XPONENTIAL 2026: Michael Robbins Community Address
May 12, 2026
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to XPONENTIAL 2026.
I want to first recognize the incredible AUVSI team – our dedicated, mission-driven staff, our outstanding Board of Directors, our chapter leaders, Advocacy Committee leaders, and the many volunteers who help carry this organization forward.
Thank you for the work you do 365 days a year to advance this industry. It is an honor to be part of this team.
And to those who helped bring this incredible, record-setting XPONENTIAL together – including our exhibitors and sponsors, the hard-working XPONENTIAL programming committee, our partners Messe Düsseldorf, in Europe and North America, and the AUVSI team – thank you for your hard work and collaboration.
And this year, we are pleased to deepen XPONENTIAL’s defense footprint through a partnership bringing MDEX into the event and showcasing even more of the technology and industrial capability driving the future.
And it is great to be with all of YOU in Detroit and an honor to host you.
I grew up here – just down river a little way. If you know me at all, you already know that because I talk about Detroit all the time … I love this city –its people, its sports teams, its pizza …
This is a place that knows something about grit, reinvention, and building at scale.
Detroit literally rose from the ashes in 1805. Resurget Cineribus, it shall rise from the ashes, is the city motto.
Later, this state helped power the Arsenal of Democracy – turning industrial capacity and engineering talent into the production base that helped secure Allied victory in World War II.
You heard yesterday from Arthur Herman, author of the great book Freedom’s Forge, about how Detroit knows what it means to build for consequential moments.
That legacy is a reminder that strategic advantage belongs to those who can manufacture, scale, and deliver when the stakes are highest.
And today, Detroit is evolving once again into a technology and innovation hub.
Similarly, AUVSI, and the industry we represent are entering a different phase…
For more than five decades, AUVSI has evolved alongside this industry. We began in 1972 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, when warfighters returning from Vietnam understood earlier than most that remotely piloted aircraft would matter in the future fight.
That history gives us perspective – but it also gives us a responsibility to keep adapting as this industry moves from innovation to deployment, adoption, and focused on outcomes.
This industry is no longer just proving technologies. You are working to integrate into the economy, public safety, critical infrastructure, national defense, and everyday operations that people depend on.
The center of gravity is shifting – from invention alone to integration, manufacturing, trust, and execution.
AUVSI’s job is to help move this industry forward. That means removing regulatory roadblocks. It means securing funding. It means shaping pathways to adoption. Leading from the front …the tip of the spear.
Another of AUVSI’s core roles is helping our members see around corners sooner and act with greater confidence. Sharing intelligence. Shaping the future.
That means federal advocacy in Washington DC, state and local advocacy, and addressing the points of friction that keep needed technology from reaching scale.
Our value is trusted access, reduced uncertainty, curated connections, and helping our members stay positioned in a market moving faster than any one company can navigate alone.
And since I was last on this stage in Houston, we have made some very significant progress.
AUVSI helped push autonomy, robotics, and physical AI deeper into national strategy conversations – tying them directly to economic growth, industrial competitiveness, defense readiness, and manufacturing resilience.
Policymakers and warfighters are increasingly treating autonomy not as a niche technology, but as a strategic capability. And they are right to do so, because autonomy is already reshaping the present, and it will define far more of what comes next.
But let me be clear: progress is real, and so is the pressure.
This is still an industry with real friction points. We are seeing movement in many areas, but we are also seeing delay in too many others. We are seeing demand, but also chokepoints. We are seeing opportunity, but also strategic vulnerability.
So settle in. I want to take a serious look at where this industry is and where it is headed. One theme runs through it all: learn from history, as history rewards those who learn faster than their rivals.
Let me start with one of the most important enablers of the drone segment of this industry: Unleashing American Drone Dominance.
After a strong Executive Order from the White House shortly after XPONENTIAL last year, which AUVSI helped to shape, we have been making steadfast progress on multiple fronts.
And after years of delay, the FAA finally moved forward with a proposed rule for BVLOS. The FAA has said the rule is intended to create a predictable pathway for safe, routine, and scalable BVLOS operations.
That is welcome, and it is overdue. But a draft is not the finish line, and no one in this room should pretend the work is done.
AUVSI has been deeply engaged with the FAA, DOT, TSA, the White House, and Congress to help make sure the rule evolves in the right ways. We need a framework that reflects operational reality and risk, rewards performance, and enables routine missions at scale.
This will be the unlock for a wide range of public and commercial missions: infrastructure inspection, public safety and emergency response, delivery, agriculture, logistics, and more.
AUVSI’s industry intelligence team has found that there are now 920 active BVLOS waivers, and that in 2025 alone approvals nearly doubled from the prior year. Since Part 107 began, more than one million UAS have been registered by over 40,000 unique organizations.
For years, our industry has been asked to prove that these operations can be safe, reliable, and useful. We have done that. You have done that. Now government has to codify what the market has already demonstrated.
I am excited for what comes next, and remain confident that we’ll see a solid, final rule in the near future.
Similarly, if the United States wants to lead in Advanced Air Mobility, which we must, we need more transparent certification timelines, better use of delegation authority, and a clearer path from concept to certification to operations. Otherwise, we risk losing ground in global competition.
Learning from the successes and challenges from the UAS Integration Pilot Program, or IPP, the Drone Dominance EO set forth and the FAA and DOT have now executed to unleash the eIPP to build regulatory confidence through real operations, real data, and clear performance standards for AAM.
We are fired up about this program, and proud that multiple AUVSI members are leading the way on this front.
The same modernization mindset applies to air traffic control modernization.
AUVSI’s Blueprint for Autonomy makes clear that scaling the system will require more data-driven digital operations and, over time, automated flight rules to reduce controller workload, improve visibility, and add flexibility.
We’ll dig into this more later in a conversation with FAA leaders here on the keynote stage.
One of the most consequential developments of the last year was the FCC’s action on the Covered List last December.
AUVSI supported targeted action against PRC manufacturers based on long-standing, verified national security threats.
At the same time, we have been equally clear that broader restrictions sweeping in trusted allies could create unintended consequences: impacting innovation, supply chain resilience, and the ecosystem we are trying to strengthen.
We have an “I” at the end of AUVSI for a reason. We are committed to working internationally – in advocacy efforts around the world, through Trusted programs with democratic partners like Taiwan and South Korea, and expanding our “connecting the industry” ecosystem with the launch of XPONENTIAL Europe.
That is why AUVSI has pushed for Covered List implementation that is narrow, risk-based, transparent, and scalable, especially around any broader review of allied-manufactured systems and components.
Many have asked why the Administration instead took such a broad approach. I think there are two closely related explanations.
First, this White House is serious about reindustrialization and wants more manufacturing onshore in the United States. I think that is a goal we can all get behind.
Second, there is a growing recognition that the industrial base itself will be contested before any future conflict begins.
Too often, policymakers focus on sustaining a fight once it starts. We need to think left of boom.
In a serious conflict, adversaries will not just target logistics in theater; they will try to weaken the industrial, economic, and supply-chain foundations that make military power possible in the first place.
History is full of examples of how dependence on critical inputs becomes a strategic vulnerability. Eddie Fishman wrote a great book about this called Chokepoints.
Before Pearl Harbor, access to oil and other materials shaped Japan’s choices in profound ways.
Earlier, in World War I, Britain used a naval blockade to cut Germany off from food, raw materials, and shipping. The idea was that weakening an enemy’s industry and supply base could be just as important as winning battles at the front.
This is the embodiment of Sun Tzu’s maxim, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
The lessons here are that nations that rely on external chokepoints eventually find those dependencies influencing strategy, whether they want them to or not.
The People’s Republic of China understands this well. Through military-civil fusion, it has aligned major parts of its technology base with national strategy. We have not.
And if we cannot access the raw materials and components required to build and sustain autonomous systems because sea lanes are contested or supply chains are cut, then we have a much larger problem than a procurement challenge. Today, the U.S. is in a position far too similar to that of Germany in 1914 or Japan in 1941.
This is why AUVSI committed to tackling hard problems. We are not choosing between security and innovation; we are advancing both.
That means supporting targeted action where the risk is real, safeguarding trusted allies, helping members navigate disruption, and pressing government to implement policy in ways that strengthens resilience and builds domestic and allied capacity.
In 2023, AUVSI launched our Partnership for Drone Competitiveness to push for a more serious industrial strategy for this sector, and we’ve made real progress over the last 3 years.
We remain focused on additional policy objectives: targeted public investment, smarter use of government purchasing power, long-term demand signals, permitting reform, and trade and economic policies that help trusted domestic and allied production scale faster.
And we have to confront dumping directly: when nations flood strategic sectors with below-market goods to wipe out competitors, the United States should respond with import restrictions, focused tariffs, and other measures that defend key industries.
In other words, we are pursuing both offense and defense. Like my Detroit Pistons, you do not win by playing only one side of the ball. We need the offensive game plan to build, scale, and compete and the defensive strength to push back against dumping, distorted markets, and adversarial supply-chain leverage.
It also means expanding Trusted programs like Green UAS – a pathway to Blue UAS and today an exemption from the FCC Covered List.
And this year, we took that work international, partnering with Taiwan to extend Green UAS across trusted democratic allies.
And if you are looking to expand internationally, do not miss tomorrow’s event with the U.S. Commercial Service—an excellent opportunity to connect directly with specialists and buyers from key markets including Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, Ukraine, Vietnam, and others driving global demand.
Because if our rivals can coordinate to undermine democracy, democratic nations must coordinate to defend it.
To understand why these debates are getting sharper – and why the stakes are getting higher – we again have to step back and look at the broader strategic setting.
Later this week, President Trump will be on his way to China …more changes may very likely be ahead.
And this is exactly the kind of environment AUVSI was built to support.
We were built to help an industry navigate complexity. To connect public and private leaders.
To strengthen trusted ecosystems.
And to help ensure these technologies serve democratic security – not authoritarian coercion.
When I stood on this stage last year in Houston, I warned about the danger of strategic dependence on the PRC for critical inputs and technologies. Some may have thought that language was strong.
That’s fine. AUVSI is not here to be timid or merely agreeable; we are here to lead from the front, speak hard truths when necessary, and help this industry compete and win.
History is unforgiving to those who ignore gathering pressure. Over the past year, that warning has only been reinforced.
China has embraced a broader conception of conflict – one in which financial systems, trade networks, espionage, distillation attacks, and supply chains are weaponized to sink industries, gain leverage, and undermine strategic rivals without direct kinetic force.
Economic statecraft is not only used to win market share, but to suppress and threaten the United States, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and other democratic allies.
The PRC is not competing by the rules of a healthy market. It is using state subsidies, coercive industrial policy, choke points in critical minerals, market dumping, technology theft, and military-civil fusion to expand its strategic advantages.
We have all seen this in commercial drones, where the technology was invented in the United States but scaled in China, and we are seeing it now in robotics, AI, and upstream supply chains.
If the United States and its allies want to compete – and win – we have to do more than invent the best technologies.
We have to build at scale. We have to secure trusted supply chains. And we have to coordinate with democratic allies, because no single nation can match concentrated authoritarian scale alone. That is why I have spoken about the need for an Uncrewed Arsenal for Democracies.
And that is why the lesson cannot stop with drones. The same pressure is now moving into robotics, AI, and the technologies that will define the next phase of this industry.
In February, AUVSI launched the Partnership for Robotics Competitiveness because the same Chinese Communist Party playbook that distorted the drone market is now coming for robotics and embodied AI.
As I told Congress in two different hearings earlier this year, we cannot afford to wake up in five years and realize that the machines moving through our warehouses, ports, factories, energy sites, and critical infrastructure are built on adversary-controlled technology stacks.
A compromised laptop exposes data. A compromised robot or drone exposes data and can move, map, surveil, and disrupt the physical world.
You may have seen in the news, there was a literal robot race in Beijing last month, and a Chinese humanoid finished a half-marathon faster than the human world record. The metaphor writes itself: we are in a robotics race with China, and right now they are moving with speed, scale, and national purpose.
We still have a window to act, and we cannot allow PRC market dominance in robotics and embodied AI to harden into strategic dependence.
AUVSI will lead from the front to shape offensive and defensive policy action to reduce dependence on adversarial technology and build a stronger trusted industrial base to ensure we are Robot Ready here in America.
There will be a great panel on this today at 1300 led by our AUVSI Board Director, Brendan Schulman, from Boston Dynamics.
Similarly, critical minerals are one of the clearest examples of how strategic dependence can become a national security vulnerability.
China’s dominance creates a chokepoint over the materials that power autonomy, advanced manufacturing, energy, and defense – and that kind of dependence is a risk everyone in this room must take seriously.
The solution must come from innovation, recovery, recycling, and coordinated work with allies to build supply chains that are less exposed, more resilient, and faster to scale under pressure.
Tomorrow, you’ll hear more about that work from people in the industry making a real difference: John Maslin Founder of Vulcan Elements, Dr. Chris Miller author of Chip Wars, and John Corrigan from our partners at the Silverado Policy Accelerator who created this fantastic slide.
I am very excited for that conversation, as it is absolutely a key issue for the future of our industry.
History is useful only if we are willing to learn from it. And one of the clearest lessons is that nations and industries that adapt late usually pay for it dearly.
The courage and grit of the Ukrainian people have been extraordinary. They have stood firm against a terrorist aggressor in Putin’s Russia and shown that determination, ingenuity, and asymmetric capabilities can upend conventional assumptions about power.
Ukraine has not only shown how offensive autonomy can change warfare; it has shown how layered, lower-cost defenses can blunt threats with far better cost discipline.
That lesson was available to anyone paying attention. Too many governments were slower than they should have been to absorb it.
In recent NATO exercise, 10 Ukrainians acting as an opposing force used drone tactics to neutralize two NATO battalions in half a day. Ukraine is now one of the most combat-experienced partners in the world, deeply experience in modern warfighting tech and tactics, and we need to treat their lessons as operationally urgent.
And then Iran’s drone campaign in the Strait of Hormuz reinforced, yet again, what Ukraine had already made plain: low-cost threats require more affordable, scalable defensive answers.
History does not only punish those who fail to innovate. It also punishes those who fail to learn.
One of the clearest lessons from both conflicts is that counter-UAS is no longer optional. It is foundational as part of a layered operational requirement for national defense and warfighting.
And the same is true domestically. As I told the House Homeland Security Committee in Congressional testimony and a private briefing to dozens U.S. Senators, every time a drone is misused to spy, disrupt, or threaten, it erodes public trust and jeopardizes the lifesaving, job-creating, future-defining promise of drone technology.
The White House recognized this and issued the Restoring American Airspace Sovereignty Executive Order last June to focus federal resources and cooperation.
The SAFER SKIES Act, which AUVSI helped to bring into law last December, begins to close the gap between operational requirements and security responsibility. It does this by creating a pathway for highly trained and certified state and local authorities to respond to real drone threats, including at the forthcoming World Cup and America 250 celebrations. Last week, the FAA also released its proposed 2209 rule to establish a formal federal framework for facility-based drone restrictions.
These steps are good for security, and they are also good for the broader legitimacy of the drone ecosystem. You are going to hear more about this tomorrow in a keynote panel with EchoDyne CEO Eben Frankenberg and top leaders in national security from the White House and DHS.
Ongoing conflicts have made the role of autonomous systems impossible to ignore. AUVSI has used those lessons to press our case on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon for greater investment and faster acquisition of autonomy: drones, robotics, and counter-UAS – and we are seeing real progress.
There is more money flowing into this space than ever before. AUVSI’s Industry Intelligence team has done great work analyzing the defense budget, which proposes $54 billion for the Defense Autonomy Working Group, or DAWG, alone.
That is real money, and it reflects a growing recognition that exquisite systems alone will not be enough in the future fight.
Robots don’t bleed. They extend operational reach and keep warfighters out of the line of fire.
The Navy’s decision to create a dedicated Robotics and Autonomous Systems office is an acknowledgment that uncrewed maritime systems are strategic capabilities that belong at the center of force design, acquisition, and fleet integration. A hybrid fleet that pairs crewed ships with uncrewed surface and subsurface systems will extend reach, strengthen logistics, improve deterrence, and keep sailors out of harm’s way.
There will be a great panel on this with the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Robotics & Autonomous Systems and other maritime autonomy leaders today at 1400.
Just as important, we are also seeing more creativity in how the Department approaches acquisition. Looking to history, when the system has moved too slowly, the Pentagon has found other ways to get critical capabilities into the force – from GPS and stealth in earlier eras to AI tools like Project Maven more recently. Today’s marketplaces, CSOs, OTAs, and programs like Drone Dominance reflect that same need for speed.
AUVSI helped secure the $1.1 Billion in funding for DDP because it reflects exactly the kind of speed and creativity our defense industrial base needs. It uses an advanced market commitment tied to competition, and Gauntlet 1 has already resulted in 30,000 orders placed, more drones than then Pentagon has bought for the last many years combined, and far greater volume ahead.
Just as important, future gauntlets will push harder on trusted component sourcing, strengthening not only output, but resilience. We are now working with Congress to replicate this model across other autonomous systems and domains, tied to real Pentagon dollars and real operational demand.
And you’ll hear more about Drone Dominance tomorrow on a keynote panel featuring the program lead, Travis Metz, some of the companies that received initial orders, and Evan Smith, CEO of Altana, our partner in our Green UAS compliance work. There will also be a Drone Dominance industry day discussion later in the day.
The real test is still ahead of us. Innovation must now translate into production, acquisition, and fielding at the scale, speed, and price warfighters need.
The most effective units in Ukraine operate on rapid iteration cycles: frontline feedback driving immediate design changes, refreshed production runs, and urgent fielding at scale.
That sounds familiar here in Detroit. The Arsenal of Democracy was not built on elegant prototypes. It was built on scale, speed, and execution.
The Commanding Admiral of the Japanese Navy understood this. He was a naval attaché in the United States and understood the military might of the United States and how it far outpaced that of Japan. He opposed the preemptive strike on Pearl Harbor he was nevertheless ordered to undertake, knowing all too well that it would awake a “sleeping giant.”
Today, the uncomfortable reality is that the United States and Europe face a similar scale disadvantage relative to China – one measured not just in factories, but in steel, power, shipbuilding, robotics, batteries, drones, and critical minerals.
Accordingly, manufacturing scale is now a warfighting requirement. The side that can produce, replace, and adapt systems at volume will have the advantage over the side that can merely invent them.
I hear from Pentagon leaders all the time that if you bring them useful tech but can’t produce it at scale, they are not interested.
AUVSI’s industry intelligence team has found that nearly $47 billion of private capital has flowed into America’s uncrewed industry since the start of 2025. More than 170 U.S. companies in our industry have raised capital since the beginning of 2025 backed by over 400 unique investors.
As a result of that capital injection, during that same period there have been 57 U.S. manufacturing announcements across our industry—representing nearly 13 million square feet being added to U.S. production capacity.
This additional manufacturing will drive down costs as economies of scale are achieved, and reduce dependency on PRC supply chains, at exactly the moment the market is demanding both. This will also create nearly 20,000 new jobs. I am very proud of this progress our industry is making.
That brings me to workforce. If we are serious about scale, for commercial and defense, we also must be serious about workforce. This industry will not scale without talent. We need engineers, technicians, operators, maintainers, cyber professionals, data analysts, certification experts, advanced manufacturers, and people who know how to take systems from prototype to production to field support.
Jay Seidel at the Fullerton Drone Lab has done some great work in this area with his American Autonomous Workforce Initiative – proposing to build a seamless pathway from early STEM exposure to degrees and apprenticeships so we can train the operators, maintainers, integrators, and technicians required to sustain trusted autonomous systems at scale.
You’ll also hear from Daryl Davidson from RoboNation on Thursday on how they are helping to train the next generation of leaders in our industry.
That also means investing in workforce and standards, which is why AUVSI continues to expand Trusted UMS Operator training as the maritime autonomy ecosystem matures and Trusted Operator for advanced drone training.
The United States also needs an immigration system that works for technology companies and for the broader innovation economy as part of our strategic industrial strategy.
What many industry leaders are telling me – and what we are feeling ourselves at AUVSI – is that current restrictions are too often excluding qualified, high-skill workers for roles that otherwise will go unfilled, weakening productivity and innovation rather than protecting American competitiveness.
Restrictive visa policies accelerate offshoring, worsening workforce shortages, and harm strategic sectors like AI and robotics. A practical, targeted approach to high-skill immigration is an economic and national competitiveness imperative.
And this is not abstract for us. AUVSI is experiencing this pain directly, with one of our own rising stars recently denied an H-1B visa despite the clear value that person brings to our mission and to this industry. That is very painful for me personally and for our team, and ultimately not in the best interest of the United States.
Workforce is central to whether this market can mature. And it is an area where AUVSI will be spending more time and resources going forward as our industry evolves.
That is also one reason our Chapters matter so much. AUVSI’s Chapters do not just build local community. They connect employers, public officials, students, operators, and innovators. They translate national strategy into local execution. They help create pipelines. They help solve problems close to the ground. And they make our industry stronger in ways that Washington alone cannot.
I hope you’ll join our Chapters at a fun networking event Wednesday night, XPO Underground, hosted by the Great Lakes Chapter at the beautiful Michigan Central train station. The crown jewel of Detroit.
There is a lot of noise in the world right now. A lot of policy churn. A lot of geopolitical instability. A lot of very real risk.
Sun Tzu said, “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”
AUVSI’s role in this environment is to move to points of friction and solve problems for our members. To help cut through the chaos and help find the opportunity.
We shape the policies that determine whether markets open or stall. We bring together the ecosystem – industry, government, academia, operators, investors, and allies – at events like XPONENTIAL, XPONENTIAL Europe, our Drone & AAM Policy Symposium, and AUVSI Defense.
And we help make sure this industry stays positioned on a level playing field in a world where the stakes are rising and not all actors are playing by the rules.
Our industry is helping redefine mobility, work, public safety, logistics, infrastructure, defense, and how humans interact with machines in the physical world.
That is one of the great industrial and strategic shifts of our time. And we have to be ready.
The AI industry is already learning, in real time, what it means to be at the center of public debate – around jobs, ethics, mental health, cybersecurity, and energy demand. They are in the spotlight, and not always in a positive way. We should take that as a warning and a lesson. Learn from history.
Robotics, drones, and autonomous systems will face the same kind of scrutiny, and when they do, we cannot afford to be unprepared.
AUVSI is preparing now – engaging policymakers, thought leaders, shaping standards, and helping this industry speak with clarity and credibility. Stay close to AUVSI as we shape the future together.
The opportunity in front of us is enormous, and I believe this industry is ready for it. We are learning from history. We are preparing. We have the talent, the mission, and the momentum.
We are working with our members to turn momentum into durable progress – to build trusted systems, scale the industrial base, strengthen allied coordination, and create the pathways that bring great technology into real operations. Together, we are shaping the future.
That will take hard work, grit, and collaboration.
And that is exactly what XPONENTIAL is about: bringing this ecosystem together to do the work, solve the problems, and help shape what comes next.
And while XPONENTIAL is just 4 days out of the year – or 8 if you join us in Düsseldorf for XPONENTIAL Europe – that same focus, collaboration, and addressing points of friction occurs every day within the ever growing membership of AUVSI.
Thank you for being here. Have a great week.
Let’s get after it.
