Mike Horton is CEO and co-founder of HYFIX, a Santa Clara company developing U.S.-made positioning, navigation, communications, and computing technology for autonomous systems.

The company's H1P platform integrates flight control, positioning, communications, and onboard compute into a single architecture. HYFIX is also working on resilient navigation technologies designed for environments where traditional GPS may be jammed, spoofed, or unavailable.

Mike is a veteran technology entrepreneur with decades of experience in navigation, sensors, and autonomous systems. At HYFIX, he and his team are working to address one of the biggest challenges facing the U.S. drone industry: how to replace a fragmented collection of foreign-made components with secure, integrated technology designed and manufactured for American autonomous systems.

In this episode of the Drone Radio Show, Mike and I talk about why the U.S. is restricting foreign drone technology before domestic alternatives are fully ready, how fragmented drone systems create security and supply chain risks, and why integrated, U.S.-made systems could be critical to the future of autonomy.

Michael Abdelmaseh is Head Engineer at PyroDelta Energy. Pyrodelta has spent nearly a decade cracking a problem that stumped the entire thermoelectric industry. The company's patented Capillary Casting process produces solid-state thermoelectric generators that convert waste heat into clean, stable electricity across applications spanning AI data centers, combustion engines, agriculture, and unmanned aerial vehicles.

In February 2026, PyroDelta launched a Florida-based manufacturing facility producing custom-designed, defect-free thermoelectric crystals, directly addressing North American supply chain vulnerabilities from China. Most notably for the drone world, PyroDelta has entered the DARPA Lift Challenge — scheduled for August 2–9, 2026 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio competing for a share of $6.5 million in prize money.

Michael has led the engineering team that designed PyroDelta's heavy-lift drone from the ground up. For nearly a decade, Michael and his team have been developing a breakthrough thermoelectric technology that converts waste heat from combustion engines into usable electrical power.

In this episode of the Drone Radio Show, Michael talks about the engineering behind PyroDelta's patented Capillary Casting process, why the company believes waste heat is one of the most overlooked energy sources in aviation, what it takes to compete in one of DARPA's most demanding drone competitions, and where this technology could lead beyond drones.

Matt McCrann is U.S. CEO of SPARC AI. SPARC AI develops software that enables precision navigation and target acquisition for drones and autonomous systems operating in GPS-denied environments. Its flagship platform, Overwatch, is a software-only, hardware-agnostic solution that transforms the sensors already onboard a drone into a resilient positioning system—without requiring additional hardware. The platform also supports detection, tracking, and multi-drone coordination, providing operators with greater situational awareness in contested environments.

Matt leads SPARC AI's expansion across the United States, overseeing commercial strategy, customer engagement, and adoption of the company's positioning technology. Before joining SPARC AI, he built DroneShield's U.S. business from the ground up as CEO of its American subsidiary. Earlier in his career, Matt served in the United States Navy as an Intelligence Operator and Analyst and as a member of the NSA's Cryptologic Direct Support Element, supporting national security and operational missions.

Whether it's electronic warfare, jamming, spoofing, or simply operating where satellite signals can't reach, today's drones face a growing challenge: how do they continue to navigate accurately and complete the mission?

In this edition of the Drone Radio Show, Matt talks about the growing challenge of GPS-denied operations, how SPARC AI's Overwatch platform helps autonomous systems navigate without relying solely on GPS, what the company is learning from deployments in Ukraine, and why resilient positioning is becoming an essential capability for the next generation of drones.