Dan Magy is the CEO of Firestorm Labs, a defense technology company focused on rapidly configurable unmanned systems and forward-deployed additive manufacturing. Firestorm’s platform approach—pairing a drone operating layer with expeditionary production—was nominated for the first Drone Dominance Program (DDP) Gauntlet.
Q: What’s your background, and what led you to start Firestorm?
A: The genesis of Firestorm comes from a begrudging respect for how well ISIS was able to use off-the-shelf drones as asymmetrical tools. I thought we needed that. And if you give your allies those types of tools, they will be able to multiply their force, as we’re seeing in Ukraine right now.
Q: What did you decide to build first?
A: In 2022, we built an OS that enables rapid payload integration. We think from the ground up about how you build one drone for one mission, with an architecture that doesn’t lock you into one payload or one configuration.
Q: When did forward-deployed manufacturing become the center of the business?
A: End users started asking if we could put our industrial 3D printers in a shipping container and mail them out. That kicked off the process of figuring out how to move industrial-grade manufacturing lines, powered by advanced manufacturing, around the battlefield.
Q: How quickly can you produce and assemble, and what does scale look like?
A: We make over 1,000 airframes a month per printer. We believe that number can rise dramatically as we optimize. We designed everything to cut down on the cognitive load of the operator. The fuselage pops together like Legos. Once everything is printed, you’re flying in less than an hour. We encourage every UAS and FPV provider we work with to co-develop with us, because we want to be an enabler for everyone.
Q: What did you bring to the DDP Gauntlet, and what did you want DoD to take away from it?
A: The way the Ukrainians fight the war with distributed manufacturing is a realistic way for the United States and its allies to operate. We’re taking technology with tens of thousands of flight hours and we’re merging it with advanced manufacturing capabilities. The product that comes out is called the Squall, our Group 1 FPV. And zooming out, there are a lot of people who really care about long-term security flocking to this new generation of defense tech, which is really refreshing to see compared to ten years ago.
