Dustin Gamble

About

Dustin Gamble as a 'Drone Innovator' collectible action figure, packaged with a VTOL drone, laptop, RC transmitter, calipers, and a 3D-printed bracket
Built for what's next. Ages 14+.

I build flying things — and the AI-powered tools that help design them.

My work sits at the intersection of aerospace engineering, unmanned aircraft, rapid prototyping, simulation, and artificial intelligence. I like taking strange or ambitious aircraft ideas and pushing them toward something real: a simulation, a prototype, a flight test, or a useful engineering tool.

At Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, I founded the Drone Innovation Garage to help teams explore new unmanned aircraft ideas faster and more creatively. Increasingly, that work includes AI-assisted software development, custom engineering tools, simulation workflows, and agent-based systems that let small teams move with the speed and creativity of a startup.

I believe the future of engineering belongs to people who can combine deep technical judgment with AI, rapid prototyping, simulation, and hands-on experimentation. One public highlight along the way: a 39-hour endurance flight world record (Stalker VXE).

AI-Assisted Engineering

A major part of my current work is figuring out how AI helps engineers build faster, learn faster, and make better technical decisions — as a force multiplier, not a replacement for engineers. In practice that looks like:

I write about how this works in practice — see The Agent Is the Tool and Build the Tool, Not Just the Answer.

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My broader philosophy is that aerospace progress depends on workflow design as much as hardware design. The teams that learn fastest, simulate well, and document decisions clearly are usually the teams that field practical systems first.

A lot of my recent effort connects simulation environments — ArduPilot/SITL, JSBSim, and browser-based tools — with lightweight AI assistance. The goal is not automation for its own sake, but better technical judgment, better handoffs, and fewer surprises late in development.

Outside direct program work, I mentor engineers, support technical reviews, and build educational tools that lower the barrier to advanced aerospace methods. I am especially interested in how modular architectures and shared simulation infrastructure help teams adapt faster to new mission requirements.

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