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Dr. John W. McCauley

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69
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2026-03-24
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2026-03-24
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  1. “You can see it You can see it because it's part of the spectrum. It's why hunters use thermal cameras. Everything generates that. Same with acoustics. So it makes noise because you can hear it for a long distance, especially when you're in flat terrain or nothing else should be making noise. Batteries, if they are not coded correctly, if the converters aren't shielded, they actually produce electromagnetic noise. So you can find that as well. So there are all these things that create a signature in environments where there shouldn't be signatures, and that means that we can be targeted. That's one of the areas that we are really thankful for new players that are emerging in the portfolio that say”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “It's heaped. So if your phone gets hot when you're using it too much, and that's a thermal signature, if you put the easiest way, if you go put your hand on top of your refrigerator at home, it's warm because it's actually generated, it's using energy, it's generating that, and it's putting out thermal energy.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “That's a good question. So there was a long period of time where being an 88 mic, a truck driver was one of the most dangerous jobs because you're basically driving a truck full of liquid explosive. You're driving a truck full of fuel. So it didn't matter how efficient the generators got, they still needed fuel to run And all of the signature that we're thinking about for, even in the world we're seeing today over the weekend and into today, signature really matters. So if you are creating a thermal signature because your generator is running all the time, you can be found.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Would love, you know, on this topic of kind of the generators and the diesel systems that are in use today, they produce heat, noise, emissions. They can be detected and targeted. We were also just talking earlier about how much of a target these fuel convoys are. We'd love to hear kind of your perspective, how big of a problem is it for the Army.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “So we had a lot of passive capabilities that were able to hide kind of sense without kind of giving away position, but needed the ability to go active when we needed to make an interception. So that meant that we had to bring the 15 kilowatt generator. That was 99% of the time running at 500 watts, which means it's using fuel very inefficiently. It's causing reliability challenges. It's taking up a lot of space on that aircraft that's air-sulting in. It's creating a detectable signature, both from the thermal and acoustic signature. and then the resupply because it's using fuel so inefficiently. So all of that creates a targetable signature that's throwing away a lot of those benefits of that passive chemical gas system. So that's really where we believe in hybrid. We believe in batteries as power, power management, power distribution, kind of pairing with the existing power generation assets in the army around the vehicles and the power generation that exists.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yeah, so that experience really shaped what chariot defense is today, which was we were supporting Expeditionary County OS operations before Ukraine, before it was kind of the kind of in vogue topic. And it is because we were working with SOCOM, who was kind of running into these problems ahead of the conventional force. When we started fueling those systems, I assumed, cool, hey, we bring the robots. And there'll be somewhere for us to plug in. And quickly realized that that was not the case. And that your options today were kind of small or like lead acid, you know, batteries not really designed for energy storage and power distribution or kind of massive diesel generators. And we certainly kind of believe in diesel being part of the solution. We're very much a hybrid power company. It's very energy dense compared to batteries. But what not having a kind of hybrid system forced us to do was size our power generation to the peak demand of that kind of US kit.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Full stack deployment of how do you do Infrastructure for communications, infrastructure for software platforms, infrastructure for software services like autonomous warfare, like robotic warfare, and then the delivery. So everything from your apps or your tech tools or the websites that you hit. Being able to deliver that as one set of platforms, as a full stack rather than the 17 disparate systems that came before it, means less servers, less radios, less routers, less cabling, less comms antenna, less noise makers. That is what we're going for. It's not just trying to find better ways to power everything we had. It's actually thinking through what should we have and then how do we power that.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “For things like NextGen Command and Control, one of our goals is really making those platforms much more power efficient, but also bringing down the size of those command posts. So we had this wonderful set of experimentation called Transforming in Contact where the very first unit that went through that, the Second Brigade 801st strike, their brigade command post was five humvees backed up to each other, whereas normally a brigade's talk by doctrine is 4,000 square feet. So if you think through just making it smaller forces us to have less servers, less computers, less fans, less TVs because you walk into every jock and it looks like a Taj Hall of TVs and routers and everything, just by minimizing the footprint, we've reduced how much stuff we have, which means we've reduced our power draw. So as we then take that truth and look at Nixon, Command and Control, which is our”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “So before we actually talk about the tactical operations center, let's actually talk about the soldier. So, all the things we want to do is really about the soldier. Your average soldier today might have one or two radios, depending on if they're in a leadership position, as we think through things like soldier-born mission command, as we think through drone batteries, as we think through their EUD, their end-user device, or something like a tactical Android assault kit, they're drawing just by themselves 30 to 60 watts of power continuously during their operation. So that's basically a mid-tier laptop running all the time. So if you run that over a 72-hour operation, they”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “So we're starting to see this shift already, but let's take that same talk and add everything that the Army wants to do in the next, let's say, two to three years. Next generation come in and control AI, more autonomous systems. How does that power math change?”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “In a large scale combat operation fight. That transmission back to base is going to get that triangulated and detected and targeted. The runway that they'd be launching that from has been destroyed by the enemy's long-range strike capabilities. If you do manage to get ISR overhead, right, that's going to be contested. It's going to be shot down. And if it does manage to maintain time on station, that video link down to it is being jammed. And so, what that means is we're pushing a lot of those capabilities down to the company, the platoon level. And so your command post is now much more distributed. Your running command and control out of a single truck rather than these big kind of semi-permanent installations.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “That's right. And so things like mobility didn't matter, things like signature management didn't matter. Even logistics mattered in logistics was fainful, but we kind of lived with those logistical burdens. And the reason was we were fighting on kind of this barbell of the operational spectrum where there was kind of short patrols happening from where all the soldiers really needed carry with them was a radio to communicate back to that brigade command post that was kind of dug in and fixed and could provide air defense, ISR, C2 capabilities as long as they could communicate with that forward force. What we're seeing is that every kind of link in that chain has been disrupted. So if you think about a platoon forward deployed, needs to go see over that next mountain to know what's on the other side of that terrain feature, they would call back for support to this big fixed command post. That command post would launch a drone, you know, a fixed-wing drone from a runway that would get overhead and kind of provide time on station and stream down a high bandwidth, 30 FPS full motion video stream down to that platoon, and they would have that intelligence picture. Every link in that chain has been disrupted.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, it's a great question. So, the tactical operations center today looks a lot different than it looks five years ago. As we transition from a very count insurgency focused force structure to a very large-scale combat operations distributed decentralized. And so you're seeing brigade command posts and brigade operational centers that are smaller than a battalion command post was before. And so what you're doing is you're pushing a lot of capabilities that used to be able to live at these big fixed site fobs, right? So those forward operating bases that were dug in, we're doing construction.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Point in time influences really easy because I have willing partners and willing leadership who say we are going to change things for the better. But what it means for me in practice, what I do control is getting out and actually seeing the problem set with my own eyes, digging in with my hands, actually being there, seeing it doing it, which you don't see a lot of generally. The Pentagon becomes a very insular and people just sort of hang out there and drive things from the top. It becomes much easier when you really understand from the bottom, from soldiers in the mud, cold, wet, tired, hungry, what makes their lives easier or better. That is my job to go understand the problem space rather than just approaching bright shiny objects or chasing technology.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “No, it's a good question. It's all an influence operation. So I will tell you the real driving force between all the change really as Secretary Driscoll, General George is the chief of staff of the Army. And then I have an amazing partner in Mr. Brent Ingraham as the Army acquisition executive. So right now at this.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Great question. Chariot is building the tactical power layer for robotic warfare. The reason why Chariot needs to exist in the world is we are moving towards an increasingly electronic battlefield at the same time that it's becoming more distributed, more decentralized. And we're building kind of these new systems or we're pushing these new systems down to these operational mobile forces that now need to sustain equipment, have organic capabilities around command and control, around county UAS, around air defense, EW, all of these electronic systems. And there's really this missing power layer that is required to actually field all those systems. So when I was leading County UAS at Androil, we were fielding all these new systems into expeditionary environments and constantly running into problems with the existing power solutions, being insufficient for what they were being asked to do in that new environment. So what we're doing is basically building integrated battery, power electronics, microcontroller systems that allow you to hybridize your systems. So we're not going to replace diesel fuel.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Modern warfare runs on electrons. Drones, sensors, electronic warfare systems, edge AI, every capability the Army wants to field draws power. But the infrastructure delivering that power hasn't kept pace. For decades of counterinsurgency, diesel generators and fixed forward operating bases were enough. Today, the battlefield is distributed, decentralized, and contested. Every generator running at 1% capacity is a targetable thermal signature. Every fuel convoy supplying it is a liability. The question isn't how to power more things. It's what the right things are, and how to make that power invisible to the enemy. Aaron Price Wright speaks with Adam Mormon, founder and CEO of Chariot Defense, and Alex Miller, CGO of the U.S. Army.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “We were moving towards an increasingly electronic battlefield. There's really this missing power layer that is required to actually field all those systems. Chariot is building the tactical power layer for robotic warfare. So we had a lot of passive capabilities that were able to hide, kind of sense without kind of giving away position, but needed the ability to go active when we needed to make an interception. So that meant that we had to bring the 15 kilowatt generator that was 99% of the time running at 500 watts, creating this detectable signature both from the thermal and acoustic signature and then the resupply because it's using fuel so inefficiently.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “The things we want to do is really about the soldier in the mud cold, wet, tired, hungry, what makes their lives easier or better. Your average soldier today, they're drawing just by themselves 30 to 60 watts of power continuously during their operation. So that's basically a mid-tier laptop running all the time.”

    2026-03-24 · a16z Podcast · The Missing Power Layer of Modern Warfare · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source