Hi, everyone. This is Collier from Marcus Evans. Thank you so much for joining us today on this webinar on Driving UAV Innovation: Enabling Heavier Payloads and Extending Coverage. This is brought to you in partnership with Amprius Technologies. Before we begin, I'd like to cover just a few housekeeping items. As you can see at the bottom of your screen are multiple application widgets. They're resizable and movable, so please move them around to get the most out of your desktop space. I'd also like to encourage you to submit any questions that you might have by using the Q&A widget, and we'll try to answer as many as possible throughout the broadcast. However, if a full answer is needed or we perhaps run out of time, we'll make sure to send you an email afterwards. I'd like to draw your attention to the resource list that will contain some interesting brochures, and please bookmark any links that you might find useful. To answer any common technical issues, I advise you use the help widget, and a reminder to look out for an email in the next two hours with links to review today's session. At this point, I just want to draw your attention to this disclaimer that just says that the views expressed during this webinar today are of our panelists and don't represent their employers. At this point, I'm pleased to introduce you to our moderator and our host. We have with us Ionel Stefan, who is the Chief Technology Officer at Amprius Technologies. Very happy to have you on. Ionel, I'm going to hand over to you and yeah, take it away. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this webinar. Thank you for joining us for this discussion on UAV innovation, which we will focus on batteries for higher payloads and extended coverage. This is a timely topic because UAV capability is increasingly being defined not just by the airframe design or the software intelligence, but by the energy storage and power delivery available. In many cases, the real limiting factor is not what the aircraft is designed to do, but how long it can stay in the air, how much weight it can carry, and how safely and reliably it can perform the mission. Better battery systems can enable longer missions, heavier sensors, greater operational flexibility, and ultimately, better economics. Today, we want to look at this topic through four practical lenses: payload, endurance, safety, and deployability. Our goal is to move beyond basic claims and get into what's actually changing, what matters commercially, and what will happen over the next few years, what we predict that will happen over the next few years. Let's start with the panelists. First, I would like to introduce David Waters, Senior Director of Operations Excellence at Honeywell. He will be joining us in the next few minutes. He had to step out for about 10 minutes or so. I will let the rest of the panel experts introduce themselves. Trent, please. Thank you so much. My name is Trent Clawson. I am the President Chief Engineer here at Titan Batteries. We are a battery manufacturer located here in Pocatello, Idaho, just about two hours north of Salt Lake City. We design and build custom battery packs for the most demanding UAV applications and defense programs in the country, and actually throughout the world. Titan sits at the intersection of cell technology and platform performance. Our goal is to turn these amazing world-class cells into flight-ready battery systems that actually work in the field. Pete. Thank you, Trent. Pete. Hi, guys. Pete Bitar. I am the CEO, Founder/CEO of Electric Jet Aircraft and also the Co-Founder of LEO Flight Corporation. We build jet drones that use electric jet propulsion as well as flying vehicles for human flight, including the LEO JetBike, which is a flying motorcycle, effectively, and we are developing the LEO Coupe, which is a flying car for two people to fly around in. Thank you. Before going to the panel questions, I will introduce the topics a little bit. Before that, I will say a few words about Amprius. In 2008, with a mission to develop the highest energy density batteries in the world by replacing graphite anode with silicon, and after a good number of years of research and development, we indeed are delivering today this very high energy and high power with silicon anode technology. In the last few years, we have been focusing on pushing the battery performance for applications where every gram of weight matters, including unmanned aviation, with emphasis on combining high specific energy with a kind of power charging safety and operational performance needed for real-world development. What are the UAV applications that we are looking at? This slide sets up one of the most important points in the whole conversations. The fact that there is no single UAV battery. The term UAV covers a large range of platforms, from toys to weapons. Everything in between. Each application puts a very different demand on the power system. The application defines the battery requirements, and the battery defines the capability. As we work through this segment, you can see here delivery, inspection drone, mapping drone, and FPV racing. There are many differences between the batteries. FPV racing drones live and die by the raw power density of the battery. They pull extreme spike in discharge for just a few minutes. High discharge rate is the priority over endurance. Inspection and mapping platforms shift the balance towards sustained moderate draw of power over 15-90 minutes, where energy density and steady delivery matter more than peak current. Vertical take-off delivery flips the profile again with the bat stop curve. Very high power on take-off and landing, low power cruise, which rewards high energy density lithium-ion cells that can handle the burst and deliver range for cruising. With higher energy density, as long as they can deliver the power, any watt-hour per kilogram added to the performance, to the specific energy density, will extend the cruising time and the cruising range. In the next slide, they are all summarized in this table, which is available in the materials after the webinar. The defense segments shown in the gray or in the dark green stretch the power and energy requirements even further. Loitering munition need a long, efficient flight followed by extreme terminal power search and abrupt cliffhanger profile. The group one and two drones prize the lightweight, long flat line endurance. Sometimes they can be paired with solar power for multi-day flight. The heavier group three and four for cargo and eVTOL platform demand high capacity and high voltage lithium-ion systems to move serious weight, while the HAPS, the high-altitude platforms, stratospheric platforms, are a category of their own with a very low power requirement over day-night cycle discharging. Takeaway is that power, energy, discharge rate, weight, and cycle life have to be balanced differently for every mission. A cell optimized for an FPV racer is the wrong cell for HAPS and vice versa. That diversity is exactly why tunable high energy density platform is so valuable. It lets us match the battery with specific duty cycle instead of forcing every application into a one-size-fits-all. Referring to Amprius batteries, we have developed silicon chemistry for many of the applications shown in the slides before with different power to energy ratios. That's what matters for each application. In this power versus energy density chart, what should be remarked is that, in all cases, the improvement relative to conventional batteries is substantial, typically in the 1.5 x- 2 x across most categories of UAVs. Now that we have seen the variety of UAVs and the requirements for batteries, let's start the discussion with something mission related. Because that's what the operators care about. Panel question one, heavier payloads and longer endurance are often in direct conflict. How do you resolve that trade-off today, and what would it take to stop making it a trade-off at all? Pete, I think. For us at this point, a lot of this has to do with different flight systems doing different things in the sequence of flight. For example, we have a large vertical take-off and landing clustered electric jet platform that carries a single person as an ultralight aircraft. We are developing a system right now for it to fly around 15 minutes per charge with conventional batteries or semi-solid-state cylindrical cells that are running roughly 300 Wh/kg. Going back to the chart where it showed the different We're on the better end of the conventional batteries, but still not anywhere near the full solid-state performance for that particular platform right now in testing. What we're finding is that we're running at roughly 50% throttle for 15 minutes. That's roughly a 4C output. Our discharge rate is about 4C on average. When you talk about maneuver, you're going to spike that to over 10C, sometimes 20C. Generally speaking, we're running between 20C and 25C batteries to make sure that we cover the entire spectrum of performance. Because your power density, your power requirement, your discharge rate has to not only be an average, but it has to actually take into account your maximum peaks. Right? Heavier payloads and longer endurance, they are in direct conflict. Even within that sense, there is direct conflict between discharge rate and average power over time. You think you can maybe do some of your flying for 15 minutes, oh yeah, you can do it with a 4C power rating, but you really can't because that doesn't let you take off and cruise transition. That doesn't let you maneuver transition spikes and things like that being taken into account. Those are some of the challenges, I think, and the thing that would stop making it a trade-off, I think, would be just something that had very high power density in peak when you need it, and then have average power density for cruise and non-maneuver flight. I think some of that could be accomplished, and there are some things being done, I think, with ultracapacitors, supercapacitors to handle peaks, and then use batteries for your basic long endurance draw. Those are some conventional approaches. Now it'd be interesting to see that technology integrated into an actual battery pack, all in one. Thank you With current technology, that's kind of where you're at. Yeah. As long as you can deliver the power, which is an absolute number, anything increasing energy density extends the range. David, do you want to add anything to that? Yeah. I would agree with that, and I would say the best approach is probably to manage it as opposed to It's a very difficult trade-off to completely resolve. I think a few things come to mind that are important about prioritizing the mission, clearly understanding what matters most, dwell time, sensing capability, or range, and then you can optimize the platform and the mission for that. I think other things coming to mind as well for that trade-off and managing it would be system efficiency. There's a lot more than just the battery of the design. It can be propulsion efficiency, power management, all of that play into how effectively you can convert that energy into performance. Another thing is the innovation and the advances in energy density, and how that's moving the curve. With all of it, I think the trade-off is always going to be there. It's just best to manage it as opposed to attempting to resolve it. Yes. Thank you. We should go to the next question. Why is energy density becoming such a critical differentiator for both commercial and defense UAV applications? I think who wants to start? Pete, let's say, or- For this, again, we go back to commercial and defense applications that have different missions. Optimizing your design matters a lot. That's why you're seeing a lot of UAS developing winged technology, because if you can use a wing rather than a propeller to maintain your altitude, you have some efficiencies there. I think energy density is kind of obvious that the more storage you can create in a battery, the better. Again, it kind of goes back to the previous discussion about power density. Power density matters a lot. Your C-rating, your discharge rate, how fast can you dump that energy out when you need it. I think, especially defense UAV applications, you're in a position where you have to have immediate power, if you need it, and be able to dump that power quickly. Some of what you're dealing with is systems of systems of batteries. You have maybe a cruise battery versus a maneuver battery or something like that. Where your energy density is taken up primarily with, let's say, a solid-state cell that has a lot of endurance, a lot of capability, but maybe not a lot of C-rating. Then you can use either a lithium-polymer cell or some combination of lithium-polymer with ultracapacitors, supercapacitors for peaks to manage all of that. It then becomes something that our friends at Titan Batteries do, where they can build a custom pack around the mission requirement. I think energy density allows you to create a baseline around which you can build a custom pack then that meets a variety of needs. As long as your core is sort of high energy density, then you can do other things to manage your mission through power density modification and things like that around that core. I think that's one of the big differentiators in my mind anyway that comes to play every day. Yeah. If I could add to that. Go ahead. I wanted to say that for an energy-dense cell, the same C-rate actually delivers more power, more current. That's usually not immediately intuitive, but that's what if you calculate the amps out of an energy-dense cell, they are higher compared to. Yeah. I will say too that something in the solid state that matters a lot is one of the things that if you do tax a battery to higher power densities or higher power draws, higher discharge demand, you stress the chemistry with conventional chemistry, whereas solid state is much less stressed in that same circumstance. That matters a lot. Running in a situation where you need emergency power, you don't want your polymer catching fire. There's a lot to be said for solid-state chemistry from a safety perspective when it's under high demand. That can be in temperature as well as demand. Yeah, that's a big deal. Trent, you wanted to say something? Yeah, I was going to say in a conversation earlier, Pete, you were mentioning also, maybe if you want to talk on this too, I don't want to put you on the spot, talking about how distance matters more than flight time in a lot of applications, right? I know earlier we were talking about that. I don't want to steal your thunder, did you want to talk about that? I'm kind of putting you on the spot. Yeah, no, that's a fair point. We're talking about. Go ahead. Not to toot our own horn, our propulsion technology uses small electric jets. We can fly really fast. I was showing Trent earlier, in fact, if you don't mind. Show and tell. Let's do it. This is one of our drones. Yeah. This is one of our drones. It doesn't use propellers. It uses little electric impellers and propulsion systems that are extremely fast. I mean, this thing cruises at about 120-130 miles an hour. What that means is that maybe we draw a lot more power doing that, but we cover a lot more distance for the same sized drone that can carry a pretty substantial payload. I mean, this thing produces about 80 pounds of thrust. We can fly around at a higher speed and cover more distance in the same amount of time. Endurance is not as important in certain mission cases as distance is. For this one, it uses it for Counter-UAS applications where we can impact a Shahed, slam into it, and then come home because our propulsion is encapsulated. We have to cover a lot of distance from the base. Ability requirement is kind of a big deal. Thank you. Again, we're trading time for distance. Thank you. Let's continue with a poll question for the audience. We will spend about two minutes on this question, which is, what is your primary driver for evaluating next generation battery technologies? Is it A, extending flight endurance, B, supporting heavier, advanced payloads, or C, reducing overall system weight, or D, meeting NDAA compliance requirements. Again, what is your primary driver for evaluating next generation battery technologies? Extending battery endurance, A, supporting heavier payloads, B, or C, reducing system weight, or D, meeting NDAA compliance. Please vote. Thank you. We go to the next, which should show us that compliance is actually very important. Next generation is more important than even extended flight endurance. Surprising. Thank you. Going back to panel questions, panel question three. What challenges still need to be solved before next generation battery technologies can scale more broadly across UAV ecosystems? What challenges? Trent, you're building batteries. Yes. Answer? I'd love to talk about that. Yeah, maybe the first thing to just set the stage a little bit is that a cell is a cell. A lot of people when they go to the store and they say, "Hey, don't forget the AA batteries," they're actually talking about cells. A cell, that's one thing, but a battery is bringing together the cell, the battery management system, the enclosure, the user interface, the firmware, everything together that's needed to take those cells to give that energy to that craft. We're looking to do that in the maximum performance and efficiency as possible. We're trying to add as little headroom or as little baggage, extra baggage to that cell, both in weight and performance. That's where companies like Titan come in. To do this, we really need amazing engineers, battery engineers. Not just cell engineers. We need those too, of course, but battery engineers who understand that whole system. It's not just battery engineering, but the drone as well. Because it's such an integrated system, what the battery does, how it affects the center of gravity, how it affects its compass, magnetic compass, how it affects its power curve. If a craft like what Pete is working on, if the powertrain is very optimized already and you're introducing a cell that has a different voltage curve, that's going to affect the powertrain. These kind of things is what's so critical that our engineering is applying that heavily. Every craft is unique, every mission is unique, it requires that deep level, a system level understanding before we even start designing a battery pack. That's the other challenge today as well is no two craft are the same. There are no standardization, broadly speaking, at this time. Because the missions are so unique, then every battery is going to require that pretty significant engineering effort to go from that concept through design stages, all the way to production. What's different these days is historically it was sort of a lot of prototyping for a lot of years. Titan's been doing this for over a decade now, we have thousands of prototypes under our belt. However, these days we're actually starting to get significant digit, or quite a few zeros in volume of orders, that's just really exciting because now we can actually carry past prototype into production stages. That also brings up the topic of just how fast innovation needs to happen. What used to take six months to a year to develop, we have to do in weeks or months now. This is because the missions, for example, Drone Dominance or the Gauntlet program that the Department of War is putting on, these Gauntlets are taking place weeks, months apart. It's a very compressed, rapid iteration timeline. We have to iterate very, very quickly. Programs are evolving, the platform's evolving, the mission's evolving. That also is a challenge because what you used to be able to do is spend a lot of time engineering a battery that could last six months, a year, years, and now that platform may only last for a couple of months before it goes through another iteration change. That just puts a lot of effort and strain on the engineering requirement. That's what we're here for, right? America can make amazing things, our allies can make amazing things. We're working very hard, at least at our company, and I'm sure other companies are as well, to take that engineering talent and capability and really increasing it. The other thing, too, is taking these timelines. There's, as many of you know, you're going through engineering, through design, through production, and each one of these stages have to go quickly now, but without skipping anything. You don't want to skip to production and we find out later that you missed something somewhere. The last thing I'd say is certifications, testing. Because the compressed timeline, it really does mean that if you want to have trust and confidence that this battery's going to perform, we do need to make that efficient and quick. Maybe just talking about the NDAA compliance, just to react just quickly to that. It's cell availability, production capacity, and engineering capacity. The U.S. is catching up quickly. When I talk to my peers and those in this domestic supply chain industry, things are going really fast. The zeros are being added quickly. I think all the demand signals that we're getting are really starting to come to reality. That allows companies like Titan to put real investment behind those demand signals. That's great to hear. Thank you for the very comprehensive answer. I think it was very good. Anyone else wants to add to this question, or we'll go to the next one? Probably we go to next one because time passes. Panel question four. In what ways is broader defense electrification accelerating innovation in battery technology and portable power solutions? What is the role of defense electrification? I'll start off- Okay Answering this one. I think when the Defense industry gets involved, that helps out move the industry along in many different ways. Number one, just with the Defense demand, it increases the need for higher energy density. They're using UAV soldier systems, robotics. That creates more of a pressure to deliver more capability. The industry has to step up and meet that increased demand. Also, Defense requires a very deep level of system integration. It's not just so much power alone, but it's how does that power integrate with things like thermal management, autonomy, how does that play into the overall mission system, and making that more efficient and intelligent in and of itself. Also, when Defense steps in, it definitely increases the need for reliability of the product itself, but also for the supply chain. Defense normally have long tails of volumes that are needed, and they also are required to meet certain environmental qualifications, be more rugged, compliant, et cetera. That also puts more demand on the industry to accelerate that innovation, not just so much in the performance, but also in the manufacturability, the supply chain, and as well as the sourcing for all of those components and products. Yeah. Thank you. We heard from Trent previously as the Drone Dominance program significantly accelerates the development of batteries and technologies for this type of application. Absolutely. Yeah. Anyone else wants to add? Maybe just briefly. Yeah When we talk to our partners in the government, they really do recognize that to have a sustainable solution for Defense, it needs to reach commercial applications as well. Because commercial applications are often smoother, a little more consistent. You think about power tool batteries, for example, just speaking on our side. If we were to make a power tool battery, we could sell those week after week, quarter after quarter, very reliably on a long time horizon. However, a battery for a Defense application that might have, like David's referring to, a big spike in rush, you order it closes, and sometimes those can be unpredictable, or the timelines might be affected on government budget or the U.S., in our case, budgets. It can be harder for a business, a private company, to manage that. Our friends at Defense and the government level, they recognize this, and they are making efforts to make cell standards so that both commercial. Basically, they want the Defense spending to spur a commercial, and they recognize that, and they want that to happen. Thank you, if anyone of you are listening, because that really makes a difference for a private entity like ours to have that continuity of business. Thank you, Trent. I think Trent really kind of covered that well, I would just add that the more commercial demand there is, the more reason that Defense would invest in broader electrification. Because a lot of the defense applications are higher dollar, lower volume and ultimately consumer electrification of various things like power tools, for example. That is a demand signal that if there is a follow-on market for the initial defense application, there's a higher likelihood that the Defense Department will invest in it, or the Department of War now. All that to say, battery technology, portable power, those things oftentimes start in defense and space, NASA-related kinds of applications, and eventually make their way to the individual consumer. Yes. Thank you. Next, we have another polling question. Which operational challenge is most limiting your UAV missions today? A, insufficient flight endurance, B, payload weight constraints, C, battery reliability at altitude or temperature extremes, and D, supply chain NDAA compliance concerns. Again, what are the challenges for operating that are limiting the UAV missions today? Insufficient flight endurance, payload weight constraints, battery reliability at altitude or temperature, and supply chain or NDAA compliance concerns. Please vote. Give it a few more seconds. A, B, C, D. Thank you. Again, the NDAA compliance or supply chain concerns is winning or getting the dominant position. Payload weight and battery reliability also seems to be a concern. Surprisingly, flight endurance, not so much. Let's go to the next panel question, number five. How are compliance and supply chain considerations, including NDAA requirements, shaping technology adoption decisions, and is the U.S. industrial base ready to meet that demand? This, we should take time here to respond because seems like this is indeed a very important topic. Five, Trent, maybe. Yes. Yeah. I know. I feel like we're on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" contestants here. NDAA, I think, is clearly really important to this audience. Yeah. It really makes sense, right? Obviously, the FCC made that a requirement. NDAA compliance is big. The Drone Dominance program is driving a lot of this. NDAA compliance is more than just a checkbox, although talk about that, of course, here in a moment, but I think it's really also about proximity and speed. Customers that we work with, the biggest value to them is the innovation rate. I want to talk about NDAA compliance here just briefly here in a moment, but what also comes with NDAA compliance, maybe a better way to say that, is people are in the same time zone, the same culture, the engineers can be on-site. Again, speaking to that innovation rate. If somebody needs They're invited to compete, they need a battery this week, can you do this? NDAA compliance speaks to that, right? If these companies are within a few state borders away, this is something that our U.S. manufacturers can actually deliver on. Then that proximity compresses those timelines so that those engineering stages, the design stages, the production stages, that NDAA compliance brings that in. Obviously, the U.S. industrial capabilities or our production capacity for in the United States and allies, it's going to take time. It's going way faster than I honestly thought was possible. Specifically, we're talking about cells, getting cells out of China and into other countries, including the U.S. That's happening as well. Also battery management systems are huge for NDAA compliance. These are, again, where China specifically has had a They've been doing this for years, it's going to take some effort to catch up to that. The good news is those are available today. You can absolutely get NDAA-compliant battery management systems right now. That's the hardware is NDAA-compliant and the software, the firmware, is written in the U.S., and you need, of course, both those for that to function. Then you need, of course, the battery itself. Things like injection molding, switches on the front, LEDs, all that, and of course, all the engineering we talked about already earlier. All that NDAA compliance, being able to have that domestically collapses those rates. It's happening now. You can absolutely get there. The challenge now is getting those zeros added. Going from 10 units to 100 units, thousands, 10,000, hundreds of thousands, that's going to take some time. I think for us, just speaking on what we're seeing, adding capacity, like maybe 10,000 batteries a month, it takes about a month or two to bring something like that capacity up. Where Drone Dominance needs something like half a million batteries over the next 12 months or so, roughly, then it's going to take some partnership between all cell manufacturers, battery manufacturers, printed circuit board companies, all these to work together to make this possible. It's absolutely happening. For NDAA compliance, it also goes to traceability. For us, for example, we're working really hard to finish our AS9100 certification. We can provide to our customers full traceability from the cell, from Amprius, of course, all the way through all the different components that it take to deliver that battery, and they're looking for that confidence so that when they go to take their craft, which includes the battery and the cells, when they deliver that to their customer, they can provide that evidence, and that evidence is being requested all the time now. I joke. It used to be, I've been doing this for over a decade now, it's only been in the last year or two that anyone even asked where these batteries were even made. Now they definitely care. It's very good to have that traceability available to our partners. I'm happy to hear that NDA compliance is there because, again, I really believe that we were clearly over-reliant on China, being able to return to a domestic manufacturing is going to help both our country, but also our defense, and we can step up and make it happen. I like especially what you said about the power of localized supply chain or proximity. That speeds up development significantly when you can do multiple experiment iterations per month or instead of waiting for shipping times and deliveries. Thank you. Going to the next question. How should organizations evaluate emerging energy technologies when planning future UAV deployments and investments? This is continuing on the topic, localized supply chains will accelerate progress, and how do we evaluate these emerging energy technologies for UAVs? David? I'll step in on this one, I think that what I would suggest for these emerging technologies in energy is for the industry, companies, individuals to evaluate those the same way they've evaluated the prior impact on other technologies in the past. First, we have to look at, okay, well, what is the mission impact going to be? Does it meaningfully improve range, endurance, or payload? Looking at what that impact will be to the mission. Secondly, how difficult is it to integrate that new technology into the current system? Is it easy? Is it very complex? Does it require a redesign? What sort of risk does that introduce into the current system that any organization might be developing? Thirdly, I think, as we went through COVID and we experienced a lot of the supply chain constraints and shortages that we're now at the tail end of, I think, can it perform whatever this new emerging technology may be, evaluating it and can it perform at scale? Does the supply chain meet the requirements, the needs, and the volumes, for the future needs? I think if any technology pretty much checks all three of those boxes, I think it's absolutely something to potentially move forward with. As we evaluate those three or four things, normally it comes up short somewhere, and then that creates risk, and then we need to make decisions on what the tolerance of risk is as we might implement that or decline and wait till it's a little bit more mature. Yes, I will add also that different types of UAVs, as we have seen earlier, may have different risk appetite. Some- Yeah Advanced energy technologies will go first in particular UAVs and then toward others. Anyone wants to add to this topic? No. Yeah, I would say that emerging energy technologies is a broad. It's not just about batteries in that sense. You're looking at the potential, for example, a long-endurance stable type of surveillance system meant for high altitude, and it's maybe covered in solar panels where it's a very small battery, but it uses solar panels for direct power, something like that. Energy systems depend a lot on the application that you want in the end. You're seeing these hybrid drive systems using fueled power sources. In addition, you're seeing fuel cell technology that has certain applications for certain things. It is a little bit cost prohibitive, again, as you sort of enhance the market and the demand for all of these things, you're going to see a broader variety of solutions that come out of innovation houses that allow us then to select a variety of application-driven power sources for whatever UAS application there is. I think all of the demand signal stuff that is both being generated by the Department of War as well as by agricultural industries and other applications for UAS, you're looking at a lot more reason to invest in a variety of sources of power. Obviously, batteries seem to be on the acceleration path that we could ultimately get past gasoline-driven engines, for direct power. It also is not far from going past fuel cell at this point, especially in a cost basis. The technologies are already maturing and battery electric seems to be the direction that this is going, but again, it's fully dependent on the kind of demand signal that's being generated by the applications. Thank you. We have another polling question here, the last one. How important is a resilient supply chain in your battery selection process? A, critical, it's a requirement. B, important, but not a deal breaker. C, somewhat relevant to our program, and D, not currently a factor. Again, somewhat related and taking into account how much NDAA mattered, I assume it'll be not very well balanced, but how important is resilient supply chain in your battery selection process? A is critical. B is important. C or D, not currently a factor. Give it a few more seconds. A, B, C, or D. Thank you. Yes, it's important. As we probably could have guessed from the previous one, it's critical even. In some cases, it may not be a factor for some applications. Interesting. Thank you for everyone that participated. Next, panel question seven. Looking ahead, what innovations are you most excited about that will enable your UAV performance over the next three to five years? Here, I think, everyone can contribute. Pete, I think you're enthusiastic about new technologies. what- Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Some of the big innovations, our friends at Amprius are really kind of bleeding edge right now, pushing forward on battery technologies. I think the solid-state battery technology is really the future. What the base chemical is that is used, I've seen some things coming out of laboratories like fluoride-ion batteries instead of lithium. Those kinds of technologies with different chemistry is interesting. Those energy densities are very promising, but there are always sort of these opportunities and opportunity costs involved. For single-use batteries, you're seeing aluminum-air batteries coming to the fore where they're single use, and they can be thrown away in a one-way UAS. That seems to make a lot of sense in terms of both cost and energy density, but again, there's a lot of experimentation that needs to happen. It is exciting, though, to see, and it'll be interesting because there are so many different approaches to this problem and to the variety of applications that are sort of implied in this problem that I think it'll be interesting to see sort of where everything falls ultimately. Having one battery that sort of does everything would be great, but I don't know that that's really the direction it's going, but it's exciting to see the different approaches to the different applications you can use batteries for, that will enhance UAV performance. Especially, I think really the next three to five years are very interesting because you're also seeing this big energy demand drive from AI, data centers, and the like, so small modular reactors, things like that don't necessarily require fossil fuel to power our grid. As we are moving away from fossil fuel-driven electricity, ultimately, I think that that is driven a lot by innovation and the ability for us to switch to a battery-based system is, I think, really even more in sight than it was a few years ago. Thank you. Yes, there are many emerging technologies, and I think this UAV Cambrian explosion in a way, of models will also produce significant development in technologies that are available, a variety of technologies that will be available. Batteries are used now more and more in pretty much everything. I think we'll see some separation of sodium-ion is good for something, lithium-ion for something else, lithium-metal for something else, solid-state and so on. Anyone else wants to comment? Just to mention that I would be remiss if I didn't mention that innovation that we need at the Department of War level is standardization. The cells are working through a standardization process, but for the Department of War to be lethal, we can't have 20 different battery designs, 20 different chargers, 20 different LEDs, 20 different standards. It's too much. It becomes at an operations administration's nightmare when you're actually in the field. We as an industry, speaking of the drone, especially the drone battery industry, are going to have to work closely with our cell partners and our drone partners to push standardization so that we have commonality between connectors, latching mechanisms, communications standards. For example, like many of you mentioned, Pete earlier, too, is you're going to want to put a certain amount of engineering into a single use attack drone differently than you want to put into an ISR drone, differently into a reusable interceptor drone. If you have all these standards, what we don't want the government to do is to say, "Well, let's choose every standard and make every battery have to meet every standard," because then that crushes innovation. Now every battery has to check every box, as it were. The good news is I really feel like the Department of War specifically and other organizations at the government level recognize this. Standardization, I suppose, before I talk too long. Yeah, I think that innovation will be very valuable to them. Yes. Typically, an industry will optimize or innovation for performance and standardization will optimize for cost and for operational performance. Sure. Okay. Thank you. I think this was the last question I had. We're opening now for audience questions. Please send your questions in. One question, how does silicon anode technology shift the competitive advantage for operators who adopt it early? Trent, you're working directly with silicon batteries. Cannot say from who, but- I know someone, yeah. Yeah. Please explain, have you seen a difference between when the start of use for silicon batteries versus before silicon? Of course. What's always interesting, and anyone who's been in this industry for a while will remember, and certainly as Pete called out earlier, a discharge density. In other words, how fast those electrons, if you will, can leave the battery is critically important. Ionel, as you mentioned it as well, if you double your capacity, you can have half the C-rate and have the same amp output. Yes. When you're increasing from 200 Wh/kg to 300 to 350 to 400, you start hitting these top numbers. What's interesting is you can start being a little more forgiving on the C-rate, then you get both. Now you get this high energy density battery at a C-rate or an amp output that meets your requirements. Now you sort of get the best of both worlds. It's really exciting to see these high energy cells, for example, not to get too nerdy, but the SA08 at Amprius is very popular, let's say. Our battery technicians know that cell very well. This kind of technology, what that means is our customers can start saying, "Okay, I want to be able to do a mission that looks like this or a mission like this." Rather than having a battery designed just for one craft, just for one mission, just for one really narrow set. These higher energy density cells allow us to have a broader spectrum because we have the amp output as well as the density, but they can also start trading payloads. That's really exciting, too. As we all know, but just to maybe state the obvious, if you increase your energy density by 20%, that either means you either can fly further 20% or you can add 20% more payload. That trade-off is, of course, up to the customer. But often, being able to have more capable payloads, that's excellent. Maybe one more thing to say on this, too, is there's a nuance that maybe many may not recognize. If you're flying to your objective and that takes, let's say, a few minutes to get there, and you're there for, let's say, 10 minutes and takes a few minutes to fly back. If you were to increase your flight time by 20%, for example, you may actually double your on position, on target flight time, because the fixed cost, if you will, of going out and coming back, that's already spoken for. But now you can be in position twice as long, or in a combat scenario, your contact distance can increase 2x. If you can reach out further, then you are further away from the lines. You are safer. This is critically important to our troops and our allies. Yes. Thank you. That was very detailed. Another question maybe for the operators here. What is the biggest limiting factor when it comes to broader adoption of next-gen technology? It's technical, commercial or regulatory? What have you seen? David or Pete? David, do you have any thoughts on that? Which question was it again? I'm looking in the chat. What is the biggest limiting factor when it comes to broader adoption of next generation cells? Technical, commercial or regulatory? I would say all those three factors play into it, technical, commercial and regulatory. It really depends on the customer's needs and what's being pushed that determines which one of those weighs the most. Absolutely, those three factors definitely play a part, and they're all kind of equal. I think in this industry, as things become more regulated, I associate that with standardization. Sometimes those two things can be a little bit different. I think there being more regulations will open the door for more standardization, and that will also help reduce cost and create more affordability, which defense and commercial are always looking for. I think that depending upon the specific situation, that will determine what weighs most. Absolutely, it's going to be all three of those things that end up determining the momentum of the industry. Pete, in your experience working with new technologies, which was the hardest to get? They didn't meet the technical specifications or were hard to get commercial or hard to certify? Yeah. I think certification is the least of our worries in what we do anyway. It's not everybody's story, but I would say primarily technical, honestly. Technical and a little bit of supply chain availability and price, obviously. Technical is a big deal. If we can get something that actually works and actually meets the specifications they actually advertise. You see the advertised performance specs, and then you actually get it and you do experimentation with it, and you realize it's not quite that good. The technical challenges have been the biggest hurdles for us to this point. Okay. If you would be to say a wish here, what kind of batteries would you prefer to have in the future? What is the aspect? How energy density changes the type of missions. What can you do with better batteries? Everything really. From our manned flight stuff, especially when it comes to the LEO JetBike. Getting more flight time per charge is a really big deal for the consumer. Because we're also with the LEO JetBike, for example, we're limited by the fact that it has to remain an ultralight vehicle, which has a hard cap at 254 pounds. The 254-pound weight limit really does. Now we can tweak that a little bit and add flotation that can add like 30 pounds per float or whatever, and people have done that to fudge. Realistically, we're still trying to keep the weight as low as possible on the aircraft, and still get more and more flight capability out of it. That's the beauty of electric, is that when you have a vehicle, if you have a gasoline-powered vehicle or a fuel-powered vehicle of any kind, it is where it will always be in terms of efficiency because the fuel is never going to be that much more efficient than it is now. Whereas a battery-driven aircraft in 10 years could have twice the flight distance and flight time than with the batteries it had when it started. Those factors are really important. Especially when weight is capped at a certain limit, you're limited in terms of what you can do with your propulsion. Electric motors are already between 90% and 95% efficient, you're not going to get much more out of electrical motor technology, to be honest. Some of that research and development has gone into how do you get more thrust out of the same motor stack. That's possible that you might see a little bit of improvement there, but it's in the single-digit percentage range. You're not going to see doubling of your efficiencies in terms of your power train when it's electric. Battery technology is really where everything is going to focus on increasing performance, increasing endurance and still maintaining a certain weight limit, so that you can maintain compliance with certain regulations. Thank you. Yeah. We're out of time. Thank you everyone for attending this. I'll hand it back to [Kyle] if we can have any other say in here. Thank you. Sure. I just want to say a very special thank you to our amazing panelists for your great insights and being so generous with your time today. It was a very interesting discussion. On behalf of myself and Marcus Evans, we'd just like to thank you so much for the collaboration throughout. To turn things to the audience, we'd just like to say thank you for all the great questions and comments that came in. We weren't able to get to all of them. We'll make sure to reach out to you afterwards by email. A reminder to look out for an email within the next two hours with links to review today's material. Finally, we'd love to hear your feedback about what you thought about the webinar today. A survey will pop up on your screen in just a moment. We'd really appreciate any comments that you might have. On behalf of Amprius Technologies and Marcus Evans, we'd just like to thank you once again for joining us and hope to see you again at future events. Thank you everyone. Have a fantastic day further. Thank you. Thank you.