VESTIGE DEFENSE
Leadership & Advisory

Operators
and engineers

Vestige Defense is built by a founder-engineer and advised by the people who define the modern doctrine of urban and subterranean warfare.

— Founder
Cade Dalton, Founder
Founder & CEO
Cade Dalton
Designer and engineer of the V-Suite.
Founder of Vestige Defense. Designs and builds the V-Suite end to end — firmware, hardware, autonomy stack, and operator software.

Dual bachelor's degrees in Finance and Economics with a minor in Computer Science from the University of Miami. Career has spanned independent game development, investment banking, and asset management.

Made the jump to defense after recognizing the persistent gap in subterranean autonomy — the domain where modern urban warfare lives and where no one has solved unmanned ISR. Self-taught the full stack — embedded systems, SLAM, sensor mesh design, and ROS-level robotic integration — and built Vestige's hardware and autonomy software from first principles. Based in New York.
Site LinkedIn
— Advisory
MAJ (Ret.) John Spencer
Strategic Advisor
MAJ (Ret.) John Spencer
Chair of War Studies, Madison Policy Forum
One of the foremost authorities on urban and underground warfare. More than 25 years of US Army service as an infantry soldier, holding ranks from Private through Major. Served in the 75th Ranger Regiment, 173rd Airborne, and 4th Infantry Division, with two combat deployments to Iraq as an Infantry Platoon Leader and Company Commander. Chair of War Studies at the Madison Policy Forum, co-director of the Urban Warfare Project, and a founding member of the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare. Author of Connected Soldiers (Potomac Books, 2022) and Understanding Urban Warfare (Howgate Publishing, 2022). Host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast. Holds a Master of Policy Management from Georgetown University.
Twitter Site
CSM (Ret.) Joe Vega
Operational Advisor
CSM (Ret.) Joe Vega
Deputy Director, National Center for Urban Operations
Spent more than thirty years as a warfighter, serving at every rank of enlisted Soldier — first as a Ranger, then a Green Beret, and finally as an Operator in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta (1st SFOD-D), where he served as a Master Breacher and a Heavy Breacher. Former Senior Operational Advisor to the Asymmetric Warfare Group. Deployed multiple times worldwide, including to Grenada, Panama, Colombia, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. One of the principal authors of the Army's Training Publication 3-21.51 Subterranean Operations (2019). Currently Deputy Director at the National Center for Urban Operations at Fort Hamilton, New York, and Vice President at US Armor Group.
NCUO US Armor Group