{"podcast":{"title":"The Defense Tech Podcast with Fexingo: Government Contracting, Aerospace, and Military Tech","slug":"the-defense-tech-podcast-with-fexingo-government-contracting-aerospace-and-military-tech-7871833","podcast_index_feed_id":7871833,"rss_url":"https://feeds.fexingo.com/business/the-defense-tech-podcast.xml","website_url":"https://www.fexingo.com/","image_url":"https://audio.fexingo.com/business/the-defense-tech-podcast/cover.png","author":"Fexingo","episode_count":120,"summary":"Defense contracting isn't just F-35s and carrier groups. Lucas and Luna break down the actual economics of military tech: how aerospace primes like Lockheed, RTX, and Northrop Grumman manage multi-year fixed-price development contracts, what the DoD’s new CMMC cybersecurity rules mean for small subcontractors, and why the Navy’s Columbia-class submarine program is a case study in industrial-base risk. Each episode starts with a real number — a contract award value, a quarterly P&L line from a defense prime, a Pentagon budget line item — and builds a conversation around it. Lucas, a former defense correspondent, brings the policy and accounting; Luna, a tech-market analyst, connects the programs to publicly traded supply chains and venture-backed startups trying to break into classified markets. No classified information, no defense-blog speculation — just the business logic behind the weapons systems you read about in the news. Why does a missile cost $4 million? How does a shipbuilder hedge against steel tariffs? And what happens when a startup wins a Small Business Innovation Research grant for a prototype that the Air Force actually wants to buy? This is the business of nationa…","last_synced_at":"2026-07-19T08:17:05.344517+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-defense-tech-podcast-with-fexingo-government-contracting-aerospace-and-military-tech-7871833"},"episode":{"title":"How the Pentagon Is Buying Drone Swarms Like Software","slug":"how-the-pentagon-is-buying-drone-swarms-like-software","published_at":"2026-06-20T08:06:41+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-defense-tech-podcast-with-fexingo-government-contracting-aerospace-and-military-tech-7871833/how-the-pentagon-is-buying-drone-swarms-like-software","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-defense-tech-podcast-with-fexingo-government-contracting-aerospace-and-military-tech-7871833","url":"https://audio.fexingo.com/business/the-defense-tech-podcast/episode-0062.mp3","audio_url":"https://audio.fexingo.com/business/the-defense-tech-podcast/episode-0062.mp3","summary":"Lucas and Luna dig into the Pentagon's new ‘Software Acquisition Pathway’ for drone swarms — a procurement reform that lets the military buy unmanned aerial systems the way it buys cloud subscriptions. They trace the shift from the old 10-year weapons development cycle to a model where contractors deliver algorithm updates every two weeks. Lucas points to the Replicator initiative's goal of fielding thousands of attritable drones by 2027, and explains how this changes the economics for primes like Lockheed Martin and newcomers like Anduril. Luna flags the cultural friction: program managers used to writing $100 million checks for 10 airframes now need to think in terms of $5,000 drones that are disposable. They look at the stock moves — LMT down 5.4% in the last five days, NOC down 5.2% — as a signal that legacy primes are being repriced as investors digest the shift to software-defined, high-volume hardware. The episode closes on the open question: does the Pentagon have the talent pipeline to manage continuous delivery in a security-cleared environment? #Pentagon #DroneSwarms #SoftwareAcquisition #Replicator #DefenseTech #Anduril #LockheedMartin #NorthropGrumman #LMT #NOC #ProcurementReform #AttritableDrones #ContinuousDelivery #BAE #DefenseContracting #Business #Technology #FexingoBusiness Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo","meta_description":"Lucas and Luna dig into the Pentagon's new ‘Software Acquisition Pathway’ for drone swarms — a procurement reform that lets the military buy unmanned aeri…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":578,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-defense-tech-podcast-with-fexingo-government-contracting-aerospace-and-military-tech-7871833/episodes/how-the-pentagon-is-buying-drone-swarms-like-software/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-defense-tech-podcast-with-fexingo-government-contracting-aerospace-and-military-tech-7871833/how-the-pentagon-is-buying-drone-swarms-like-software.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}