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PODCAST

DIB Innovators

The DIB Innovators podcast celebrates the brilliant minds behind innovation within the Defense Industrial Base. In each episode, host and co-founder of RADICL, David Graff will speak with DIB leaders who are driving technological advancements, championing our nation’s security, and shaping the future of defense technology. Brought to you by RADICL — Cybersecurity-as-a-Service purpose-built for small and mid-sized businesses in the Defense Industrial Base. Starting your CMMC journey? RADICL guides

technology

All Episodes

00:37:21

EP 90 — Grid Aero's James Gherdovich on Why...

DIB Innovators ·

2026/03/19

Removing the pilot from an exquisite manned airframe doesn't make it expendable; it actually makes it more expensive to lose. James Gherdovich, Chief Strategy Officer at Grid Aero, argues that strapping a high-end autonomy suite onto a platform already limited by constrained supply chains only increases economic risk to the force in a kinetic environment. Grid Aero's answer is a 40x40-foot autonomous cargo aircraft built from scratch: thousands of pounds for thousands of miles, GPS- and

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00:45:50

EP 89 — Anduril's Shane Arnott on Eliminating Design...

DIB Innovators ·

2026/03/12

Australia and Anduril each put $50 million into Ghost Shark. That 50/50 split eliminated the customer-contractor power imbalance and got the vehicle in the water in 12 months, whereas the US Navy's ORCA program took nearly a decade to reach the same milestone. When Anduril couldn't solve biofouling on control surfaces, they walked into a design review and said it. The Australian government's science organization brought research from facilities across the Asia-Pacific to fix it. No

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00:41:34

EP 88 — Chariot Defense's Adam Warmoth on Powering...

DIB Innovators ·

2026/03/06

Adam Warmoth, Founder & CEO of Chariot Defense, fielded with the 101st Airborne at GRTC six months after first check by pulling silicon carbide power electronics and high-voltage lithium directly from Tesla and eVTOL supply chains. Their M424 hybridizes tactical vehicles and generators to deliver 4-5x higher charge rates than trucks alone, resulting in 3-5x drone sortie rates while almost eliminating generator signature during critical windows. Adam breaks down why the operational shift from

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00:42:36

EP 87 — Galvion's Todd Stirtzinger on the Warfighter...

DIB Innovators ·

2026/02/26

Galvion built a warfighter lab in Portsmouth, NH: a configurable shoot house with high-speed cameras, VR, 3D sound, and a double-PhD cognitive scientist on staff. Elite special operators ran the course with night vision and called their gear perfect, but the data showed they were slower, their muscles tighter, and compensating the entire time without knowing it. That gap between what a trained operator feels and what the science measures is where Galvion makes its design decisions.Todd Stirtzinger

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00:43:10

EP 86 — Firehawk's Will Edwards on Cutting Propellant...

DIB Innovators ·

2026/02/19

Will Edwards, CEO & Co-founder of Firehawk walked around defense conferences with what was essentially Lego plastic demonstrating it could become rocket fuel. Everyone laughed until Firehawk proved thermoplastic works as a binder for 3D-printable solid propellant, cutting production from 60 days to 6 hours. The breakthrough came from a failed pivot: they tried selling hybrid rocket engines to disrupt the supply chain, but learned the military won't swap proven systems for new architectures

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00:42:53

EP 85 — Hermeus' Zach Shore on Building Mach 5...

DIB Innovators ·

2026/02/13

Zach Shore, President of Hermeus, and his team have demonstrated a turbine-based combined cycle engine in a wind tunnel for roughly $20 million. NASA and DARPA spent nine figures on the same architecture. The system uses proprietary modifications to an F100-229 to hit Mach 3, then routes airflow around the cocooned turbine directly into a ramjet to reach Mach 5. Reverse the process to decelerate. The result is reusable air-breathing flight from zero to Mach 5. No rockets required for acceleration or

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00:40:47

EP 84 — Ashish Parikh on Building Mesh Radios That...

DIB Innovators ·

2026/02/03

Doodle Labs engineered multi-band radios that frequency-hop in milliseconds, outpacing jamming attacks that make satellite control impossible for real-time drone operations. When conflict in Ukraine started, the engineering team repurposed this architecture for anti-jamming by hopping between bands faster than adversaries could track and jam. Ashish Parikh, Co-CEO, details their monthly software release cadence driven by field engineers embedded with Ukrainian operators, where mission requirements

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00:39:19

EP 83 — Oura's Geoff Wylde on Building Wearables That...

DIB Innovators ·

2026/01/27

Oura tracked an armored unit's gunnery qualification and found baseline heart rate variability statistically predicted top-quartile performance on weapons platforms. Their three-tier privacy architecture gives individuals AI-driven feedback, lets them share data with coaches by explicit consent, and provides command aggregate de-identified metrics. This information helps command know not only when to back off on training, but when they can push harder and how trainees are recovering.Geoff Wylde,

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00:29:26

EP 82 — DEWM's Clark Haymond on Using Networks to...

DIB Innovators ·

2026/01/20

Clark Haymond, COO of DEWM, leveraged active duty relationships to compress validation timelines that would take years through traditional AFRL sequences. Having friends now in squadron leadership enabled direct jet time allocation for hypothesis testing, proving DEWM's DART could complete actual SEAD kill chains before committing to the formal program of record pathways. This network-driven approach delivers a combined operation with real-time feedback loops impossible in controlled SBIR

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41:15

EP 81 — Inversion's Justin Fiaschetti on Hiring...

DIB Innovators ·

2026/01/13

Storing cargo in orbit is becoming cost-comparable to maintaining hundreds of terrestrial warehouses scattered globally, but in orbit, they’re not as vulnerable to atmospheric conditions, geographic limitations, and single points of failure.Justin Fiaschetti, CEO & Co-founder of Inversion, explains how this approach requires orders of magnitude fewer units to cover the same geographic area because any satellite can deliver to any location within its coverage zone. When launch costs continue

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35:02

EP 80 — Lothric Labs' Jonathan DiMattei on Capability...

DIB Innovators ·

2026/01/06

Jonathan DiMattei, Founder & CEO of Lothric Labs, describes his pathway into defense manufacturing as fearless, relentless, and totally unbiased networking. He attended every ribbon cutting, grand opening, and Chamber of Commerce event he could find, regardless of industry. The breakthrough came at World Trade Center Denver, where events put him directly in front of United Airlines, Lockheed Martin, and defense contractors. His team's thousands of hours of lived 3D printing experience made the

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49:45

EP 79 — PrimerAI’s Sean Moriarty on Time-Bounded...

DIB Innovators ·

2025/12/16

Primer.ai reduced a 50-day intelligence analysis timeline to hours, enabling operators to redirect friendlies away from hostile forces before collision. CEO Sean Moriarty explains why this speed advantage stems from working backward from customer need rather than leading with AI capabilities — understanding workflow bottlenecks where analysts spend more time assembling information than analyzing it, then building software that starts their day where it used to end.Sean's product background shaped

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39:02

EP 78 — Epsilon3’s Laura Crabtree on Compliance as a...

DIB Innovators ·

2025/12/09

SpaceX's early mission operations exposed a fundamental problem: mission-critical teams were executing complex procedures across Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, and fragmented communication channels, creating dangerous gaps where hardware gets destroyed and critical data falls through the cracks. Laura Crabtree, Co-founder & CEO of Epsilon3, built Epsilon 3 to solve this after watching teams flip through paper documentation at T-minus countdowns instead of focusing on root cause analysis. Her

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42:45

EP 77 — Lazarus Alliance’s Michael Peters on A...

DIB Innovators ·

2025/12/04

Michael Peters, CEO & Founder of Lazarus Alliance, built his cybersecurity career on one principle: turn over rocks before the bad guys do. After 25 years conducting audits, he's watched DIB companies treat compliance frameworks like magical protection. For Michael, however, passing CMMC means you had two good weeks, not 50 weeks of security. His Security Trifecta framework overrides this checkbox mentality with three layers: governance that documents policies in writing, technical enforcement

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32:24

EP 76 — OpsLab's Arun Nair on Teaching AI the Art of...

DIB Innovators ·

2025/11/25

OpsLab's scheduling platform saves Air Force squadrons 200 hours per month — time previously spent by pilots manually fixing flight schedules until late at night. Arun Nair, Founder & CEO, showcases how OpsLab's three-layer intelligence system went from 30% scheduler acceptance to operational deployment across 75+ squadrons by combining operations research algorithms, reinforcement learning from daily user feedback, and LLM interfaces that let commanders simulate scenarios like losing 20% of

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46:40

EP 75 — Elara Nova's Kim Crider on Balancing “Shiny...

DIB Innovators ·

2025/11/20

When Kim Crider, Founding Partner at Elara Nova, became the Air Force's first Chief Data Officer, she had no mandate, minimal staff, and skeptical four-star commanders. Her CORONA presentation changed everything: using actual pilot retention data and analysis, she demonstrated how insufficient training aircraft was driving attrition. The Secretary's response unlocked buy-in across the service. Kim shares how she did it: start with the decision you need to make, then work backwards to determine

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45:07

EP 74 — Roger's Jill Castilla on Building Fee-Free...

DIB Innovators ·

2025/10/30

Roger fills gaps other military banks ignore: free credit score monitoring that typically costs $20 monthly, 2% yield on checking with savings rates reaching 5.25% during peak periods, and zero overdraft fees while competitors generate significant revenue from service member overdrafts. Jill Castilla, President & CEO of Roger Bank/Citizens Bank of Edmond, walks through how the platform's fraud detection handles the reality that 75% of account opening attempts come from bots, while allowing

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40:09

EP 73 — Ethos's Sasha Seymore on Training Warfighters...

DIB Innovators ·

2025/10/17

Sasha Seymore, Co-founder & President at Ethos, walked onto the UNC basketball team as a senior, struggled with outdated playbook training, and turned that frustration into a company that cuts military schoolhouse failure rates by two-thirds while saving millions per location. His co-founder Andrew was student body president studying active learning pedagogy, and together they built a platform that measures knowledge gaps impacting performance rather than just tracking completion. The

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40:53

EP 72 — Zone 5's Thomas Akers on Why...

DIB Innovators ·

2025/10/02

Zone 5 Technologies cut cruise missile costs from $1.5 million to $200,000 by rethinking not just the engineering, but how you build the supply chain and factory floor around cost targets from day one. Thomas Akers, CEO, shares how his team goes from contract award to weapon flight in 4 months by keeping engineers right next to the production line, writing all their own software, and doing machining in-house. When a problem hits the shop floor, an engineer can be there in a minute.The real

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49:29

EP 71 — Skydio’s Mark Valentine on How Sanctions...

DIB Innovators ·

2025/08/26

What happens when China sanctions your drone company? For Skydio, it became the catalyst for complete supply chain independence and battle-tested technology that now guides Ukrainian artillery strikes. Mark Valentine, Global Head of National Security Strategy, breaks down the story for Dave: when their drones in Ukraine failed due to single-band radios and GPS dependence, his team made 36 field visits over two years, embedded Ukrainian engineers, and developed Asimov software enabling complete

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91 results

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