The New King of Combat: How Small FPV Drones Are Reshaping Modern Warfare

Small drones biggest development in combat since nuclear weapons

By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

Small, first-person view (FPV) drones are rapidly becoming the most significant weapon of modern warfare, the CEO of a technology-oriented defense contractor said in an interview.

Ryan Gury, CEO of Performance Drone Works (PDW), said the widespread and effective use of small UAVs by both sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict has marked a paradigm shift in how nations will think about and prosecute wars in the future.

“This is the most significant change in military doctrine since nuclear weapons,” Gury said. I would compare it to things like gunpower, rifles, explosives and conventional warfare mechanizations since World War II.”

Small drones have played a major role in the fighting in Ukraine since February 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of that neighboring country. As weapons systems, small FPV drones are inexpensive and portable enough that every individual combat unit can deploy them, without having to rely on big and expensive strategic weapons systems.

“We look at robotics as consumable weapons, where a single robotic system can be used one time, the same way you would use a hand grenade,” Gury said. “We think that they’re more effective than grenades, Javelins. We think that they will be the most used combat system of all time.”

In addition to the increased use of drones in warfare, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has highlighted the necessity of upgrading the radio systems needed to keep those UAVs flying and hitting their targets, he said.

“I think that people need to not just look at drones. The ways that radios are used as well on the front lines are going to vastly change. You can see that in Ukraine and Russia, where most of the high-value targets are being hit with fiber optics,” Gury said. “It’s where 20- to 30-kilometers of glass string is used to hit targets way beyond the front line.”

He said that defense contractors such as PDW are hard at work developing radio systems with the sole design and purpose of waging this new type of electronic warfare. “We think that all radio systems must evolve,” he said. “There is a huge radio industry in the United States, worth many billions of dollars, and we think all of those (systems) need to change dramatically in order to serve tactical jamming.”

Yet, despite the lessons to be gleaned from the battlefields of Ukraine and Russia, Gury said he does not believe that U.S. military planners should precisely mimic Ukraine’s strategic use of drones.

“Ukraine has proven that small drones can dominate the battlefield,” he said.  “But I do not believe that Ukraine’s technologies will meet all American requirements.  America has many requirements that we must parlay well — safety, security, scalability, lethality — and surpass what’s currently being used in Ukraine. It’s our job to evolve.”

To achieve those goals, Gury pointed to the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) Transformation in Contact program, designed to rapidly test new military technologies in real-world scenarios in order to enable the military to adapt to emerging threats quickly.

“The American DOD is incredibly adaptive,” he said. “Transformation in Contact is a vastly high-speed methodology to ensure that the products being brought into the greater army are meeting not only this new era of warfare, but the broader requirements that the U.S. has for security, safety and lethality.”

In the little over two years since the start of the war in Ukraine, the U.S. military has adapted quickly to adjust its war-fighting doctrines, to expand the role that drones will play in future conflicts. In particular, the Army’s United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) “will certainly adapt and extend their edge on the rest of the world,” Gury said.

From racing drones to combat-ready drones

Gury said he first recognized the potential applications of FPV drones and the radio systems that support them during his time as co-founder and chief technology officer of the Drone Racing League. The league’s televised drone races, carried on ESPN and NBC, pit some of the world’s best UAV pilots against each other in flying FPV drones through an obstacle course.

“In the process of developing that TV show, we had to build an industrial robotic stack, which meant radios that had to work alongside different frequencies and mitigate interference,” he said.

After several years of producing DRL events, the league began getting requests from the DOD to help train its Tier 1 forces in the use of FPV drone systems. At the first training event, Gury met DFW’s current CTO, Dylan Hamm, a former Navy Seal who was working to create a new tactical combat initiative employing small drones.

“We were building technologies that no one in the world was doing,” Gury said. “And we realized that we were in a unique position to develop a brand-new company with a massive impact.”

The founders recruited a number of veterans with extensive drone-related experience, and launched Performance Drone Works (PDW) in 2018.

“We combined a very robust small drone team that’s been around for a decade,” he said. “And we positioned them with the nation’s greatest warfighters, people who are truly experienced and have incredible experience in tactical and dynamic operations.”

Gury said he expects to see rapid growth in the defense segment of the U.S. drone industry as more companies recognize the needs of the DOD for contractors able to produce products and systems that are compliant with the National Defense Authorization Act’s requirements. He added that he welcomes the added competition for the military’s business.

“We need as many American companies working in this sphere as possible to ensure that Americans and our allies adapt and they don’t lose their edge,” he said.

“For businesses like ours that are looking for industry growth, nothing could be greater than more competition and more growth in the space. It’s just better for our country, so we like it, and we encourage it. This is the new king of combat.”

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Read more:

• PDW’s Rucksack Portable, Heavy Lift C100 Drone Added to Blue UAS List: A Step Forward in Military Drone Applications
• U.S. Army Selects New Small Uncrewed Aircraft Systems for Company-Level Use
• Anti-Jamming Drones: Enhancing Battlefield Resilience

Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.