EP 122 — AEVEX's Manan Patel On The Modular Drone Strategy That Won Army Launched Effects-Short Range (LE-SR)

<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mananpatelsos/"><u>Manan Patel</u></a> deployed to Iraq as a civilian engineer and mission commander on airborne ISR platforms, then left the government lab with no business plan to start Special Operations Solutions. A decade later, private equity merged his company with two others to form <a href="https://aevex.com/"><u>AEVEX</u></a>, which went public on the NYSE and has delivered over 6,000 autonomous platforms.</p><p>As CTO, Manan explains how AEVEX&#39;s CompassCore hardware-software stack runs across every platform size and domain, enabling mass production by design. He breaks down ForgeX, a 3D printing capability that lets operators build and fly drones in the field without AEVEX personnel.</p><p>Topics discussed:</p><p>- Deploying to Iraq as a civilian engineer on ISR platforms</p><p>- Founding Special Operations Solutions and scaling to PE acquisition</p><p>- Designing Atlas for the Army&#39;s launched effect short range program</p><p>- Building CompassCore as a common stack across all platforms</p><p>- Operating autonomous UAS in GPS denied and comms degraded environments</p><p>- Forward-deployable drone manufacturing with ForgeX</p><p>- Separating kinetic and surveillance payloads with modular nose cones</p><p>- Scaling from prototype to full rate production</p><p><strong>Listen to more episodes: </strong></p><p><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dib-innovators/id1720062726"><u>Apple </u></a></p><p><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5Z3PpCHsglA3uk2S6dCRBP"><u>Spotify </u></a></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX2eBOnzz1SX0Psj6BmbdCw"><u>YouTube</u></a></p><p><a href="https://radicl.com/dib-innovators-podcast"><u>Website</u></a></p>