September 8th, 2026
In the Spotlight: Patrick Malcor & Wesley Sparks of Ajax Defense
Hey friends - sorry for the delay in getting this newsletter out! I hope everyone enjoyed their LDW. Quick heads up before we get into it - the next few episodes will be Mission Critical episodes. This is the series that I started earlier this year with Alex Mercer, and we recorded three in-person conversations over the summer that are finally ready to share, starting with one of the cooler facility visits we've done. I’ve really enjoyed digging into these businesses, and I hope you enjoy these conversations as much I did.
This week, we’re sharing our conversation with Patrick Malcor, Founder & CEO, and Wesley Sparks, Chief Strategy Officer, of Ajax Defense. We recorded at Whelan Machine & Tool in Louisville, a precision machine shop Ajax owns that has made parts for the Naval Strike Missile since the first prototypes in 2018. The conference table we sat at has those parts under the glass, signed by every machinist who built them.
There are 40% fewer small businesses in the defense industrial base than there were 20 years ago. The big primes have moved up into systems engineering and software, and the machining, welding and fabrication that turn a program into a physical thing got pushed down to tier 2 and tier 3 - the companies that own the machines but can't raise the capital to buy more of them. Patrick's belief is that defense doesn't have an innovation problem. It has a capital problem. His answer was to start a veteran-owned holding company and buy machine shops.
Patrick started his Army career at Fort Knox, where his father was a career armor officer and his mother taught in the DoD schools. Ajax is based in Louisville, bought Whelan in 2023, and has announced a $5.7 million expansion in Jeffersontown that adds 30 jobs. The defense industrial base isn't an abstraction here. It's a building in Jefferson County that needs machinists.
The optimism is grounded, and it comes from two people who won't take the easy shot. Patrick defends the primes - they want to invest, the incentives just don't reward it. Wesley, a former Army acquisition officer who literally wrote the book on how this system works (Buying Power: The Business of Defense in America), points out that George Washington was already complaining to his quartermasters about late, broken, overpriced goods, so there's no golden age to go back to. And when we got to AI, neither of them reached for some abstract vision. Wesley's example: a CNC programmer who used to spend six hours building a tool path for a new part now spends thirty minutes checking one.
What We Discussed
A capital problem, not an innovation problem - Why 40% of the defense industrial base's small businesses disappeared, and the financial dynamics that prevent them from investing in new equipment.
A trillion-dollar industry on one-year budgets - What continuing resolutions do to a machine shop, and Patrick's simplest fix: make multi-year commitments flow down past the primes.
Business on hard mode - Wesley on running a normal manufacturing company with every ordinary burden plus exactly one customer and the math he calls "apples plus oranges equals bicycles."
Permanent capital vs. the five-year flip - The retiring owner with no successor who can't just close because he's single-source on a live program, and what Ajax tells him: "We're joining your team, not the other way around."
Six hours to thirty minutes - What AI actually changes on a shop floor, why the skilled programmer doesn't go away, and why Anduril still needs the 110-person welding shop.
We hope you enjoy this episode! If you have any thoughts after listening, feel free to shoot me a message at [email protected]
Have a great week, friends!
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