'NO MISTAKE': Rubio sends BLUNT message on US military move

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:01]The US military is deploying the necessary assets to extend this defensive umbrella over commercial shipping. But there should be no mistake, and as I said this already, this is a defensive operation. The assets supporting this project, by the way, include guided missile destroyers, over 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-dommain unmanned platforms, and 15,000 of the finest military service members on the planet.

[00:00:26]That's Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week highlighting the advanced military weaponry being used against Iran. Defense technology software company Divergent is a leader in the space recently launching a new autonomous strike aircraft called Venom in a partnership with Mach Industries.

[00:00:42]Divergent uses its adaptive production system to bring the aircraft from a draft to a full flight in just 71 days.

[00:00:50]Joining me now is Divergent Technology CEO Lucas Zinger. Lucas, great to have you. Welcome.

[00:00:55]>> Good morning, Maria. Great to be on.

[00:00:57]>> Yeah, tell us about that. How fast can you all manufacture this? I mean, President Trump has been real clear with the defense contractor saying we need mass production of some of these things.

[00:01:08]Uh, tell us about your supply and your uh ability to manufacture fast.

[00:01:16]>> Exactly. America's needs have really outpaced uh our ability to produce and that's a massive problem. That's a problem that Divergent is helping to support. And we really can take requirements for a missile system, an interceptor, turn it into an input file, use our generative design and AI to very rapidly design that structure, compressing quite literally tens of months into singledigit days, and then bring that directly into the manufacturing process faster, better, cheaper, and importantly delivering at scale. And we do this both for the large traditional players like Loheed Martin and Rathon, but also for the neoprimes and mid-tier primes like Co-aspire and Mach Industries. So we're really supporting across the entire defense industrial base and bringing something next generation which will give America the edge in the fight.

[00:02:10]>> Yeah. So, so again, how soon can you manufacture? I mean, I know Divergence is producing airframe cruise missiles among other programs to meet the demands um from the military. We had your father on Kevin Zinger on this program last year and he brought us on set a a model of the cruise missile. Um he also brought on set this rocket that we're looking at right here and it was made by 3D. I mean that was just incredible when Kevin joined us to walk us through how this is done. Is this 3D um production or something else? Lucas, >> the major milestone is that missile behind you. That's a system called Rackom. The prime is co-aspire and we engineer and manufacture that entire airframe and it is now today in full rate production. So we make multiple of those per day and that is 100% additively manufactured. So 3D printing of metals, the most agile and advanced way to make a high quality metal part.

[00:03:11]And that missile is really the first affordable system under $300,000 per unit as opposed to multi-million dollars for traditional technologies. And we are supplying it at high volume today in our production facility. So major milestone accomplished since you had Kevin on the show.

[00:03:30]>> That is great. Congratulations. I know the company's invested over a billion dollars just in the last 10 years on this technology. Uh you can manufacture 600 parts across industries and produce missiles, cruise missiles 10 times cheaper than the standard. But in terms of how fast you can get these out, what's the answer there?

[00:03:50]>> We can produce over 225 your typical missile per year per printer. which means a facility with a 100 high rate machines can actually produce north of 20,000 systems. So today on an annual basis we're making thousands of units.

[00:04:06]Next year we're going to more than triple that throughput and in 2028 we'll be making tens of thousands of products.

[00:04:13]>> Yeah. And and and Lucas, tell me about the the cost here because you've talked a lot about being able to do this cheaper, right?

[00:04:22]>> Absolutely. and Secretary Hegsth and team the full department who came out to visit us in January. They have made it very clear for both the large primes and the new players cost is king. Effect per dollar is important and that's where divergent can really compress time increase quality but importantly also decrease cost of these systems. I gave the example of rackom that's an affordable space. So that entire family of affordable munitions, that initiative, that is an initiative that Divergent is helping drive forward. And really, we're looking at a 10x cost compression, going from $3 million per system down below $300,000 per system.

[00:05:02]>> That's incredible. Look, your adaptive production um system is combining AI engineering with with 3D printing, automated assembly, Lucas, these are all very much next generation things. And so we want to understand more. What else do we need to understand about divergent right now?

[00:05:23]>> That next generation system is end to end. And if I had to choose a single edge that we have, it is in that end-to-end capability so that we can both design the part using more advanced software, manufacture it using more advanced processes and then assemble it into the relevant end item. And we look at reshoring, bringing manufacturing back at scale to the US. But in fact, we've got a much bigger opportunity, which is to create the next generation industrial base in the US to have by far the most advanced system in the world.

[00:05:54]And that's what we're proliferating across the US at Divergent.

[00:05:59]>> All right, Lucas, we'll be watching your work. Thanks so much for being here.

[00:06:02]>> Thank you, Maria.

[00:06:03]>> And we're going to come to your factory one of these days to check it out. I hear it's amazing. Luca Zinger joining us in New York