Heads Down Building, Battlefield Autonomy, and Chaos Industries with Will Hurd

Oct 29, 2025

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Will Hurd – Chief Strategy Officer, Chaos Industries - former CIA officer, Member of Congress, and cybersecurity founder

Chaos Industries is quietly shipping modern radar and autonomy tools into some of the hardest environments on earth—from Ukraine to the Middle East—while most of the market is still talking.

Will Hurd joins Callye to break down why giving warfighters time is the real advantage, why “volume beats exquisiteness,” and how Chaos went heads-down to build radar that sees farther, sets up faster, and costs a fraction of legacy systems.

Topics

Why autonomy and sensing at the edge are reshaping domain awareness and air superiority
How Chaos Industries approached building a new class of expeditionary radar (Vanquish) instead of iterating on 1970s concepts
The deliberate choice to stay quiet, build first, and market later—and why over-promising kills credibility in defense
Operating in Ukraine and other high-end environments as a proving ground for hardware, networking, and EW resilience
Why partnerships (e.g., Forterra) and culture-matched sprint cycles are critical for turning point tech into real capability

Takeaways

Time is the real currency on the battlefield. Moving from seconds of warning to minutes fundamentally changes what warfighters can do with the systems they already have.
Defense hype without working hardware is a dead end. In a world where radars designed in the 1970s are still in service, the bar is not slogans—it’s reliable, repeatable performance in the field.
Partnerships and speed win. Companies that can integrate, iterate on two-week cycles, and plug into existing platforms and contracts will outpace those trying to boil the ocean alone.

Timestamped Highlights

[00:00] - Why Will joined Chaos and the autonomy problem

[02:12] - Systems vs point solutions on the battlefield

[03:19] - Chaos’ stealth phase and real-world deployments

[05:17] - Updating 1970s radar for modern threats

[07:44] - Build first, talk later: Chaos’ GTM philosophy

[12:22] - Speed, OODA loops, and 10x building over marketing

[13:36] - Hype vs reality when your widget is tested

[15:05] - Partnering with Forterra on autonomous ground vehicles

[19:30] - Outcome over widgets and culture-fit partnerships

[20:37] - Looking ahead to maritime autonomy and closing remarks

Resources & Links

Chaos Industries — https://www.chaosinc.com
Forterra — https://www.forterra.com/

Connect

Will Hurd — https://www.linkedin.com/in/wbhurd/
Callye Keen — https://www.linkedin.com/in/callyekeen/

“In today’s battlefield, the winner isn’t the biggest—it’s the fastest. If you can’t upgrade at the edge and iterate in weeks instead of years, you’re already behind.”

To explore how Kform helps defense innovators move from idea to fielded capability, visit kform.com. If this episode was useful, share it with a builder, operator, or investor who needs to hear a no-nonsense view of defense autonomy and sensing.