Balerion Principal Aidan Daoussis sits down with Joe Musselman, Founder of Union Technologies, to discuss factories as a stockpile. Union Technologies is developing software-defined factories for national security manufacturing. The company is focused on increasing industrial production capacity for critical systems such as 155mm shell bodies by making factories faster to build, replicate, and operate.
Timestamped Overview
00:00 – Introduction and overview of Union Technologies
00:50 – Joe Musselman’s family background, military service, and manufacturing roots
03:00 – Bravo Victor Venture Capital’s national security thesis and the origin of Union
05:00 – Why factories became the bottleneck across munitions, rare earths, nuclear, and energy systems
07:30 – Transition from investor to operator and building the Union founding team
09:30 – Factory-as-product model and the concept of factories as a stockpile
12:00 – Union’s first factory and the decision to begin with 155mm shell bodies
14:15 – Building a factory faster and at lower cost than traditional defense manufacturing models
15:40 – Production goals, line throughput, and 155mm manufacturing capacity
18:50 – Why 155mm rounds matter in Ukraine, Taiwan, and broader deterrence planning
22:30 – Raising a large seed round and explaining industrial scale to venture investors
25:00 – Financing capital-intensive hard-tech companies and building blended capital stacks
27:30 – Framing the factory as a moat rather than a liability
29:50 – Union’s software stack: Fabric, Faction, Overmind, and Overhaul
32:30 – Embedding software inside the factory to command production, traceability, and optimization
36:00 – How a Union factory differs from a traditional prime contractor facility
41:00 – Lessons from standing up Factory One: teams, leadership, and culture
46:00 – Mutually Assured Production and manufacturing as a deterrence doctrine
49:00 – Builders as peacekeepers and the role of industrial capacity in avoiding future conflict
52:50 – Closing remarks and invitation to connect with Union and Balerion
