Original subtitles

[narrator] On "Tomorrow's World today," we explore the cutting-edge

advances that are shaping four different worlds --

the world of inspiration, where the wonders of

the natural world amaze and inspire us.

The world of creation, where ideas come to life from

traditional arts.

The world of innovation, where ideas and inventions

move us all forward.

The world of production, where innovations are

mass-produced to improve our lives.

From Inventionland World Headquarters, here's your host,

George Davison.

For more than a century, the aerospace and defense

industry has been driven by incredible advancements.

And one of the biggest has been the rise of unmanned

aircraft systems.

During World War II, the radio plane OQ-2 was

the first mass-produced unmanned aircraft vehicle in

the United States.

And when you fast forward to the iconic Predator drone that

was used during the War on Terror,

well, you can just see

how much technology has evolved.

What started as a simple remote control drone for

reconnaissance has transformed into a sophisticated machine

equipped with advanced sensors, AI,

and autonomous capabilities.

These unmanned systems are reshaping our military

strategies and changing how we approach national security.

Today, unmanned aircraft systems are playing a crucial

role in intelligence gathering,

surveillance, and target acquisition,

allowing military forces to operate more efficiently and safely.

They can carry out missions in dangerous environments without

putting a pilot at risk.

From real-time reconnaissance to precision strikes,

unmanned aircraft are giving military commanders better

situational awareness and smarter

decision-making tools.

So how will these unmanned aircraft systems continue to

shape military operations...

...and strategies?

Well, I'm gonna send Greg to the world of innovation

to find out.

[upbeat music playing]

Cutting-edge technology is taking flight right here

in San Diego, California.

I'm meeting with David Alexander, the president of

General Atomics Aeronautical, to explore their groundbreaking

unmanned aircraft systems, and how they're redefining

what's possible in the air today and in tomorrow's world.

-Hey, Dave. -Hey, Greg.

-Welcome to General Atomics. -Thank you very much.

I am super excited to be here and learn about all

the different things that you folks do here.

I'd kind of like to start with a little bit of the history of

General Atomics. How did it all get going?

Well, General Atomics was founded in 1955, and in 1986,

the Blue family purchased the company,

and built three main affiliates,

electromagnetics, energy, and aeronautical system,

which is where you're at here today.

Well, what sort of spurred that diversification into

aeronautics and unmanned aircraft?

Neal Blue and his brother, Linden, they're visionaries to

start with, and they are enthusiasts

with anything that flies.

So they really saw a vision of surveillance aircraft for

the military with the advent of GPS combined with low-cost,

long-endurance platforms.

[Greg] And this was really the start of the Predator system, right?

[Dave] That was the beginning of the Predator.

That was the vision.

It was a reconnaissance aircraft,

long-endurance, and very affordable.

But now I'm sure over the years, that has really evolved.

[Dave] It's an evolution of 30 years of the making, and so we would

like to show you everything we have.

Excellent. Well, let's go take a look.

-Lead the way. -Follow me, please.

So, Greg, here we are on the integration floor in

the factory, and behind you is the latest and greatest

MQ-9 Bravo.

It's the next generation aircraft.

It's amazing looking.

One of the first things that struck me as we walked in is

the size of it.

If you roll back like we were talking before, MQ-1 started

as Predator -- small, long-endurance aircraft,

using GPS.

When Predator really got put into use, it was equipped with

SATCOM control, so you can control it halfway around

the world, and combined with weapons.

So now I have full motion video, I have the weapons,

I have the control halfway around the world, I can protect

the war fighters without putting a pilot at risk.

Well what are some of the capabilities that this

aircraft has that the original Predator did not?

The original Predator was 55-foot wingspan,

maybe 2,500 pounds take-off weight.

This is roughly 80-foot wingspan, 13,500 pounds so

it's got way more capability to carry the sensors that are

needed for all types of new missions going forward,

not just full motion video and weapons, you name it,

into maritime missions,

and so this aircraft can fly 48 hours --

two days -- without landing,

and so it gives that long persistence

with even more sensors and that's really

the capability that you're seeing here today.

It also provides the ability to integrate into the airspace

with certification from NATO, all-weather, de-ice,

lightning protection, and safe separation so you can

fly in contested airspace going forward.

[Greg] This is approved for being around general populace.

It's got the same sort of safety measures in place that

any aircraft would, and it has to adhere to that.

[Dave] That has been our key, is to make this platform that can

integrate into all airspaces, not just combat, and it'll open

up new missions for us.

So, what I'd like to do is show you and discuss some of

the other platforms that we have along the way.

Sounds great.

[Greg] I'm in San Diego, where I'm talking to David Alexander,

the president of General Atomics, about the latest

innovations in drone technology.

So Greg, I'd like to continue the story about the MQ-9 Bravo,

the predecessor of this aircraft that is displayed here

was the Reaper, MQ-9A Reaper.

And that started as a commercial enterprise,

as a kind of a vision of our owner

for telecommunications.

The Air Force said, "Whoa, that's bigger and better

than MQ-1, we want that."

Bigger airplane, more useful load, more capable.

And the key was turbine machinery, a turboprop,

that was key.

So Predator was piston engine with gasoline.

And then the Army saw that and they said, "You know what,

"we would like the Grey Eagle aircraft, but we want it with

diesel fuel," and that's really what started the Grey Eagle

airplanes, about halfway in between this airplane and an MQ-1.

So the different propulsion systems is kind of

what drove that. What did it leap into next?

Well, next was what we call Avenger, and that's a even

bigger aircraft, about a 20,000 pound gross takeoff weight jet.

So here we are using a turbofan jet engine.

That has led into collaborative combat aircraft

using jet engines that fly fast.

So the jet engines fly higher, they fly faster, and it allows

us to get into a collaborative combat program.

This autonomy, affordable mass, is the future right now for us.

So the future of unmanned aircraft is being created

right now.

-Right now, as we speak. -Well, I've gotten to see some

things today that I never thought I'd get to see,

so thank you very much, Dave. -Thank you for coming.

Next, I met with Niki Johnson, Vice President of

Government Affairs and Strategic Communications, to discuss

flight hours, missions,

and international partnerships.

So Niki, I got to meet up with Dave Alexander and learn

a little bit about the history of General Atomics.

-And then he also showed me some really impressive aircraft. -Yeah.

From what I understand, you've got some really

impressive numbers that go along with that technology.

So we do.

We are approaching over eight and a half million flight hours

across our fleet.

We've flown 556,000 missions over 40 countries.

And our aircraft actually has an aircraft availability rate

of over 90%.

So what that means is, when the aircraft is needed,

they're ready to go.

And that aircraft availability rate is actually one of

the highest for aircraft in both the US Air Force

and US Army's inventories.

Well, how does that translate internationally?

Are you partnered up with any of our allies?

[Niki] So, we are.

There's always been a lot of interest in our aircraft from

international partners and allies, probably starting

with the MQ-9A Reaper during the global War on Terror,

and now just providing the situational awareness

and multidomain capabilities that the aircraft offers.

We have over a dozen international partners right

now, and we look forward to expanding that, particularly as

we move into the Collaborative Combat Aircraft,

or CCA, program.

Excellent, that's one of the things that I'm actually

gonna talk with Mike Atwood about next.

OK, I'll show you the way.

-Hi, Mike. -Hey, Greg, good to see you.

-Good to see you, too. -Yeah.

Well, Mike, I was just talking with Niki, and we were

discussing General Atomics' international involvement,

how many different countries you service,

and it's pretty impressive.

We also talked a little bit about CCA or collaborative

combat aircraft, and the XQ-67A is sort of where that started.

Why was there a need for that aircraft?

About six years ago, we realized that we needed to

work on the next generation of the Predator

and Reaper families.

And we realized we were at this inflection point of kind of

stealth and cost and autonomy and kind of mixing

those all together.

And so, in partnership with the Air Force,

we began the initial program to build the XQ-67 Alpha and ended

up inventing this concept called genus species.

Somewhat like the automotive industry, you have kind of one

skateboard, one chassis, and you have different variants

on top of it.

And what was so interesting about that is it allowed

the Air Force to essentially not have to choose the mission

that they wanted to do.

Land attack, dog fighting, defending tankers were all

possibilities from one aircraft.

The other aspect that was exciting about 67 Alpha was

the ability to go really fast.

So we wanted to prove to the Air Force that we could,

in about two years or 24 months, bring a new aircraft to

the flight line.

And so, we proved to the Air Force on a modest amount of

money that we could build a genus species, and build

the offboard sensor station variant of that

that did airborne sensing.

And that's really the first time an aircraft like that has

existed, where you could take that base model and apply

different technologies to it, depending on what the mission is.

Especially for the Department of Defense.

I'd say the automotive industry has done a little bit of that

with what you've seen with different kind of platforms

and different SUVs and sedans that would come off of it.

But really, it was the only way to reach that level of

affordability for the Department of Defense.

It's very innovative, but inspired by what was

happening in the automotive industry.

And I guess, as we look around and see how quickly things are

changing in the world today, it's important to have that be

able to be done very fast. -Yeah, fast and cheap.

You know, we hear a lot about combat mass and how do we bring

more assets to the fight more quickly?

So, you know, having adaptability

and affordability with a little dose of stealth on the side is

something really special for the Air Force to have.

So, very excited, and you know the next couple of years,

you're gonna see this go into production.

Well, I'd really like to get a closer look at the technology

involved with this. Can we see that?

Yeah, let's go check it out

[Greg] I'm at General Atomics in San Diego, and I'm going to meet

with Steve Fournier, Senior Manager Additive Design

and Manufacturing Center of Excellence, to talk about

additive manufacturing and 3D computer-aided design models.

Well Greg welcome to the Additive Manufacturing

Center of Excellence at General Atomics.

In this particular space, what we focus on

is metal additive.

So parts like this, made out of very hard material called

titanium, starts their lives as powder, right?

It's very thin powder being melted using lasers,

and one layer at a time, we build this complex structure.

Wow, and now this is even a little bit different than

what I'm seeing here.

So this is how it comes out of the printer,

but this is how it ends up.

How does it get from one to the other?

So, all of this extra structure are needed for

the printing process.

Now, at the end of the day, a human being needs to get

the parts out of the printer that looks like this,

and then start spending time removing components like these

to really get to a final part that looks like that.

And then also paint the parts and qualify that for flight

before we put it on the aircraft.

So even with all of the high tech of the 3D printer,

the human factor is still an important part

of the process. -Absolutely.

So, does a 3D printer help you get from, say, the drawing

board to the prototype and up into the air more quickly than

you have been able to before?

Over the years, General Atomics has learned how to design

things differently.

So, as a result, we combine parts together so

we have less parts.

And so that allows us to go from a design to a final

prototype into an aircraft much faster.

So a part like this would have maybe been three or four

different parts in the past,

and then would have to be assembled.

Now, with the 3D printer, it doesn't care.

It just builds whatever you need.

[Steve] That's the beauty of this process.

And as a result, we have hundreds of parts on

our latest aircraft in our fleet.

And that's the testament of that this technology is

real today. -[Greg] So this isn't science fiction.

This is actually being used in aircraft that are in

the air right now.

Absolutely, and it's getting bigger and more structural

every day.

Steve, this is amazing, but I really want to get

another look at that 3D printer.

Absolutely.

So my getting together with Steve and seeing the 3D

printing technology in action was really impressive.

But I'm curious as to how all of that is going to be

integrated into the future of the armed forces?

[Mike] Yeah, you know, the modern fighting force has

to kind of recompose itself for the changing

adversary condition.

As we've seen in the modern conflicts, we can think the war

is gonna develop one way, and then it's gonna shift

a different direction.

The quadcopters in the conflicts that we see are

constantly changing and adapting.

So part of the additive technology allows us to have

that adaptable airframe for that changing need,

that changing mission.

And right now, cost imposing, almost economically imposing,

is a key tenant of the war fight.

So bringing that cost down with that genus species approach is

a key part, but more than that, we need to address broad

fronts, long borders of countries.

We can't have these soda straw fighters going out.

We really have to put the fighters behind this large

mass of unmanned airplanes to get the combat advantage.

And I guess that's a really great way to keep the pilots

out of harm's way.

You're talking about really highly trained,

really extraordinarily capable pilots that you then put into

a combat situation.

This is a great way to keep them back from that.

Yeah, you know, it always amazes me.

We take our best and brightest and put them in the worst

possible position we can to be right in the threat bubble.

Unmanned has this unique attribute where we can pull

that man back in the battle space, and we can essentially

put a large force structure of unmanned airplanes

in front of that.

And that creates a very, again, imposing strategy.

It creates a force-front where the human can kind of

collaborate and augment.

[Greg] And I would think that this is a great additional asset for

the pilot themselves, because even with all of

the modern technology monitoring in a fighter jet,

they still really only see what's in front of them.

Yes, when you bring these disaggregated unmanned wingmen,

they can see the whole battle space.

So the level of situational awareness goes way up.

You know, another interesting aspect of unmanned, is you can

actually forward base them.

A lot of people don't think about

how the planes actually get there.

The fighter pilots have to go through this long range of

tankers to get there.

You know, they're coming from their chow halls

and their bases, and their barracks.

The unmanned airplanes are just stored in hangars.

They can kind of leapfrog out of jungles and smaller bases in

the Indo-Pacific region and meet the fighters on the way there.

And that's how we get huge amounts of combat mass that are

incredibly cost opposing.

And that becomes a fight that your adversary just doesn't

want to engage in.

Yeah, the best way to win the war is to never fight it in

the first place.

[Greg] I'm at General Atomics, where I'm continuing

my conversation about unmanned aircraft with Mike Atwood,

Vice President, Advanced Programs.

So Mike, as we talk about these autonomous aircraft and how

important they are becoming in the rapidly evolving landscape

of warfare,

is AI and machine learning, is that a big part of this?

We talked a lot about the airplane and the technology

of the physical product, but really,

the software and the autonomy brain is the ultimate pillar of

what we need to do to bring the capability to

the Air Force.

One of the biggest challenges actually isn't writing the code

or the software, but it's getting the humans,

the fighter pilots, to actually have trust in the autonomy.

How do you communicate intent to a machine?

Do you tell it to turn left and right, or do you tell it to

go shoot that other airplane?

So, understanding those boundaries of trust

and capability is really what we're focused on right now.

[Greg] The future seems pretty exciting.

[Mike] Yeah, you know, in the next two years, we're gonna see a lot of

that flight testing.

I'm really excited for the general public to see

the growth in that.

It's much like the autonomous car industry.

When it first came out, it was very exciting and new,

but were we really gonna use it?

Were we gonna trust our families with it?

And I think we've now gotten to a point over five or so years

where we do.

I think the unmanned airplane and the autonomy is gonna

follow that same roadmap.

Excellent, Mike, thank you very much.

Well, Dave is headed over to Inventionland.

He's gonna meet up with George, and I've gotta get back there

myself, so why don't you show me out?

Let's go.

Hi, Dave, welcome to Inventionland.

Hey, George, thanks for having me.

Well, I couldn't wait for you to get here.

My team was telling me all these stories about

3D printing, additive manufacturing.

I hope you could expand on it.

Well, we enjoyed having him there.

We walked him through what we call a national asset,

which is five million square feet just dedicated to

unmanned aircraft.

You're not gonna find that anywhere in the world.

You know, example is the part behind us.

Yes.

That started out as a composite hand layup part.

We looked at the cost of that and said, "You know what?

There's a better way to do it," and there it is right behind you.

It was done in 3D printing or additive manufacturing,

and cut the cost by a third of what it was before.

That's great.

So you saved costs and picked up production, correct.

I saw some other images, too, from your team,

and I thought, five beautiful aircraft, Dave.

What you're seeing there is what you couldn't give away

a long time ago, and what changed the world to

really reconsider unmanned aircraft was the aircraft right

in the center there called Predator.

It's one of the top 10 aircraft in the world,

and it can deliver over-the-horizon control

through satellite dish, full motion video,

and weapons tied together with long endurance. -Wow.

Over the years we have developed over

1,200 aircraft delivered to customers, and at one point,

over 100 a year were being delivered to

support the warfighter.

And that's with the series that you see up there,

the Bigger Brother, the Reaper, the Grey Eagle for

the Army down below, our first jet, which is

the Avenger, High Fly Go Fast, and then our latest

and greatest Sky Guardian, Sea Guardian aircraft.

Again, huge investment, forward-looking from our owners,

the Blue Brothers, reinvesting into the company.

[George] Beautiful.

Beautiful.

And then I saw this image, and I thought, "Now that looks

like the future, Dave."

Well, George, we're really excited

about this airplane.

Now, you can see it's a flying wing, but it can stay up three

times longer flying than other flying wing that looks just

like it, due to a special hybrid propulsion that we're working

on, and it's gonna be a game changer.

So it's not a me-too flying wing, this is very,

very different.

Dave, thanks for everything you're doing.

Thank you.

All right, everybody, that's another edition of

"Tomorrow's World Today." We'll see you next time.

So, how about we check out some trade secrets

in Inventionland? -Excellent.

Alright.

[George] And remember, tomorrow's world is where

inspiration and creation drive innovation and production.