Days, Not Decades: Warfare’s Relentless Innovation Cycle  

By PDW’s Daniel Vazquez 

Roughly 42 years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight, jets were dueling above Korea. A few decades later, drones were flown remotely from desert trailers halfway around the world. Barely thirty years later autonomous systems are making life-and-death decisions on their own. In Ukraine and the Middle East, innovation now happens in days.  

The result is a battlespace transformed not by a single invention, but by the compounding speed of every invention that followed. The pace of technological change has driven near real-time adaptation of tactics, techniques, and procedures. The Soldier has been at the center of that transformation, with each advance altering their role and their reach on the modern battlefield. 

It is no longer just only the warfighter who needs to adapt on the fly, but industry as a whole. The defense industry base has responded while the traditional primes of the United States and Europe have needed more time to shift to more agile approaches. 

Meanwhile new initiatives like the Brave1 marketplace in Ukraine, the United States Army’s newly announced FUZE program, and agile and adaptive defense technology companies like PDW are focused on fast iteration and quick responses to the demands of the warfighter.   

Since the first tranche of the Army’s Company Direct Requirement, PDW has continued to iterate, adapt, and scale to keep pace with the demands of the modern warfighter, and has been recognized by the Army with successive orders under its Transformation Initiative.   

The C100, PDW’s flagship Group 2 multi mission platform, remains an industry benchmark of adaptable airframe, expanding its capabilities in 2024 with the addition of STAG5 LTD and Electronic Warfare, MANET, and VBN multi mission payloads to the rifle company level.   

With the opening of Drone Factory 01, PDW’s 90,000 sq ft manufacturing facility in Huntsville, Alabama, PDW can produce C100, Attritable Multirotor FPV, Tethered Aerial Systems, and Multi Mission-Payload platforms at scale for rapid fielding, effectively redefining individual soldier lethality for the 21st century. 

PDW is doubling down on the future of unmanned warfare and attritable munitions amid the greatest change to ground combat since the introduction of the machine gun. The company remains steadfast and invested in providing innovative and transformative solutions to the most important part of the US Army – the Soldier.    

  
Come see the latest capabilities that PDW is bringing to the warfighter at AUSA 2025, ADS booth #3125. www.pdw.ai.    

Daniel Vazquez is a former U.S. Army infantry officer, serving from 2014 until 2025 in Stryker, Light, Advisor, and Innovation positions.