Drones Summit
Drones Summit
World Technology Forum — Drones Summit
The US Army handed Anduril a $20 billion, ten-year contract to build the country's counter-drone shield; global governments spent over $53 billion on anti-drone systems in eight months; and cheap drones now cause roughly 80% of casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian war. On the commercial side, Washington quietly blocked the world's dominant drone maker from selling another model here. The Drones Summit convenes the manufacturers, defense primes, delivery networks and regulators reshaping who builds, flies and shoots down the aircraft nobody needs a pilot's licence for.
$63.6B
Global drone market size, 2026 (Drone Industry Insights)
33
Companies, programmes and regulators in the directory
12
Countries represented at headquarters level
$53B+
Global counter-drone spending, first 8 months of 2026
Few markets show a wider spread between research firms than drones — a single "2026" figure ranges from under $10 billion to nearly $100 billion, because "drone market" means something different to each analyst house.
Grand View Research's broader hardware-plus-services definition puts 2026 at $96.4B, rising to $182.4B by 2033; Mordor Intelligence's narrower hardware-only civil segment puts the same year at just $9.29B. None of these figures is wrong — they simply draw the boundary between civil and defense, and between hardware and services, in different places.
DJI still holds 70%+ of the global market even as its US access narrows — accelerating Skydio's $3.5B domestic manufacturing build-out.
Anduril, Shield AI and Helsing are converting lessons from Ukraine into AI-piloted hardware faster than traditional defense-procurement cycles.
Zipline, Wing and Amazon Prime Air have moved past demo flights into millions of real, paid deliveries.
The FAA's Part 108 BVLOS rules, EASA's U-space, and the FCC's Covered List are simultaneously opening and closing different parts of the same sky.
In March 2026 the US Army awarded Anduril Industries a firm-fixed-price contract worth up to $20 billion over ten years for its AI-enabled Lattice counter-UAS suite, consolidating more than 120 separate procurement actions into a single framework — the largest counter-drone deal on record. It landed as Anduril's own valuation doubled to roughly $61 billion, alongside a fast-rising cohort of defense-autonomy rivals: Shield AI at $12.7 billion, already flying its Hivemind-piloted attack drones in Ukraine, and Germany's Helsing at roughly $18 billion. The urgency is not abstract. Global government spending on counter-UAS systems topped $53 billion in the first eight months of 2026 alone, with major new "drone wall" programmes announced in Poland, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Nigeria and Colombia. The reason is written in the casualty statistics from the Russo-Ukrainian War, where inexpensive commercial and militarised drones are now estimated to cause roughly 80% of all battlefield casualties — the clearest evidence yet that a $2,000 aircraft can out-argue a multi-million-dollar air-defense system.
Thirty-three manufacturers, defense primes, delivery networks, procurement programmes and regulators spanning the industry from hobby quadcopter to counter-drone shield. Filter by category, or search by name.
Revenue, contract and valuation figures reflect the most recently reported financials, government contract announcements or credible 2025–2026 industry estimates, compiled from public filings, press releases and trade coverage including Drone Industry Insights, Unmanned Airspace, DroneXL and company communications. Defense contract ceilings often represent maximum potential value rather than obligated spend. Compiled for Summit convening purposes as of September 2026 and not intended as investment research.
Four threads run through the Drones Summit programme, each mapped to the institutions in the directory above.
Chinese volume manufacturers, the US onshoring response, and the trade-policy fight now playing out at the FCC and in the Ninth Circuit.
The primes, the AI-autonomy challengers, and the procurement programmes turning Ukraine's battlefield lessons into national air-defense doctrine.
Logistics, agriculture, inspection and the passenger-drone crossover into urban air mobility.
BVLOS rules, U-space, and national registration regimes deciding how much of the sky drones are actually allowed to use.