The Ground A laser — A drone game-changer?

0:00Mike Butcher:Welcome to Path Founders with me, Mike Butcher. We like to cover the code, the capital and the consequences in the startup ecosystem. Before we hear from today's guest, let me just remind you that later this month we'll be launching a new platform, Path Founders Network. Here's the problem. Europe is far too fragmented and that means tech startup founders, investors and the talent that wants to join the ecosystem has enormous problems connecting. When you can literally drive around Silicon Valley, in Europe, it's impossible to join every meetup, pay for every conference and fly to multiple cities all the time.

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1:22Mike Butcher:Just go to pathfounders.com slash network to start your application today. The war in Ukraine has shown just how dramatically cheap fast-moving drones are changing modern warfare and how expensive it can be to shoot them down with conventional missiles. That's the problem German defense tech startup Ground A is trying to solve. Founded only in January this year, the company has now raised an astounding 9.1 million euros in pre-seed funding and developed its first system, literally a laser-based weapon, to shoot drones out of the sky. But can laser weapons finally become a practical, scalable answer to the drone threat?

2:03Mike Butcher:To discuss this is Ground A's CEO and co-founder, Dr. Tobias Brunet. Welcome. Thank you, Mike, for having me. Now, we've heard about laser-based systems before, and the British Army has the Dragonfire system, which came out last year. What's going to be different about Ground A? Yeah, I mean, we are building, as I said, a laser-based system. In comparison, like directly straight to your comparison, what's developing in the UK, we are building a scalable mobile system. We are talking about a system which has a standard Euro pallet in size. So that means it's highly mobile. You can deploy it on a pickup truck, on tanks, on UGVs, on existing platforms.

2:56So like if we compare ourselves to really high power laser systems where the laser power is hundreds of kilowatts, we are in a single kilowatt laser power. meaning our focus is besides the size of the machine and the product itself to really have a pinpoint accuracy with our laser beam to have really like a euro coin sized in a far distance on target to have the highest energy per square centimeter on a certain target to really make it pinpoint accuracy in a small scalable modular system. And that's a product we are building and offering to the market.

3:43Mike Butcher:But it sounds incredible that you can go from having a system like the Dragonfire, which requires enormous amounts of energy, to going to something that requires such lower energy by comparison. How did you do that? So in laser system, it's always a combination of different factors. the most critical factor is how you how you detect and then target the drone that's a prerequisite for everything which follow to give an example if you have a laser beam let's say like a soccer ball like a football you know that's you need quite a lot of energy on target but the less accuracy in targeting in following a fast flying object you want to target we on the other hand really from the very beginning and that's a lot of a lot of percentage that's exactly what we are solving with our own um with our own software to detect optically the drone and to follow it the flight pass of for instance for fpv drones is highly complex and our own ai powered targeting models are really key to stay on the target and to really then have this pinpoint accuracy which then result in rather small laser powers in comparison to really big systems.

5:05And we clearly position ourselves in not a laser will solve every problems against drone. No, our clear positioning is with our system to be in the last mile of descents, to really in the closed engagement of drones to protect, you mentioned the war in Ukraine, But besides that, to protect critical infrastructure sites in Europe, for instance. You have heard about the incident at the Leipzig airport in eastern Germany. Unfortunately, that's an example where our system could be deployed to first of all detect the drone, double check if there's an explosive on the drone, is it a friendly drone or is it an enemy drone, and if needed and if there's a final decision by the human to engage and to bring that fast-flying object down.

5:56Mike Butcher:I mean, it sounds amazing, but what kind of real-world tests have you done? For instance, in the defense community, they say that if you're not in Ukraine, you're not really in defense. So what sort of real-world testing have you done? So I'm always super transparent about these points. We have real-world testing at sites in Germany, at an airport in Germany, to show the capabilities that we can detect and bring down target drone down in less than one second. We have shown at an official event how we engage with several drones simultaneously. So not just one drone on a nice blue sky, rather than several objects simultaneously.

6:45We have not tested yet in Ukraine, which is in the upcoming month on the clear target. And that's the reason we are talking already to several brigades in Ukraine. as for now besides that a lot of ongoing testing with partners from the industry inside Germany and inside Europe to exactly what you said to to make the last step from final from testing in the it grow at basis to really real world testing conditions considering certain weather conditions considering all kind of circumstances with fast flying objects.

7:27Mike Butcher:And will you deploy it to Ukraine? Yes. Right. Good answer. What about the background to all of this? I mean, did you assemble an incredible laser expert team? And what's your background yourself? Yes. So very important. I founded the company with my two co-founders, Daniel and Roland. Daniel, 20 years in experience on the software side, studied computer science. Then Roland, a drone pilot himself, he already assembled drones 12, 15 years ago, a pilot himself, an aeronautical engineer and spent all his professional career before Ground A at the largest Leiser manufacturer, Trump in south of Germany.

8:12My particular background is for the last 15 years, PhD in engineering and the last 15 years for made basically for two corporates in the machine building. So just to put it in the perspective, I would say there are a lot of airplanes, certain defense company which are producing their parts on the machines. I personally provided them in my corporate past. So basically the step what we did in the past to founding Ground A is rather small. And you mentioned it, we were three founders in January. In March we were five, now we are 25 people. But I'm not counting headcounts, which is very important.

8:56We have really dedicated experts in their respective field from optics, from a company already deployed a large laser system in the field, from world-leading robotic architects, world-leading computer vision engineers, world-leading battery specialists to really a simple, really hands-on team to get really the speed from starting in January to have the first prototype. And we demonstrated it in April on a fast-flying object. And now we are really in the final testing phase with a clear target to deploy the first commercial machines by the end of 26.

9:35Mike Butcher:And in your announcement, you've talked about keeping the human in the loop on the system. And that's very interesting because there's a lot of discussion about autonomy in these new kinds of autonomous weapons. So was that based on an ethical decision or something to do with regulation? Yeah. So it's really about like from the technical side, everything would be possible to have a completely autonomous engagement from targeting tracking and bringing down the object but we due to regulations we really make it like we detect the object we target it we follow it and we give recommendations when to hit the button to bring it down but the final ultimate of decision and it's really a friendly user surface will be with the human will be with the operator if it's either on the military side, police side or other official sites to make the decision to bring down the object if necessary.

10:36Mike Butcher:And I understand you're looking at going into very high mass production. So what's your strategy for scaling these systems because they're going to be deployed on airports, on the battlefields. So what's the strategy around scaling so i mean due to my past experiences so i was very responsible for very much similar production facilities bringing down hundreds of of laser machines or other critical machines and i know and i experienced it there's a huge difference to build a nice prototype we already were testing about field testing that's a that's what we are working on right now and but most people forget how to really scale a system and that it's a proven quality consistent performance into the field and that was the reason we already started into the factory planning really in the very early we're just two months in with the company and that's where we already started planning how should a factory look like how we can modular scale it with partners to have components produced outside which we can insource to not depending on certain suppliers and so we already make it that accurate down to a two shift planning over the following months to be really ready to first ship out the first products in 26 but then to be ready for a lot of orders to handle them and to really deliver consistent quality in these really complex machines i mean We are not talking about easy going machines.

12:13We're talking about complex laser systems, which you need to deploy at whatever minus 40 degrees Celsius to up to 80 degrees Celsius. There's a lot of technical complexity around it. So it was very clear for me at the very beginning. We need to prepare. We need to plan and do things in parallel rather first the product and then think about scaling. And that was really from the idea to have this modular system that we have a modular for detection, targeting the effector where colleagues can work in parallel, including the software, including the battery pack to really have to be ready for remote operations of our system from from really day one of the existing of Ground A.

12:56Mike Butcher:Well, it is definitely an astounding funding round. Nine point million euros led by V squared as a pre-seed funding round. They're pretty seminal at this point, and especially given the geopolitical situation. Dr. Tobias Brune from Ground A, laser drone systems there. Thank you so much for joining PathFounders. Thank you, Mike. And remember, apply today for Path Founders Network, a curated, vetted platform where founders, investors and emerging talent can engage with each other across Europe, plus access our journalism first and get a ton of member benefits. I shall see you again soon.