Nathan Diller joins Divergent as CSO for Aerospace and Defense
June 20, 2024
Divergent Technologies, Inc, located in Torrance, California, USA, has announced the appointment of retired United States Air Force Colonel Nathan P Diller as the company’s inaugural Chief Strategy Officer for Aerospace and Defense.
Diller most recently served on the staff of the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, where he oversaw a $42 billion annual Defense-wide research, development, and procurement budget. As a Professional Staff Member, he drafted defence legislation intended to drive appropriations flexibility and transparency to accelerate adoption of emerging technologies. In his final role in the Air Force, Diller was the Director of AFWERX and responsible for the strategy and execution of a $1 billion annual advanced technology budget for the United States Air Force and Space Force.
At Divergent, Diller is expected to scale the company’s aerospace and defence business, as well as lead the company’s government affairs. In 2023, Divergent was selected by General Atomics as its strategic manufacturing partner for Unmanned Aircraft Systems. Since then, multiple major aerospace and defence companies, as well as many startups have created agreements to leverage this Additive Manufacturing technology.
Within the automotive sector, Divergent has more than twenty production programmes with global automotive manufacturers and has designed, tested, certified, and is now manufacturing the record-setting 253 mph Czinger 21C production hyper car for affiliated automotive company Czinger Vehicles.
“With the multitude of security challenges across the globe, US and allied leaders continue to highlight the need for agile and scaled manufacturing for a resilient defence industrial base,” said Diller. “After years of funding thousands of emerging technology companies, I am convinced that Divergent is uniquely postured to support DoD, along with companies, and allied nations of all sizes around the world, in advancing the arsenal of democracy, all while creating extraordinary peacetime economic and technical advantage. It is a privilege to join Kevin, Lukas, and the A+ team they have recruited to deploy a critical dual-use technology for this existential mission.”
During his twenty-two years in the US Air Force, Nathan Diller served as the Director of Aeronautics in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and commanded a flight test squadron. He was assigned to DARPA, the Joint Staff J-8, the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, the Strategic Capabilities Office, the Space and Missile Center, and multiple fighter and flight test squadrons.
Diller is a member of the DoD Acquisition Corps, a test pilot, and a fighter pilot with over 2,900 hours in more than sixty aircraft. He is an alumnus of the Air Force Academy and French Test Pilot School, with graduate degrees in engineering, government, and strategy from MIT, Harvard, National Defense University, and France’s ISAE-SUPAERO.
“We are thrilled to have Nathan join our team,” said Kevin Czinger, founder, Lead Inventor and CEO. “As Divergent continues expanding its business in aerospace and defence, Nathan’s rare operational, classified, and congressional background, along with deep experience in the DoD requirements, acquisition, and budgeting processes will be a major asset to our goal of completely transforming the global manufacturing industry and becoming a pillar for national security.”
Lukas Czinger, president and Chief Operating Officer added, “Nathan’s breadth of experience and strong leadership will be a key part to accelerating new programmes and products for our aerospace and defence partners.”
To date, Divergent has raised approximately $700 million in capital to develop and deploy its advanced manufacturing capability, combining digital engineering, Additive Manufacturing, and automated assembly in an end-to-end process with over 700 patents called the Divergent Adaptive Production System (DAPS). DAPS is intended to replace slow, inflexible, and capital-intensive traditional design and production processes with an agile system for rapid development and manufacturing at scale.
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