Engineering, technical analysis, and AI services for the new defense industrial base.
Blackthorn brings intelligence tradecraft and operator experience to AI companies, defense-tech builders, and the programs that buy from them. Evaluation and data work for AI systems, intelligence analysis, product strategy, and a specialty in RF and electronic warfare.
Why Blackthorn
Blackthorn was founded to work on the next generation of AI-enabled services for defense technology and the new industrial base. The models are getting good. What they still need is people who have done the work: analysts who know what a sound assessment looks like, operators who know what breaks in the field, and product leaders who know how the government actually buys.
We've worked across the practitioner and technologist divide for years, helping build and shepherd new technology to market. We know what it takes to get a capability from a whiteboard to a program of record, and we've spent most of that time in the valley of death between them, translating between the people who will use a system and the people building it, and pushing the work through the parts of the process where good technology tends to die.
Four ways to engage.
AI evaluation and data development
Real-world analytic judgment applied to AI systems built for national-security work. Scenario and structured-content creation, model-output evaluation, and quality review that separates fact from assessed judgment and flags what the model got wrong.
Intelligence analysis and tradecraft
SIGINT, all-source, and open-source analysis from a former intelligence officer. Threat and geopolitical assessments, collection and targeting support, and analytic writing that says plainly what is known, what is assessed, and how confident to be.
Defense-tech product and go-to-market
Shape the product, pick the right acquisition vehicles (SBIR, OTA consortia, program office pursuits), and build a pipeline that matches how the customer buys. Available as fractional product leadership for teams that need senior judgment before a full-time hire.
Technical due diligence
Independent assessment of AI, RF, EW, and sensing technology for investors, acquirers, and primes. What works, what doesn't yet, and what it would take to close the gap.
Specialty: RF and electronic warfare
Where the physics meets the mission.
The deep bench is RF. Blackthorn designs and runs field test campaigns that answer real questions: drone link budgets, MANET and PACE communications planning, EW and jamming threat assessment. Results are written for program offices and engineering teams, not for the shelf.
Field test design · Link budget · MANET / PACE · EW threat assessment · RF physics engines · Physics-based agents
Recent work
Tactical RF planning tool for ATAK
Montana, 2025. Field test and business development. Planned and executed an RF field test campaign for an ATAK-native tactical RF planning tool, covering drone link budgets, MANET and PACE comms planning, and EW threat assessment workflows. Built the company's DoD business development pipeline across SBIR, OTA, and program office channels.
Propagation engines and antenna modeling for a tactical planning tool
2025 to 2026. Engineering and product. Designed and delivered the propagation physics behind an ATAK-native RF planning tool, calibrated against measurements from a live field test campaign and tuned for the edge cases the data exposed. Specified directional antenna modeling and a reusable antenna library, and reframed the product's workflows around the three questions operators actually ask: will it fly, will I lose comms, will it be jammed.
Analyst, operator, technologist, venture builder.
Blackthorn Strategies is a veteran-owned consultancy based in Kentucky, founded and run by Bobby Tuohy.
Bobby is a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer and signals intelligence professional with a background in special operations. Since leaving the service he has led product at defense and intelligence technology companies (Flashpoint, Echosec), run a venture studio (25madison), and served as a Venture Partner at First In, a defense-focused venture firm. He holds degrees from the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard (MBA and MS in Engineering).
Building AI for national security, or building the companies that will?
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