Battle Bottle - an AI brain to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
In this episode, we talk with Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions. In their first 6 months, they won a major defencetech industry award and were invited to showcase their tech in NATO AIR Command HQ
We discuss how to reduce decision fatigue as operators have an increasing number of uncrewed systems at their disposal, how AI can help improve the cost asymmetry of modern warfare, the growing role of simulation in training and developing autonomous systems, and the future of human-machine teaming.
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Production, Design & Artwork: HIATUS ↗ The Defence Design & Communications Agency
Find Out More: https://battlebottle.tech
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Transcript
00:00:01 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Hi, welcome to the Future Frontiers podcast from Mililux.io.
00:00:05 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
In this episode, we talk with Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, UK defence tech company developing an AI brain list between the sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions.
00:00:16 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
In the first six months, they won a major defence tech industry award and were invited to showcase their tech of NATO Air Command headquarters.
00:00:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
We discuss how to reduce decision fatigue as operators have an increasing number of uncrewed systems at their disposal, how AI can improve the cost of symmetry of modern warfare, the growing role of simulation in developing autonomous systems and the future of human machine teaming.
00:00:41 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Hey Francis, thank you so much for joining us on the Future Frontiers podcast.
00:00:45 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I realise you've got a very busy summer ahead of you with building and developing your technology.
00:00:50 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So to kick us off, please can you give us a really concise one minute introduction to yourself?
00:00:55 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Hi, so my name is Francis.
00:00:57 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I'm the CEO and co-founder of Battle Bottle, which is a CUAS orchestration AI.
00:01:02 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And what's funny was I used to be a science teacher, crit because of too much marketing, made an AI for schools that did the marketing for them.
00:01:11 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
That resulted in King's College London giving me the Alumni of the Year Award last year for my work on AI in the public sector.
00:01:17 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
That got me invited to a bunch of events on AI in like Whitehorn Parliament.
00:01:21 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Made a few contacts in the MOD, basically sort of right in the wall, made a demo of our software, BattleBot, also a few contacts in the MOD.
00:01:29 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And they have been giving us a lot of support ever since we started back in February 2026, which was like 5 months ago or so.
00:01:39 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And also I'm doing my PhD in knowledge transfer mechanisms.
00:01:43 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So a lot of the stuff I learned about AI in the public sector and security
00:01:49 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
and validating data from the AI edtech space joins up really well with my PhD in knowledge transfer mechanisms.
00:01:57 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And turns out both those fields work really well in the defence sector.
00:02:02 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Brilliant.
00:02:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I think it was about February 2026, maybe not long after that, we met at the event in London, wasn't it?
00:02:09 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And I remember...
00:02:10 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Hearing your tech and I was like, we definitely need to get Francis on the podcast and share more about this.
00:02:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I think we've just now managed to find a chance where our schedules line up.
00:02:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, it's been a really busy summer, hasn't it?
00:02:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
really has.
00:02:25 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Well, let's kind of roll straight into it then.
00:02:27 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So can I please get your take on Europe's rearming efforts right now?
00:02:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
How are you seeing it?
00:02:33 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Honestly, I think we definitely really need to rearm Europe much, much faster.
00:02:39 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I mean, we've had peacetime for such a long period of time right now, become somewhat quite content, but we have definitely seen over the last couple years how there's certainly a bunch of bad actors who do want to destroy our peaceful way of life.
00:02:54 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I mean, we just need to see what happens in Ukraine for the last couple years as well.
00:02:59 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And it's just, you know, Ukrainians
00:03:02 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
didn't really have anything to defend themselves against the Russians and they just had to be like scrappy and find some really good guerrilla style tactics to rebel against that opposing threat.
00:03:13 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Like we have not seen that sort of level of like, you know, scrappy underdogs fighting against a bigger power.
00:03:18 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It's just like what, the Viet Cong in like Vietnam.
00:03:21 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So, you know, we need to be better prepared for that.
00:03:23 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
We just can't rely on, oh, an enemy is attacking us, let's just see what kind of stuff we can make with over-the-counter items to defend them.
00:03:32 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
We need to be
00:03:32 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
be a lot more prepared just in case we do get attacked again.
00:03:37 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And best way to prepare is to make sure that we are rearmed with enough deterrence because honestly none of us want war, none of us want to fight, but also it's just basic human or animal nature that we just fight against each other all the time.
00:03:56 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And honestly it's just
00:03:57 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
our enemy knowing that we do have all these powerful weapons and therefore they shouldn't attack us, that's kind of like the best option we can go for.
00:04:06 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I mean, I'm personally in the defence industry now because I like my way of life, I like my peace, I want my peace to continue and all I really want is just to continue having a peaceful life that we don't have to fight and if me contributing my expertise and experience will help us preserve our peace,
00:04:26 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
That's exactly what I want to do.
00:04:28 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, brilliant.
00:04:29 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, that strategic deterrence these days is more of a kind of psychological element, isn't it, where actually we don't we don't want this, we're not looking for a fight necessarily, but we want to do is kind of deter and deter people that would want to do aggression upon us.
00:04:45 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So, yeah, thanks, thanks so much for your take.
00:04:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I really appreciate it.
00:04:48 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I mean, I think there was another issue about it as well as, you know, we do have like the money that's actually coming in, but it's just a procurement framework to just so
00:04:55 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
slow at the moment.
00:04:56 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Like we saw that when Ukraine started, just that procurement framework became so, fast.
00:05:01 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And it's like, it's kind of like what we need because it's like, especially as startups, we need some quicker routes to pilot and get our tech out there as well.
00:05:11 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It's like, there's a major fund that we're having discussions with at the moment who are interested in our tech in a pre-C perspective, but are like, even though, you know, we're interested in your tech and we would love to invest in it, we would want to see it actually being used
00:05:25 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
obcured by a major prime first.
00:05:27 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And you're like, how long that takes.
00:05:30 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And we're like a startup, like, what's our runway?
00:05:34 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I don't know, however long we can survive.
00:05:37 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And, just like we need to get that procurement time to be just like slashed a lot as well.
00:05:43 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:05:45 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Well, I'm really keen to hear more about Battle Bottle.
00:05:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Like, can you give us a deeper dive on it?
00:05:50 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Like, what is it?
00:05:51 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
How did it come to be?
00:05:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What problems, you know, what is it?
00:05:55 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So top line overview of Battle Bottle, it's CUAS orchestration AI with a gamified layer that acts as a capability within a C2 system.
00:06:03 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But to explain in non-military talk, it's like the AI brain that acts between the sensors and data in a C2 command and control system and the actual deployment part.
00:06:18 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And what Battle Bottle is, the AI brain that goes
00:06:21 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
okay, we've got all this information, we've got all these units, this is where the enemies are and everything.
00:06:26 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
The AI analyzes it and provides different force packages to recommend you should do XYZ if you want to win while factoring in cost optimization, cost optimization, asset survivability and protecting high value key infrastructure.
00:06:43 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And it all basically got inspired by
00:06:50 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
How are we seeing, especially from Ukraine, that war and conflict is basically becoming gamified and how gamers are quite good when it comes to drone-related, where it's like, piloting or drone planning orchestration.
00:07:07 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So what we do is we have the video game side of Battle Bottle where we get players who
00:07:12 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
play micro versions of previous skirmishes and try and find the most cost optimized drone deployment strategies and orchestration routes to defeat the enemy for the cheapest way possible while maximizing asset survivability.
00:07:25 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But we were also very, very inspired by a lot of dual use within the video game sector and in defense and security.
00:07:36 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Like I just want to say like my biggest inspiration was actually pokémon Go.
00:07:43 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I mean, how much do you know about pokémon Go, Chris?
00:07:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I mean, it hit the big time because it was augmented reality and it was kind of like the first real, I would say the first real, the killer use app, so to speak, for augmented reality.
00:07:56 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So people were using their phones and they walk around and it would project obviously an image of a pokémon character on their phone, obviously where there was nothing there in real life, but it was that kind of, that real interactive layer where I guess you can always call it mixed reality where you could obviously
00:08:11 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
interact games with, where you were in time and space.
00:08:16 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
They greatly expanded on that capability A lot.
00:08:19 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So you thought pokémon Go was just, you go walk around, you find Pikachu, you capture, etc.
00:08:25 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But basically just it became a really, really good
00:08:29 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
crowdsourced tool to collect really, really fine ground level st data as well.
00:08:36 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And that was then able to basically sold off to like governments and militaries, especially in America at the moment.
00:08:42 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So a good example with pokémon Go was they had this whole period of time where you would be given random missions and the prizes for it would basically be like really, really expensive in-game premium items.
00:08:56 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And what it would ask you to do is go to one hyper-pacific area, which is basically a pokémon stop, and then it would want you to stand there, get your phone, and slowly, like, rotate your phone around in full 360 degrees everywhere.
00:09:14 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But they gamified it with like Pokemon-based like UI.
00:09:17 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And it's like, let's try and help like Professor Rillo, like scan this area and follow this bar.
00:09:24 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Oh, he really was like, oh, you're moving too.
00:09:26 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
fast.
00:09:26 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
He can't keep up.
00:09:28 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And then once you collect like this fine, like, slow 360 degree stuff off this area, they give like, okay, here's a free premium in-game item.
00:09:36 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And then what happens?
00:09:37 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
People needed those in-game items in order to collect much more rarer pokémon or do better in the PvP aspect.
00:09:43 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And then it just turns out they were just selling, collecting all that data from a fine ground level aspect and just selling it off to militaries and governments.
00:09:51 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Because pokémon players like myself were just going out, slowly scanning around and collecting all of this data.
00:09:59 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And it's just amazing how much data got collected as well.
00:10:04 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Like I still play pokémon Go because I think it's
00:10:06 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
a masterclass in how they use gamified-based technology to collect all of this data for, defence and security purposes.
00:10:14 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But it's also somewhat concerning as well.
00:10:17 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So, like, early on in the summer, I got invited to Showify Tech in NATO Aircom HQ in Ramstein in Germany, the Showify Tech in their CUAS conference.
00:10:28 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Like, all around that major NATO army base, there were pokémon stops and pokémon gyms
00:10:35 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
everywhere, which has shown that people must have been playing pokémon Go a lot there and collecting all of that data.
00:10:42 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And you're like, you think back like, decades ago and just like imagine what it would have taken to have a foreign actor to come in and collect ground source data of the inside of major NATO bases.
00:10:56 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And then pokémon Go is just like, yeah, we're just going to gamify it and we're just going to let people like, you know, play around in there.
00:11:01 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And I'm just like, you know, just only open up pokémon Go while I was there.
00:11:03 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I was like,
00:11:04 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
This is concerning that there is a lot of this, pokémon stops and pokémon gyms inside this major NATO army base, which shows that people have been playing it a lot here and collecting loads of ground source fine data.
00:11:17 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And it's like, you know, it's kind of evil, but it's also kind of smart at the same time.
00:11:24 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Real quick, if you want to hear when new episodes and articles are released, be sure to sign up to our newsletter at the Mililux website or find a link in the show notes below.
00:11:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Otherwise, back to the episode.
00:11:36 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
do you know what you've reminded me about?
00:11:39 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I'm kind of, I've got this like open mouth expression because I'm like, that is incredible.
00:11:43 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
You know, there's obviously lots of reports out even over the last week which say that Strava users in sensitive military places have been uploading their data to Strava.
00:11:55 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's been publicly accessible.
00:11:58 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
The Iranians have been using that to target
00:12:02 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
their air strikes and stuff.
00:12:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I was like thinking, we've learned about that problem for quite a while now.
00:12:07 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
That's not a new problem.
00:12:08 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But the way you've just explained pokémon Go now has literally just blow my mind going,
00:12:13 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
That is brilliant.
00:12:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Why, you've got maybe a few users in like a military base, you tell them like you delete Strava and you never have to use it.
00:12:22 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But then obviously if you get their children, if their children are kind of evading detection by using pokémon Go, then all of a sudden they're scanning buildings, they're scanning for heights for, and they're probably capturing
00:12:35 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
personal data, facial shots of people walking in and out and vehicle number plates and stuff.
00:12:40 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And you can then...
00:12:40 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah.
00:12:41 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
They really collect a lot of really fine geospatial data in pokémon Go.
00:12:47 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And it just turns out that, you know, that after they basically exited in that massive exit a few months ago, then it just probably came out that's basically what all the data was being collected for.
00:12:56 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So it's the fact that they were able to completely gamify and infantilize fine-tuned collection of geospatial data
00:13:04 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It's just kind of like impressive.
00:13:06 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Like she was saying, it's all like, no, you think Strava.
00:13:08 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Strava is something that grown-ups have and therefore you're not to go like, no Strava on the army base.
00:13:14 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But pokémon Go, people are like, oh, it's pokémon.
00:13:17 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
That's not evil.
00:13:19 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Let them play pokémon Go here.
00:13:21 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And then it's just like they collect geospatial, like fine-tune geospatial data.
00:13:27 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Wow, I'm my, I'm definitely, that's a huge learning experience for me.
00:13:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Thanks for sharing that.
00:13:34 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Let me jump in and just make sure I've got the right understanding of Battle Bottle then, because my brain is still kind of thinking about the pokémon Go element.
00:13:42 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So essentially, so you create the brain between the sensor, obviously the drone, the drone that's flying overhead, and the effector, which might be the counter UAS, you know,
00:13:54 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
rocket from, I don't know, whichever error provider makes it.
00:13:58 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
You're the brain which turns what's being seen into actionable decisions, you know, give information to the person that is either pressing the button to fire the county UAS or at some point it will be an automated action, I'd imagine, based on perimeters.
00:14:16 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
How, so
00:14:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So the game, so when you said about the game element, is that like a separate product or something that you're used to obviously train the AI brain, presumably through users playing this video game element?
00:14:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Or is that something that is a separate product or service or something?
00:14:37 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Oh, you've got to know completely like straight on the head, Chris.
00:14:40 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So what it is, the game
00:14:43 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
The data we collect from the game, which is like, no identifying features, we just collect like what the gamers actually do and how to deploy stuff in the game, is what basically feeds our custom in-house developed AI.
00:14:54 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So we use a lot of open source intelligence to create micro versions of previous skirmishes.
00:15:01 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And then we get the gamers to try and find the most optimal way of doing it.
00:15:04 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So like there's no login, no collected personal information.
00:15:07 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It's just
00:15:08 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
This is what I was presented.
00:15:09 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
What did the gamers do to try and win this?
00:15:10 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And we used our custom gamified engine to determine what would be like, you know, if they did X, what would the results be?
00:15:18 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And then we applied to that whole gamified based logic that will help gamers try and work out the most cost optimized drone deployment strategy.
00:15:27 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And due to that, we did end up winning the government audience award at DSIT.
00:15:33 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
earlier on this summer, which is the major defence simulation education and training conference.
00:15:39 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And you got the government audience award.
00:15:41 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
That was the one that was voted by the key visiting UK, MD and NATO delegates on the new tech that would be the most likely to provide the most financial value and benefits to our governments and militaries.
00:15:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I mean, my brain is already thinking is that whilst you've given us a counter UAS example there, in say the future where we're using augmented reality helmets, for example, your, you know, and the helmets with kind of their own like LIDAR or kind of sensors or sensing suites,
00:16:11 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
implemented, then obviously it can start to feed real-time information to the user, perhaps, or even, or those that are flying the one-way affected drones or the drones themselves, you could be feeding, the AI brain can be feeding them, say, right, you know, strongly suggest you bank left or right to avoid an oncoming missile from, you know, from this direction, flying at this kind of velocity with this sort of wind speed is protected to hit you.
00:16:38 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So
00:16:39 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
that kind of brain could be feeding the user actionable information, strong suggestions, and whatever layer of kind of advice, guidance, or maybe it takes over control and steers the platform out of the way when it detects a human isn't, you know, isn't functioning properly.
00:16:58 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
That's a long-term plan.
00:17:00 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, I feel like I've.
00:17:02 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Modern problems call for modern solutions.
00:17:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I feel like I've jumped forward a few questions now, so I'll make sure I kind of gobble that back up and make sure we don't dive too much into that without kind of going into the next few next few first.
00:17:18 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
OK, so, what so let's take your take on it.
00:17:22 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So, what other what problems does your company or your tech solve for defence security, kind of notwithstanding the counter US one, because that's a really obvious one and
00:17:34 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
brilliant that people like you are solving that.
00:17:37 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So one thing we've definitely learned from Ukraine is conflicts and wars are basically coming down to our financial war or patrition.
00:17:46 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So who can ever financially survive the longest and be able to have a more prolonged campaign is the one who's more likely going to win.
00:17:55 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So what our Battle Bottle AI tech does is that it presents
00:18:01 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
the key decision maker with multiple force packages.
00:18:04 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So like, what's the cheapest way to get an 80% chance of victory?
00:18:08 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
What's the cheapest way to get a 90% chance of victory?
00:18:10 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
What's the cheapest way to get a 99% chance of victory?
00:18:13 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And it takes that whole costings into consideration, like, you know, what types of, like, you know,
00:18:21 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
should you deploy these more expensive drone units or should you deploy these more cheaper units?
00:18:27 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
If you want to try and get the same result, do you want to, like, you know, is it going to be more cost efficient if you deploy a bunch of smaller disposable FPVs or do you want to have like, you know, one big one that will be more likely able to survive multiple skirmishes?
00:18:41 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So it's kind of like it starts factoring all of that into your account, just like
00:18:45 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
what could you do to maximize your expenditure during an overall campaign, what you can do to maximize the survivability of your assets from skirmish to skirmish, but then also fact in other considerations.
00:18:59 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So it's just like...
00:19:00 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
If you needed to protect a key piece of high value infrastructure, what can you deploy and spend to protect that, but still neutralize the opposition for the chief is very possible?
00:19:13 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Because as much as, you know, we say that the defence industry has money, we do still need to try and cut down spending as much as possible.
00:19:21 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And especially in Ukraine, how they basically fight on a budget of like, what, a few thousand, which is actually impressive against Russia.
00:19:28 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So that's how our tech works.
00:19:29 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It's trying to maximize efficiency for the cheapest way possible.
00:19:36 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So you know, we're always interested to hear from organizations that want to contribute their thoughts to our articles.
00:19:42 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
If this is you, send it to the e-mail newsletter to stay up to date on what we're working on.
00:19:45 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
There's a link in the show notes.
00:19:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Otherwise, back to the episode.
00:19:51 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
and I guess you can map that out in both directions, can you?
00:19:54 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So that's people looking to neutralise a drone threat that's coming to you.
00:19:58 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I guess you could also, once it's got enough battlefield data or kind of target data, it could say, right, don't fire the Patriot missile at $1 million per
00:20:12 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
per fire and use a swarm of three or four of these FPV drones come in from this direction, from this direction, from this direction, and you'll neutralise the, I don't know, the, you know, whatever the target is, they're trying to neutralise, you know, be it like, you know, a missile deployment system or something like that.
00:20:34 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I'm assuming you can go both ways.
00:20:37 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It worked in that way.
00:20:38 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So what we also did is after we collected a lot of the organic player data, we had some, we made some internal, very, very sophisticated scripts and applications that was able to extrapolate a lot of that organic player data into really high quality synthetic data.
00:20:54 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But that synthetic data was
00:20:56 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Really given a lot of very interesting, like during deployment strategies, like to give you an example, so one thing that players were trying to do early on, they're trying to find the most cheapest ways, like let's say you know you're...
00:21:08 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
A Russian soldier on the field in Ukraine and you need to neutralize it.
00:21:12 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
What players were doing were deploying basically 2 drones towards them.
00:21:16 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So the soldier would be able to take down one drone before the other one neutralizes that soldier.
00:21:21 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But what the synthetic data started identifying was actually the most cost efficient way was not deploying 2 drones but deploying 30.
00:21:29 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Because if the soldier's being approached by 30 drones, he isn't able to take down one
00:21:35 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
before all of them, like, neutralize him.
00:21:38 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Therefore, even though there was a higher upfront cost, there was a higher rate of survivability, which allowed, which our AI was then able to recommend, it's like, this is what you should do to try and like maximize your expenditure and asset survivability between individual skirmishes.
00:21:53 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And I was like, well, the synthetic data being extrapolated from the organic data is providing these sort of really interesting solutions as well.
00:22:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:22:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I'm thinking, and I'm wondering actually, is that you can use that from a psychological perspective as well, in that if you want to force a, call sign, like a platoon or a bigger formation to actually, you don't want to necessarily, kill them.
00:22:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
You want them just to give up and, lay down their weapons and,
00:22:30 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
become prisoners of war, so to speak, is that you could actually send a much larger force, which actually has got a higher likelihood of enacting a, basic giving up, rather than having to, make, kill somebody unnecessarily and also expend a platform, is you could just project a big force, which then forces people to kind of give up.
00:22:57 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I wonder.
00:22:58 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I'll probably take it a bit too far, a bit too a bit too far forward kind of into the future into our questions.
00:23:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But yeah, that's really fascinating.
00:23:06 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It's definitely an interesting field at the moment.
00:23:08 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So we ended up getting a lot of feedback from a lot of stuff introduced us like, you know, got a lot of feedback after we were
00:23:15 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
invited to show up at Tech and NATO Air Con HQ.
00:23:19 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
A lot of feedback after we had some meetings with some senior officials in the US Army.
00:23:22 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
A lot of feedback after the MOD invited us to meet the US Department of War guys at Barnborough last month.
00:23:29 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And just like the level of feedback we've been getting from like, you know, NATO and the US has been really, really helpful in helping us refine our functions within Battle Cosmos capabilities.
00:23:42 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, brilliant.
00:23:43 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And can I ask a silly question?
00:23:45 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Where does the name Battle Bottle come from?
00:23:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What's the, because my first thought is I'm actually holding up a plastic bottle here to kind of show people.
00:23:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I was like, is it?
00:23:53 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's not like a, obviously we'd spoken before, I actually knew the name of the company, so I knew roughly what the technology was.
00:24:00 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But then when I saw the name, I was like Battle Bottle, I got the wrong end of the stick.
00:24:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Is it not a bottle for battle?
00:24:07 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What's the name?
00:24:09 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So
00:24:11 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So, the name inspiration came in because it basically represents like, a battle in a bottle, so like a closed environment, because when we were developing our early stage prototype for mobile devices, it was like a really long vertical, like, battle zone, and then, at the bottom, it kind of got a little bit closer for deployment.
00:24:32 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It's like,
00:24:33 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
and it kind of looks like a bottle shape.
00:24:34 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And we're like, oh, it's like a battle in a bottle.
00:24:37 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So it kind of reminds me of a whole ship in a bottle thing.
00:24:39 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It's like, oh, it's a battle in a bottle.
00:24:42 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
That name is just like, you know, kind of just rolls off your tongue and then, you know, alliteration and then it's also quite, it's letter B.
00:24:50 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So, you know, when we're in directories, it kind of goes, not the very first page with all the A's like everyone else does, but just, you know, still on the B, she's still quite early on.
00:24:58 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And I was like, you know what, this name just rolls off the tongue.
00:25:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I had to ask anyway, that's something I was kind of wondering about.
00:25:08 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Okay, so let's get on to our penultimate question because I realise you've obviously got some building and developing ahead of you today.
00:25:13 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So as a defence startup, what are the main problems and opportunities that you're experiencing?
00:25:20 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So I will say definitely main problems are procurement timelines do take quite a long time as well.
00:25:29 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So it's just like we're in conversations
00:25:32 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
with a few primes at the moment on some pilots.
00:25:36 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But getting all of the paperwork done through their legal compliance team, especially during the summer, takes ages.
00:25:45 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And then you can find it together with the whole typical procurement timeline as well, takes a long time as well.
00:25:50 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But also, I see what we like, you know, the big
00:25:54 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
problem for me is I want to keep this as like a UK-based defense tech startup.
00:25:59 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I want sovereign AI, but it's like with the delays, with the dip as well, the MOD were really, really helpful and good towards us, but it just wasn't any funding available to us, you know, from like, you know, the MOD at the time or UK, RI or Innovate UK.
00:26:18 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But it's kind of like, from having loads of meetings and introductions with senior officials in the US Army.
00:26:23 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And the US Army are like, yeah, with all this money, we could just give you for like ODAs.
00:26:27 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And you're like, that's just money for pure R&D and testing and I don't have to give up any equity.
00:26:34 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Or like another thing right now is that we're part of one of the major NATO brave one programmes at the moment that allow us to like, you know, work with some Ukrainian companies.
00:26:43 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And then it's like, you know, money directly from NATO itself as like grant money.
00:26:47 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And it's like, I want to keep our tech in the UK.
00:26:51 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I want this to be a sovereign AI defensive capabilities.
00:26:56 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But it's kind of like, there's no money from the UK government, but the US military and NATO are willing to offer money.
00:27:04 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
That, you know, it's a startup.
00:27:06 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
You can't really say no to that because, you know, NATO and the US, they're still allies though, aren't they?
00:27:11 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And there's also another issue as well as like during our fundraise at the moment.
00:27:16 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So we've got to this really annoying stage where the fundraising as pre-seed is quite hard for defence in the UK because if you meet and talk to defence funds, they generally only invest in defence companies if it's series A or higher.
00:27:32 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But if you have conversations with UK-based pre-seed funds,
00:27:40 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
They're either one, they don't like defense.
00:27:44 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Two, they're now interested in defense, but they've never invested in defense before.
00:27:49 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So they're really like unsure and don't know what to do.
00:27:53 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Or 3, one of my favorite ones with a lot of AI 3C funds is like, I don't understand why battle bottle is useful in like conflict.
00:28:00 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And you're like, well, our AI does XYZ and this really helps.
00:28:04 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I'm like, yeah, but why do you need AI for that?
00:28:06 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And I'm like,
00:28:07 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
it takes the humans like about 3 days to do this.
00:28:10 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
We get this done in 3 to 30 seconds.
00:28:12 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Like, why do you need AI for that?
00:28:14 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It's like, you don't seem to understand that.
00:28:16 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
If you have loads of missiles coming towards you, know, cutting down all the decision and planning time from three days to 30 seconds or even 3 seconds can literally mean life and death for like, you know, loads of people as well.
00:28:32 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So those are the main issues.
00:28:33 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
problems we're having.
00:28:35 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But in terms of opportunities, I do feel that the cultural sensibility towards the fence is changing because we've seen that, the fence is about defending ourselves, defending our peace, defending our way of life and our freedoms for ourselves and our loved ones.
00:28:53 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So the sentiments towards the fence is completely shifting.
00:28:56 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But also people do like to
00:29:02 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
dog polling on the MOD quite a lot.
00:29:04 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But honestly, as a UK-based defense tech startup, they have been really, really helpful and nice towards the, like they've opened, like, you know, we literally started back in February.
00:29:13 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
We're like, what, TRL one, probably even less than that.
00:29:16 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But it's basically like, you know, what, five months, they opened up so, many doors, like, you know,
00:29:23 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
being about show off our tech and one of the major army bases, Larkhill, and show off our tech to loads of our allied nations defence attaches, being like, invited to show off our tech and other events as well, and getting loads of introductions made within the MOD and a lot of their relevant partners.
00:29:39 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But also one thing I've definitely noticed as well is in a lot of the primes, there's a lot of ex-military people there, so who did hold a lot of quite higher positions.
00:29:52 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And honestly though, Chris, I can say that those people you meet who were ex-military and now working for the primes, they're actually some of the most loveliest and nicest and most chill people you could ever meet in your life.
00:30:05 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And it's like, you know, like back in other industries I was in before, it was always like, oh, if you want me to like, you know, even help you a little bit, you're going to do all of this stuff for me, even if what you're doing is for the greater good.
00:30:17 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
In the defense industry, with a lot of those major ex-military people, they're like, oh yeah.
00:30:22 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Your tech will work really, really well on help.
00:30:24 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I'm just going to make all these introductions for you and get you like all of these introductions and open all these doors for you.
00:30:29 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And you're like, do you want it to be back in return?
00:30:31 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It's like, not really, just defend our country.
00:30:34 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And I'm like, that is just nice.
00:30:37 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It's like, you know, it's like, it's like, you know, quid pro quo, I help you help me, but it's like, you know, you help me and I help them defend our country and our freedoms.
00:30:45 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And you're like, they're just absolutely bloody lovely people in the defense industry.
00:30:51 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
They're like,
00:30:52 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So chill, and then you end up meeting, finding out a lot of their career and backgrounds and what they used to do, and you're like, I thought, in previous industries, ed tech, some people would have massive, massive egos, and they'd be like, what?
00:31:07 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
An assistant head teacher in a secondary school, and they have massive, massive egos, but in the defense industry, you meet people who are majorly, majorly important, or they commanded entire warship fleets and everything.
00:31:22 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And those would be the people you would expect to have like a big ego.
00:31:27 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But they're the most chillest, nicest people around that never bring it up.
00:31:31 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And then you only find out about it when someone else mentions it to you and they're like, you speak to this person really, really casually.
00:31:38 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Do you not know their background?
00:31:39 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It's like, yeah, it's X.
00:31:40 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
He's just like really, really chill.
00:31:42 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And he was like, oh no, he did X.
00:31:43 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I said, oh, that's really cool.
00:31:45 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
He never mentioned that to me.
00:31:47 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
I'm just like, you know, in this, you know, industry just
00:31:50 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
just networking is key and then just meeting a lot of these key people from the MOD, the primes and ex-defence people, NATO, the US Army, like they are really, really nice and helpful.
00:32:03 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Like, yeah, I love them.
00:32:05 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
They're great.
00:32:06 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
They're really nice and helpful.
00:32:06 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And I'm just like, that's like the main opportunity.
00:32:08 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Just this is an industry where networking plays a major role in success and traction, but just the people in this industry are just really nice.
00:32:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, that's really really good to hear.
00:32:21 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's yeah, I know sometimes sometimes the kind of like the veteran community sometimes it can be a bit closed-minded when it comes to new ideas like new tech and stuff, so actually hearing hearing counter-intuitive experience to that, from somebody outside defence is always always like heartwarming because it's you know I'm an ex I'm an ex-British Royal Marines officer, so you know when you're saying there you can cut three days of cognitive horsepower down to three seconds.
00:32:48 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I was like, yeah,
00:32:49 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I can remember those three days of, staff work and planning and stuff because it was, we used to go through those exercises and those operations all the time to get the time faster.
00:33:01 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's referred to as the OODA loop, the Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act, which is a concept developed by a World War Two fighter pilot named John Boyd.
00:33:10 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But yeah, essentially kind of it brings, and the argument was if you can bring your OODA loop smaller than your enemies, and obviously you can decide
00:33:18 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
faster, react, and therefore you can fight a quicker battle.
00:33:22 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So therefore that's kind of the reasoning that AI is such a force multiplier is because you don't have to spend, get a big group of officers around the table for three days.
00:33:33 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
You can actually just make a decision that is
00:33:38 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
almost there, taking into account some automation bias maybe from early AI models and how the human factors interact with, those systems and information that passes back to you.
00:33:49 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But yeah, you can see it's like a no-brainer.
00:33:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
This will absolutely help NATO in the UK.
00:33:57 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's so good to hear as well that you had such good experiences with the military.
00:34:01 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I was really hoping you were going to say, I was really hoping you were definitely not going to say we had a bad experience because I was like, oh God, these are pro people I know.
00:34:07 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But anyway, it's No, like, you know, it's been like 6 months or so now.
00:34:11 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And it's just like, no, everyone I met has been like really, really nice and everything, especially once you are ex-military, but also like you would expect those who are ex-military to be a lot more.
00:34:23 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
fearful of new tech and AI.
00:34:26 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But they're really like open to it because they just see like, the defense industry is basically one of the main pioneers in technological development as well.
00:34:36 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So a good example is like, if you imagine like the normal tech industry, like, you know, med tech, fintech has been at 0, the ed tech industry is about 7 years behind at minus 7.
00:34:46 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But the defense industry is kind of like at plus 10, like 10 years ahead in advance.
00:34:51 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And it's like,
00:34:52 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
One thing I really do like about this industry is that there's not really any clashing ideologies and everyone is pretty much united with the same belief that we just want to protect our country, we want to protect our freedom, we want to protect our way of life for ourselves, our family, our loved ones and our allies.
00:35:11 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So we're all willing to work together and find the most cost optimized and most optimized way where we can preserve our peace and preserve our freedoms
00:35:21 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
and not have to send our kids off to war.
00:35:23 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And it's like, I love that everyone is like united, Chris, in just like, same goal, facing the same direction, no petty in fighting, just going to go on that journey together because we all want the same thing, which is just peace.
00:35:40 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, for sure.
00:35:41 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Great stuff.
00:35:41 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Great stuff.
00:35:42 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Well, let me jump on to my final question.
00:35:44 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What is the future of Battle Bottle?
00:35:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And you interpret that how you will.
00:35:48 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
That could be like short, medium or long term kind of future.
00:35:52 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So I say short term, we want to finish our pre-seed raise.
00:35:57 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
We're raising our one mill pre-seed at the moment.
00:35:59 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
We've got about 15% of it committed by probably the end of 2026.
00:36:04 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
We're planning to also enter
00:36:07 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
the serious game showcase in ITSEC in Florida for this, later on this year.
00:36:14 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And we're also starting up some work with NATO regarding doing some work in Ukraine.
00:36:22 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So that's our near-term stuff at the moment.
00:36:24 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
So finish off the fundraise, entering it for ITSEC's competition, which is something to DC and also just something NATO in Ukraine.
00:36:33 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
But long term, we want to
00:36:37 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
basically just get into a really, really good contract of some of the major primes as a capability within their C2 system and basically speed like the tactical AI layer or tactical AI brain for drone operation and deployment and show about how we can use crowdsource intelligence, especially from gamers, to help us in conflict as well because modern problems call for modern solutions.
00:37:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I'm just, I'm just, I'm just writing out something you said then, which is a really unique statement, crowd-sourced intelligence.
00:37:11 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
That's, I've not heard those two words together, but that's, it makes so much sense to.
00:37:19 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Or crowdsource refined open source intelligence.
00:37:25 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
kind of like what pokémon Go did.
00:37:27 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Technically, all of those maps are like pretty much open source, like what Google Maps did, but then they just crowdsource the absolute refinement of that open source intelligence and just started off to do with government.
00:37:38 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, brilliant, brilliant.
00:37:39 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Fascinating.
00:37:40 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Well, we could do an entire podcast, I think, on that kind of business strategy behind pokémon Go, because that's probably one that will catch a lot of people by surprise.
00:37:51 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
That's a great place to end it there.
00:37:53 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And Francis, I'm just going to say thank you so much for giving up almost an hour of your time.
00:37:57 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I realise you're very busy at the moment in that pre-seed developing the product further and look forward to getting you back on the show in like, I don't know, maybe six months, a year's time.
00:38:08 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
If you're not kind of like expanded internationally by that point, then I have no time for us.
00:38:16 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
Oh, thank you so much again, Chris, for environment of this.
00:38:18 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
It was very much appreciated.
00:38:20 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
And yeah, let's carry on because this industry honestly really allows me to innovate at pace and also just, it's just really, it's just really cool, isn't it?
00:38:30 Francis Jones, founder of Battle Bottle, a UK defence tech company developing an AI brain that sits between sensors and effectors to make the most cost-optimised drone deployment decisions
This industry.
00:38:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's really good chatting with Francis about the solutions they're creating.
00:38:34 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
If you want to find out more about them, check out the show notes below and we'll see you next time.
