Donald J. Trump

I spent a lot of time as a program manager for all Navy and Marine Corps UAVs.

We did a lot of work with the shipboard integration of ScanEagle, which was a new capability that frankly got us back into the fight from a naval perspective.

Started very simply, and then we grew into a fully integrated ScanEagle system in the small surface warfare combatants, which I always cruised on.

I was a frigate and a cruiser sailor.

So there are ways that we are making the tyranny of distance, which is what we call it in the Asian theater.

How do I communicate?

How do I jam?

How do I do things at distance?

What's the power of endurance?

How do I use these semi-lethal and also long-flying UAVs?

How do I merge them with the manned fleet?

So man-on-man teaming is going to become a big thing, trying to shorten the energy loop of decisions between finding something that is actionable and making a decision on that data.

That's where UAVs are unique.

So for instance, the jamming world is where we got started.

We were very concerned about F-18Gs, the inability for them to get close enough to jam without putting just a boatload of energy in the air.

So we came up with an expendable UAV when I was the program manager, and we called it whisper rather than shout.

You can get in close, you could do everything you need to do with an expendable UAV from the F-18, and you can whisper jam, not shout from 50 miles or 150 miles.

So that's the power of UAVs.

It's a time sink.

It's the power of endurance and it's the power of communications at long distances.