ABOUT
Independent research on drones and autonomous systems.
Drone Intelligence publishes research on the drone and autonomous systems industry: who is building what, where the money is going, how regulation is changing, and what that means commercially. Our work is built from public sources, and we show them.
“Careful research, clear commercial reading, and honesty about what we do not know.”
The sector sits across defence procurement, commercial logistics, aviation regulation and technology. Much of what is written about it is either promotional or very narrow. We try to read across those areas and explain how they connect.
We follow regulation in the UK, EU, US and Asia-Pacific, public spending and contract awards, company funding and filings, and changes in the supply chain such as the restrictions on Chinese-made hardware in Western markets.
Our work is public-source research. We are not engineers or a certification authority, and where a question needs specialist technical or legal assessment, we say so.
OUR METHODOLOGY
How we work.
The same rules apply to everything we publish: sources ranked and named, facts kept apart from our own reading, and corrections made on the page.
PRINCIPLE 01
Sources Ranked, Not Flattened
Official records and filings outrank company statements; company statements outrank third-party estimates. Where we use a market estimate, we name the provider and treat it as an estimate, and where published figures disagree we show the disagreement rather than pick one silently.
PRINCIPLE 02
Sourced or Left Out
Figures, funding amounts and regulatory references carry a named source. If we cannot find a source for something, we leave it out. Where we go beyond the sources, we say it is our own reading.
PRINCIPLE 03
Sector Specificity
We cover one sector: hardware, software, airspace, logistics, defence and counter-UAS. Each new piece builds on what we have already read and published, rather than starting from scratch.
PRINCIPLE 04
Written for Decisions
We write for people who have a decision to make: investors, strategy teams, commercial leads. Short, structured, and clear about what is known and what is not.
COVERAGE
Six segments. One sector.
Our research covers the full autonomous systems stack, from the hardware platforms competing to replace DJI, to the airspace infrastructure that will determine where and how quickly the market scales.
Hardware Platforms
Western and NDAA-compliant manufacturers, supply chain exposure, and the post-DJI competitive restructuring of the enterprise and defence hardware markets.
Autonomy Software & AI Flight
The operating layer above the hardware: fleet management, autonomy and mission software, and which software businesses are building lasting positions.
Airspace & UTM
Traffic management infrastructure, U-space implementation, BVLOS corridor development, and the regulatory architecture that determines commercial scale.
Logistics Operators
The companies building drone delivery and cargo networks: their funding, regulatory approvals and operating models.
Defence & Government
Public procurement budgets, contract awards and the companies supplying defence and government buyers. We cover the market, not how systems are used.
Counter-UAS
Detection, tracking and defeat technologies as a market: who supplies them, who is buying, and what is being spent.
PUBLICATION
The Signal Dossier.
Our main publication. Each edition covers one development in depth: a regulatory change, a funding round, a contract or a competitive move, and what it means commercially.
Each brief sets out the question, the evidence, what it implies, and our assessment, with the sources listed.
WORK WITH US
Have a question about the sector? Get in touch.
We take on commissioned research and written briefs. Tell us the question and we will say whether public-source research can answer it.
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