DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

Richard Vigilante.

71 days.

That’s how long it took Venom, a powerful, new, U.S. autonomous strike aircraft (aka a drone) to move from concept to flying prototype.

71 days. In traditional aerospace terms, that is almost indecent.

For decades, the path from concept to first flight has stretched across years. Requirements proliferated with each committee’s two cents. Design reviews accumulated. Tooling lead times expanded. Certification protocols hardened. Oversight layered on top. The system evolved to prevent embarrassment, not accelerate learning.

All that is going away. Elon Musk and Pete Hegseth are driving a radical improvement in how the U.S. military develops and acquires weapons, which, in turn, will radically change U.S. war fighting doctrine and ultimately transform U.S. manufacturing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2026 at 07:05 and is filed under Think about it.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.