Field
Notes.

I formally started Slade Technologies in late April. It was exactly how it sounds. A name, an LLC, and a direction.

Just a month later, that has changed. We secured a CAGE code, completed SAM.gov registration, and established Slade Tech as a contractable defense entity. We're actively researching SBIR opportunities and our systems are in active development with physical prototyping underway.

I want to be clear about what this means and what it doesn't. No, a CAGE code may not build aircraft. But, it opens a door. The engineering, the testing, the contracts — that's where companies are made or lost. I know that.

But it matters to document where you started. This is where Slade Tech stood at the end of its first month. Everything from here gets measured against this.

The foundation is real. The rest is ahead.

Reports of another MQ-9 Reaper shot down over western Yemen.

If confirmed, this isn't the first, and it won't be the last. At ~$30M per airframe, attrition at this price point isn't a combat loss, it's a procurement crisis.

The calculus is broken. High-value persistent ISR platforms are being fielded into threat environments they weren't designed to survive. The response can't be "fly fewer missions." It has to be "build platforms the threat can't afford to engage."

That's the premise behind the ST-1 Specter — a tailless blended-wing-body UAS designed from the ground up for low-observable ingress into contested airspace. Long-duration loitering. SIGINT collection. A cost structure that doesn't make attrition existential.

Slade Tech is early. TRL 1–2, no hardware. But the requirement couldn't be more visible than it is today.

The MQ-9 is a great platform built for a different threat environment. That environment no longer exists.

Slade Technologies | ST-1 Specter

There's a gap in modern defense. Between cheap and expendable, and costly and irreplaceable.

ST-1 Specter™ is designed to fill it. Persistent, recoverable, and affordable enough to field where it matters.

The current landscape forces a binary choice — you either accept that your platform is going to get shot down and price it accordingly, or you spend $30M+ per airframe and treat every loss like a congressional hearing. Neither is a real answer for the kind of sustained ISR presence modern contested environments demand.

The Specter premise is simple: a low-observable platform that costs enough to be capable, but not so much that attrition breaks the mission. Recoverable by design. Built to fly again.

That middle ground is where we're operating.