C2GRID - 3D environments to better understand battlespaces
In this episode, we speak with Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID, a European defence tech company transforming drone footage into near real-time, hyper realistic 3D environments to give operators a richer understanding of the battlespace.
We discuss how the character of warfare is changing, the growing importance of geospatial intelligence, the challenges of making sense of vast amounts of battlefield data, and how AI-powered 3D reconstruction is helping commanders make better-informed decisions.
Find Out More: https://www.c2grid.com
Production, Design & Artwork: HIATUS _ The Defence Design & Communications Agency
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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 millilux.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 speak with Heidi Krusma, co-founder and COO of C2Grid, a European defense tech company transforming drone footage into near real-time, hyper-realistic 3D environments to give operators A richer understanding of the battle space.
00:00:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
We discuss how the character warfare is changing, the growing importance of geospatial intelligence,
00:00:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
the challenges of making sense of vast amounts of battlefield data, and how AI-powered 3D reconstruction is helping commanders make better informed decisions.
00:00:40 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Hey, Haiti, thank you so much for joining the podcast.
00:00:43 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I realise it's still very early in the morning for us both, so to kick us off, please could you give us a really concise one-minute introduction to yourself, please?
00:00:52 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Yeah, morning.
00:00:53 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Actually, I'm an early person, something like 5 o'clock, so breakfast, but yeah, one minute.
00:01:01 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
I have a background in many things in life, enterprise, IT solutions, cybersecurity last 25 years and also the military background 13 years since war started in Ukraine.
00:01:19 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So like technology, military, security,
00:01:26 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
these are all the different things that they do.
00:01:28 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And nowadays, obviously, the focus is contributing to defence posture of our nation and allies.
00:01:37 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So...
00:01:38 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, brilliant, sir.
00:01:40 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Well, thanks so much.
00:01:41 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
We'll definitely dive into some of these subjects in more detail throughout the podcast.
00:01:45 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But can I get your take on Europe's rearming efforts right now?
00:01:50 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Like, how do you see it playing out?
00:01:51 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And obviously, it's
00:01:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Today the NATO summit starts off in Ankara, Turkey.
00:01:56 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So how are you seeing the rearming effort?
00:02:02 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
It's must have for survival.
00:02:06 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Speaking from Eastern frontier countries that possibly will be fighting the next war.
00:02:13 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So for us, it's really important.
00:02:16 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
I know people also behind this movement from Estonian side.
00:02:22 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
and Darkstar and all the people involved there and so and our people from our MOD that started like this effort for munitions and building capabilities.
00:02:38 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So it's everybody has to do their bit.
00:02:41 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So I hope it will destruction and also they're much more comfortable Western allies that
00:02:52 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
maybe don't feel this situation so much, they would also get worried and will contribute to it because, for our way of life and Western democracy to survive, we need to do this.
00:03:09 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, Just for the audience here, just to highlight, so we're recording in Estonia at the moment.
00:03:15 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
We're talking kind of defence
00:03:20 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
across the whole of NATO, which obviously you've got the countries at the very western frontier, being like the France, the Spains, who may have a different perspective of forthcoming conflict in the 21st century than say us on the Eastern frontier.
00:03:36 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But just to pivot the podcast a little bit into kind of more about what you're working on right now, can you tell us what is C2 Grid and how did it come to be?
00:03:47 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Is basically building image intelligence software or rather contributing to making kill change faster, helping decision making cycles faster by providing most current and recent intelligence that can be exploited using
00:04:13 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
AI tools, kind of like helping human to make decisions faster.
00:04:21 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And roughly, what we are actually doing, how we actually started, we are building, we are collecting video footage and making 3D map of the battlefield and then exploiting that with AI.
00:04:35 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And how it started, well, I'm Vladimir, my co-founder,
00:04:41 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
invited me to be part of a new startup.
00:04:45 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And so we had like a meeting, first meeting where we were talking with the team.
00:04:51 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
We have Ukrainian developers.
00:04:53 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So there is a 7th, there is five of us founders and we had a chat what to do.
00:05:04 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Guys had some ideas.
00:05:05 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
I gave some direction also and we got to place where we are right now.
00:05:11 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And so my part is also actually giving relevant direction, military use cases.
00:05:19 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And it's also because we are building a new technology from scratch.
00:05:25 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So it's also about like research and development, what can we do, how fast we can do it, and also the speed of creating this knowledge and intelligence.
00:05:39 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So
00:05:40 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
It's part of like there are many different variables, but overall we want to able to kill enemy faster and kill the kill more enemy.
00:05:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, and a good a good a good tool to build.
00:05:57 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I think it probably helped for me to contextualize the conversation a bit more.
00:06:01 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So essentially, as I understand, you create a digital twin of the battlefield, which is a
00:06:07 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's a 3D geospatial representation of an area where you're having operations.
00:06:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
That could be a cityscape or a 3D version of a terrain environment.
00:06:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And then you're able to overlay different types of information onto that digital twin.
00:06:28 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So that could be
00:06:30 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And the website refers to multi-spectral imaging, so you could, I guess, you could overlay heat mapping, you could overlay drone data from, they've gone round and kind of surveyed the battlefield, and that then helps to, and I'm going to throw in a classic John Boyd model here, the OODA loop, which is the decision-making cycle that all militaries around the world these days are probably kind of
00:06:57 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
officers are brought up on.
00:06:58 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I certainly was when I went through Limpson many decades ago.
00:07:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And essentially, you're then able to help commanders make quicker and better decisions based off more accurate information kind of overlaid into a single place.
00:07:15 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Is that right?
00:07:16 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Does that sound about right?
00:07:17 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
You got it exactly.
00:07:21 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
But yeah, I mean, it's about collecting, first of all.
00:07:24 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And collection nowadays,
00:07:27 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
using different assets, like off-the-shelf drones, Chinese drones, whatever.
00:07:34 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And like this, like most use of use of used ISR drone actually in Ukraine is TJI Mavic still.
00:07:44 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So, and there is also cost of collecting.
00:07:48 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And then we're talking with our Ukrainian colleagues, you know, they're looking also the cost factor also and availability like
00:07:57 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
expensive platforms versus off-the-shelf stuff that can be used.
00:08:02 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And there is also a lot of data.
00:08:04 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So there is 10,000 drones at any time in air, ISR drones in air in Ukraine.
00:08:13 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So obviously you cannot have like 10,000 eyes on the
00:08:21 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
on the older pictures.
00:08:23 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So basically collecting and also analyzing this and using modern technology, obviously, that is 1 making 3D model.
00:08:31 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
It doesn't have to be also 3D, it could be also 2D.
00:08:35 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Because like some ISR customers we have that they're saying, well, they don't really care about 3D because, you know, they just want to analyze, they want to do image intelligence analysis.
00:08:47 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
But
00:08:48 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
We have also small units that are using our software to plan the missions.
00:08:54 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So for them it's critical.
00:08:56 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Also the better space is 3D and it is below 5 kilometers or 3 kilometers nowadays.
00:09:02 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So and they're supporting land forces mostly right now.
00:09:08 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And so everything in that 3D space, is it the forest?
00:09:14 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Is it the urban terrain?
00:09:17 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
is it build up areas have to be recorded and also the terrain is changing quite fast.
00:09:24 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And if you're looking, we are doing military exercise in Estonia or wherever in West, we are always used to, okay, buildings are standing, we go and attack this building, the building is always the same.
00:09:35 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
But like if I have artillery and the drones are working, the train is changing dramatically all the time.
00:09:43 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So basically.
00:09:46 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
have a most latest and greatest vision and then obviously making photorealistic and accurate model where you can actually measure the distances and you can actually exploit it with different tools, line of sight tools obviously, then also their measurements and you can possibly need also this information for
00:10:11 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
navigation like UGVs, how this UGV will go and actually supply troops, where are the roads, where they can pass through, etc.
00:10:20 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
If I want to attack this site and I want to plan my mission, we have also like a drone simulator that FPV drone pilot can actually go and reverse the mission.
00:10:33 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And you know, like talking about different effects, if talking about small units, all the small units nowadays in Estonia and I know for sure for UK also,
00:10:41 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
They have integrated FPV drones as organic weapon systems with their small units and they actually want to plan the mission.
00:10:51 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So and then you bring in also different sensors.
00:10:54 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So we bring, yes, you have a thermal.
00:10:57 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So you can have like a regular 3D model.
00:11:00 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
You can add a thermal 3D model on top of it.
00:11:04 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
and bring in the sensor fusion.
00:11:06 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So like a ground sensors, ground cameras, seismic sensors, heat sensors, and you can actually do the fusion of, and in intelligence, you know, you have to do like a confirmation.
00:11:18 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So it's good to have alternative confirmation, alternative sources for confirmation of if you like looking for a sign of life, et cetera.
00:11:28 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
maybe even bring in humanity into it.
00:11:31 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And if you have a geospatial like coordinates or something of events, correlate that looking historical changes in the area.
00:11:40 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So there is all this stuff that can be done with platform like ours.
00:11:44 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, got it.
00:11:45 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I'm thinking back to my own experience in officer training a few decades back.
00:11:49 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And it was, we were planning operations based off paper maps, which has got, it tells you very little information about the battlefield other than there's some trees that might be in this area or there's, 10 metres of elevation between this point and that point.
00:12:06 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And really what you have to do is to fill in those intelligence gaps, you have to send out
00:12:12 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
a reconnaissance patrol, and this was pre-FPV drones or anything, so it was all kind of, foot patrols and kind of very slow incremental movements and incremental situational awareness improvements that took so long, took a lot of logistics to, support those reconnaissance patrols and dangerous.
00:12:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, exactly.
00:12:35 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, you know, they could get compromised, they could get, you know, soft compromised.
00:12:39 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Whereas actually now tech can actually fill in and take a lot of that risk factual way, not necessarily everything, but so I guess so I can see the problems that you solve for defence.
00:12:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
How
00:12:55 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I guess, how does it increase that speed of decision making at the tactical level, do you think, for kind of infantry units?
00:13:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And how does that weave into, say, how you integrate air and maritime domains?
00:13:11 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Yeah, MDO, very popular NATO 2030 plan.
00:13:18 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Yeah, in Estonia, we are kind of like more like ground forces, land forces centric.
00:13:24 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And we don't even have a cavalry, so we have a light infantry.
00:13:28 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So for us, everything that is on the ground.
00:13:30 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
But they, like the current kill chain speeds, it used to be days, now it's maybe hours, half day, whatever.
00:13:44 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
If it speed up at least, find function, to find and confirm the enemy location really fast, meaning in minutes,
00:13:54 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And if you do like a flight, we have done some testings and we can generate a 3D model right now in 30 minutes for 20 minute flight.
00:14:03 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So you will have this information in 30 minutes.
00:14:07 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
But we are working on sub 5 minute.
00:14:11 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And this is not even like fast enough.
00:14:13 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
In Ukraine, for example, they can do it in detect less than two minutes.
00:14:18 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
In less than two minutes, the information will be
00:14:21 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
passed over to the operators and if they have a throne in air, they can apply effects immediately.
00:14:26 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So this is something that we are looking for.
00:14:31 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And so definitely less than an hour or in minutes, we want to provide information.
00:14:37 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
We have our ISR partners, they are like finding enemy on the ground and then passing on information.
00:14:48 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Then effects will be applied and then
00:14:51 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
possibly doing PDA and we can also be part of PDA process, monitoring changes and effects applied.
00:15:03 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So what for commanders?
00:15:06 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And also you have to have different parts of it.
00:15:09 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So kill chain has to be like automated cross domain, also cross classification levels.
00:15:19 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So there are some cross-domain solutions built, even Estoin has built one, and everybody's trying to automate a kill chain.
00:15:27 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So you need to have a C2.
00:15:29 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So because we are contributing image intelligence, geospatial intelligence, but then you need to have also like really good next generation C2 systems that actually can support delivering like modern effects like drones or
00:15:43 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
or even doing combined arms, drones and artillery, etc.
00:15:50 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So there are like some caps there, but we want to do our part, but we are also aware of all other parts that are there where we are playing and who we have to integrate with.
00:16:02 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, I mean, there's a few things you mentioned there which really stuck out to me, like the less than two minutes between a platform gathering
00:16:11 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
intelligence to then relaying that information back to, a tactical commander, maybe an operational commander who can then very quickly move assets and resources.
00:16:20 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I mean, that kind of level of operational agility was something we could only dream of, you know, 10, 15 years ago.
00:16:28 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I think, you know, it's a real new dynamic in defence and how wars would be conducted.
00:16:37 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
In Sandbox, you had, I guess, the guilt chain
00:16:40 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
It was like days and building target package and confirming and whatever.
00:16:50 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
For sure.
00:16:50 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I think back to my time in Baghdad as well, back in 2006.
00:16:53 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And, even then it was, we had the likes of Blue Force track and a number of other things, but still it would be
00:17:02 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
a long, time before you would have a decision, information, enough information to make a decision to then carry out an effect or do something else.
00:17:12 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So yeah, it's now really stark, really startling just how quickly decisions could be made.
00:17:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And obviously, this is all fed by Ukrainian testing, R&D and obviously their feedback.
00:17:27 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I mean, are you able to comment a little bit more on kind of how you
00:17:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
how your systems are being used in Ukraine without saying anything sensitive?
00:17:38 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Yeah, we have from day one because we are Estonian Ukrainian startup.
00:17:42 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So our engineers are Ukrainians.
00:17:46 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
They are here in Tallinn, young guys, they are studying, doing their masters.
00:17:51 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
But they obviously the natural contact.
00:17:56 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And we started off with actually our first hackathon in Darkstar.
00:18:01 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And that was already integrated.
00:18:02 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So Ukraine and Ukraine was already integrated into our beginning.
00:18:08 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And we found very quickly units that we are like developing our products with and very prominent units actually in National Guard and also in Army.
00:18:21 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And there are like
00:18:24 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
different units have also different capabilities and different innovation cycles and teams building a new technology from scratch.
00:18:32 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And so we are working with some of them and it's really valuable information what we are getting from there.
00:18:42 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And also, working on
00:18:45 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
on with real data from battle space and then partners are generating and helping them.
00:18:54 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
It's must have for us.
00:18:56 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
However, we have now the Western side and the NATO and allies and federated mission networks,
00:19:04 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
where operations are, NATO classification levels, et cetera.
00:19:10 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So we also, and then all these C2 solutions.
00:19:14 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And so we have to fit into that with our talk tree, because sometimes also the processes are different.
00:19:24 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Even though Ukraine actually adopts quite a lot from the West and NATO way of doing things,
00:19:32 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
However, we need to have this balance between our and our operation requirements.
00:19:40 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And we cannot prepare for the last war.
00:19:43 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
We have to for the next war, right?
00:19:46 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So kind of like having this crystal ball also thinking about future a little bit.
00:19:53 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Too much we're in stuck actually in present day and everybody wants to do FPV, everyone wants to do this and that.
00:20:00 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
But when you're talking to Ukrainians, they're saying, they would love to have rockets and artillery everywhere.
00:20:06 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
But they were like out of necessity.
00:20:09 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And they're doing a really good job and they're developing these capabilities.
00:20:12 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
It's working, but there is like this combined fire and like coordinating everything, making everything faster.
00:20:21 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So everything has its role and how's the future going to be like?
00:20:25 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And because enemy is also learning and learning really fast.
00:20:29 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
The innovation cycles used to be months on frontline in Ukraine.
00:20:33 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Now it's a couple of weeks, even less.
00:20:36 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:20:37 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And you just sparked a thought actually in my head about how your systems could be used for long range strike.
00:20:43 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I guess it is if you're able to integrate much more
00:20:48 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
visual information into reconnaissance, you bring you bring down the fratricide risk, you bring down the less precise strikes, for like we saw in the US-Iran conflict where they accidentally they struck areas which weren't kind of militarily
00:21:15 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
military targets.
00:21:16 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I can imagine that if you've got your, if you're using your information to visually present information, a reconnaissance and you could actually help with the decision making about a go, no go criteria.
00:21:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I've avoided that really badly.
00:21:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Let me have another go at that second.
00:21:33 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Yeah, no, I understand where you're going to.
00:21:35 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So we need to have a mass current and current and relevant intelligence.
00:21:41 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And I think this hitting the school, you know, in
00:21:45 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Iran, I think it was, I understand, I heard that was some kind of MSS glitch or something, the old data in the models or whatever.
00:21:55 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
But obviously, we don't depend actually on the, we are not tied to any specific platform and technology.
00:22:03 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So if this reconnaissance drone can pass us information in depth and from far away,
00:22:14 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And then obviously we can use that in our models and we can also include that.
00:22:22 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
No, don't know actually how Ukraine does all the long range reconnaissance.
00:22:27 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
I guess there is like a lot of human involved and different penetration operations, but like I don't know if we have that luxury.
00:22:36 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Estonians cannot build it, like blend in into Russia with binoculars sitting somewhere in pitch and looking at the places.
00:22:47 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And we cannot build like SPU is like a really huge organization and very powerful, then they can build networks.
00:22:53 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And so we don't have that kind of stuff.
00:22:55 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So maybe technology helps us at least, you know, to see far enough for our weapons in the future.
00:23:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:23:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I'm really interested actually to kind of dive a bit deeper into how you present this visual information, because I can imagine there's obviously the mobile phone sort of tablet, which sits obviously on the tactical level on the operator's body armour.
00:23:18 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But I've also been really interested in how kind of extended reality might fit into military operations.
00:23:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And that could be like your virtual reality goggles to actually
00:23:29 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
get closer into a, I guess, an environment.
00:23:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Is that something you guys are looking at where you could say a commander could zoom in really closely to a digital twin and look for real precision places to strike or to get a foothold?
00:23:45 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Yeah, however you're going to look at the picture, it could be screen, it could be a smaller screen, bigger screen, it could be also the goggles.
00:23:56 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Also, it's a reality check also with operators on ground because all of this stuff is gimmick also.
00:24:04 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Because, you need to hack more batteries and they have to load it and some people get sick, putting like 3D goggles on and things like that.
00:24:14 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And, even in Ukraine, some of the FPV pilots, not even using goggles, like using actually screen.
00:24:22 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
because there is a there is other guy like targeting guy can watch also screen same time identifying targets and giving instructions and so it all depends doesn't matter like we have to give our opportunity for end users use whatever kind of platform they want to watch in talk in tactical operation centers they will have a bigger screens
00:24:53 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
small unit commander maybe has a tablet somewhere safe place you can watch it or look at it.
00:25:01 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So it doesn't matter.
00:25:03 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
But we have we have like we have interface that can be at our own sort of like a viewer where you can actually exploit this model literally inside the browser and wherever the browser works you know you can actually do it.
00:25:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I imagine that's probably some kind of like 3D kind of API that fits into a browser.
00:25:25 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
You could actually, you could scroll it around and zoom in closer to kind of a 3D model.
00:25:30 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, that's fascinating.
00:25:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
That's I mean, I think that kind of technology when I was when I was a young troop commander in the Marines, you know, would have been the absolute gold standard.
00:25:41 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
You know, that would have been what the special forces would have been using at the time.
00:25:46 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But now to think that this is in the hands of
00:25:49 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
conventional conventional infantry ground units is brilliant, it's fascinating.
00:25:58 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Because Reaper Reaper got produced with all the software, they could have produced the same picture, but like what kind of, it's not accessible for Estonian forces at least, you know, and this technology should like every unit can have it.
00:26:14 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
We are concentrating on tactical level because sometimes tactical level is not
00:26:21 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
There is like a lot of caps there because the knowledge starts at like battalion plus higher operation centers, but we want to bring it to their to the individual on ground in trenches.
00:26:37 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, And I guess giving more autonomy to those tactical units means that actually you can influence the battle picture a lot faster than having that.
00:26:47 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
They can make decisions faster themselves.
00:26:49 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
They can maneuver fast.
00:26:51 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
They can in the air operations and their responsibility, they can also, you know, apply their own effects faster to get the effect.
00:27:01 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And then, you know, and all this information, they also find it has to be disseminated to higher echelons, obviously.
00:27:07 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So that's by design also.
00:27:12 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And so then at least in overview and measuring effects and stuff can be done and higher assurance.
00:27:22 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating stuff.
00:27:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Well, I realise time's getting on a bit now and you've probably got a busy day ahead of you.
00:27:27 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So jumping to my penultimate, my second from last question.
00:27:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What do you see as the current problems and opportunities when working with other NATO countries?
00:27:40 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
There are no problems.
00:27:41 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
There are only opportunities.
00:27:46 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Adapt or die.
00:27:50 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
But I think opportunities are yes that I think like Europe is waking up.
00:27:59 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Some nations already doing quite a lot except for UK, for example, Netherlands, Finland.
00:28:10 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
There are like Denmark.
00:28:12 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
They are more advanced.
00:28:15 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Bigger nations maybe take longer time to also to get it going, but they have also more resources.
00:28:23 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So I think picture is better.
00:28:27 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And in the NATO side also, there are like some beacon projects and some like direction given by Sakur and joint force commands, and they're like they have also like a certain priorities like a counter OS and obviously the threats that are there that need to be addressed right now.
00:28:51 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
They're much, much, much more urgent.
00:28:53 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
What if
00:28:55 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
there is going to be like drone attacks over the Baltic Sea, et cetera.
00:29:00 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So how are we going to deter it right away?
00:29:02 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Are we going to detect it?
00:29:03 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And we've seen like some attempts or not attempts, but at least some incidents in Poland.
00:29:10 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And it comes kind of surprise, you know, when drones fly over your border.
00:29:16 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And so it's getting better.
00:29:22 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
But maybe there has to be more urgency.
00:29:25 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
and also investments and things like that.
00:29:28 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And Darkstar, one of the leaders, Ragnar was writing in LinkedIn about like heated analysis, where all the investments are going, some few big companies that are now unicorns, et cetera, but maybe we need to lift up, the whole defense industry, giving a chance, because there's a lot of good technologies there.
00:29:54 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And there has to be, the primes are doing what primes are doing well, but there is a lot of more potential from defense industry.
00:30:03 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Even in Estonia, there is like a lot of good examples that are coming up and we need more uplift and bring these technologies faster to the war fighters.
00:30:13 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
At least give them opportunity to experiment and select the ones that actually work.
00:30:20 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
pay on PowerPoint and pictures in boardrooms.
00:30:25 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
For sure.
00:30:26 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Pretty much what you just said there is a reasoning why we started up the Devent Innovation podcast for that very reason was to diffuse
00:30:33 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
the innovation that's going on in almost in silos across Estonia, Germany, Denmark, France, Spain, UK, and actually make it more cohesive so that frontline units, for example, in Estonia understanding about 10 technologies or companies, problem solving going on in Denmark and UK, hearing about Estonian companies.
00:30:55 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
We want to just put ourselves in the middle and just kind of gather all these
00:30:59 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
all these good efforts together who may not be aware of kind of other companies that you can integrate with.
00:31:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I think also as well, it just from an appetite perspective, it's more interesting to hear of, lean, kind of smaller, more hungry
00:31:16 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
defence SMEs.
00:31:17 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I find them personally more inspiring as a, as a former marine officer, more inspiring to work with those than your bigger, your unicorn level primes, those that don't, almost like a big oil tanker that, take a long time to move, make very small incremental changes to technology over time and actually you've got more hungrier and bullish startups a bit like yourself who are just there like, right, we can, we can
00:31:44 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
innovate this new technology into existence, and we can bring that real first-hand war fighting experience from Ukraine and make it capture into crystallize it into a product.
00:31:55 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So, I, yeah, I took my I took my hat to you to you guys.
00:31:59 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I'm a big I'm a big fan of this level of kind of this level of innovation.
00:32:08 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, for sure.
00:32:09 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
okay, let me throw up my final question before I let you get back onto your work.
00:32:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What is the future of C2 Grid?
00:32:16 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Like how do you see yourselves in like the next sort of five or 10 years?
00:32:23 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Five years, 10 year plan.
00:32:25 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Yeah, we live in trenches right now, trying to make everything work and getting funded, raising our seat around right now.
00:32:36 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So
00:32:38 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
More important is more engagements also with our potential customers and then also validation of what we are doing and the direction.
00:32:49 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
We like during the autumn, we already have like four different experimentations, NATO and some other forces set up.
00:32:57 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And so we want to do everything really like fast and agile.
00:33:03 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And I don't even know where the five years will be.
00:33:07 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
There will be five years, but at least in one year to get our technology to the hands of war fighters, starting to prepare war here and then also in Ukraine already.
00:33:21 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So and like making difference and contributing substantially to the tactical level, that's our goal.
00:33:30 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
And then on the side also there technology wise,
00:33:37 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
build something new and cool and to be in cutting edge of geospatial intelligence part where we are actually working.
00:33:47 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
We definitely want to in two years also establish the standard exchanging information, geospatial intelligence, 3D geospatial intelligence data because it's not there yet.
00:33:57 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
It's not in standards.
00:33:58 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So it needs to be
00:34:01 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
put into federal admission network standard lists and exchanging information and embedding also our solution in couple years to other like next generation C2 systems that actually
00:34:21 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
A lot of the intelligence community is still living in 2D world and so need to move over to their multi-sensor 3D world that is dynamic and real time.
00:34:32 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So and having larger impact on maybe a couple years with our technology and contributing.
00:34:44 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Five years, I cannot say.
00:34:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
A bit too far out to say.
00:34:49 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
You have to go space anyway.
00:34:50 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
So everybody goes space.
00:34:51 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Brilliant.
00:34:52 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
No, actually in our roadmap also, we integrate the space data too, because moving from like a three to 5 kilometres to their space, you know, five years we will be dominant, you know.
00:35:03 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Spatial 3G 3D intelligence.
00:35:09 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I love, I love the ambition.
00:35:10 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I'm just making a note right now.
00:35:12 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So we run a space podcast, stratospheric podcast.
00:35:15 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So we're going to get you on to, you know, we're going to get you on to our space podcast.
00:35:20 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And we'll set, yeah, we'll set a timeline and say, right, can you please be a space bearing company within the next three years because we set a date for our space podcast.
00:35:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Interestingly, you said something really interesting then about the establishing the 3D geospatial intelligence standards.
00:35:36 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It made me think to organisation or industries which use 3D already.
00:35:40 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So real estate's been using 3D for a long time for doing virtual walkthroughs of
00:35:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
properties that you could buy before you actually go and visit.
00:35:50 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And it almost seems like a no-brainer right now.
00:35:53 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's like, why isn't defence using the same thing which industry has been using for, I think maybe about 5 or 10 years now, real estate has been using 3D.
00:36:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So it almost seems like a no-brainer, like why isn't defence cottoned on to this idea yet?
00:36:08 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But I know having spent 12 years in the British military, sometimes new ideas take a long time to get
00:36:15 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
a hold, and then once they're in, they kind of spread like wildfire.
00:36:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So, I know kind of defence sometimes.
00:36:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Sometimes it needs its head moving and its eyes pointing at something that is good and useful, hence the podcast, before they get it.
00:36:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But I realise I've been talking for kind of
00:36:38 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
over kind of 35 minutes and you've got a busy day ahead of you and you probably, like me, need recaffeinating again.
00:36:44 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I'm going to say a big thank you, a big sore right, Haiti, and wish you the very best.
00:36:51 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
We'll be advocating for your company and kind of pushing out to anyone that we see would be a great connection for you guys.
00:36:58 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And yeah, wish you the very best of luck in building, solving the problems.
00:37:03 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
Yeah, thank you.
00:37:04 Heiti Kruusmaa, Co-founder and COO of C2GRID
It's been a real pleasure and looking forward to talking to you in future.
00:37:09 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It was really great chatting to Haiti and hearing more about his fascinating defense innovation.
00:37:13 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 the company, check out the shirts below and we'll see you next time.
