How did the drone competition give birth to a cutting -edge drone company

More and more American drone companies are emerging as the technology is largely transmitted by the civilian and military sectors.

The Ukrainian war has been outstanding about what the drones can do in battle, and the pentagon is severely inclined to technology, as the planned overhaul of the Army shows.

Increased demand is accompanied by new companies who want to become suppliers. But Performance Drone worksPerhaps PDW, there was no sudden interest in warfare. Instead, on television, it came from the Drone Racing League colorful quadropters and runways, where talented pilots flew through sophisticated obstacles at speeds of up to 90 miles per hour.

From the drone racing on the battlefield Techin

PDW is a post -famous international racing league. Six years ago, the company started to deal with the absence of top -level US suppliers, the company's CEO and co -founder Ryan Gury Business said. All the drones flying along the pilots are the same and done by the DRL and came in Gury: drone design.

Now PDW makes drones for the military.

The priority is to make drones, such as their flagship C100, and other technologies, “which are small and tactical and the introduction of individual units,” said Gury. “This is our dissertation.”

The C100 is a light quadropter designed to accommodate cleaning and can fly over 70 minutes, up to 40 km / h, 10 pound load-bearing capacity. The latter can be customized on the basis of mission requirements. PDW also plans to debut this summer with a new, smaller, first person's view of the drone. In December, the company announced a US Army of more than $ 15 million C100 contracts and sales.

For years, battle drones were large, fixed -wing planes that cost millions, but grows interest in small, cheap learning systems that can be used at team level so that military personnel can carry their person, even in pockets. The Ukrainian War has shown that small UAS platforms can do battlefield tracking, strikeouts, bombing runs and more.

The key to promoting this goal and massively training is affordable systems, close and flexible relationships with the Ministry of Defense, and a reliable domestic supply chain that does not depend on foreign components.

Blooming business

PDW is located in Alabama in Huntsville, where the C100 production rate has exceeded expectations. They have grown out of the factory, which they think would last for a few years in just eight or nine months.

“A year ago, on our board, we were muttering,” Can we produce 30 months? “” Said General Tony Thomas, the chairman of the board of PDW, at the command of US special operations. Now the company is doing 70 per month and soon doubles. For their future FPV product, Gury said he hoped that the figures will exceed current production indicators.

Testing takes place in the process of making pdw drones, said PDW technology officer Dylan Hamm, who built small drones while working as a naval seal, told BI. Testing includes everything from all to make sure that the drone has the desired profit for the evaluation of weather, temperature, height, landscape and countermeasures.

“We test our drones every day,” he said. “Whether it's in the qualifying of the aircraft, whether they respond to our designs or actually take them out to events.”

Drone manufacturing requires flexibility, taking into account the rapidly developing battle. Much has been learned from electronic warfare countermeasures and the rapid pace of innovation in Ukraine. “If you have these systems in these complex working environments that are constantly changing, we must be prepared to adapt,” Hamm said.

Designing systems for new fights

PDW has US veterans throughout the workforce and management – 20% and 63%, respectively. In conversations with B, the PDW staff spoke about the role of drone in battle, the need to work closely with individual war fighters in these systems and the pace of accelerated adaptation and evolution.

Veterans bring a unique perspective to defense companies, but in cutting -edge systems they have to look beyond their experiences.

“When we are planning a system of wars that Dylan and I fought a few years ago, we are behind,” PDW Director General Chuck McGraw, another former seal, told BI.

The battle that has been seen in Ukraine has shown that the future of the war differs very differently from previous conflicts. Matt Higgins, one of the PDW co -founders, said “the fact that you can take a $ 1,000 drone and take out an $ 8 million tank is an asymmetrical advantage that the world never sees.”

Drones and other UAS, such as Loinging ammunition, have changed the game. Now, the question is not what these systems can do, but whether the US has an industrial ability to keep up.

The PDW C100 is completely constructed and manufactured in the US and does not contain parts made by Chinese; Most of the drone parts come from American companies. The US army cannot simply grab DJI drones and make it difficult to procure. Military leadership wants to strengthen the domestic industry of the drones, as well as for other weapons, ammunition and assets.

Gury and Thomas highlighted a growing number of new companies in the defense industry, especially those working on drones, artificial intelligence and autonomous opportunities and other future military elements. Thomas said it was a really frantic environment, a time when there is a “real animus” to move away from heritage systems that may not win the next war and really “escape the transformation opportunities”.