got to know you guys, in that context as well. And now at SkyGrid, we're much more focused on the operational side of autonomy, and the operational side of airspace integration and air traffic management. So it's been a constant learning experience and I think in that process, your view will necessarily evolve as you encounter new information and new ideas. Where it's evolved for me and where maybe there's a distinction is that I think when we think of autonomy, and I was one of these people. you, you really think very much, the aircraft as a closed entity, right? It has to have everything on board, be able to figure things out and act, all of that. But one of the things that I've learned as I'm in this sky grid journey and what we're building to, is that autonomy really extends beyond the aircraft. Because we exist in a national airspace, global airspace system. It is a complex system of systems. So there are lots of interactions and part of the challenge of getting autonomous aircraft, in fact, arguably the biggest challenge of getting autonomous aircraft functioning is that they have to integrate into the national airspace, per ICAOs directives. You cannot interfere with all the operations that's happening already, right? You have to be able to do this in a seamless way, and so that means this becomes a much bigger system level problem. You have everything, all the goodness, all the great technology on the aircraft, but you also need the off-board digital systems to provide you with things like surveillance, other kinds of data decision support tools. to integrate into that airspace. And then, when you shift the responsibility low, the air traffic management system increasingly has to take on this awesome task of integrating advanced air mobility, at lower altitude, at higher volumes, and with increasing level of automation. So if there's one thing that I want to call out as being, somewhat of a different perspective, and the one that I have, increasingly come to appreciate is the importance of thinking of autonomy beyond just the vehicle. And I'll just caveat it, it's not like, the industry doesn't recognize this. You've certainly had, folks on from parts of the industry that has emphasized this, but I came from the airplane side. I'm passionate about airplanes as well. It's very easy to forget that or, or perhaps not pay enough attention to it at times when you're in the knee deep in your flight test, right in your composite build and all of those kind of things.

Luka:

Jia, where do you see the, the greatest bottlenecks in the system right now? On the aircraft side or in the ecosystem side? And, what hard problems remain to be solved on both ends of this discussion.

Jia:

I think if you'll go back to my last podcast, you'll hear a lot about the airplane side challenges and some of those remain, right, building very high integrity and availability and assurance avionics at the right price for onboard systems to bring it all together. Sensors including, critically reliable and, certified detect and avoid systems, which by the way, right, detect and avoid and surveillance and situational awareness is a critical component for integrating into international airspace. It's really, I have to know what else is on the road at some level, right? To be able to operate if, to take a ground analogy, and that's an example where. There are still critical things that we need to do on the ground side, right? Just airborne, surveillance is better complemented probably as a ground-based view as well, since a lot of our radars, a lot of our assets are at the ground. And then airborne sensors also face challenges of lower altitude against clutter, another kinds of things. So that's one example you where you can see very powerfully that ground-based infrastructure for all of the data that we can pull in, and then all of the compute that we can affect on the ground can integrate very synergistically with what's in the air.

Luka:

And as you look back over the last two years, how has the industry changed the most?

Jia:

Yeah. That's, that's a good question. I, I do think one of the elements that's, that's interesting Is there's now much more of a view toward operationalization, right? We see some of the early entrants on the a m side start operating, some internationally, some, increasingly, moving also domestically with some of the policy tailwind that we're seeing, which we can talk a little bit as well. So there's much more of an emphasis now that we are, really deep in the certification process for some of the eVTOL players. We have, essentially some precedents and paradigms on how to certify and operate, let's say, BVLOS right now that we have part 1 0 8, part 1 46 in draft form, at least out, that the industry, I think as a whole is gonna shift much more toward, okay, now we're building the airplanes, we're going to a certification. We have to think about where to set up. We have to think about infrastructure, whether that's concrete or digital. We have to think about launching the first, productive and valuable and impactful operation. So that's where I see the shift. That's where I see the. The tremendous excitement. The other aspect I think that we're seeing, is this temporal as well, right? We see the defense side of things continue to make, to be a significant part of the industry, and a lot of advances are still made in that domain. what happened, in terms of Ukraine over the last few years has really brought back the intensity of great power competition, of the intensity of original wars and the speed of military innovation on the autonomous side. and that, by the way, that's maybe the smallest that we're seeing, but around the world also, we see a lot of advances on larger aircraft. So, there's, there's certainly as much as there is advances, obviously, on the civil side in terms of autonomy, with all of us pushing in that direction with companies like Wisk, which now SkyGrid is part of Wisk as a subsidiary, as much as there are the push on the civil side, the defense side continues to be a major driver in the pathway to autonomy. Perhaps that's not a change, but an emphasis of that perspective, right. In this era of very much renewed great power competition.

Jim:

Jia, when you think back to 2022 when we were last together and you said, now we're in the phase of operationalizing, for example, What's most different about the three years So we're more of an operational phase.

Jia:

Yeah.

Jim:

Has anything surprised you in the last three years? Has the speed of innovation changed at all? or has the complexity of operationalizing and deployment changed as well?

Jia:

Yeah, I, I would say that, At some level, having spent a lot of time in aerospace, I know this is hard. So we've seen this, right? I've seen this firsthand at different places. So in a way, I am not surprised that the industry has taken the time, right? It takes to certify, to create the vehicles, the systems, and now increasingly also looking at ground systems and traffic management and all of these things. So in a way, I am not as surprised by that. what is a, I would say a positive surprise and, and maybe this is a bias toward the very recent, because it's clear as in my mind, but one positive surprise has been the attention and the emphasis on policy side was the current administration, the Department of Transportation, et cetera, in terms of emphasizing the need for American leadership. and there are obviously then money and, resources and. Material outcomes with that as well, right? So when we look at, the brand new a TC system, the investment in that kind of infrastructure, tying together some aspects of airspace modernization with bringing new, new entrants into the airspace, as well as obviously the part 1 46, part 1 0 8 movement in terms of making BVLOS a pervasive and normalized part of our lives. and then the executive order as well in terms of pushing a a m forward pushing integration and operationalization forward. And today we're seeing some movements as well on certification. this is all just happening in effect, in real time. The pace of that has been somewhat surprising, given all the things that the FA and the USG have to do, right? And so when I go talk to, the different kind of government entities as well as going on the hill, I'm always kind of, Super impressed by how folks are focusing on these issues, on advanced aviation, on aviation, on the impact, on leadership, and, and, and the depth of their knowledge of this space and the willingness to ask, Hey, how can we help? What, what do you sort of like this podcast, right? What do you see as the biggest challenges and, and what can we do to overcome? so I'm really impressed by that. And, and maybe that sounds like I shouldn't be, but given what everybody has on their plate, and everything that's happening, the fact that we have the attention to focus on this level of, of strategic competition and leadership is, is really important. And, it's, it's not perhaps surprising given what's happening, elsewhere in the world, given what's happening, in terms of aviation advances, let's say in China and elsewhere. There's definitely competition. And so now there's the response to that competition.

Peter:

So I'm curious, what is your answer to that question? When you go to the hill and they ask, how can we help? What is the. What is the next thing that, in your mind, that they, they can do?

Jia:

Yeah. So, I think getting the legal, so there are many things, right? Getting the legal foundation for beyond visual line of sight out and doing so in such a way that is, referencing data that is referencing operational experience that the FAA has obtained through the Keysight and other activities was extremely positive. this was long coming, but for the longest time, I think elsewhere in the world, the sort of legal basis and policy basis for doing beyond visual lines of sight, has at times been, ahead of the United States. whereas we are probably stronger in some ways of getting operationalized experience, sort of making the things that we can. Make work, into the system, right? Basically take the early wins, do incremental operations, learn from that experience, and then scaling that, that up and generalizing it through rulemaking. So it's that last bit that I think is important because now we have closed the loop, but the method by which that we have done it with the fa in the United States, I think is also very important because it's very practical, it's grounded, and it's data driven at the end of the day. So closing that loop is really positive. I'm, I'm actually reminded of something that Jiay Rios said on this podcast not that long ago, which is, how can we make use of what we have today and make the existing operations that we have, or the early operations that we have work? So I think closing that loop has validated in some ways the fa a's approach of using data-driven kind of more industry driven and performance driven approaches, to inform operations and then policy and reg, regulation. So I'm really glad that that has come around and we need to continue to do that. associated it with that. Perhaps on the larger UAS and a EM scale, it's really the same thing. How do we get into early operations testing, maybe with parts of the airspace under modulated risks for large scale autonomous operations? How can we do that with today's airspace? How can we innovate both on the vehicle side, the ground infrastructure side, as well as the airspace regulation and construction side of things? Right? Can we enable, let's say more digital autonomous operations in a part of the national airspace that is still representative of the operations that's, that's gonna take place. How do we build those sandboxes, learn and then inform with data and experience rulemaking, like how can we scale up the goodness of the key sites now to bigger aviation inclusive of a a m right. in that order. So I think that's really important and what you see with the, the eVTOL pilot, innovation and pilot programs, the EIPP, that the White House has mentioned that others are pursuing may give us opportunities to do just that. those are, I think, are the kind of things that government can do, including making this a policy priority to push the industry forward.

Jim:

j I'm gonna ask you a question that's actually gonna lead us into this discussion more about the shared aerospace. It'd be interesting to get your views. You came from a world with Honeywell and the simplified vehicle operations where you had a lot of control over what's gonna happen. Then you moved into a sky grid, an area where you don't control anything. You're moving into autonomy and you're moving into, helping to manage the vehicle movements in the aerospace. what's that been like for you and how have both of those changed in the last couple of years? And then we want to hear your vision for this shared airspace.

Jia:

Yeah, that's a, that's a cool question, Jim. I would expect nothing less. I, I would say for one thing, coming from a company, I don't know, Honeywell Aerospace in their future,'cause they're splitting away, right? of, I don't know, 40,000 people into a startup of, we're now about, a little less than a hundred, is probably a big change in terms of where, where you sit in the industry pecking order, right? so that level of control, even comes from that. but yes, you're right. The problem is in a sense much bigger, right? Because now it's, like I said earlier, it's that track of thinking about it more in terms of the airborne system. But obviously Honeywell as a company, has all the other businesses and they have a system view as well. But now, it's much more the system bringing stakeholders along. There's the airspace. There are other players who do similar things as we do. There are air navigation service providers that we have to work with. There are rulemaking entities and constructs and regulators that we have to work with. So in some ways the stakeholder community and the ecosystem has materially expanded. and so it's, there's an certainly aspect of our work that is also influencing and leading the, the thought process. So we've, issued at SkyGrid our concept of operations, last year. we actually have some more work that's gonna come in that space. Hopefully folks will see that soon. So, unlike a normal startup, let's say in Silicon Valley. we also write documents as one of our outputs, right? So that's, that's one aspect where it's a little bit different. But there are also many other similarities. And what I mean by that is even when we're building, let's say, avionic systems or onboard systems, one way that the industries has come together and make sure that these systems interoperate in a complex system of systems, which even includes aircraft, is things like standardization. And the means by which we certify TSOs, right? All of these constructs that also takes industry consensus and a great deal of many stakeholders that has to get involved. So in that sense, it's actually not that different because we also have to go to the same kind of standard organizations, figure out the same kind of interfaces, figure out the same kind of, means of compliance in many ways. So that facet of aerospace, pervades all of it. And as I think about what SkyGrid is trying to do. In reference to something like SVO, which is how can I make the human operator a little bit more on the loop or over the loop even? And have the machine do what it does best, right? In this human machine team, what we're trying to do in terms of airspace integration, decision support for the operator, as well as support for NSPs or doing delegated functions of airspace management, all of those things are essentially SVO now applied to the airspace and, operational fleet level, right? So, because again, the question here is we only have so much cognitive bandwidth, both on the operator side and the A NSP side, and now we're asked to do tremendously more complex and larger volumes of operations. So how can we do that? Well, the only way to do that is through responsible safe, addition of human machine teaming and automation, not taking the human out, but to augment their capacity in significant ways. So in that logic, the two are actually not terribly different. And I, I perceive that the learning at Honeywell about how do you deal with edge cases, how do you deal with. The approval process. How do you deal with the human factors? There are actually a lot of similarities.

Luka:

you mentioned, part 1 0 8. this is obviously a big milestone, with the draft coming out recently. What are your high level thoughts on it?

Jia:

Yeah. this is an interesting space for, sky SkyGrid because we're, we're not in the very, very small UAS world, right? We're not really in the segregated airspace. UTM world. That's a different kind of a safety assurance, a different kind of a risk profile and different set of complexity. So even though in the UTM world you have words like strategic deconfliction, they mean very different things when you now have airports, verti ports, kind of lanes in the sky and other kind of constrained resources and large aircraft that are safety critical. So in that respect, we're somewhat different worlds, but what part one a also specify are now. larger, higher kinetic energy, high, more high, highly assured UAS operations. That's of interest because at some point, I think even at low altitude, you are incurring air risk and ground risk that warrants, better kinds of systems and better digital systems to support them. That's one touch point. another touch point is the notion that now we will have normalized beyond visual line of sight. Operations. Robotic airplanes is now a thing, right? By definition. And so that's, I think, important for the whole industry. Even if we set that precedence at a small scale, that creates again, more ways to generalize to the bigger scale as well. So, 1 0 8 to me is significant in that way and some of the precedent that it's setting in terms of, right of way in terms of the need for digital systems. is incredibly important for how we orient our thinking as an industry and how the fa a orients its thinking, as a regulator. So I'll give you an example, associated with the part 1 0 8 document is also part 1 46, which now talks about how do we regulate, automatic data service providers for a DSPs that for the first time provides a name for entities like, someday like SkyGrid, right? Which provides digital services decision support and data to enable operations of all kinds of aircraft inclusive of a a m. And so if you read part 1 0 8, and this is like, I think The presence of the FAA and thinking ahead. They've have, they have category defined for UTM at low altitude segregated airspace, lower risk operations where you can, again, kind of self declare that, Hey, I'm like, I'm good guys, I'm, I'm good. Go. and then they also like left out this higher category of service level three of saying, Hey, this is part 1 0 8 related. But we also wanna define what ads DSPs will look like for vehicles beyond part 1 0 8, That are part 1 35 operations and beyond. So we are gonna leave this category in there. we are gonna claim jurisdiction over it, that we can actually regulate it, and then we will create the environment by which we can foster the development of these systems in the future. So that's incredibly smart in my mind, and it creates this capacity for us to now think about how we, in more concrete ways digitize operations for a a m. Other craft aircraft support, high volume operations and, and sort of find another way to further accelerate the pace of, airspace digitization in the future. Because right now it is possible that it's not just the FAA that's in this, right, you can actually approve higher assurance approved operations that are safety critical, that are helping with decisions that have consequences, in the NAS and for operators.

Peter:

What's, the difference when it's an unmanned aircraft that you are talking about, when you say digitizing the airspace, versus a manned aircraft. if you don't have a human in the loop,

Jia:

Mm-hmm.

Peter:

does it go really to a fundamental level of the difference of how a robotic system is transacting with these outside data feeds in an airspace system? And. how, how do you discover the available data? How do you transact with it? How do you secure those transactions? How do you provide all of the, just the auditing and the compliance and the security and everything that you need in order to be able to let that happen in an automated way with these agents that are basically connecting with each other? It, number one, is that what you're going after? And, how do you see the fundamental differences there?

Jia:

Well, well, Peter, I mean, You asked the question really well, and I feel like, if those are the questions that move you, you should, like, work at SkyGrid. Like I think that's the, if I may be so both, but those are precisely the things that we wrestle with on a, on a fairly regular basis. So

Luka:

Don't go, Peter. Don't go.

Peter:

I am filling out the application.

Jia:

the first dimension of that is, you're right, right? When it's all more machine centric, a lot of the communications will be more machine to machine, because we can do that. That's kind of the default state of things. And so now, what that means is that data has to be more machine readable, right? So then you have a question of structured versus unstructured data. You have a question of interfaces and all of that. So that's a very like mechanical layer. when you think about the distribution of the systems and the composition of the system. You also realize that now there's kind of a ground station element, right? We have remotely supervised vehicles. In the case of Wisk, they're building, one too many supervised vehicles and there are others in the space that's doing, very similar things. And so in that way, the mediation now is through the ground station. You have machine to machine communications. You have potential for more efficient operations, more consistent operations as well. The kind of flip side on that is now the integrity of data is something that you have to worry about because you're now, yes, human is supervising, right? but. What that implies is, is it implies a certain way of level of delegation to the machine, to machine interaction and machine decision as well. Because otherwise, if you're fully in the loop, there's no difference, right? So the fact that you're, you're over the loop or on the loop implies a certain level of delegation. And as soon as you have that, you have to do the safety analysis, understand the safety case, and thereby understand the integrity level, the precision, and the, the sort of freshness temporarily and resolution spatially of the data that is consistent with the operation that you're trying to undertake. So now, the burden really shifts toward the data and that just doesn't even just mean the reality of the data at the point of collection. It means the whole chain, right? The whole, how do you ensure the cyber assurance along the way that the data hasn't been tampered with? How do you use utilize existing standards, some of which exist to guarantee that transmission of the data that you haven't changed things and that it is still. sufficiently fresh and up to date to enable the operation. So that whole chain of custody has to be thought about. so those are just some of the like first order things that you can think about. And lastly, as well as, and, and Brendan Suarez and others on your podcast have talked about this as well, which is now that we have the data exchange being digital, now that we have the aircraft being digital, now that we have the airspace going, becoming more digital, What can we do to, to do the unlock? Because some of the flight operation paradigms and rules were developed at a time when just radars were becoming a thing, right? And everything was still voice communications, a lot of things were done manually. So then it becomes the next level of questions of, as the systems are moving in this direction and concurrently as the airspace is being more taxed with volume and complexity of operations, can we re, consider the rules of the game, right? what has to happen, in the way that we operate, to unlock that level of flexibility and unlock the potential of digital operations. So this is when you hear about digital flight rules or autonomous flight rules and this new category of thinking of, what can we do on the rulemaking side to unlock the potential of digital operations as well?

Luka:

What exactly does part 1 0 6 say, and how does it explain A DSB? And by the way, this is so, so confusing. They could have chosen then, an acronym that doesn't so closely resemble A DSB, especially p and b being, the voicing pair letters. but anyway. What exactly is the, what used to be, I think a third party data service provider, now they remove that third party, new element of it. and what are the levels of criticality of the data, and what really falls under that definition, what kind of data that the aircraft consumes, is, inside that definition, what falls outside and what are the impacts downstream on the robustness and certifiability of this data?

Jia:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think some of these things are still being figured out, right? I, I would say caveat that it was part 1 46 is kind of the, the foundation or framework, but many of the pieces inside are still left to be filled out in effect, right? And so, what that means is that, it has def defined these categories of services, level one being, something that you can self declare, right? Lower assurance, lower stakes. Level two, I think you kind of have to explain to the fa what you did, right? level three, which is what we're talking about as highly assured, potentially beyond 1 0 8, is where you have to show the means of compliance and what, what did you do, right? To actually get that. It's much more close to a traditional aircraft certification type construct.

Luka:

What are some of the examples for these three levels?

Jia:

again, some of these have been defined, so you, you have on the UTM side, things like, elements of strategic deconfliction, intent sharing, conformance monitoring as some of the elements that's been defined in that category. but let's say if we wanna do these things now for a m vehicles, that will be totally different standards and that yet still has to be defined So the data and then some of the functionality to affect that. Right. The logic and the decision support will look like that,

Luka:

So if, a drone or, or if an aircraft, is consuming, weather data, that would probably be fall under, level one data, I imagine,

Jia:

It, I think it depends on the use case, right? but, but yeah, I mean, forecast data probably. things that change quickly. Right? They probably cannot be considered, the highest level of assurance, right? Because you may not be able to get to that future state anyways, right? With clarity. but there may be other types of weather data that are collected, hyperlocal sense, that have more timeliness to it, that could perhaps enable tactical functions as well that are higher assurance,

Luka:

is the impact on the journey that this data and, all of the stops along the way. And, the traditional data centers that might be the intermediaries today, are the regulations, especially if you're a level two or level three type of data, will that require a different architecture for data centers?

Jia:

Yeah, that's an interesting question. We do think that the higher, level of requirement is gonna impose. more strict, cyber assurance integrity requirements. It will involve the necessary system level thinking about architecture, about redundancy, and about the assurance around it. It also has enterprise, implications because 1 46 is not per se about the product. It's really about the entity that is gonna operate this, right? And so there's a corporate dimension of your safety management system, quality management system, your cyber assurance approach that is about the product, but also extends beyond the product because it's the totality of all of that. Work that creates the necessary level of safety and assurance that we need. So in a way, you're right, it's, it's the mechanism of the transformation and delivery of that data. And we have standards for that. and then, and some yet to be developed. It is also about the system as a whole and the architecture, as you've talked about and extent beyond the system could probably embrace the whole enterprise as well.

Luka:

Are you guys, planning on, submitting comments for 1 0 8? And so can you give us a hint as to what kind of comments you would want to provide?

Jia:

Yeah. For the folks who are listening on the 1 46, team, one thing is, I, I just really, I support the future orientation that we talked about in the 1 46, approach. So, I don't know if, like, support is a comment that we can make, but I, I support that aspect of it. I also support the clarity of making this kind of digital services a priority, for regulation. There's even a paragraph in there where the FAA talks at length about the authority that, that it has to regulate this category of third party services, which was very, I think it was very well done and very like, Structured where they talked about, while Congress through reauthorization gave us the imperative to regulate third party services. So we claim authority from that. The FAA has historically had the precedent of, of regulating air agencies, which includes certain training schools and that give them the ability to regulate third party services that have safety implications. So I think that's very positive to have clear authority to do this because up until 1 46, it's not clear that the FA has the authority to do this, right? To regulate things beyond aircraft certification, engine certification, all of that. I think one comment that we'll probably make re related to this is. Now that we have the framework in place, how can we accelerate the development of these component, kind of means of compliance or service definitions that's needed to then go approve high assurance services, like, let's say strategic and tactical deconfliction for bigger aircraft. so the FA a has defined the construct of, s PSOs, which are like ts, sorry, too many acronyms. like TSOs, right? So like a. What, what used to regulate a box or LRU on an airplane now regulating a digital service. Like, how cool is that? Right? That's, that's like a, a new paradigm. So in our mind, it's great. Let's accelerate the next phase, right? So there's a problem with giving industry a bone, right? They'll want the whole world, but for us, that's kind of where the actual work is gonna have to happen. Now, with the FAA, with the standard bodies and with the industry at large, which by the way, Luka, I forgot to mention, I'm, I'm really glad that A DSP is spelled without the dash because if, if that were the case, we would be in a world of hurt.

Luka:

Agreed. Agreed.

Jim:

Jia, when you walked into SkyGrid, you became aware of the airspace, the complexity of the airspace.

Jia:

vaguely aware before. I wouldn't say that I was totally unaware, but yeah.

Jim:

yeah. Sorry. well, you're making your business now in the shared airspace, and you must have thought, this is so much more complex than most people realize. You may have already realized it. Talk a little bit about the recent past of the shared airspace.

Jia:

Right.

Jim:

Where we are today and the relatively near future of the shared aerospace and educate our listeners for those who may not be aware of the complexities, the challenges, and the opportunities.

Jia:

Got it. yeah, first I, I would even, before we start reference some of the experts that spoken on this, that probably spoke much more credibly. Again, Jiay Rios spoke a little, a little bit about the history of the airspace. Brendan again, hate to always bring him up as well, but he, through multiple discussions you've had, I, I couldn't quote, hey, refer back to episode number 26, right? But like, that's, that's the kind of thing. They've also talked about some of this, but in a nutshell, right, the airspace has evolved, in large measure, with like many things, this other parts of aviation with, with the safety mindset, right? How do we increase safety? How do we, Kind of not let go the lessons that's paid in blood. Right. So some of the, biggest advances in airspace control, air traffic control, which really boils large to a large degree into separation management, making sure the aircraft stay out of each other's way. A lot of them come from accidents, right? Mid-air collisions, including the one that happened over the Grand Canyon that kind of prompted the shift toward IFR operations backed by radar, right? So the last great innovation really was around the time of radar, which was a long time ago, right? of course the foundational innovation, you can certainly count things like A DSP, which has been significant, as well as more recent evolutions in that, in that picture. But essentially, we went from VFR, which is pilot doing, a lot of things, having the separation responsibilities there, being only able to fly in visual meteorological conditions into this IFR construct, where now the responsibility for separations safe operations is divided right between the pilot and air traffic control. And in many places, air traffic control has positive control. So they control the, the aircraft, right? They should, they tell you where to go. And that has historically created this, this. tension in a way that VFR is somewhat more flexible. but IFR is more, provides you more access, right? In terms of flying under different kinds of meteorological conditions and in different kinds of air spaces, including in airspace that, where that requirement of equipage and IFR control is, is, is stronger. So that's roughly the, the history in a nutshell of how the airspace has evolved in the US and of course else elsewhere in the world. The story is, is quite similar and analogous where we're going, since NextGen and then since the introduction of A DSB, which has, created a more information rich environment in the airspace. Although at a. It's not perhaps at the highest level of assurance because A DSB, can be spoofed, they could be installed incorrectly. They're dependent, you don't have to install it if your airplane is really, really old. So we still have a, a digitized, perhaps partially digitized airspace in that way. The other thing that's kind of interesting, maybe the, the more plain spoken way of explaining it is in this age of like, chat GPT or Claude, and, I don't even wanna say cell phone. Cell phone was many ages ago, right? Like, whatever it is that the, the kids have now in this age, the common understanding of air traffic control is probably not what it is actually, right? Which is there's a lot of manual processes. It's mediated by voice communication. it isn't very strategic, it's fairly tactical, intent isn't really shared, isn't really capitalized to optimize capacity. So in a way, where I think we're going with the airspace is ideally this place where if you ask someone on the street their expectation of the airspace, which is probably like some level of coordination, right? Digital communication of information, people sharing their intent, and then optimizing the trajectories and, access to different precious resources using machine intelligence, augmenting people, and being very strategic, right? Making use of all that information to think ahead on how we reduce delay, improve environmental outcomes, and all of those things. So, a way, it's like when, when, when you ask someone on the street, like, how does the airspace world, they probably wouldn't tell you, Hey, like we may have like strip charts and paper shifting on the table and, we might step over each other when we try to communicate over VFR, right? Like, they probably wouldn't give you that read. So how do we get to that more common read, common sensical version of the airspace, so to speak.

Jim:

So when you speak to the person on the street, this would be their impressions and this would be their viewpoint and it would all make sense. But when you ask the person in the tower,

Jia:

Mm-hmm.

Jim:

You, you probably got to a sense of reality of, oh gosh, this is how it works today. And we've all heard about the manual, we've heard about the fight strips. it's a very manual process for a lot of valid reasons. So when you stepped into this world of shared aerospace today, that it's easy to express an articulate vision of the way it should be, but to be able to articulate how do we get from where we are, which is a very safe space, with significant separation, with a lot of manual processes and old equipment, How do we get to that next step forward with all the things flying that are gonna be flying in the coming, months and years? what's your vision to get from where we are to this Efficient, digitized, shared aerospace.

Jia:

Yeah, I, I think that's absolutely right and, and I should obviously caveat was, what I say was this is an extremely safe system, so that actually makes any kind of change. Rightfully so, having to really earn its place, right? That is to say the, the impedance is necessarily high because we have a system that works really well and the consequences of failure is dramatic, right? As we've seen recently, with, with what happened, around DCA in terms of the, in-flight collision and also, in terms of some of the impacts, if not material impact, but certainly psychological impact to the controllers of communication outages and things of that nature. So, there are definitely things to be had about maintaining safety. That's really the primary objective of doing all of this. And so just in the same reckoning too, it's like what can we do to actually then improve safety that may be the best way into this, right? Rather than to say, Hey, I'm really in this for let's say efficiency. It's like, how can I make this safer to begin with? This is much the same story as SVO because when you make a statement of, Hey, I wanna do SVO principally because I want to increase efficiency or unit economics, yes, that's true. There are elements of that, but it would be much more powerful if those objectives are directly aligned with improving the safety outcome. Right? If I can say, let's create an SVO system that will drive, Accidents incrementally or dramatically towards zero. I would have a much better case than, Hey, let's just do this to make sure our like bottom line is better, right? So I think in the same way in the airspace we have to make safety the number one priority. So what can we introduce that will be, that will be safe? I think the other tailwind that we have in this regard and the opportunity to do this is kind of in this era where we have part 1 0 8, part 1 46, that they're not exactly today for this application, right? They're talking about segregated airspace. But guess what? That's an environment where we can learn quite a bit about how to safely operate, some of these new concepts, right? Of strategic and tactical and digital conflict resolution, and then learn from that experience, but then incorporate all of the constraints and design features that is needed to operate a shared airspace to get to that end goal. another element on the pathway from here to there is to think about all the technology, all the layers of the stack to operate efficiently and also to build the assurance by design and by experience that's needed to make the transition. So what I mean for that is, you have to be able to mobilize the same kind of, proven aerospace design assurance paradigms. how do I do the safety case? How do I do design assurance for my software? How do I do all of those things to ensure that I have confidence, in that I am delivering the outcome, right? In that I am producing no harmful or effect and the system is functioning as intended. So. That's another aspect to get from here, here to there, is to leverage what we already know in the aerospace domain to create assurance and to translate it into the ATM space. because one of the interesting things there too is that up until very recently, no one has said, this is how you certified an ATM system, right? The, the European Union with EASA has actually done that, I think earlier this year where they've said, okay, this is how we're gonna certify an ATM system, right? It's gonna have attributes that look similar to how you certify an aircraft system. And so that is yet another path, right? Where, this, this space now becomes more normalized, more regularized to allow for third parties to build composable systems into it. And that could then enhance the speed of innovation. From a SkyGrid perspective this makes sense because it's. It gives us an opportunity to build a coherent product that helps the operators today, that may help inps tomorrow in this advanced air mobility space where, the traffic is, is potentially significant. The low altitude coverage and information space needs to be gauged, and then the level of decision support and logic and of strategic and tactical deconfliction have to be that much, more capable, right, to alleviate the load workload that would otherwise be imposed on the air traffic controller. So it creates the need and the sandbox for the innovation, which we can then think about how do we, how do we think about using this for other segments of aviation as well? That's the pathway in my mind.

Luka:

You mentioned improvements in safety. What are some of the near term levers that you see? that industry can pull on to effectively increase safety.

Jia:

Yeah. So, certainly, better domain awareness of all the, having a fused common operating picture that's, with all of the intent of the different actors, as best as it can be. Characterize, that's one thing that could improve safety and efficiency, right? If we know what everybody is trying to do, we have a more credible and higher assurance view of that operating environment, both the natural environment and the traffic environment that's gonna deliver dividends because we can be smarter about our strategic and tactical deconfliction. There air domain awareness in the way of better surveillance. This is actually one of the critical needs for. autonomous aviation and having that domain awareness of traffic, delivered at high assurance and low latency is gonna help you with rotorcraft operation as well with other kind of operations where you are exposed to the low altitude coverage gap. and so I think that brings another element here is, a lot of the things that we're doing for, aircraft to operate more autonomously in terms of lifting the quality of the data, the assurance of the processing, and all of this is gonna pay dividends on, crude aircraft as well. And when you think about SVO and the, the continuity of automation from SVO to this more autonomous construct, it's actually not that different because as soon as you, sort of say, I'm gonna. Allow people to supervise. It implies a level of delegation of responsibilities. And in an SVO context, you, when you do the safety, you can very quickly come to a place that says, Hey, the system doesn't look too different from a, a system that it can behave autonomously. Because what if I have pilot incapacitation, right? And I have single pilot operations. How, how do I even deal with that? That means the system has to be able to operate with continuity on its own or with the help of an off board remote, control center or, ground station, for example. So. In that world, what we learn in autonomy is gonna help with things like SVO, which in turn I think is gonna help, all future operations, which become a little bit more, automated. And that just means that machines may have a bigger role. And so if we conceive of aviation as moving in a direction where, the human machine team's role is always being adjusted, right? Maybe the machine do a little more of the mundane and the human does more strategic and he or she needs to do more and more strategic over time, then you know, we have to figure out the pathway to autonomy no matter what.

Luka:

What part of this tech stack is the most immature today and perhaps an opportunity for startups to go and innovate.

Jia:

One of the biggest gaps still is people like to say, the conspicuity question, right? I think that's still one of the most important things, is to know where everybody is. and to do that with some level of integrity and credibility. And this is on the sensor side, this is on the, digital infrastructure side, which is being addressed by things like 1 46 and by things that we're trying to do. but the sensor gap and the emitter transmitter gap is still there, right? This is a tough problem. and I think we should throw. More attention at it, because e conspicuity is an in-state. It's like saying, I just, I wanna know where everybody is, right? But it's very hard to get to. So like, yes, we have applied a label to the problem, but we do need to throw some brain power at, at solving it. some of the other, let's say, cases, whether it's always gonna be hard, right? Understanding the, the environment for that. There are things obviously that you can do to be robust to weather, right? You can design that in, but understanding, weather and the environment that we're in, especially as weather, the intensity of certain weather becomes more significant over time is gonna be important still. and I think. Know the problem that you said earlier, which is the backend system. How do we host all of this stack? How do we think about the interconnectivity, the communication, the cloud stack to do this? that warrants some more thinking as well, because now kind of when you're thinking about the engineering sense, right, the balance of availability, cost, determinism, redundancy, all of that is going to maybe get reshaped right when you need to deliver something that is more assured over this kind of cloud environment. And there are many, standards and definitions that are still open there.

Peter:

I want, wanna learn a little more on your thoughts on weather data for, these types of craft. It, it occurs to me that when, when you're flying an airplane through the airspace system, especially in parts of the country where you have thunderstorms, in the afternoon and, you have that type of weather, so much of the decision making comes from what you see with your own eyes looking around. it's not from the 12 minute old, radar information that you might have or the one hour old terminal, conditions at the airport. and so the, the way the airspace system with respect to weather works today. The weather data that we have is sufficient, provided that we are also using our own immediate sensing of the weather conditions around us. Right? Oh, there's the, there's a cell right over there. I should avoid that. Right? but when you move into these networks of unmanned aircraft and drones, how are they going to get the level of fidelity and weather data that they need in order to, be as safe? it's not gonna be the same weather data that we have today. It's gotta be e either you have to have dedicated weather sensing on board the aircraft, or you have to have a whole different level of fidelity in the weather data. I would think that is being sent to that aircraft.

Jia:

I, I agree. I mean, I think there's definitely a need to uplevel the resolution spatially and temporally as well as the, The integrity of that data for certain applications. I think the tricky part is gonna be what can you actually achieve? Right? What is good enough, right? Historically, you're right. there is an implicit understanding, as with many of these transitions from piloted autonomous, is that the, the pilot, right? The mark one plus the very efficient neural computer that is there is doing all of this, like calculations, all of this decision making, and we say that's kind of effectively DAL A today. Right? Very highly assured, even though perhaps it's, unmeasurable, what that really means. So the. You're right, there's definitely this question of like, how do I replace that situational awareness and closed looped, high quality decision making of a trained pilot when I have an autonomous aircraft? so yes, onboard sensors may have to get better, maybe more like, onboard radars are needed. another way is to understand the total safety case of your operations. And that has to account for the variability of the weather, the length of your operations, right? Are you doing a ev toe flight versus a cross country flight? the quality of your init sensors and the assurance of the data that you're getting from there, as well as how can you appropriately use forecasted data? And maybe it's even forecasted data that's linked with some real, real time data that's anchored in that. So. Maybe you can't, maybe you can develop a better forecast, but maybe you can't use that for, let's say, realtime tactical decision, but you can plan better and reach a high level of efficiency, at least in terms of your go no go decision. So whether I think it is both interesting and tricky because of the, the fact that it is at the end of the day, hard to pin it completely down, right? So you still have to operate with some level of uncertainty, and then at the same time, there's always this desire and, and need to do better, right? So that's, that what makes, that's what makes it even more complex over this, the question of like going from pilot to autonomous.

Jim:

Jia, you've talked about the future of aviation as autonomous. Where are we today? How does autonomy play out in the next couple of years? I would assume with Wisk it's absolutely necessary, right? they're all in on autonomy. Give a little bit of a, overview for our listeners.

Jia:

Right.

Jim:

where are we and where do you envision it to be? In what timeframe?

Jia:

giving a timeframe is always gonna be hard because who knows, maybe I'll come back on in two years and then we'll, we'll have a fact check on my predictions. But the, I think the near term, yes, you're right. I think it's very exciting in terms of us getting civil autonomy, off the ground, probably in the a m space first. there's also, obviously, as you see, efforts in just rotorcraft all kinds of other aircraft, conventional takeoff and landing aircraft, getting more into an autonomy in there. And oftentimes it's this tension between autonomous as in. I have someone on the ground supervising versus more SVO constructs. But I, as I, as I've mentioned, that's the continuity. So I expect that continuity to continue to advance and getting to operationalization. So the really exciting part now is like entities like SkyGrid coming in and figuring out, well, how, now that we have the construct on board, how do we make that fit in the, in the construct of the national airspace? And how then can we perhaps refactor that technology stack of what's on board, what's off board, what's in the cloud to affect the best possible operational efficiency and operational safety? And so that's, I think, very exciting. To me, it's also about keeping our, ears to the ground of learning what's gonna happen now that we have potentially large scale US operations in segregated airspace, what can we learn from that experience, given that's where a lot of aerial robotics will happen at scale as well. So even though to me that's a somewhat different space, I do want to, see the advances there, right? And, and learn from that experience. and knowing that there will be caveats for scaling it to bigger airplanes. But it's, it's something to definitely, keep watch on. And of course, on the military side, this is all gonna move, very, very fast. And so, companies that can do both, could also benefit from that acceleration, no doubt. it's interesting. Someone, someone at Boeing once said something that I've found really, really interesting and really, Tactile, right, because it's, it's something I've tried to explain in many words, many more words before. but he basically said like, civil autonomy is kind of like driving cross country safely, right? Like military autonomy is kind of like driving across country safely and robbing three banks along the way. It's like a different, level of assurance and expectation of risk, but also then a different level of complexity in a sense. So, I, I think that's another space definitely to keep wash off.

Luka:

When, when looked through that lens of, definition of autonomy and, in the civilian and the military, context, what's your assessment of the efforts of, well-known firms that are operating in this space, whether it's reliable or X-Wing, Joby, Wisk, Aurora. What major milestones impressed you? what system bottlenecks remain.

Jia:

Yeah, I, I think the biggest thing will be getting operational validation, right? Getting into real operations, in our case from point A to B without robbing banks, right? That's, that's really step number one and the, the most important milestone. and that entails a measure of like, how do I access the airspace, right? How do I do the coordination? How do I figure out the, letter of agreements with the air traffic authority locally, to start operating? So that to me, is the most impressive milestones, and that's what we as an industry have to. strive toward, many of the other pieces. A lot of the technologies are in place. There are definitely some corner cases and some, parts of the space that are hard. I won't really enumerate all of them, but there are definitely some that are challenging. But when you look at it, people are building the pieces. They are integrating the systems. They are having productive conversations with FAA. there is gonna be more attention, I think, in the near, near future toward the operational side of the rulemaking equation of, how do we accommodate autonomous aircraft in a more systematic way in the na. but really for me, the milestones get to get to that. point A to B autonomous operations on a regular basis, was one of these entrants and with the right digital system to enable that.

Luka:

How close are, e either of those players or just industry broadly coming to those milestones?

Jia:

I think we're getting there. we are, certainly from a sky grid perspective, we are building with the urgency of being there in the next few years.

Jim:

Jia, I was excited for Sky Grade when I saw that you were joining. you're an extraordinarily capable guy. let's say you were interviewing with SkyGrid and your first question was, what problem are we solving? What do we plan to solve? What would be the answer?

Jia:

We are in the business of opening the sky for autonomous flight. that for us is problem number one. How do you solve for airspace integration and the safe integration of autonomous aircraft into the airspace? And we think that problem is very important because, again, we have lots of players building aircraft. They're all toward increasing automation and autonomy. but there is this gap, right? And, and, I was even at the Honeywell summit, the last one that we were all at. I think I was on the, on the stage with a bunch of, CEOs from different companies and C-suites. And, the, my last question was kind of like, well, what, what is, what keeps you up at night, right? At the end of the day? And they all said airspace integration or air traffic management for a m. And so maybe I got a hint out of that, right? in my actual interview with, with SkyGrid. So, that's, that's how we see the world over here in, in Austin.

Jim:

and What's the closest analog with today's system that would be corollary to what you're planning to do for autonomy?

Jia:

That's a really interesting question. I think, I think there are, there are a couple things, right, in terms of the design approach, in terms of how we have to think about autonomy as a system and safety assurance and all of that. We draw inspiration from, the aviation world, from, even things like SVO, right? How do we do the allocation of responsibility? How do we do the safety case? how do we think about system design and redundancy and all of that. From the perspective of airspace organization I think a Faso analogy is this idea of like UTM right? Digitization and UTM is digitally like native at low altitude because that was the space that's kind of open before, right? It's not highly utilized. But now that we have drones that can use it, so PK and NASA had, this, this instinct of doing this, kind of a revolutionary step at low altitude. And, and it's, it's possible because it's essentially kind of a white space there. And even then it's entailed a lot of challenges, right? It's not a complete white space in that we still have to worry about transit by crude aircraft or other aircraft that are not on the UTM system at low altitude. So it definitely still issues there, but on the whole, that level of digitization of human machine teaming, of machine-based thinking, we do draw inspiration from that even though we understand that the system has to be fundamentally different in many ways. and that kind of going back to the very earlier conversation, that part of this conversation, when you wanna do that in shared airspace, it is a, much more complex environment with many more stakeholders, right? So it's not like we can just impose this. We don't have like that power or authority. We have to rather say, how can we enable the operators today, right? How can we make their jobs easier and better? How can we make it safer? And then how can we then on the other side, kind of act as a broker and help a NSPs, right? Can we build systems to help them reduce their workload and actually be able to accommodate the a EM world that's to come. so that's where I think the analogy is both helpful, but also then breaks down because we have to do, what is in effect a much more ambitious thing.

Peter:

Do you see, playing a role in the below 400 foot airspace area playing like a UTM type role as in scope for what you guys are going to do? I mean, it seems like there's an argument that you could make in favor of that because there, may well be a very high volume of unmanned flight hours being accumulated with those types of aircraft on those types of missions. That could be interesting, but. How do you weigh that, as part of your path and your roadmap?

Jia:

Right. I mean, that's a fair question. It's, it's definitely one that, that we have thought about. one side I think is it, some of them may naturally happen in the sense of like, parts of part 1 0 8 operation will probably be increasingly like larger again, higher risk vehicles. One might ask that even if they were to operate, initially, let's say in a more segregated aerospace environment. It what is then the safety level required, right? The, the very, just because they're operating at lower altitude doesn't mean that they don't impose quite a bit of risks, and then perhaps you actually need a higher assurance system to deal with that. the other side of it too is that they might quickly realize too that they need to actually operate potentially more integrated environment or transit through integrated environment such that they could achieve the operational flexibility that they want. So again, in that case, it might push them into the boundaries of what SkyGrid is trying to do. I think that has to be balanced too by what do we think is the, the long term viability of UTM because it's, it's in effect in an environment where, there's less assurance requirements. So in principle, more players could do it. and then you have, certain operators of, let's say large fleets of drones that will just build their own UTM system as well. So there's a, there's a kind of question of how much of a moat can you create with a purely UTM solution versus one that, in our mind is like, you want to go to a place where's more stakes, which is probably where you're gonna create more value.

Luka:

Jia, describe. The, major phases in the life of, of Sky Grid and how it has evolved and what strategic insight led to these, pivots, and, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the early focus back in, 2018, I think it was as a joint venture between Boeing and Spark recognition. It was focus on UTM command and control tools for small UAS systems. And that was done via, mobile mission planning apps. And then there was a transition to high assurance enterprise grade, products. and then further expanding from there into, even higher integrity services. So.

Jia:

Right.

Luka:

what's, what's been behind the scenes? I know this, you, you came, after a lot of these decisions, but in retrospect, what drove some of these major inflection points in the trajectory of the company.

Jia:

Part of it is just, I think, is emblematic of the entire US and drone industry was that, folks in a way thought BVLOS and all of this would arrive faster. And so when SkyGrid was formed, there was a view that this was just around the corner. Let's go like all, full speed right into kind of this UTM world. but kind of the issue that we just discussed became, came front and center, which is, well, if we're doing that, then there has to be like a long-term business model here, like a moat in it. And it wasn't very clear at the time that it was. Apparent, and we've seen this with the likes of air maps and others, right. in terms of the UTM space as well. So I think that's the kind of macro, internally some of the linemen was also driven by the fact that, at the end of the day there's, there's a Boeing stake in this. There's a view toward bigger things, whether it's kind of the Wsc side of the world or what can Boeing do to inform kind of the development of the future airspace, right? You might remember as well that, around that time when I was actually at Airbus, on the other side, that Boeing Airbus got together and wrote a vision for the Future airspace that talked about a lot about digitization, a FR like concepts. And it was a kind of a, trendsetting piece of document for the industry where again, these two, historic rivals came together and outlined a coherent vision for the future airspace. So some of those motivations came from. That as well, that for this to support this holistic vision of autonomy at Boeing, that includes the entities like WISC and also what Boeing is doing, that we need to orient toward bigger things, more ambitious things. And, I've since, had, shaping on that strategy, my role. But you're right, some of that started before I even got here. Right. Fabrice Kunze, who led the company for a while, who you may know, who's now at Avidyne did a lot of that work on the ground as well?

Luka:

Do you mind giving us an overview of the products that SkyGrid is offering to customers and who are those customers?

Jia:

Yeah, so essentially you can think of our products as there's a family of product for the operators, for like your a EM operators and your fleet operators. And we provide common operating pictures and decision support tools to help them better integrate into the airspace, improve their operations, and. Some of those services include the better data, right, the better decision support tools, surveillance capabilities. we provide a high integrity, high assurance surveillance data feed with partners that's gonna help the integration of autonomous aircraft. Many of those same services could also operate on the air navigation service provider side, either, as SkyGrid as A-A-D-S-P, that's providing some of these services directly where it's possible, like in the United States or internationally. We would actually provide these services to NSPs who wanna integrate a EM and who may someday wanna provide these services for other types of aircraft as well. So that's kind of generally how we see the, the market we have deployed with a m and operators of that nature. we have customers in kind of the existing operations space as well. and we hope to be able to announce some other ones actually very soon. That's more kind of the, the other parts of the, the, The business space that we're trying to address. So look to, announcements very soon in those regard.

Jim:

Jia, how often do you hear about Boeing ATM as something similar to what you're doing, within the halls of Boeing, either in a positive way or less positive.

Jia:

not perhaps often enough, but I think it's important for us to understand some of this. I, I don't see it as a direct precedence in many ways, but, I, I'll just, give you a sense. I think Boeing ATM was, was like a thing in the early two thousands. So, at that time I was, probably still in college, right? So for me it's, it's a bit of history there. but what I, I would say what the continuity there is that Boeing as a company is very strategic in its view of the airspace. And, and the earlier reference point that I had was the joint white paper was Airbus on the Future Airspace and even our conops that we've released as SkyGrid, the Joint Conops with Boeing and Wisk on their operations. Many of those things highlight, Kind of like this importance of airspace, of knowing that, Boeing is an important player in commercial aviation. but for that industry to thrive, we have to have an airspace that is future proof, that is safe and that will support volume operations. So it's, it's a very strategic pillar of how Boeing thinks about the ecosystem and thinks about their long-term commercial aviation strategy. So, irrespective of whether or not Boeing has a business unit that is there to kind of build into ATM, the, the importance of airspace can never be, overstated within the volume context. And so. If there's one shared thread, it is that sky grid, along with other parts of Boeing, are, are working to enable the operations of Nelle, as well as the, the sandbox for a a m and how that kind of informs bigger airspace. But also we have a vision of how can we in some ways contribute to the public good of thinking about how can the future airspace evolve to accommodate all entrants, new entrants, traditional entrants. What can we do? What has to happen to enable this more strategic, more efficient, and safer, and smarter operation of tomorrow in the airspace?

Luka:

Back to the products and, the common operating picture, how does one build a certified high assurance version of that? Obviously there's, a lot of products along that spectrum from,

Jia:

Mm-hmm.

Luka:

Some common apps on, on mobile phones, to, the things that, uAvionix is doing or Vantis is doing. Where does SkyGrid fit along that spectrum? And what really, when you get into the weeds, into the details, how does that work?

Jia:

Yeah. I would say without getting into too much details, one of the biggest things is the starting point of positioning of where do you see yourself, right? Do you wanna. Kind of start at the UTM level and move upwards, or do you wanna be at the sky grid starting at the A DSP for a a m for short aviation and moving from there? Right? Because I think there's always this sense of, disrupting from below, but I think positioning also matters. So for us, being that digital backbone for a m is important because it, it gives us the safety culture and the orientation to the product that I think is then required to tackle the bigger problems in the NAS and integrated operations. So I can say that, what it means in terms of safety is to really think, the sole system engineering side of things. Understand what it takes, to assure the product, writing the software in the right way, and investing in the kind of enterprise quality management, safety management that is required to, qualify you as a high assurance A DSP player. I think That's a really big piece of it. and then, investing in things like modeling and simulation and other assurance tools to make sure that the system that you're building, can actually enable autonomous operations and can actually enable the kind of delegated, operational authority when you have this human machine team. so I think it's been said by others, in this space as well. the emphasis here isn't necessarily on new fungo algorithms. It's really on the system engineering that it takes to bring an assured market, a product to the market.

Luka:

And when, when you're thinking about the market that you will go and address and serve, what are the segments that. will most likely want to, adopt or, or be required to adopt this high level of assurance as opposed to, a lot of the UAS services that are operating now, which, don't really use that.

Jia:

Mm-hmm. So, certainly when we think about anything that has, passengers on board, right? and then, large aircraft that have significant air and ground risks, where we think there's gonna be stakes, higher risk operations, perhaps over more populated environments, that's going to drive probably your safety case toward higher assurance. And even those are kind of in the a EM space. But I also think that. There's, as we build better and better systems, we'll wanna figure out ways of playing roles in the modernization of the nas. Can we deliver piece and parcels of these systems into ATM systems? can we help some of those existing operations to be smarter and more efficient once we have a coherent product in this kind of low altitude, a EM space?

Jim:

Jia, when you were at Honeywell, I, presented a question to you. If you were speaking to the CEO of Honeywell and he was gonna go speak to a group of investors, how would he express what you guys were doing? And you said something like, well, I just spoke to the CEO of Honeywell and. Here's what he would say. let's say Kelly, your CEO, was talking to Brian, who used to run Wisk, and he saying, boy, there's a lot going on with Boeing right now, which is in a very positive way, but this is a really strategic opportunity for us. How is what Sky Grid is doing gonna help us in the near term value to our shareholders?

Jia:

Boy, I mean, it is like, it's, it's the time of the budgeting cycle right now, Jim. Like, this is a, this is a really good, conversation to have. the, the biggest thing here is that Boeing isn't in place where you're right. I think it's trending very positively. There's a new energy, there's a renewed focus on getting this done right. And, full support, across the board for Kelly and, and what his team is, is doing, and for what Brian is doing vis-a-vis, the, the commercial side of the business. I would say the biggest thing is, once we're on track again, for Boeing, it's really thinking about them. What is, what is the next aircraft? What is the aircraft after the next? Right. What is then, we got the basics done, which is not simple, which is very hard. we get the production volumes up. We, recenter the business. Then the question will return, well what is, what is next? Right? And that's where companies like SkyGrid and Wisk play a role. Like what, what are we doing in terms of opening up a wide space in aviation? And that's a m in the broad sense, right, of autonomous aircraft, of different sizes. Like you mentioned, everything from the operating of 1 0 8, to other kinds of aircraft. And I think the advantage of Sky Grid there is we have the ability to support different kind of operations, different kind of actors in the space. So that's a white space that I will. wanna conquer for the Boeing company, right, in a sense, and also provide this kind of a new airspace, construct for the world. The other side of it too is when we think about technologies for future aircraft, what is the right combination of offboard onboard systems, digital infrastructure versus onboard systems to enable increasingly autonomous operations? and wouldn't you want to be able to then have a coherent view of that at the product level, but then, having that coherent view with the regulators and with the folks who are setting the rules about the future airspace so that you can best anticipate and, and create value in that future state as well. So, I mean, Kelly, if you're listening, that's kind of me pouring my heart out.

Jim:

That's great. That's very articulate. That's

Luka:

Of course he's listening. What are you talking about?

Jia:

Right. I know, right? This is a Vertical space, guys.

Luka:

Jia anything that you would wanna leave the audience with?

Jia:

Just that as we continue to innovate in The Vertical Space, I think we wanna keep in mind that the kind of scope of innovation extends beyond the aircraft. and it goes into the digitization of the system, of system, the operations and the airspace. And if you're innovating here, we are here too. So love to be able to join hands with you guys.

Luka:

Perfect. Well, Jia, thank you very much for your time. Always a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you for, coming back and thank you for being a fan of the podcast.

Jia:

yeah, absolutely. Always once and always. Yeah.