Edge in the Sky: UAS and the Future of Defense Technology

We've seen drones deployed in a lot of areas for good, right? They're used for electrical inspections, they're used for package delivery, but we've certainly seen drones across the world used in some nefarious ways, especially with regard to what we're seeing in Ukraine, what we've seen in Yemen. And so it's very crucial as a country that we get prepared and make sure that we're staying ahead of our adversaries with regard to being able to protect ourselves from the deployment of drones. The panel discussion on important topics like Counter UAS are really a unique opportunity for Virginia Tech for us to be a convener and bring people from industry and government alongside the university. There are grand challenges to solve in the world and only through creative partnerships with industry and academia and governments will we be able to solve them. The center of next you know this is a great series because it's an opportunity first of all for Virginia Tech to share with industry collaborators There's folks who graduated from Virginia Tech who work in this space, folks who worked with Virginia Tech in this space. We can bring people to Virginia Tech, have an open forum where we can discuss some of these hard problems. It's just an incredible opportunity for us. I'm thrilled to be here today to kind of share Virginia Tech's Counter UAS Test and Research Center that we're standing up. This is a joint effort between the National Security Institute of Virginia Tech that has a long story history of doing Department of Defense related work and our test site that It has a lot of history with the FAA and answering their research objectives around drones. We each bring something different to the collaboration. Of course, NSI brings the important relationships with government sponsors, and MAP brings all of their experience with operating uncrewed air systems. There's a bias to action we bring to everything we do. We want to get busy, we want to get busy with partners, and we hope events like today really help inspire that. We'll be right back.