The Next Generation of Military Drones Is Taking Shape | Ep. 101 [James Thurman]

What if the future of aviation could combine vertical takeoff, turbine-powered endurance, and the flexibility to serve both military and civilian missions?

In this episode of Industry Ignited, Dr. Leeanne Aguilar sits down with James Thurman, Founder and CEO of Portal Aircraft Company, to explore his vision for the next generation of VTOL aircraft. Drawing on his experience as a naval aviator, aerospace engineer, professor, aircraft owner, and defense industry professional, James shares how real-world aviation challenges inspired him to develop a different approach to vertical flight.

The conversation explores Portal Aircraft’s turbine-powered architecture, the limitations of battery-electric VTOL platforms, and the potential advantages of greater range, endurance, payload capacity, and rapid refueling. James also discusses why Portal is entering the market through unmanned aircraft, the growing importance of drones in modern military operations, and the company’s long-term vision of expanding its technology into manned aircraft and civilian mobility.

From building prototypes and securing early support to gaining credibility in a capital-intensive industry, James also shares valuable lessons for engineers and entrepreneurs pursuing ambitious ideas.

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Transcript

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 0:06

What if the future of aviation could combine the agility of vertical takeoff, the endurance of turbine power, and the flexibility to serve both war fighters and civilian travelers? Welcome to Industry Ignited. I'm Dr. Leanne Aguilar, and today I'm joined by James Thurman, founder and CEO of Portal Aircraft Company. James, welcome to the show. Thanks. Thanks. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, let's dive in. So I know your career spans both military aviation, missile strike planning, satellite development, aerospace education, and systems engineering. What experiences most shape the way you lead and innovate today?

SPEAKER_01 0:48

So it's a lot of experiences. I would say the ones that shape it the most are now in with the business I'm doing now, being a naval aviator, also being an aerospace engineering professor, system engineer, and an aircraft owner are really shaping what we're doing with portal portal aircraft right now.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 1:04

Yeah, so just a wide variety of experience. And, you know, what led you into wanting to start your own company?

SPEAKER_01 1:11

It had been a dream of mine for years to actually design and build my own aircraft. I've had two aircraft. I'm on my second aircraft right now. I have an airplane, but I've seen certain things with it that I would like to improve. For one, I'd like to be able to vertically take off and land the aircraft. And another thing, I would like to have lower maintenance on it and have it uh actually ready for me to fly more often when I'm not doing maintenance. Like for right now, I had to drive out here to Austin, Texas, because my airplane is in maintenance right now. So I'd like to have an aircraft that has less maintenance intensive. And helicopters are even more at maintenance intensive than airplanes. So I sought out to design an aircraft that would really meet all of my needs that allows you to vertically take off and land. It's not maintenance intensive, and I can fly long range with it because I fly across country all the time.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 2:00

So really just with your experiences and the challenges that you encountered, the pro the problems in your own career and personal life just with the aircraft. And you're like, okay, I want to fix that. Let's create something that awesome.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

So to build something to fly myself and end up becoming a business.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 2:15

Awesome. Right, absolutely. So you've mastered both fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft and served in highly demanding military environments. How did that operational experience influence the way you think about aircraft design and mission performance?

SPEAKER_01 2:29

I would say I've seen it aviation from a lot of perspectives, with it from being a military aviator, serving in combat zones, flying my own aircraft into being a professor. And I would say a big thing is I'm going back to this maintenance aspect of it and seeing how much maintenance we had to do on our aircraft. When we would deploy in the military, we'd have an entire team of uh maintenance personnel, and we'd have actually a few pilots. And every time we landed aircraft, I could go, I would go work or go to the rack, but we got a whole team of people working on those aircraft almost 24, 24-7 a day. And then when you switch over to be an aircraft owner, uh then you realize you don't have that. You have yourself or you're paying somebody to do it, and it makes a a big, big difference. Right. And so, really, what I I did, I used that experience plus my engineering experience. I'm an aerospace engineer as well, and was a professor, and I use that knowledge to come up with a solution, solution to that problem. Yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 3:23

Now, yeah, I understand you had a military career, like you mentioned, and then uh worked at Lockheed Martin for a good amount of time. And so you're wanting to solve your own problems, but what really inspired you to take the leap into entrepreneurship?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

I would say I thought of this concept about probably more like five years ago. I started it then, and then actually when COVID happened, it kind of slowed things down. But the big world event that really restarted this was actually the war in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine actually turned what was a quadcopter or drone was seen as somewhat of a toy before the end. Once that happened, they saw it as a weapon system, and that opened up a lot of funding in the drone space. So when I saw that happening, I kind of realized like this is the time to do this. Even though I was working on a you know a manned aircraft, I saw that the right pathway to get there is actually to start with a drone because you start small, there's already uh industry built around it, and it allows you to de-risk your technology in an unmanned state, uh, which is a little bit safer. And then you transition that onto a manned aircraft. Uh so that that's kind of our current plan now. We start out with drones where we transition to to manned aircraft pretty soon.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 4:33

Okay, so the just the political environment and what was happening in the world is you know, that shifted your your perspective and what your focus was on at the time when starting your own company. So you've seen aerospace from the cockpit, the classroom, like you mentioned, the defense sector, and the engineering lab. How did those different perspectives come together to shape your vision for Porto?

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Um I think I would say it it just made me think of the problem as a whole. Looking at it from a military perspective, for instance, uh, if they want a military drone, understand, because I flew the 860 Seahawk for the Navy, uh, I have a good idea what the military wants, what they're looking for in a in a militarized drone. So it gives me that experience as a civilian pilot. I I know what in an aircraft owner. It helps me to understand what civilian pilots are looking for, which is a very, a very different thing from what military is looking for. But some things are similar, but other things aren't quite, you know, the same for what they're looking for. And and again, for me being uh, you know, with my engineering background, it helps me to actually understand all of it uh and put it all together and come up with uh uh a solution, which is our system, which really kind of resolve all the issues. It's a or the architecture we're using can be utilized for both military and civilian purposes.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 5:51

So it's just like breadth and depth of inf of experience, it sounds like just really equips you to understand the problems in a multidimensional way and help you design you know aircraft that meets the need needs of you know the multiple sectors, is what I'm hearing.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Right, yeah, it's it's unusual. Not it's hard to find someone who can put who has done all of it. You've seen it from all those perspectives of the engineering and the military and civilian side. But for today's, you know, Lancet, you kind of need all of it. Even the military, they're looking for dual-use companies, companies that can actually exist if they don't have a military contract that actually makes them a better military contractor, so they're not totally dependent on the government.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 6:30

That makes sense. Now, portal aircraft is built around a patented turbine-based quadcopter design. What makes your approach fundamentally different from other VTAL and unmanned aircraft platforms on the market today?

SPEAKER_01 6:43

So if you're comparing to, let's say, the E VTAL, so the EVTOLs use a battery to power distributed electric motors. And actually, the hybrids do the same thing. They use a conventional engine, though, to power a generator that then goes through a battery and powers distributed electric motors. And the thing about that, then you're losing energy in the conversions between mechanical energy to electric, then back to mechanical energy. You've also got extra weight associated with that system. And you got to do maintenance on all both the electric system and the conventional, uh, the conventional engine and the generator. You got to maintain all you have to maintain all of those components. Whereas our system, we're using distributed turbines instead of just distributed electric motors. So that uh gets rid of the need to have these high-power electrical systems, uh, gets rid of the need to convert energy to electrical energy, but we're still executing the same same concept. It's distributed propulsion, so we get the same benefits of distributed propulsion, but we have a simpler form of doing it than that. And it's also another good military aspect of it. It's not susceptible to electromagnetic attack, like, say, an electric system is.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 7:50

Okay, awesome. So really simplifying the system with additional benefits. Exactly. Yeah. Now you've spoken about the limitations of many electric VTOL platforms, especially around endurance, utility, and economics. Where do you believe turbine-powered VTOL creates a stronger real-world advantage?

SPEAKER_01 8:07

I would say turbine-powered VTOL. One big difference with it is that a turbine actually produces a very high amount of energy and power for a very low weight. So one big thing you get is a high payload to weight ratio, is what the and that's something that the military and DARPA uh and organizations like that are looking for. Also logistics agencies or companies as well. But you also get long range and um long endurance with that, just because of the energy density you have in jet fuel versus battery powered uh aircraft, inherently, even with a little bit of efficiency, you're gonna get longer range and longer endurance with a system like this.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 8:43

Right. So your platforms are also designed for both military and civilian applications, like we spoke about. How are you building one architecture that can serve contested logistics, reconnaissance, and eventually personal or commercial mobility?

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Because ultimately, the the same architecture will do the same thing for all, and they're all looking for pretty much the same thing, but to varying degrees. They all need to take off and land vertically. So our architecture supports a standard quadcopter configuration, or it can be multi-rotor rotors. We could do more than more than four. Uh, but the other thing, and if you're and if you're just talking about pure logistics, then that's really all you need. You just need something that can lift a lot of a lot of weight and carry it a certain distance. But our our uh architecture texture is also a tilt rotor configuration, and so it's designed to tilt even up to 90 degrees, so you can go into an airplane boat. All of our, and it's designed that way from the onset, so all the aircraft are designed that way, whether it's a drone or the manned aircraft, they're they'll all have that same configuration. So it's just a matter of depends on whether or not for the mission set they want to use it. Some mission sets they may not need to do tilt rotor, they may not need to go that far or that fast, they may just need to carry a load of certain short distance, and then they won't have to use a tilt rotor aspect of it. But I would say, you know, that's how we're just we're basically making a a quadcopter configuration that can divert over to a tilt rotor as well.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 10:00

Okay, cool. Now, when you think about aircraft like the strike, dragonfly, and the longer-term hummingbird version, how do you decide which capabilities to prioritize first?

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Honestly, it's about the demand and what we can feel the fastest and what's got the funding. And uh, so right now we have some investor funding that's helping us with the strike. We also have some army funding that's helping us to actually at least build the design for the Sentinel, which is the larger version of it. So, really, I would say it's those two things. It's it's funding and what you can build fast. Because really, especially when you're talking about investors in a company, you want to build something relatively fast so you can actually sell it and start making a profit off of it. And then that profit you can then reinvest that into the things that are maybe harder to do or that are longer term so that you don't have to, you know, the investors don't have to wait forever to to get paid.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 10:53

Okay. Now, is the strike the one that the the uh military is currently interested in?

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Yeah, I would say they're interested in that and also the sentinel. The the shrike is the smaller, a group to one, two size drone, and the sentinel is the is, I'm sorry, that's the smaller one, but the sentinel is a larger, a group three to four size drone. And they're I would say they're interested in both because they have requirements that cover all those sizes of aircraft, even possibly bigger.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 11:18

And for our audience who might not be familiar with your um aircraft, can you tell us a little bit about each of the models?

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Yeah, yeah. Well, the Shrike is a small group two drone. And if you look on our website, PortalAircraft.com, you'll be able to see it there. But it's a group group two gas turbine powered drone uh designed to lift loads, let's say, well, actually over 100 pounds. So they have a pretty high payload to weight ratio, pretty decent range in endurance as well. Uh and so if I say group two, that means it's less than uh around 55 pounds. But when you get above that, then you get into the group three size, but then the sentinel is a larger dome that's upwards of a thousand or so pounds. So it's it made to lift a much heavier load. But I'd say both are able to do the ISR missions, both are able to do uh logistics missions, both will even be able to do um to do attack missions as well. But those are the first sets of drones we're we're looking to make. Now, even with those, uh, there's not just military use for those. We see a civilian use for those for these types of drones and things like agricultural, border patrol. There's other things too, but those are some of the primary ones that I see a use case for.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 12:25

Right. Okay. And right now you're building toward an early prototype and already have traction, like we mentioned, through army support and defense innovation channels. What milestones are most important for portal aircraft over the next six to twelve months?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

The biggest milestone is that we get this, the we have a a few prototypes we're doing, and we're rolling it out in a certain order. And the biggest thing is to get it flying in a stable hover. And we're actually looking at doing that within this month or the next month. Yeah, flying in a stable hover. Uh, and we're going to actually show those demos when we when we do it. And I've got a I've got you know companies, the company that's helping me to do this, uh, actually several people and a team of people doing this, and uh, and it we're making a lot of progress. But that's the biggest one. Uh, and then for us to actually create our MVP aircraft, which we want to have done and actually tested and demonstrated in August of this year, where we'll have a small variant of the strike uh actually lift a very, very heavy payload, you know, actually quite a bit heavier than itself, uh what we're looking for to do. We we want to demo that after after that. We actually want to start getting orders. But at the same time, simultaneously, we're actually doing an Army Phase I SBIR contract as well. So we want to complete that contract and then move on to the second contract so that we can build the larger Sentinel class uh drone.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 13:45

So you're moving very quickly.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Yes. Yeah. We're looking at it's gonna depend uh because it depends on when we start when you start production, you go from like, you know, a low rate production to a full rate production. It can change a lot because you're hiring people, you're building up your facilities and things like that. But we definitely want to be able to be able to, you know, produce you know one in less than a week. I think we'll be able to produce them pretty fast, even the way we're making it right now. We're using a lot of additive manufacturing, like modern manufacturing processes and capabilities so that we can produce them uh actually pretty fast. Yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 14:23

Awesome. Okay. So you mentioned that the near-term opportunity is in unmanned systems, even though your deeper passion, though, is includes the manned aircraft. Why is the drone market the right entry point for the company right now?

SPEAKER_01 14:35

I say it's the right entry point because it is it is what is hot right now and needed right now. Number one, it just honestly just in terms of military and warfare. You look at Ukraine, even if you look at Iran and what's going on, we saw with the war in Ukraine that the future is now unmanned. It is unmanned drones and artificial intelligence, drones that can fly themselves. And so that's what, you know, every not just the United States, every country in the world is acquiring that right now. Yeah. And so that's where we saw that, hey, this is where this is our time to actually actually do this and do it in a way that's not just where we're not just competing head-to-head head with every other drone company. We actually have something we're doing that's very different and uh is novel and not just for novel's sake, it actually produ you know provides a lot of useful uh capabilities that other drones can't do or can't can't uh replicate.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 15:26

Okay, so you're you're differentiating qualities. So you're developing aircraft for rugged, high-value missions where payload, endurance, and flexibility matter. What gaps do you see in today's UAV and VTAL landscape that that portal is uniquely positioned to fill?

SPEAKER_01 15:42

I would say in terms of just number one things are range, endural, endurance, and payload delay. Typical drones fly maybe 20 to 30 minutes, and that's not with a you know huge payload on them. Uh I would say that's a big gap in recharge time of the drones. I mean, when you have a drone that's electric, it takes time to recharge it. If you have some fuel power, you land it, you put fuel in it, uh, it takes a few minutes and you in you go. And that's another gap we're feeling that we could keep uh a greater op tempo with something that you just put fuel in to operate. And uh yeah, I would say those are those are kind of the key gaps that that we're filling with this.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 16:18

And as a young company in a capital-intensive industry, what have been the biggest challenges so far in moving from concept to prototype to investable business?

SPEAKER_01 16:26

I would say gaining traction is one. And in the beginning, it's it's very hard because if you're an unknown, then you know a lot of people they don't want to invest or put their their money or even the government's money in that something's unknown. And they're typically looking for you to have the support of others to do it. And so, really, what you have to do is create almost a snowball effect. You get support from one investor or government agency or you know, one group, and then it that compounds, and other people or uh agencies see it, you know, and next thing it's a snowball effect. Now that they see a lot of agencies or people, investors or whatnot are behind you, now it becomes much easier. So building that traction and that snowball effect in the beginning was very, very hard, especially when you're doing something that is going against the grain. Yeah, everything that we saw, or or most of what we see is electric that is changing uh right now. Uh yeah, when you're going against the grain, it's hard to get traction.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 17:22

Yeah. So, what were some of your strategies for gaining that traction? What are things that you did, or how did you make connections with the right people?

SPEAKER_01 17:29

So, part of it is we actually got backing from, say, Texas AM University to do independent studies on what we're proposing and validating the architecture and the benefits of it. So that was a big one that helped to do that and really just being precise, producing data and actually producing prototypes. You know, we had produced a small prototype and a video showing how it works. So you really have to prove it out to people, both in test and independent studies, prototypes to show that what you're saying is true. Uh and just be very, very good with your communication and persistent. You just have to be very persistent, keep going back at people or talking to a lot of people until you find somebody who will who understands it can help you out.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 18:11

Yeah, and like you said, it that first believer, that first person who who invests in you that helps you establish the credibility. And from there, at some point it it kind of snowballs and then they approach you, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

And actually that's what's I mean, that's what's happening now. Now it's, you know, now we're getting approached by people and they're coming to us. I mean, so it's it's somewhat changed. There's, I mean, we still look, we're still looking for, you know, more investment dollars, more government contracts, but it's changed a lot because now people, you know, people and agencies are are coming to us.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 18:39

Right. And that's when you know that you've you've got that attraction and credibility when they they start approaching you. Right, right. Yeah. So looking ahead, what is your long-term vision for Portal Aircraft Company, both in military applications and in the future civilian VTOL market?

SPEAKER_01 18:53

So for the military side, I would like to see our aircraft become workhorse drones throughout the military, uh, for the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard. And by what I mean by workhorse, it's kind of like what I flew. The H60 is like a workhorse aircraft. You do multiple missions with it. You just reconfigure it, you can carry cargo, do attack, are all types of things. I like to see our aircraft used in the same way as an unmanned system. I'd also like to see possibly the military do a manned aircraft as well in the future. For the civilian side as well, we'd like to see our drones in doing things like agriculture, border patrol, maybe you know, surveillance and things like that. And definitely, personally on the personal side, I want to fly the aircraft and sell the aircraft myself. So I want to see our aircraft at airports, out in the field, in the skies, in cities like I'm in now, Austin, Texas, things like that on skyscrapers, uh, and sold across the markets, just general aviation, recreational aviation, advanced server mobility, I like to see that. And when you look in the sky that you see some portal aircraft flying, that's what I that's what I like to see.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 20:00

Love the vision. So, James, you've built a career around teamwork, technical rigor, and mission execution under pressure. What leadership lessons from the military and aerospace worlds are most relevant to building a startup?

SPEAKER_01 20:13

I think keeping keeping your ego under control. I mean, in the type of uh business that I'm in, or even the military, you tend to do the types of things. You tend to be a little bit, I guess, arrogant, honestly, to even try some of these things. But you have to you have to be careful, you have to uh you know control your ego, and you have to surround yourself with a team of people that can help you and who you'll listen to uh with advice. You that give you sound advice, can see things that you can't see, uh, and do things that you can't do uh because you can't do everything yourself and you can't know everything yourself. Right. So I think that's a big thing. You have to surround yourself with a team of very smart, dedicated people, and then you know, watch your ego and listen to the people and learn from them and help them as well.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 20:59

Right. No, that's good advice. It's like you have to have enough confidence to get started and to try different things and to take risks, but at the same time, right, you don't want to get overconfident or let your ego run away out from under you because that can be dangerous. And and not only that, but I think it's um as far as finding partners or partnerships and relationships that could be, you know, off-putting or or detrimental for that kind of thing. Now, finally, for engineers, founders, and aspiring aerospace innovators who want to build something bold, what advice would you give them about pursuing big ideas in a difficult high-stakes industry?

SPEAKER_01 21:36

I would say, well, number one, make sure whatever you do, solve a problem, you know. So let make sure you're aiming to solve a problem. Because most likely, if you're solving a problem, it's a problem that others have, and maybe they just accept it as a problem. Generally, in general, with inventions, that you that's usually the case. People just accept something as a problem, but somebody has to solve that problem. Right. So look to solve a problem that no one else is solving. And then once you figure that out, protect it, protect your solution, and be persistent and get a team that can help you to push this solution you have to a problem and just be persistent at that point about it.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 22:13

Yeah. So protecting it with IP, basically, get your patents. Is that what you're mean? Exactly. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Well, and before you do that, actually, I should also say do a patent search to make sure nobody has solved it. Right. Yeah, that's true. Make sure they hadn't actually solved it, you know, uh first, and then once you've done it, then you can, you know, proceed.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 22:33

Proceed with protecting it, yeah. Well, James, thank you for joining me. Uh, how can listeners learn more about you and Portal Aircraft Company?

SPEAKER_01 22:40

So you can go to our website, uh portalaircraft.com. So that's uh www.p-o-r-t-a-l a-i-r-c-r-a-f t dot com. So we got a new website up. It it gives a you know decent explanation of what we're doing and visuals, talks about the company and our people and what the benefits are. I would say that's a a good place to look. We just started a YouTube page. I think I've got to put a link on there to it. Uh we're putting some material on there. But I would say that that website is is the best place to look.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 23:11

Okay, so do you have videos of your your aircrafts and the ones you're working on and testing?

SPEAKER_01 23:16

On that website, yeah. I think we do have we have some video on there, at least on the YouTube channel, but we're about to start putting more video up right now, especially when we get the prototype flying.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 23:23

Yeah, super exciting. Well, thank you again, James. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in to Industry Ignited. Be sure to subscribe and join us for the next episode. Until next time, stay bold, stay curious, and keep igniting industry.