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Frontier Security Institute, at the Center for AI Safety
To  Josh Bryan, Performance Drone Works
From  Mike Marrotte, Signalform Studio
Re  Training Systems Pilot, twelve weeks
Date  October 1, 2026

PDW Training Systems Pilot — twelve weeks with the training team

Goal: Turn the training team’s existing knowledge, workflows, templates and repeated work into a reusable system for building and delivering training.

1.The Situation

Josh already carries much of the system PDW’s training function needs. The trouble is that too much of it has to pass through him by hand. Between now and the end of December the team has three week-long trainings to deliver, the first multi-mission payload arrives at the end of October with more to follow, and the new variant needs its own Fort Bliss materials. The answer isn’t more people doing what Josh does. It’s systems around him that have caught up with what he already knows how to do.

2.One Training Requirement, Today and After
Today
  1. A new training requirement arrives.
  2. Josh finds the prior materials and works out what’s being asked.
  3. He rebuilds the templates and writes the syllabus.
  4. He organizes the content and builds or directs the slides.
  5. He decides what assessments are needed.
  6. He manages the files and coordinates the instructors.
  7. Students, critiques and trends get tracked however they can.
  8. Records get updated by hand in Salesforce or wherever they live.

Josh is the integration layer.

After the pilot
  1. Josh opens a course workspace and drops in the source material.
  2. The system knows PDW’s training structure, templates and terminology.
  3. It proposes the course package. Josh directs instead of assembling.
  4. Everything stays editable.
  5. Student access, assessments and supporting material come with it.
  6. Feedback comes back in a structure, so patterns show.
  7. Records flow on to where they belong.

Josh spends his time on judgment, instruction, strategy and the problems only he can solve.

3.How the Twelve Weeks Run
01
Month 1, see the system. I work alongside Josh in the real flow of training development: templates, source documents, course builds, reviews, student materials, assessments, reporting and follow-up. I look for repeated work, judgment trapped in one head, things rebuilt from scratch and tasks a machine can now do. Small fixes ship as we find them.
02
Month 2, build leverage. The patterns are clear enough to build on. We build the tools that take the most weight off the team, test them on real courses and keep what works.
03
Month 3, hand it over. The useful tools get hardened, documented and made editable, and Josh learns to change them himself. We work out what can safely go PDW-wide and what needs IT and cyber first, and write the roadmap for what comes next.
4.What’s Certain and What We’ll Find
5.Boundaries
6.Investment
Founding pilot
$22,000
Twelve weeks · three monthly installments

I work alongside the training lead, embedded with the training function, to find, prototype and hand over a new training-operations capability.

7.At the End

PDW has a more capable training lead, a documented set of systems that hold the work that now has to go through Josh, and a model for spreading that capability across the company. Then I leave. The point is that Josh can change the tools himself, without me.

8.Next Steps
  1. Josh shares this with whoever signs off.
  2. A 20-minute call to walk through it.
  3. Week one: we pick the first workflow together and start.

Mike Marrotte

Founder & Principal, Signalform Studio

703-431-9026