Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE), Autonomous Land Systems for the 21st-Century Battlefield
In this episode, we talk with Ben 'Bags' Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE).
We get into how DCE came to be and what this new generation of uncrewed systems could mean for the way militaries operate, the thinking behind Task Force RAPSTONE, the British Army’s rapid-procurement initiative aimed at accelerating the deployment of uncrewed systems, and DCE’s experience developing robotic control systems and uncrewed vehicles.
We also discuss the British Army’s new 20/40/40 principle as a warfighting doctrine, why the cost of sensors and weapons can quickly change the economics of an uncrewed platform, and the thinking behind Clausewitz’s ‘total war’ concept.
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Production, Design & Artwork: HIATUS ↗ The Defence Design & Communications Agency
Find Out More: https://dconcepts.co.uk
Also By Us:
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Transcript
00:00:01 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI 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 PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
In this episode, we talk to Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering, AKA DCE.
00:00:11 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
We get into how the company came to be and what its new generation of uncrewed systems could mean for the way militaries operate, the thinking behind Task Force Rapstone, the British Army's rapid procurement initiative aimed at accelerating the deployment of uncrewed systems, the 2040-40 war fighting doctrine, why the cost of sensors and weapons can quickly change the economics of an uncrewed platform, and DC's experience
00:00:30 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
in robotic control systems and uncrewed vehicles.
00:00:38 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Hey Bags, great, thank you so much for joining us on the Future Frontiers podcast.
00:00:42 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I realise it's probably quite a busy day for you.
00:00:45 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI 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?
00:00:48 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Yes, so I'm Bags.
00:00:50 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
I am a former Army.
00:00:52 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
I was in the Royal Tank Regiment for 10 years, a couple of tours of Afghanistan.
00:00:59 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
and left to start my own company in film and television.
00:01:03 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
I was working in film and TV for just under a decade doing things like Rogue Heroes and then got bizarrely through a roundabout way, headhunted to go and help a company called Digital Concepts Engineering or DCE.
00:01:19 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
with providing UGVs on crewed ground vehicles for the British Army.
00:01:25 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So I've been doing that now full time for about six months and a couple of part time projects in a few years before that.
00:01:35 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So I'm the trials and development guy.
00:01:37 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So I frequently find myself as the
00:01:41 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
translator between what the army want and what the engineers can build and then go out and test it, break it, take it back to the engineers and go, we've broken it in ways you couldn't even possibly have planned for.
00:01:54 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Can we have another one, please?
00:01:55 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So that's effectively my life.
00:01:59 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Very cool.
00:02:00 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Well, I'll keen to dive into that a bit more in the next few questions, but just to jump in with like an off the wall question.
00:02:08 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Let's get your take on the UK and Europe's rearming efforts right now.
00:02:11 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
How are you seeing that play out?
00:02:15 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Well, where do we start?
00:02:16 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's a fascinating situation.
00:02:20 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It feels like probably for the past 25 years or so, the West has been kind of on the trajectory of
00:02:34 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
global peace to an extent, fighting proxy wars perhaps, but not getting involved in full scale wars as much as it has been over the previous 200, 300 years, which probably come as a surprise to people because we've been talking about Afghanistan and Iraq, but neither of those, with probably the exception of the invasion phase of the Iraq War, were really
00:03:02 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
proper warfare, proper peer on peer warfare, as we call it.
00:03:05 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So 2 technologically equal countries having a go at each other.
00:03:12 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And the invasion of Iraq was a little bit of that, but not quite.
00:03:20 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So we've been lucky over the last 25 years to have relative peace throughout the world.
00:03:28 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Obviously the last four or five things have been steadily changing and so the UK has not been geared up for this either through size of the forces or what the forces are armed with.
00:03:45 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And so we're now having to rapidly go through a bit of a gear change to make that happen.
00:03:52 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Unfortunately, it's very difficult to do that.
00:03:54 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But if you look at pre-World War II, had to do exactly the same in the run up to that.
00:03:59 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
I'm hoping we're not in a World War III situation, but we've been here before.
00:04:04 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We have this attitude because we're an island.
00:04:07 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We're quite well protected, which is true.
00:04:11 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But warfare these days comes in many different forms.
00:04:15 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We've seen a lot of problems over the last year about certain cyber attacks in the UK.
00:04:21 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Chances are we're going to see more and more of that.
00:04:22 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But not my bag, but in terms of warfare, we are, and frontline warfare, we are just starting to sort of think about what the British Army of the next 10 years looks like.
00:04:35 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:04:36 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Thanks so much for your take on that.
00:04:38 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's quite a nebulous question purposely to see what people are thinking of and diving into.
00:04:45 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But I'm sure some of those more of those themes will come out during our conversation as well.
00:04:49 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But I think just to set the scene a bit more, can you give us give us give us an idea like what is DCE and how did it come to be?
00:04:56 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Like what obviously you mentioned that you obviously concentrate on UGVs, robotics and stuff, but what's the genesis of DCE?
00:05:03 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So DCE is Digital Concepts Engineering.
00:05:07 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's been around for about 10 years, started by a very clever man called Ed who is a robotics engineer from Cambridge and he did a lot of work for the British Army on various uncrewed vehicles going back over the last sort of...
00:05:24 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
20 years or so.
00:05:25 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
very early stages of roboticising vehicles.
00:05:29 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But the British Army's not really needed it over the last 20 years or so.
00:05:33 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
there's been some projects here and there, but it's sort of not been brought on whole scale.
00:05:38 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So Ed decided to start his own company and Digital Concepts Engineering was the company he created.
00:05:44 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Primarily they have two things that they're focusing on.
00:05:49 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
First one is automating systems.
00:05:52 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So taking an existing vehicle and automating it.
00:05:59 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
There are various different ways you can do that, but the optionally crewed vehicle is where DC really, really succeeds.
00:06:08 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And that is having a vehicle which, let's say like a Land Rover or a truck, a man truck where a operator or driver can jump in and out of it and can choose to leave it and have it remotely operated from somewhere else.
00:06:23 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So plug and play kit that goes into the vehicle that manually actuates
00:06:30 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
steering, accelerator brakes, things like that.
00:06:33 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And then additional modules that can go onto it to add to that, which will be sensors, which can be as simple as cameras, could also be lidar, so short range radar, anything like that, depending on the situation.
00:06:51 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And so you can have, and as vehicles have become more fly by wire,
00:06:59 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So old school vehicles direct, you have the steering wheel, that steering wheel is directly turning the wheels.
00:07:06 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
More modern vehicles are fly by wire where you're turning the wheel, which is putting in a demand on the system.
00:07:12 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And then the system itself is steering the vehicle.
00:07:15 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So you're not steering it directly.
00:07:17 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So the more modern vehicles that do that, same with the pedals as well, they're not directly mechanically linked to the engine or anything like that.
00:07:27 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
it's much easier to do that now.
00:07:30 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But also, it can be done for those older bits of kit too.
00:07:36 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So that's the first thing.
00:07:38 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So the marionette system is Ed's design and it's an incredible design that's been evolving over the last decade or so.
00:07:46 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And if you think about it like a brain,
00:07:49 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
and you can plug whatever you like into that brain, whatever kind of sensor, whatever kind of actuator, you can create a system of systems that all talks to each other, works together.
00:08:00 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Very, very smart.
00:08:02 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So that's the marionette system.
00:08:03 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
That's the, it's,
00:08:06 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
The IP is owned, designed and built.
00:08:08 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Everything's done in the UK.
00:08:10 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So it is British through and through.
00:08:12 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's not some sort of shell company that claims to be a British company and just slapped A Union Jack sticker onto everything that they build.
00:08:22 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It is a genuine UK company.
00:08:25 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
For the staff that employed, you know, everything, the tech, the IP.
00:08:30 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So the marionette system is the brains.
00:08:32 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We then have building other vehicles.
00:08:35 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So a particular use case might come out where an organization needs a type of vehicle which is automated.
00:08:44 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So DC also build the vehicles themselves and automate them through the marionette system.
00:08:52 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So it's a common architecture working across bits of kit.
00:08:56 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So if the British Army in the future wanted to start automating
00:09:00 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
all of its bits of kit, having a common architecture that it all works off of the same thing, all talks to each other, all operates in the same way.
00:09:10 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So any user can step from a Land Rover to a manned truck.
00:09:13 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's the same controller, works in the same way.
00:09:16 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
is going to be incredibly beneficial.
00:09:18 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Let's hope that's the route they go down, but it's all in the very early days of it.
00:09:23 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Just to clarify, is that the X-series end?
00:09:25 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So if they're on the website at the moment, that's the X-series.
00:09:27 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So the website is not showcasing everything that DC are doing because what DC is doing is quite commercially sensitive.
00:09:35 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's also under a lot of security implications as well.
00:09:39 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So what you see on the website is probably about
00:09:43 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
four or five years old in terms of what DCE are doing right now.
00:09:48 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
The X series is DCE's own UGV, uncrewed ground vehicle that DCE have been building.
00:09:56 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's small enough to fit in the back of a four by four.
00:09:59 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's sort of that kind of size.
00:10:00 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's the grandson of the wheelbarrow, which if any of you are sort of EOD related, it's sort of it's that kind of size, that kind of architecture.
00:10:10 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
that kind of form factor, but a lot more robust.
00:10:13 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So the EOD UGV is not designed to go great distances.
00:10:17 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's designed to be quite technical.
00:10:18 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
This is sort of a much more ruggedized version of that.
00:10:21 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's basically a baby tank, the bottom of a baby tank, the hull of a tank, a little bit like those remote control cars we had in the 90s that could do flips.
00:10:31 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's A tracked vehicle.
00:10:32 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's the size of a coffee table, depending on the form it takes.
00:10:37 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's, around about 350 to 450 kgs, various different options.
00:10:44 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But we've been working on, it's very modular as well.
00:10:49 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So depending on what an organization needs or wants, we can very quickly adapt the design.
00:10:56 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Again, it's DC's design.
00:10:58 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's not owned by somebody else.
00:11:00 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We don't have to go back to a prime to say we want to change this.
00:11:03 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
we can iterate and have done overnight if needs be.
00:11:08 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So we've been running UGV training for the army now for about three or four months and the first ever course we ran with a new vehicle that had come out the workshop, come off the line a couple of days previously.
00:11:23 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
The soldiers had some really good feedback saying, what if it could do this?
00:11:27 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
What if it could do that?
00:11:28 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Overnight, the workshop made those changes and tweaks.
00:11:32 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And some more complex stuff took a few days.
00:11:35 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But by the second course and the third course, we'd implemented these changes.
00:11:40 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And some of them were even on that course.
00:11:43 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
That's the speed we can work.
00:11:44 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And at the moment, what we're seeing coming out of Ukraine is 6 months.
00:11:49 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Every six months, designs are changing tweaks.
00:11:51 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And that's the speed you need to
00:11:53 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
operate at and there are large conglomerates making UGVs but they are big companies and they sell their designs to other people who modify it.
00:12:04 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So to get designs changed can take months by which point it's too late.
00:12:09 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
These need to be done in the field quickly.
00:12:14 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI 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.
00:12:21 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Otherwise, back to the episode.
00:12:25 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:12:26 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, so I guess just to kind of, I guess to summarise it, in terms of like the problems that DC solves for the kind of the end user, if you will, I'm guessing it sounds like kind of
00:12:40 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So, you're able to hybridize existing vehicles like Land Rovers, those I guess the armoured kind of all those things for mobility, and then I'm guessing, and you mentioned the X-Series is like an EOD kind of robot.
00:12:56 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
That's what it looks like, but it does many other tasks.
00:12:58 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So the problems that DCE are solving, essentially the motto of DCE is keeping people out of harm's way.
00:13:06 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So it is remotely doing whatever it is that the army is doing.
00:13:12 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Oh, sorry, the army defects it's doing or whatever sector it is.
00:13:15 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So to give you an example, so one of the vehicles I can publicly talk about because it's in the public domain now, we have a logistics UGV.
00:13:27 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So it is essentially got a cage on top that you can put supplies in and those cage sides
00:13:36 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
can fold down or be removed so you can put stretchers on there as well.
00:13:39 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So it's a last mile resupply to take ammunition equipment, water, food to the troops and then a casualty evacuation back again.
00:13:51 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So it is doing those runs that would normally have to be done by a person, either a person operating a vehicle or manually, it is removing that person out of harm's way.
00:14:04 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Also the problem being is you don't want all your logs in one basket, literally all your eggs in one basket, because then it becomes a target.
00:14:13 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So packetizing and making it smaller and making it,
00:14:18 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
10 times harder to track is a key thing as well.
00:14:21 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So the UGV that's out in there at the moment, if you look for it, it's called the X3 wide or the universal carrier.
00:14:28 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's with Rapstone at the moment.
00:14:31 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It enables troops to move about 500 kgs of supplies around the battlefield.
00:14:37 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So they found it really useful for resupplying ammunition.
00:14:41 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So if you've got a fire support group somewhere on a flank, whipping ammunition to and from them,
00:14:47 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
if you've got trenches, moving supplies in between those trenches.
00:14:52 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So as a sort of company sergeant major sat back, you can whip supplies to and from the trenches without having to have soldiers get out of the trenches and expose themselves.
00:15:03 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So yeah, keeping people out of harm's way.
00:15:05 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So remoting the user somewhere safe so that vehicle can still do its job, but remotely.
00:15:14 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:15:15 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I'm just thinking, having had to manpack everything in the past, from mortar to greenies to, 50 cal, the era of remote controlled resupplies, it sounds like an absolute.
00:15:28 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Gunset, but I realised it was incredibly popular because of that, because somebody you don't have to lug all of that kit and the mobility of the vehicle is excellent.
00:15:38 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It can get in and out of places that a four-by-four can't, so you, yeah, you don't have to
00:15:43 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
to spend all that time humping and dumping, but also you don't have to be there.
00:15:46 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
You can be entirely separate.
00:15:49 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So yeah, very popular.
00:15:53 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So we're always interested to hear from organisations that want to contribute their thoughts to our articles.
00:15:58 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
If this is you, search the e-mail newsletter to stay up to date on what we're working on.
00:16:02 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
There's a link in the show notes.
00:16:04 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Otherwise, back to the episode.
00:16:07 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But I'm also thinking kind of like one step further from that and obviously our research kind of suggests as well is you can also move, obviously you can put, machine guns mounted onto it as have it as a mobile fire support group or augmenting a fire support group.
00:16:22 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
You can also, I'd imagine, put kind of radio, you know, radio systems on there to rebroadcast, you know, increase the kind of the span of the communications net, ECM bubble, I'd imagine.
00:16:32 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Yeah, all of that.
00:16:32 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Everything else is either I've done or is in.
00:16:36 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
is in the process of, but I guess in terms of where it moves from next, do you, will you stay fully on the ground or will you be drawn up into the air and subsea, like a lot of kind of other, I don't want to kind of capitalize, categorize you as another drone company because there's a, you know, you're very specialist in that space.
00:16:55 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Yeah, I would say probably not because there are other companies
00:17:02 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
doing that and have far more experience in that zone.
00:17:05 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Whilst there is an economy of effort, if the MOD was to decide right, every UGV that the MOD buys or fields will be powered by the marionette system, that's great.
00:17:18 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
DC doesn't necessarily have to build every UGV itself because we produce a couple of different sizes and a couple of different form factors, but somebody might want
00:17:32 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
a humongous one that can move, 20 tons of stores.
00:17:37 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Somebody want a micro one that, can take a camera into a building.
00:17:44 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So we, the MOD has got to decide at some point
00:17:48 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
is it going to buy lots of different types of these things?
00:17:50 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And the problem is Ukraine is having this problem where a lot of nations have donated EUGVs or a lot of companies have donated EUGVs or sold them to them, but they are currently working off about 20 different platforms, which causes problems for supply chain for parts, training and interoperability.
00:18:09 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So they've actually said, look, we'd rather have fewer types.
00:18:17 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So what the military tends to do and has done in the past, and if you look at vehicles like potentially Ajax, is it has tried to produce one vehicle that does everything.
00:18:28 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And it's done that to reduce construction power cost, you know, the works, training.
00:18:36 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Just it's done to simplify things.
00:18:38 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
The problem is if you try and make one vehicle do everything, then you are going to simplify it and
00:18:47 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
compromise it to the point where it can't do anything particularly well.
00:18:51 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So imagine a Land Rover that can hover, fly, go underwater and fit into a suitcase.
00:18:57 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
You know, it's not going to be able to do all of those things.
00:18:59 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So there is a sweet spot.
00:19:00 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And I don't know where that sweet spot is, but if you think about it in terms of super small ones, so sort of something that a soldier can stick into a backpack, light ones, which is something that a soldier can use,
00:19:15 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
that can carry maybe a large sensor, but it's not something that a soldier would carry.
00:19:19 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Then you're talking medium ones, which is where we see the X-series ones, which are a soldier wouldn't be able to pick it up.
00:19:30 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
You'd have to have a vehicle to move it around longer distances.
00:19:36 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
but is transportable.
00:19:37 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And then you'd have your heavies, which are the size of a 4x4.
00:19:40 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And you can go even bigger than that.
00:19:42 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But that's roughly the orders of the magnitude that they're thinking of.
00:19:46 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
course, you can have every different weight class in between.
00:19:48 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So in an ideal world, the MOD would decide for them all to be controlled by one similar system for the reasons that we've said.
00:20:00 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
but they don't necessarily have to all be built by the same people, because depending on use case, there will be different areas of expertise.
00:20:07 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
When it comes to air and sea, again, that's another different use case entirely.
00:20:13 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And some things that we don't have to consider in our cases, we'd suddenly have to think about, such as pressure, like if you're having something flying at pressure, does that affect things?
00:20:24 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
If you're having something that's in the sea, corrosion and what things are made from, these are all things outside of our, we understand about them, but we're not necessarily the best people to deal with them.
00:20:36 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So trying to put all of those different UGVs and different drones into one company is probably a step too far in terms of complexity and it's not going to save you anything.
00:20:50 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Having
00:20:53 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Three companies doing UGVs for land, three companies doing drones for the sky, three companies doing drones for the sea, for example, might be one way to go, because at the moment you've got 20.
00:21:05 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
30, 40 different ones.
00:21:08 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Luckily, there's only a very small number of properly UK UGV manufacturers.
00:21:16 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Definitely one, that's us.
00:21:18 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
There may be one or two that are sort of development stage behind us that are Brits, but you know, there's not a lot out there in the land space.
00:21:28 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Loads in the sky, loads in the sea.
00:21:32 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Interesting.
00:21:34 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I guess I guess with that that's in mind, are you able to talk about kind of any recent projects or successes or anything that you guys have been working on that's obviously in the public space that's non-sensitive that you kind of you can share?
00:21:45 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Just to give us more context as to, you know, what it looks like.
00:21:50 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So the only one that's that we can publicly talk about is
00:21:56 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
the CSS one, the universal one I was saying about.
00:22:01 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So we, what's publicly been announced is we've sold 15 of those to Rapstone and it's the first ever British Army UGV contract, proper contract.
00:22:14 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So they've used funding to buy a couple of bits here and there and they've used funding over the last, you know, decade to fund trials and things.
00:22:21 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But they've always been in sort of
00:22:24 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
low single digit numbers, maybe three or four here.
00:22:28 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
This is the first contract.
00:22:30 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So on the top of it, this is, we're going to have it framed, it says UGV 001.
00:22:36 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So it's the very first, very first MOD UGV sort of proper contract.
00:22:44 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So that wasn't for humongous numbers, that was for
00:22:48 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
just over a dozen.
00:22:50 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So we're talking sort of lower than 20, but higher than 10.
00:22:55 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
That sort of order of magnitude as an important first step.
00:22:59 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And realistically, we are behind the curve.
00:23:02 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We've had all sorts of political things like the three or four dips and the delayed dips and the
00:23:09 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
The dips that were meant to be dips that turned out not to be dips.
00:23:12 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We've had a lot of that which has definitely been a bit of a hurdle for everybody in the defence industry.
00:23:21 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But that's the key one.
00:23:25 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
The army is still deciding where to go and it's balancing speed of acquisition with ensuring that it's not wasting cash by
00:23:35 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
throwing it at lots of different companies at the same time.
00:23:38 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So it's got to very carefully decide which horses to back.
00:23:41 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So and you can completely understand why because what you don't want is the defence sector unfortunately is built on the MOD buying things and the MOD doesn't buy things quickly and doesn't buy things in huge numbers.
00:23:59 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So I'm sure we'll talk more about this but one of the challenges is
00:24:04 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
surviving and waiting for the MOD to be ready to make that choice and being there to go, we can do that, we can compete, stickers in the ring and seeing what happens.
00:24:16 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So we are waiting for that next stage of what that might look like in terms of orders from the army.
00:24:23 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But we internally are working on, we've already, as I said before, we iterate extremely fast.
00:24:29 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So
00:24:32 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Base UGV, it was the Mark III, was the version that we sold to the Army back in the first half of the year.
00:24:45 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We were already working on 3.1, 3.2 and the Mark IV.
00:24:52 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So we've got a tech roadway for how we're going to improve that base model.
00:24:58 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And then what we call the payload on top, which for this one is that cage.
00:25:04 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We had the prototype cage.
00:25:07 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We have the Mark 1 cage, which is the one that went out on the products that they got.
00:25:12 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We've been working on the Mark 2.
00:25:13 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So at the moment in the workshop, we've got the bits for the Mark 2.
00:25:16 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So that'll be on show DVD.
00:25:19 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
If you're listening to this after the DVD, you missed it.
00:25:22 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
was brilliant.
00:25:24 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It hovered, it flew, it did fireworks.
00:25:27 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
No,
00:25:28 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
That Mark 2 is again based on feedback from the soldiers using it in the field and going, wouldn't it be great if it could do this?
00:25:36 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
What about this?
00:25:37 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So all these ideas we're taking on board and developing.
00:25:42 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Some ideas are great, some not so great, or some too difficult to implement because the other thing the Army is really concerned about is cost.
00:25:50 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
What the Army wants now is mass.
00:25:53 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It wants mass of these things, so they've got to be below a certain price point.
00:25:57 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Are you aware of the 20-40-40 principle?
00:26:02 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So it's something that CGS has been talking about for a while now, but the idea is that military procurement for vehicles specifically is going to be in a 20-40-40 format, being percentages of vehicles on the ground split into three groups.
00:26:19 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
The first group, which is the 20% group, is your legacy and prestige vehicles.
00:26:26 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So that is your tanks.
00:26:28 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
That is your armoured stuff.
00:26:31 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
That is your stuff that takes a long time to design and build.
00:26:35 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So Ajax, Challenger 3, anything in the air as well.
00:26:39 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So Apaches, things like that.
00:26:40 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
That's your prestige 20.
00:26:42 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
That is your long lasting stuff that is iterated every few years, but otherwise is a
00:26:49 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Then at the other end of the scale, you've got your 40%, which is your disposable.
00:26:55 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Essentially, you'll find forget your one-way effector type thing.
00:26:59 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So this is stuff that you're expecting not to come back.
00:27:01 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's consumable.
00:27:02 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So you're talking one-way effector drones, you're talking the interceptor drones, things like that.
00:27:09 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So they are single use, if effectively, they're not designed to come back.
00:27:14 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So that's the 40% at the front.
00:27:16 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And then the 40% in the middle is the attritable zone.
00:27:20 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So the attritable zone, which is where our UGVs sit, is something that is designed to come back.
00:27:28 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But if it doesn't come back, it's not the end of the world.
00:27:30 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So it's not going to, you've got enough of them and they're cheap enough to have enough mass that if one does go down, you don't have to send a soldier out to fix it.
00:27:40 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
You can just leave it.
00:27:42 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So
00:27:45 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Quite interesting is training the first batch of soldiers and the realisation that we came to is the soldiers wanted to know, like, why couldn't it do this?
00:27:56 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Why couldn't it do that?
00:27:57 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And they were sort of things that would have been incredibly expensive to have.
00:28:03 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So something that on your 20% legacy platform wouldn't be a problem, but on a treatable UGV.
00:28:10 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So one key example,
00:28:12 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
is probably something like AI.
00:28:15 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So any kind of automation where you have the AI that decides where to plot a route, for instance.
00:28:24 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So you say, I want you to get from here to here, and it goes right.
00:28:27 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And it looks at the map, works out a route, looks at the obstacles, avoids things.
00:28:33 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
That sort of moderate level, moderate level AI.
00:28:36 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's not top level, but it's sort of, it's sort of quite a chunky thing for it to do.
00:28:43 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
The cost associated that with the types of sensors that the AI would require and the modules that you could put into it would make that UGV prohibitively expensive and it would push it towards, it would take it from costing.
00:28:58 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So CGS, for instance, wants UGVs to cost the same as a 4x4.
00:29:03 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So we're talking around about the 50 grand mark.
00:29:06 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Putting that AI onto it would take it into the region of sort of
00:29:10 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
200K for instance.
00:29:12 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
That's A ballpark figure.
00:29:14 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Similarly, you were talking about putting weapons on it.
00:29:18 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So if you put a remote weapon station onto a UGV, remote weapon stations are costing 150 to 300K depending on the type.
00:29:27 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So
00:29:28 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
you are automatically pushing your UGV out of the attritable zone or rather to the very top of it.
00:29:35 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
means you can't afford as many of them.
00:29:37 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So the way we explained it to the soldiers is like, right, this doesn't have what you want, but there's a very good reason for it.
00:29:44 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Because if it costs more than you do and it breaks down, they're going to send you to fetch it.
00:29:50 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So going back to the keeping people out of harm's way idea, the idea that it's a charitable, that it can sit in that middle bracket, is if it does go down, you've got 10 more to replace it rather than having to put a soldier in danger to go and fetch it.
00:30:06 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So that's sort of the area that we're trying to be in.
00:30:13 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating to know.
00:30:15 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Thanks.
00:30:15 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I realized I had heard of the 20-40-40 principle, but I hadn't actually gone, we hadn't dived into it in detail yet.
00:30:20 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So yeah, much appreciated for kind of highlighting it.
00:30:23 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I know probably for you as well, that this concept of platforms being attributable is still relatively new, you know, back I think, you know, when I left 10 years ago, it was either, it was either, you know, you either have to bring it back or not.
00:30:38 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's never a case of like this grey area, which is like, well, if it kind of stays out there, then you know,
00:30:43 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
can make a decision and it can either come back or not.
00:30:45 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's either bring this back or, we're in trouble.
00:30:51 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It sort of, it goes back to, we've not been in this situation for a while, but total war.
00:30:57 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So if you know your clouds of it and your theories, when a nation is at total war, all of its manufacturing capability, everything is geared towards supplying the front line, be it building vehicles,
00:31:10 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
making ammunition, whatever it might be, all of those factories are tilted towards that.
00:31:15 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And Ukraine is in that zone at the moment.
00:31:19 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
The UK is not and hasn't been probably since World War II.
00:31:22 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
In fact, definitely not since World War II.
00:31:25 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So we've got so used to the idea of you having a 20 year lifespan for whatever it is, the kit that you're designing.
00:31:35 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
that's the way we're sort of indoctrinated to think.
00:31:38 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We're thinking prestige stuff, we're thinking that, which is why as Brits we tend to be slight, at the start of any conflict we tend to be slightly behind the curve.
00:31:46 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We're always trained and kitted out for the previous war rather than the war we're fighting now.
00:31:52 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And there's always that lag at the start of a war for us to catch up.
00:31:56 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But when we do, we're great.
00:31:58 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So what
00:31:59 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
the military is trying to do at the moment is get ready for that next war before that next war happens, which is good, but it's difficult to do in terms of manufacturing and trying to get things spooled up.
00:32:13 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Defence companies rely on lots of orders, not lots of orders, but a steady supply of orders coming through.
00:32:22 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
especially if something is designed to be cheap.
00:32:24 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So your cost modelling is based on selling lots of these, selling thousands of these rather than twos and threes.
00:32:33 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But the military is not going to put them into, until it goes to war, it's not going to put them in that situation where they are going to be killed.
00:32:40 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So you're still going to be ordering 10s from the company, but expecting it to get it at the cost of thousands.
00:32:51 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
which no company can survive on.
00:32:54 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So there's this disconnect between the military and the defence contract firms, which I'm starting to become aware of now, having had a foot in both camps.
00:33:08 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
The military think that these defence firms are, you know, rolling in cash
00:33:15 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And most of them aren't.
00:33:17 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
90% of them are desperately waiting for the MOD to put in just one order, let alone thousands.
00:33:25 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And yeah, it's a difficult situation to be in, but until we're at total war, until we're building up to war, we're in this difficult middle stage where we realise we need to spend the money, but the politicians
00:33:40 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
can't spend the money because we are at war and trying to persuade the general public like your taxes need to go up because of a war that we're not in yet is a tough one, especially with all the other competing political arguments for funding.
00:33:54 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
There's not enough fat in the system.
00:33:56 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
There's not enough cash in the system to go round.
00:34:00 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So trying to persuade people to increase spending on defence is quite tough.
00:34:03 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So at the moment, we're stuck in this halfway house
00:34:06 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
until the government makes some decisions, which hopefully should be coming in the next six months or so.
00:34:11 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But it may be too late for some defence firms.
00:34:15 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:34:16 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Well, I mean, in a way, that kind of like half answers my next question.
00:34:20 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I plan to ask kind of what are the defence company?
00:34:23 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What is what the main problems and opportunities you're experiencing?
00:34:25 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
You kind of you kind of like highlighted that the problems is it problem problems are sorry that you as a defence company that is making
00:34:33 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I guess a treatable and those systems, they have to be affordable enough that the government will buy them in the numbers, but you then can't make them excessively expensive that you then give yourself extra runway.
00:34:48 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So it's kind of like this balancing act between anticipating demand and then also not pricing yourself out of a procurement process.
00:34:57 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
You need to price yourself for essentially a war cost when you're building hundreds of them a month and yet as a company survive now when you're not.
00:35:10 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's an impossible place to be and it's all about survival really.
00:35:16 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
For a company it's all about financially staying in the game for long enough.
00:35:23 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But DC are in a pretty good place compared to most.
00:35:28 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
I know a lot.
00:35:28 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We've got friends who have been talking about this publicly where they've had to move companies to, they've moved the company to overseas where, I don't know, where labour costs are cheaper, where the government there is buying stuff that they aren't yet.
00:35:47 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And it is meaning that we're hollowing out
00:35:52 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
the British tech space because these companies are moving abroad by necessity or they're collapsing or they're being bought out by much larger defence conglomerates in order to survive.
00:36:05 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So the government, in an ideal world, the government should have a lot earlier said, right, this is what we anticipate we will need.
00:36:23 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And that's really tough to ask them to do, but this is what we think we will need for the next 10 years.
00:36:29 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We're not going to put in any actual orders yet, any bulk orders, because we don't need them yet and there's still a lot of work to do.
00:36:36 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
However, here is some funding.
00:36:38 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Here is some base funding to keep the lights on for your company for the next two or three years.
00:36:45 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Before that funding, what we'd like you to do is look at use case A, B, or C.
00:36:50 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
we might never buy these things, but here is a little bit of funding to get you started.
00:36:55 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So you can keep the lights on, you can clothe people, you can hire them for three years, let's say.
00:37:02 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It doesn't have to be that long, but a time.
00:37:05 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So these companies can keep ticking over.
00:37:07 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So when the government does decide, right, actually, we've now worked it out, we want option A, sorry, option B, C and D, you know, we're not going to go with yours, but we've given you some funding.
00:37:20 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Good luck.
00:37:21 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Option A is our option.
00:37:22 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We're going to go wholeheartedly on them.
00:37:24 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Here's a load more cash.
00:37:27 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But at the moment, what's happening, or at least up until now, with the exception of a couple of small projects here and there, the government have gone, right, here's what we want.
00:37:36 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And we want it in a month's time because it's the end of the financial year and we've got a pot of cash left.
00:37:43 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So let's go.
00:37:44 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And the company's like 2 blokes operating in a shed who've been going, well, that's
00:37:50 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We can't do that in a month.
00:37:51 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We need at least six months.
00:37:53 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We're like, no, we've got the money now.
00:37:55 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
We didn't realise we had it six months ago.
00:37:58 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So it is this, we've all been there at the end of the tax year when somebody comes around and says, right, we've got a budget, budget underspend.
00:38:07 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
who wants a briefcase or who wants a Parker pen, here's a stationery book, quick order stuff, because if we don't spend our budget now, we're not going to get it next year.
00:38:17 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Yeah, and you're sat there going, this is mental.
00:38:19 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
At the same time, we're scrambling for money in some places and we've got an excess that we're wasting over here.
00:38:25 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It's like, wouldn't it be great if we could manage this in a smarter way and be rewarded for not spending it all and going, actually, we've got a little bit left over, we can roll over into a
00:38:37 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
definitive project for next year, but you don't have to spend it by the end of the tax year.
00:38:42 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And I understand it's probably not as simple as that, but if there was some way where we could harness spending better than the yearly churn of hold off, hold off, hold off, hold off, all the money in the world, stop, hold off, hold off, hold off.
00:38:57 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
That would be, I think that would be great for everybody.
00:38:59 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But who am I to say?
00:39:01 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, that feast of famine kind of like kind of
00:39:06 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
rolling kind of shape, isn't it?
00:39:09 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But I realize time is getting on now and I should let you probably head back to work soon, but I'm going to ask my final question.
00:39:15 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What's the future for DCE?
00:39:17 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What is it like?
00:39:18 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Anything you're able to share with us?
00:39:21 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So I can tell you what's happening right now.
00:39:23 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So we've just moved into a much larger factory.
00:39:27 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So for the previous
00:39:30 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Not quite sure how long they were in the previous one, maybe five years.
00:39:33 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Previous five years or so, DC have been in a small workshop in Leicestershire.
00:39:39 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
With everything that's happening, we've been able to expand to a much larger factory.
00:39:44 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
First UGV factory in the UK.
00:39:47 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And it's already looking like it might be a bit small.
00:39:50 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And it's huge.
00:39:52 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
It was, I think it's.
00:39:55 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
I think it's about 10 times larger than the previous place.
00:40:01 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And already we're looking around going, we filled this pretty quickly.
00:40:07 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And the sort of hints that the government are sending down the line about what they might want to order in the next
00:40:16 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
financial year or two make us go, okay, we're going to be, we're going to be, we could be tight in here, depending on what it is.
00:40:22 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Because some of these things might come through, some of them might not.
00:40:26 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
There's other projects outside of the defence sector as well that we're working on.
00:40:30 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Again, I can't mention those.
00:40:32 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But a lot of it is automating other vehicles that are currently crewed in dangerous places.
00:40:39 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
So not replacing the operator, but remoting the operator somewhere else.
00:40:45 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And so there's a lot of work being done in that in various sectors.
00:40:52 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But there's lots of these little projects that are going on here and there.
00:40:55 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And as you say, feast and famine, some of them are going to go and suddenly everybody in the world will want one of these.
00:41:05 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And some of these will only ever make two.
00:41:08 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And people will go, yeah, that's great.
00:41:10 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
And they'll sit on a shelf and somebody may come back to it in a decade's time.
00:41:15 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
it's one of these weird things where you can't really predict where it'll go, but yeah.
00:41:21 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
That's the nature of the beast.
00:41:23 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinate yourself.
00:41:24 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Well, mate, thank you, thank you so much for giving up, well, almost an hour of your time to kind of shed some light on what DC is.
00:41:30 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I must have, I'm assuming I haven't, we haven't heard of you before.
00:41:33 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Maybe we should talk again after the DVD, see what some see what that has brought out.
00:41:40 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
But yeah, because there could be some surprises, I don't know.
00:41:45 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Let me leave you to it.
00:41:47 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Thanks again, mate.
00:41:47 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Really good to talk to you.
00:41:48 Ben Simmons, Trials and Development Manager at Digital Concepts Engineering (DCE)
Speak to you soon.
00:41:49 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's really great chatting with Ben.
00:41:51 Chris Shirley MA PGCert GCGI FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at HIATUS _, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
If you want to find out more about DCE doing, check out the show notes below and we'll see you next time.
