E61 – Rebuilding the Test Playbook with Nominal

<p>Test is where new military hardware goes to wait.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Jenn’s take is that acceleration comes from optimizing what you test for. Cutting test points is the wrong lever.</p><p><strong>Topics include:</strong></p><ul><li><p>Test and evaluation as a mission enabler</p></li><li><p>High rate, multimodal test data</p></li><li><p>Real-time telemetry and closing the test loop</p></li><li><p>DARPA CIPHER Forge and digital twins</p></li><li><p>Closing the sim to real gap</p></li><li><p>The F-35 crowdsourced flight data program</p></li><li><p>Knowledge parity between primes and government testers</p></li></ul><p><strong>Links</strong></p><ul><li><p>Sign up for the newsletter! https://www.themerge.co/</p></li><li><p>Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/the_merge</p></li><li><p>Nominal homepage https://nominal.io/</p></li><li><p>Nominal careers https://nominal.io/careers</p></li><li><p>Nominal LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/nominal-inc/</p></li><li><p>Jenn LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-t-wilson</p></li></ul><p><strong>Follow us on...</strong></p><ul><li><p>LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/themerge</p></li><li><p>Instagram https://www.instagram.com/merge_newsletter/</p></li><li><p>X https://x.com/MergeNewsletter</p></li><li><p>Facebook https://www.facebook.com/themergenews</p></li><li><p>Website https://www.themerge.co/</p></li></ul><p><strong>Chapters: </strong></p><p>00:00</p><p>00:32 intro</p><p>01:47 why this, why now</p><p>02:32 test is not sexy</p><p>03:47 test as an afterthought</p><p>05:40 more data, less insight</p><p>07:18 where the name comes from</p><p>07:54 the founding story</p><p>10:43 Mike is a user</p><p>11:16 streaming telemetry in real time</p><p>13:14 design of experiments</p><p>15:17 the Fid Labs acquisition</p><p>16:31 DARPA CIPHER Forge</p><p>19:35 closing the sim to real gap</p><p>20:21 the commercial side</p><p>23:31 lessons from Ukraine</p><p>25:00 F-35 crowdsourced flight data</p><p>27:15 fleet bugs found in days</p><p>29:07 combined test force</p><p>31:50 experimental operations unit</p><p>32:34 speeding up test</p><p>33:09 the pilot taking fire</p><p>34:21 knowledge parity with the primes</p><p>35:18 a billion dollar valuation</p><p>36:03 hiring at Nominal</p><p>#defensetech #podcast #military #testandevaluation #flighttest #digitaltwins #darpa #f35 #autonomy #nationalsecurity #airforce #dualuse #militarytechnology</p><p><br></p>