The $54 billion drone boom

How unmanned systems are rapidly redefining how goods, intelligence, and force move across the world

Yevhen Titov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images

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Last December, north of Kharkiv, Ukraine's 13th National Guard Brigade sent roughly 50 aerial drones and a fleet of unmanned ground vehicles toward a Russian position. No infantry. No soldiers within miles of the fighting. When it was over, Ukrainian troops moved in to find Russian corpses.

It was the latest in a series of signals to every defense ministry, venture capital fund, and logistics company on the planet that drones had become something different. Not a gadget. Not a supplement to conventional warfare. A primary instrument of power.

The money has followed. The Pentagon's proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 includes $53.6 billion specifically for drone and autonomous warfare technologies, more than the entire defense budgets of Ukraine, South Korea, or Israel. 

The global market for drones as a service is currently valued at somewhere between $6 and $8 billion with some projections putting it above $150 billion by the end of........

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