Leaders from JetZero, Joby Aviation, and Mach Industries urged faster pathways to field dual-use aerospace technologies at AIAA AVIATION Forum 2026
SAN DIEGO – If America wants to keep its edge in the skies, it must get serious about dual-use innovation and the hard economics behind it. That was the shared conclusion at the recent AIAA AVIATION Forum 2026 by a panel addressing strategies on how to build the future of the Air Force faster.
Investors, operators, and former government insiders made the case for faster pathways from prototype to production. Moderated by Roberto “Bert” Guerrero, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Operational Energy, Safety and Occupational Health (SOH), the panel framed innovation not as a technology problem but as a systems and incentives problem.
Guerrero opened by challenging the traditional view of fuel and efficiency as cost-cutting levers, reframing operational energy as a combat multiplier: an efficient aircraft “flies farther, delivers more cargo at range, or more fuel at range,” boosting “lethality per gallon” rather than just saving money.
He said incremental gains, properly incentivized, can unlock billions in value and capability. A key success: a fuel-efficiency initiative that challenged wing commanders and air crews to think differently about fuel that saved about $40 million in one year, with a portion of those savings returned to wing commanders at U.S. air bases as no-strings-attached funds and technology investments.
But Guerrero made clear that incrementalism isn’t enough. For a 21st-century fight, he said, the Air Force needs “24th-century aircraft” and new acquisition paths that reward risk-taking, not punish it.
“Our aerospace and defense sector is America’s national security power. One of the most important things we do as a country is maintaining that edge,” observed Mach Industries President and Chief Strategy Officer Nathan Diller.
During his time on Capitol Hill, Diller recalled how Congress wrestled with a core question: How does America turn ideas into hardware faster, using emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, digital engineering, new manufacturing approaches, electrification, 3D printing, and automated assembly?
Dual-Use as the New Center of Gravity
Several panelists argued that the future of U.S. air dominance runs through dual-use aviation: technologies that can thrive in both commercial and defense markets, spreading risk and accelerating learning.
JetZero CEO and co-founder Tom O’Leary framed the urgency in historical terms. In the 30 years before the Boeing-McDonnell Douglas merger, the United States produced dozens of clean-slate commercial jets. In the 30 years since, it has produced precisely one large aircraft. “I think it’s fair to say that innovation has declined in critical areas,” O’Leary said. Flight, he noted, has not fundamentally changed in that time, even as the threats facing U.S. airpower have grown sharply more complex.
Dean Donovan, managing director and co-founder of aviation and aerospace tech investment firm, DiamondStream Partners, said his fund began with a commercial lens and “ended up almost exclusively in dual-use companies.” Dual-use, he emphasized, “is the future of aerospace in our country, if we’re going to be successful at it.”
To move “deep-tech” aviation companies through what he called the “slow zone” (the long, capital-intensive march from prototype to certified, revenue-generating product), he applies four filters: demand, tech difficulty, access to experience, and capital availability.
Donovan cautioned that undisciplined government signaling can distort markets, pointing to large European hydrogen-aircraft bets as premature for near-term commercial deployment. “We all have to invest smart together,” he said, or risk burning capital and eroding long-term investor appetite for critical aerospace technologies.
Blended-Wing Bodies and Electric Flight: Hardware at the Speed of Software
From the startup side, O’Leary of JetZero and Ben Brelje of Joby Aviation illustrated how dual-use platforms, backed by both DoD and private capital, can accelerate capability.
O’Leary described JetZero’s blended-wing body tanker/transport as a return to first principles: “You can’t argue with physics. Lift, weight, drag, and thrust.” With only a single requirement from Operational Energy, lift-to-drag (L/D) performance, the program avoided the “requirements overload” that often stalls major platforms.
“We were grateful for that opportunity,” O’Leary said. By combining 30-plus years of NASA research, entrepreneurial execution, and Air Force sponsorship, he argued, the United States can “begin a new era of big jet production” that dramatically cuts fuel use and extends range, benefiting airlines and the Air Force alike.
Brelje, engineering leader in Joby Aviation’s Flight Research Group, showed how a flexible electric vertical take-off and landing or VTOL architecture, initially designed for commercial air taxi service, has already spawned multiple government-relevant variants:
- A liquid-hydrogen fuel cell version that demonstrated over 500 miles of zero-emission range, developed “in just a matter of a few months” in partnership with the Air Force’s Agility Prime program.
- A turbine-hybrid prototype, swapping in a turboelectric generator to prove the same airframe could support multiple propulsion concepts without a “multi-year re-engineering project.”
- An autonomy-focused logistics demonstrator that flew thousands of miles in and around Hawaii during a DoD exercise, logging more than 40 hours of uncrewed operations in complex airspace.
Those rapid turns, Brelje stressed, were only possible because of early, sustained collaboration with the government on a dual-use platform built to be modular from the start.
From Prototype to Production: Crossing the Valley of Death
For Diller, who helped stand up the Air Force’s innovation arm, AFWERX, and its Agility Prime program before crossing into industry, the core problem is no longer getting prototypes started, but getting them to scale.
“The number of prototype programs that I launched as director of AFWERX,” he said, “unfortunately, in many instances [are] not getting to production.” His concern: the United State still defers near-term tactical risk in flight test, in qualification, in new manufacturing methods, and in doing so “accrues massive strategic risk on the joint force” and in the American industrial base.
He argued that hardware can move at the pace of software if the United State is willing to modernize qualification and risk-acceptance frameworks, using tools like additive manufacturing, in-situ monitoring, and AI-driven analysis to certify parts and systems faster while maintaining or improving safety.
That means tighter coupling among operators, technologists, and acquisition teams, and using the Pentagon as an incubator whose data and lessons can also inform civil regulators like the FAA.
Trust, Culture, and the “Ugly Baby” Problem
Julie Curtis, founder and CEO of Connected Alliances, zoomed in on the human and organizational side of innovation. Her firm specializes in guiding promising concepts through the “valley of death” between demonstration and fielding.
She said the most common point of failure is that neither side fully understands the system they’re in. Industry assumes government program offices know all the levers: funding lines, contracting authorities, test resources. Many on the government side, meanwhile, are unfamiliar with tools like OTAs or SBIRs, or the end-to-end path to operational capability.
Curtis argued for acquisition literacy on both sides; outcome clarity, or agreement on the problem, value, and measures of success before work begins; and more openness to killing projects early, while preserving relationships and redirecting capabilities where they fit better.
She praised outcome-based structures like the JetZero L/D requirement, but warned they only work when there’s a “very high degree of trust” and a genuine willingness to collaborate over time, despite military leadership changes or PCS churn. The cultural shift required, Curtis said, means both sides spending more time on building relationships and “really learning how to collaborate more effectively.”
O’Leary built on that point, noting that trust between startups and government does not come from promises but from performance. “Trust really just happens” after consistent delivery, he said. JetZero’s approach has been to hit every milestone, from conceptual design through systems integration review, on time and under budget, with NASA, the Air Force, and AFRL in the room. “Give us a chance, and we’ll deliver,” he said.
Guerrero acknowledged another cultural barrier: the Air Force’s emotional attachment to legacy platforms, a pattern he called the “ugly baby” phenomenon. Even when a new system proves out, it can take years for communities to accept it, he said, especially when they’ve invested careers in legacy fleets.
Energy, Economics, and Strategic Patience
Energy consultant Joe Bryan, a former Navy operational energy lead and senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense, placed the conversation in a global context of volatile fuel prices, supply disruptions, and rapidly scaling clean energy markets.
With jet fuel up dramatically and conflicts threatening key chokepoints, he argued, efficiency and electrification are not just climate strategies; they are survivability and competitiveness strategies for airlines and air forces alike. A future in which aircraft burn 30–50% less fuel, he suggested, would look very different: routes expanded instead of cut, fleets modernized faster, and operational risk reduced.
But getting there will require what he called “consistent attention over time with money:” budget stability, policy patience, and a willingness to accept mistakes as part of learning, not as grounds to kill entire technology pathways.
The panel’s consensus underscored that technology is not the limiting factor: U.S. processes, incentives, and risk tolerance are. The tools to reshape airpower already exist. What is missing is sustained, outcome-based partnership between government and capital markets, and a willingness to accept near-term risk to avoid long-term strategic decline. If the United States backs dual-use innovators with consistent funding, smarter acquisition, and faster qualification, it will not just buy better airplanes; it will buy time, deterrence, and a stronger industrial base for whatever comes next.
