Drone industry news from UASFeed — procurement awards, defense primes and startups, funding rounds, and the business of uncrewed systems.
At Land Forces 2026, NIOA became AeroVironment's local partner for Switchblade and AV's wider loitering-munition portfolio in Australia and New Zealand. The deal covers distribution, sustainment and growth, but it names no contract value and makes no firm commitment to build anything locally.
Read the story →At Land Forces 2026 in Perth, Shield AI and Innovaero signed an MoU to put Hivemind mission autonomy on the Australian-designed OWL loitering munition family. The software is already on the electric OWL-B ahead of flight tests, but no deal value or ADF order has been disclosed.
Anduril's $3.7B Arsenal-2 shipyard at Sparrows Point is meant to build Virginia-class submarine parts, starting with torpedo tubes, under a Navy deal worth up to $2.9B. The president's talk of drone subs and a 40% taxpayer stake doesn't appear in any official release.
Oregon Remote ID maker Zing Drone Solutions is evaluating Wi-Fi/BLE modules from Seoul's NUCODE under a new MOU, but the FCC's foreign-component rule has no ally carve-out, and nobody has said whether a general-purpose radio counts as a drone critical component.
Northrop's company-funded YFQ-48A Talon Blue flew itself from taxi to landing at Mojave on Oct. 3, about 15 months after concept, and it now goes after an Air Force CCA Increment 2 competition whose requirements are still undefined.
Textron Aviation and Merlin revealed the SkyCourier UX, an uncrewed cargo variant of the Cessna SkyCourier built for autonomous short-field delivery in contested military logistics.
Saronic broke ground Sept. 30 on Port Alpha at the Port of Brownsville, Texas: a $3B-plus private shipyard on 835 acres designed to build autonomous and manned ships, with operations targeted as soon as 2028.
Powerus was expected to close its reverse merger with Nasdaq-listed Aureus Greenway on Oct. 1 and trade as PUSA, but its headline $90M Air Force deal is a ceiling, not guaranteed revenue.
Amprius's Pentagon agreement is worth up to $75M, but its SEC filing shows only about $22M obligated so far, and the production line to be converted is run by an unnamed South Korean manufacturer.
Matternet's new M3 carries 11 lb over a 10-mile radius and targets commercial service in 2H 2027, but no FAA airworthiness criteria for it have been published, and the M2's took 22 months from proposal to final.
Quantum Cyber N.V. narrowed its defense platform to interceptor drones, a jam-resistant "quantum antenna," and swarm software, anchoring the pivot to an 80-unit 3D-printing line in Bridgeport, Connecticut, with a stated goal of 100,000 drones a year.
The Army has picked American startup Vulcan Elements to supply the neodymium magnets for SkyFoundry's drone motors, another link in an effort to build a small-drone supply chain with no Chinese components.
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