In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo sits down with Benjamin Fowl, Head of Growth for Wild West Systems, at African Lion 2026 to examine a compact drone weapons platform designed to be small, fast, and difficult to detect or shoot down. The conversation covers the system’s platform-agnostic design, its field-tested integration with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and the mechanics of how the drone fires, aims, and returns to base for reuse.
The episode dives into a core challenge facing forces operating in complex terrain: how to deliver a kinetic capability that is lightweight, reusable, and adaptable to the platform a unit already has on hand, without requiring heavy logistics to get the system into and out of theater. Fowl explains how a 3D-printed mounting rail allowed the 173rd to adapt the weapon system to a drone they brought from Italy, going from a modified CAD file to a field-ready mount in under 24 hours.
The solution centers on a platform-agnostic weapons payload, built around a Picatinny rail, that can be swapped between reconnaissance and kinetic missions and refined directly through feedback from the soldiers using it in the field.