The Merge

America’s solid rocket motor industry consolidated from six manufacturers to two. Firehawk wants to be number three.
Mike sits down with Will Edwards, Co-Founder and CEO of Firehawk, to talk about breaking a thirty-year propulsion duopoly.
Founded in 2019, Firehawk replaced the traditional cast-and-cure process with a continuous thermoplastic platform, cutting propellant production from 60 days to six hours. The company just closed a $150M+ Series D to scale two major facilities in Oklahoma and Mississippi.
Will’s take is simple. Defense is a component space business. The companies that win are the ones that plug into the ecosystem.

Topics include:
• The solid rocket motor duopoly
• Thermoplastic vs. cast-and-cure propellant manufacturing
• 60 days down to six hours
• General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems partnership
• Great Plains Arsenal and the Mississippi integration campus
• The $150M+ Series D
• Defense as a component space business

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Links 
• Sign up for the newsletter! https://www.themerge.co/
• Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/the_merge
• Firehawk homepage https://www.firehawkdefense.com/
• Will LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-edwards/

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Chapters
00:00
00:46 intro
01:53 the origin story
02:50 the duopoly
03:39 hybrid rocket roots
04:43 pivot to solid propellant
05:26 the three co-founders
07:04 Forbes 30 Under 30
08:45 cakes and cupcakes
09:56 the Krispy Kreme donut machine
11:22 safety at small batch sizes
12:13 60 days to six hours
13:18 diameter ranges and limits
15:02 defense is a component business
17:01 primes are not the enemy
18:39 qualification and certification
20:11 General Dynamics partnership
21:45 base bleed motors explained
22:48 growth and fundraising
24:34 three states, two arsenals
27:36 why it’s called Firehawk
28:37 goals for 2027
30:27 final thoughts
31:32 outro
#defensetech #podcast #military #rockets #propulsion #solidrocketmotor #defenseindustrial #manufacturing #artillery #nationalsecurity #aerospace #startups #venturecapital
• Website https://www.themerge.co/

The Pentagon wants thousands of autonomous systems. The question is who builds them and how fast.
Joey Arora sits down with Paul Lwin, Co-Founder and CEO of Havoc, to talk about collaborative autonomy and why the path to mass runs through software, not shipyards.
Havoc builds autonomy software that turns commercial platforms into autonomous systems across sea, air, and land. Founded in January 2024, the company has integrated on more than 200 vessels without owning a single shipyard.
Paul's take is direct. Don't reinvent the boat. Partner with the people who already build thousands of them.
Topics include:
• Collaborative autonomy and human-on-the-loop control
• Software-defined hardware and the 90/10 split
• The CSBC Taiwan partnership and in-country production
• Operating without persistent comms
• Two acquisitions before the company's third birthday
• The Rhode Island maritime innovation cluster
• Moving from prototype to production contracts
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Links
• Sign up for the newsletter! https://www.themerge.co/
• Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/the_merge
• Havoc homepage https://www.havocai.com/
• Paul LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-lwin/
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It started with an email to 300 fighter pilots.
 
Joey Arora turns the tables on Mike "Pako" Benitez to get the full origin story of The Merge.
 
Mike spent 25 years on active duty between the Marine Corps and Air Force, flew the F-15E Strike Eagle, and graduated from the Air Force Weapons School. During COVID in 2020, he saw the defense world had nothing like the newsletters the startup world lived on. So he built one.
 
Six years later, The Merge runs three days a week, with a premium tier and a podcast.
 
Topics include:
• Writing op-eds on active duty
• Marine Corps enlisted to Air Force weapons systems officer
• The first newsletter in November 2020
• How Save Rounds and On the Radar were born
• The three audiences Mike writes for
• Merge Premium and the Thursday deep dive
• From newsletter survey to podcast
 
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Links
Sign up for the newsletter! https://www.themerge.co/
Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/the_merge
Mike LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-benitez/
Joey LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeyarora/
 
 
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Website https://www.themerge.co/
 
Chapters
00:39 intro
01:37 getting into writing
02:45 a newsletter for defense
03:26 the first email
04:12 fun as the driver
04:48 how "on the radar" started
05:37 Mike's military career
06:21 Marine Corps to Strike Eagle
07:26 why it's called The Merge
08:35 editorial philosophy
09:33 the birth of Save Rounds
10:04 the three audiences
12:23 Merge Premium
14:51 the sixth anniversary
15:27 why the podcast exists
16:45 what's next
17:32 outro
 
#defensetech #podcast #military #newsletter #originstory #airforce #marinecorps #nationalsecurity #defenseindustry #f15e #strikeeagle #veteranfounders #militarytechnology

Buying a fighter jet is the cheap part.
Mike sits down with Jim Becker, President and CEO of Perfect Point EDM, to talk about the biggest line in any defense program: keeping the fleet flying.
Perfect Point builds the E-Drill, which uses electro discharge machining (EDM) to pull aircraft fasteners. Founded in 2005, it turned a lab curiosity into a fielded tool that removes a rivet in about 30 seconds instead of 10 minutes, with no debris and almost no rework.
Jim's take is blunt. The aircraft modernized, the maintenance tooling did not, and the industry keeps papering over it by leaning on a shrinking pool of skilled mechanics.
Topics include:
Operations and maintenance as the biggest cost in a program

Electro discharge machining applied to fastener removal

Cutting a 10 minute rivet job down to 30 seconds

Eliminating foreign object debris and rework on titanium airframes

Why maintenance tooling never modernized

Winning over risk-averse engineers with the material science case

The shrinking pool of skilled aircraft mechanics

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Links
Sign up for the newsletter! https://www.themerge.co/

Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/the_merge

Perfect Point EDM homepage https://www.ppedm.com/

Perfect Point EDM LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/perfect-point-edm/

Jim LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-becker-48449790/

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Website https://www.themerge.co/

Chapters
00:00
00:28 intro
02:06 the MRO space
02:53 the founding story
04:38 from the Marine Corps to Boeing
06:10 framing the rivet problem
07:01 tooling stuck in the 60s
07:43 titanium and steel fasteners
08:54 no FOD, no mess
09:46 the three step process
10:27 four to five times faster
10:49 killing the rework
11:52 problems everybody just accepts
13:49 the miracle-worker culture
14:55 the aging workforce
16:49 winning over the engineers
17:32 the launch that fell flat
20:21 SBIRs and the valley of death
21:39 fall in love with the problem
22:09 conventional wisdom that's wrong
24:47 making do with less
26:03 go talk to the mechanics
28:29 the stance he'll defend
30:12 where to learn more
31:03 outro

Test is where new military hardware goes to wait.
Mike sits down with Jenn Wilson, Head of Federal at Nominal, to talk about test and evaluation, the least glamorous gate between a program and the warfighter.
Nominal builds test data infrastructure for hardware. Founded in 2022 by Anduril, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin alumni, it reached a $1 billion valuation in March.
Jenn’s take is that acceleration comes from optimizing what you test for. Cutting test points is the wrong lever.
Topics include:
Test and evaluation as a mission enabler

High rate, multimodal test data

Real-time telemetry and closing the test loop

DARPA CIPHER Forge and digital twins

Closing the sim to real gap

The F-35 crowdsourced flight data program

Knowledge parity between primes and government testers

Links
Sign up for the newsletter! https://www.themerge.co/

Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/the_merge

Nominal homepage https://nominal.io/

Nominal careers https://nominal.io/careers

Nominal LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/nominal-inc/

Jenn LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-t-wilson

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Website https://www.themerge.co/

Chapters: 
00:00
00:32 intro
01:47 why this, why now
02:32 test is not sexy
03:47 test as an afterthought
05:40 more data, less insight
07:18 where the name comes from
07:54 the founding story
10:43 Mike is a user
11:16 streaming telemetry in real time
13:14 design of experiments
15:17 the Fid Labs acquisition
16:31 DARPA CIPHER Forge
19:35 closing the sim to real gap
20:21 the commercial side
23:31 lessons from Ukraine
25:00 F-35 crowdsourced flight data
27:15 fleet bugs found in days
29:07 combined test force
31:50 experimental operations unit
32:34 speeding up test
33:09 the pilot taking fire
34:21 knowledge parity with the primes
35:18 a billion dollar valuation
36:03 hiring at Nominal
#defensetech #podcast #military #testandevaluation #flighttest #digitaltwins #darpa #f35 #autonomy #nationalsecurity #airforce #dualuse #militarytechnology