E35 – US Merchant Marine

Buying a fighter jet is the cheap part. Mike sits down with Jim Becker, President and CEO of Perfect Point EDM, to talk about the biggest line in any defense program: keeping the fleet flying. Perfect Point builds the E-Drill, which uses electro discharge machining (EDM) to pull aircraft fasteners. Founded in 2005, it turned a lab curiosity into a fielded tool that removes a rivet in about 30 seconds instead of 10 minutes, with no debris and almost no rework. Jim's take is blunt. The aircraft modernized, the maintenance tooling did not, and the industry keeps papering over it by leaning on a shrinking pool of skilled mechanics. Topics include: Operations and maintenance as the biggest cost in a program

Test is where new military hardware goes to wait. Mike sits down with Jenn Wilson, Head of Federal at Nominal, to talk about test and evaluation, the least glamorous gate between a program and the warfighter. Nominal builds test data infrastructure for hardware. Founded in 2022 by Anduril, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin alumni, it reached a $1 billion valuation in March. Jenn’s take is that acceleration comes from optimizing what you test for. Cutting test points is the wrong lever. Topics include: Test and evaluation as a mission enabler

How do systems operate when GPS disappears? Mike sits down with Kara Kramer, Vice President ofRaptor Sales at Vantor (formerly Maxar Intelligence), to discuss one of the most important challenges facing modern autonomous systems: operating when GPS is jammed, spoofed, or completely unavailable.

Anduril Industries raised $5 billion at a reported $61billion valuation—putting a nine-year-old defense tech company in the same conversation as legacy primes that have been building weapons for generations.

What does it actually take to get new technology into thehands of warfighters—and why is it still so hard? In this episode, Mike sits down with the co-founders ofDcode, Meagan Metzger and Meg Vorland, to unpack the reality behind defense innovation, acquisition reform, and the flow of capital into the sector. Dcode operates at a unique intersection—working withstartups, investors, and the Pentagon—giving them a rare, inside-out view of how the system really works. We break down why most acquisition reform efforts fallshort, whether recent policy changes are hitting the right targets, and what conventional wisdom in defense innovation is simply wrong. If you’re trying to understand how defense actually getsbuilt, funded, and fielded—this is the inside baseball.