Dr Rob Smith – COO, AV

The Defense Procurement Revolution: From Cost Plus to Off the Shelf

The traditional defense acquisition model was built for a different era. A company would invest a small percentage of revenue in internal research and development, submit a bid, win a cost plus contract, spend years in engineering development, move through low rate initial production, and eventually reach full rate production on a timeline measured in years or decades. That model produced some of the most capable and complex weapon systems ever built. It also produced cost overruns, schedule delays, and a pace of innovation that adversaries have learned to exploit.

The Department of Defense is actively moving away from that model in many of its fastest growing markets. Today’s procurement environment increasingly expects companies to fund their own development, build their own facilities, produce products at scale, and have inventory ready for delivery within 30 days of contract award. That shift fundamentally advantages companies like AV, which have built the financial strength, manufacturing infrastructure, and product portfolio to meet customers where they want to buy rather than asking customers to wait for what is being built. Smith describes AV’s position as a unique hybrid: experienced enough to be a trusted defense prime with long standing customer relationships and a track record of program execution, and agile enough to operate as a disruptor willing to take on development risk and build at scale ahead of contract. Very few companies in the defense sector can credibly claim both.

Locust, Switchblade, and the Counter UAS Portfolio

AV’s product portfolio spans the full spectrum of autonomous and directed energy systems, but two products define its current growth trajectory more than any others. The Locust laser weapon system is AV’s most visible and commercially successful near term platform. Designed to defeat unmanned aerial threats across a layered defense architecture, Locust has been deployed operationally, tested at White Sands with a 100 percent success rate, and demonstrated 20 for 20 performance against advanced threats aboard the USS George Bush aircraft carrier, the only company able to claim that result in a shipboard environment. Smith estimates AV is approximately two years ahead of competition in this category. The half billion dollar counter UAS contract award reflects the scale of demand for this capability, and the addressable market extends well beyond the military to critical civilian infrastructure protection globally.

The Switchblade loitering munition is the other defining platform. A one way attack system that launches, searches for targets of interest, and executes the mission autonomously, Switchblade has become one of the most recognized autonomous strike systems in the world, used extensively in the conflict in Ukraine. AV is investing significant capital in a new Salt Lake City manufacturing facility specifically designed to produce Switchblades at a scale the company projects will generate two billion dollars in annual revenue from that facility alone. Together with the Halo command and control system, Freedom Eagle kinetic counter UAS, a robust ISR drone portfolio, and strong cyber and electronic warfare businesses, AV has assembled the full stack of capabilities that the next generation of multi domain warfare demands.

Manufacturing at Scale: The Real Bottleneck in Defense Technology

Building an autonomous system that works is an engineering problem. Building it at scale, reliably, at the quality levels that warfighters depend on, is an operations problem. Smith is direct about which one is harder. The valley of death in defense technology is not the gap between concept and prototype. It is the gap between prototype and production. Companies with exquisite products regularly fail to make the transition because they have not designed for manufacturability, have not built the supply chain and quality systems required to produce at volume, and have not invested the capital to facilities ahead of demand.

AV has been investing aggressively to close that gap. The company is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in capital expenditure this year, a significant portion of which is going into manufacturing facilities and production equipment. It has reduced its supplier base from approximately 3,000 to 1,500 and is targeting further consolidation, with a specific focus on reducing sole source dependencies for critical components and building longer term agreements with strategic partners. The quality standards that apply to these decisions are not commercial quality standards. Products that go into combat environments and are used to protect soldiers and airmen must work 100 percent of the time. That requirement shapes every supply chain, every quality process, and every partnership decision the company makes.

AI on the Battlefield: On the Loop, Not in the Loop

Autonomous systems and AI are not optional in next generation warfare. When 100 adversary drones are inbound simultaneously, no human can process the targeting, prioritization, and response decisions fast enough to be effective. The AI systems embedded in AV’s products are what enable the speed of response that modern threats demand. Smith makes an important distinction between how those systems are designed to operate: humans on the loop rather than in the loop. The distinction matters. In the loop means a human must approve every action before it is taken, creating latency that adversaries can exploit. On the loop means the AI system is making real time decisions and a human operator is monitoring and can intervene, but the system is not waiting for approval on every action.

For certain mission profiles, Smith notes, even that level of human oversight is being relaxed. Operators set permission parameters before a mission launches, and the system executes autonomously within those parameters, assessing threats and making optimal decisions in real time. The customers operating in the most contested environments are becoming increasingly comfortable with this model because they have to. The speed asymmetry created by adversaries using fully autonomous systems cannot be offset by adding human approval steps. AV’s position at the intersection of AI, autonomy, and precision systems makes it one of the most strategically important defense technology companies in the current threat environment.

From Government Agency to Mars: A Career Built on Saying Yes

Rob Smith’s path to the COO role at AV was not linear and was not planned. He chose chemical engineering because a mentor told him it was in demand and paid well. He picked up his first job at a government agency because that same mentor opened the door. That early experience, working on programs that most people would never know about but that made a real difference to national security, set the direction for everything that followed. From the agency he moved to a small business, then a VC backed firm that was acquired by Lockheed Martin, then through BWXT and Raytheon, and now to AV.

The reboot moment that defined his leadership trajectory came at Lockheed, when he was selected for a vice president role overseeing a billion and a half dollar space and cyber business. By his own assessment, he had no business getting the job on paper. The scope was significantly larger and more complex than anything he had managed before. His response was to go back to fundamentals. He was reading John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and applied it directly to the challenge in front of him. The law of the lid: he had to grow his own capacity to lead at this scale. The law of empowerment: secure leaders give power to others rather than holding it. The law of magnetism: who you are determines who you attract. The leaders who supported him took a strategic risk, invested mentoring time they did not have to invest, and gave him the room to grow into the role. He credits that decision and those leaders as the pivot that made everything possible. His advice to leaders at every level of the organizations he works with is the same: take strategic risks on people, invest the mentoring time, and trust that the leaders you develop will carry the organization further than any system or process ever could.