Sensors search across spectra.
A team’s visual appearance, heat, geometry, movement, and emissions combine into a signature that can reveal its position and intent.
Built around the fight
Our operating premise
A team found before it can act cannot accomplish the mission.
Signature management protects the time and freedom of action mobile teams need to observe, communicate, employ effects, and displace. It is not hiding for hiding’s sake—it is creating the conditions to survive, fight, and win.
The operational problem
Detection collapses the mission window.
Visual, near-infrared, thermal, radar, RF, and persistent aerial sensors can find a team before it is ready to act. Once detected, the time to observe, decide, employ effects, and move rapidly disappears.
Detection becomes targeting.
Persistent sensing compresses the time between being found and being acted against. Every minute exposed reduces the team’s options.
The team must still fight.
Effective signature management must preserve observation, communications, access, equipment function, and the ability to act and displace before the window closes.
System 01 · In development
SPONSON
A backpackable, field-repairable multispectral hide designed to extend the mission window for reconnaissance and drone teams that must establish, operate, and displace quickly.
Mission effect / design intent
Stay hidden.
See first.
Act first.
01Observe
Preserve the time to build understanding.
02Act
Maintain the freedom to employ the team.
03Displace
Move before detection becomes targeting.
SPN / Operator hide
Signature management built around the mission.
SPONSON is being designed to reduce detectable signatures without preventing the team from observing, communicating, employing equipment, or moving when the mission demands it.
CarryBackpackable
Establish1–2 people
OperateAirflow + access
RepairReplaceable sections
RecoverRapid + controlled
Research and prototype development underway
Design priorities
Lower signature.
Greater lethality.
SPONSON is being developed to reduce exposure while preserving the team’s ability to sense, communicate, act, and move under operational pressure.
Deny detection across spectra
Visible, near-infrared, and thermal behavior are treated as linked signatures because defeating one sensor is not enough in a layered sensing environment.
Preserve combat function
Concealment must support observation, communications, airflow, access, and equipment employment—not force the team to choose between cover and capability.
Move before targeting
Rapid establishment and controlled recovery reduce exposed time and preserve the ability to reposition before detection becomes effective action.
Built and sustained in America
Domestic materials, production, repair, and replacement are treated as mission-readiness requirements from the beginning.
Leadership / 01
Katherine HathawayFounder · Chief Executive Officer
Founder and CEO
Command experience. Field perspective.
Katherine Hathaway served for 10 years as a U.S. Army Armor officer. A Massachusetts native and two-time unit commander, she commanded both an M1A2 Abrams tank company and a cavalry headquarters troop and led Soldiers in the United States and Europe.
Her experience spans armored warfare, reconnaissance, brigade planning, and extensive field training at the National Training Center and Joint Multinational Readiness Center, as well as operations alongside allied forces during Atlantic Resolve. Those environments reinforced a simple lesson: if a formation is found before it can act, it loses the initiative and may never execute the mission.
She brings a commander’s perspective to product development: begin with the mission, understand the user, test under realistic constraints, and build equipment that improves survivability without reducing combat effectiveness.
Katherine holds a master's degree in Global Technology and Development from Arizona State University and is completing an MBA and MA in Design Leadership through Johns Hopkins University and the Maryland Institute College of Art.
- Command
- Abrams tank company · Cavalry headquarters troop
- Experience
- Armor · Reconnaissance · Brigade planning · NTC + JMRC training
- Approach
- Mission analysis · Soldier-informed design · Realistic field testing
- Roots
- Massachusetts native · Maryland-based company
Our mission
Protect the team. Preserve the mission. Win the fight.
Lead Element develops practical signature-management systems that help mobile teams remain undetected long enough to observe, decide, act, and displace. If the team is found before it can execute, the mission may already be lost.
This is not hiding for hiding’s sake. Reducing detection creates time, options, and freedom of action—the conditions a team needs to survive, remain lethal, and win in a sensor-saturated battlefield.
Work with Lead Element
Bring us the field problem.
We want to hear from reconnaissance, UAS, vehicle, manufacturing, and signature-management practitioners who can sharpen the operational requirement and help test what comes next.
hello@leadelement.design