Yes, I would predict that. My understanding for high-end military drones, which to be clear cost $100k+ each, the US is undisputedly the world leader. You linked to a random subreddit for consumer drones, which of course have almost nothing to do with the specific point of the U.S. being ahead on the cutting edge frontier.
My understanding is that American military technology is extremely expensive, and also at the frontier miles ahead of the competition. The thing you linked at are not at all in a comparable market (and again, yes, if mass production might turn out to be a bottleneck things are different, but I am disputing the cutting-edge point, not the mass production point).
Read the other link about how Ukraine preferred their consume-derived drones to the high-end military drones, which indeed cost 100k+ but nevertheless sucked.
Tbc this is just one link but I’ve seen this sentiment across several platforms.
That link is helpful! It does seem like cost was one of the big complaints, though other quality complaints also seemed pretty substantial.
Reading what is implied by the transcript, it seems like what happened is that the U.S. has not had that much investment into small + cheap drones, which is the market segment that ukraine really wanted. The big battle-tested drones probably worked, but really weren’t what Ukraine needed or wanted.
I also got a sense that most of the drones that didn’t perform well were from new private companies in the US. It’s a bit unclear to me how much that reflects what the US cutting edge ability is.
My current prediction is that by the end of 12 months, the best small drones will be U.S. manufactured, though far from price-competitive with other country’s drones. To be clear, I am not super confident on this. My guess is it’s also already true, it’s just not what Ukraine currently needs given their economic position.
Relevant sections of the transcript for convenience:
Heather Somerville: Starting about two years ago at the onset of the war in Ukraine, many US startups shipped their drones to Ukraine, and things went very poorly right from the start. They were very glitchy. They were very fragile in this electronic warfare environment, and these drones could not perform. Oftentimes, they couldn’t even take off. If they took off, they couldn’t complete missions, they couldn’t return home. They lost the signal between the pilot and the drone, and the drones fell out of the sky. This happened time and again. And they could not carry heavy payloads, in this case being an explosive, a grenade or something else that you drop on the enemy to blow them up. And that, of course, was a problem. They were very difficult to repair, they didn’t have parts for them. And that’s a lot of problems to contend with if you’re a Ukrainian soldier on the front lines.
Alex Ossola: US companies have made drones for a while. Why is Ukraine a particularly notable test?
Heather Somerville: Ukraine is the first war where small drones are very prominent. We’ve seen small drones being used by militias, by terrorist organizations before this, but this is the largest scale, the largest theater where they have played an extremely prominent role. And there’s also the rush among American corporations to try to help the Ukrainians. And in the beginning of the war, they could very easily find Ukrainian soldiers who were like, “Yeah, give me it. I’ll take anything.” And so, they had willing partners to use their drones, and these American companies thought, this will be our badge of being battle-tested, and we’ll start getting orders. We’ll be able to sell to the US military, to allied militaries. This is going to be great. And none of that panned out.
Alex Ossola: How much have US drone startups received in venture capital funding?
Heather Somerville: I estimated about $2.5 billion has been invested by venture capitalists into drone technology startups in the US in the last 24 months. So, they’re getting money, but that only lasts so long, of course, at a certain point, you need to start to make money. And having a customer continues to be a big problem for these companies that cannot sell to hobbyists. And that is because China has dominated the hobbyist industry. They can sell some to police officers and fire departments and search and rescue crews, and that’s great, but you only need so many drones for that purpose. They can sell some to utility companies and farmers who want to survey the land from the sky, but they were hoping that the cash cow would be the DoD with its big, huge budget, and there’s no indication that is the direction that this is going.
Alex Ossola: What will it take for US-produced drones to do better on the battlefield.
Heather Somerville: They have to reimagine what they’re building. And in the case of company Skydio, this is a drone company where I am in Silicon Valley, that’s raised a lot of money. They have built a new drone. They tell us that they have fixed the problems. They’re very clear that this is based on feedback largely from the Ukrainians, and they say it’s going to function in the electronic warfare environment. There’s another company in Utah called Teal Drones that says it has a drone there that is working and is hopeful the Ukrainians will buy it in large number. So, we’ll see if these companies make good on this.
Doesn’t this predict the US would currently produce the world’s best drones? Which by pretty universal acclaim is simply not true.
Or consider, for instance, the drones that American companies sent to Ukraine, which were largely duds.
Yes, I would predict that. My understanding for high-end military drones, which to be clear cost $100k+ each, the US is undisputedly the world leader. You linked to a random subreddit for consumer drones, which of course have almost nothing to do with the specific point of the U.S. being ahead on the cutting edge frontier.
My understanding is that American military technology is extremely expensive, and also at the frontier miles ahead of the competition. The thing you linked at are not at all in a comparable market (and again, yes, if mass production might turn out to be a bottleneck things are different, but I am disputing the cutting-edge point, not the mass production point).
Read the other link about how Ukraine preferred their consume-derived drones to the high-end military drones, which indeed cost 100k+ but nevertheless sucked.
Tbc this is just one link but I’ve seen this sentiment across several platforms.
That link is helpful! It does seem like cost was one of the big complaints, though other quality complaints also seemed pretty substantial.
Reading what is implied by the transcript, it seems like what happened is that the U.S. has not had that much investment into small + cheap drones, which is the market segment that ukraine really wanted. The big battle-tested drones probably worked, but really weren’t what Ukraine needed or wanted.
I also got a sense that most of the drones that didn’t perform well were from new private companies in the US. It’s a bit unclear to me how much that reflects what the US cutting edge ability is.
My current prediction is that by the end of 12 months, the best small drones will be U.S. manufactured, though far from price-competitive with other country’s drones. To be clear, I am not super confident on this. My guess is it’s also already true, it’s just not what Ukraine currently needs given their economic position.
Relevant sections of the transcript for convenience: