PDW is scaling attritable drone manufacturing into a distributed frontline strike system

PDW closed more than $110 million in Series B financing on March 25, 2026, with Ondas leading and Hood River, Cedar Pine, Hanwha Asset Management's venture fund, and Booz Allen Hamilton participating. The financing followed the production launch of PDW's Attritable Multirotor strike platform, tying the round directly to software development, production capacity, and delivery of modular military drones.

The industrial base is Drone Factory 01 in Huntsville, Alabama, a 90,000-square-foot facility opened in August 2025 for engineering, design, manufacturing, flight testing, and final assembly under one roof. PDW lists planned monthly capacity at 350 C100 multi-mission platforms and 5,000 AM-FPV systems, with the facility built around U.S.-based production and reduced foreign-component exposure.

PDW combines professional drone racing engineering, defense software work, and U.S. Special Operations feedback inside a tactical sUAS company. Ryan Gury is CEO, Trevor Smith is chief strategy officer, and James Slider is president and chief operating officer. The product logic is fast repair, modular payloads, tactical communications, and software that links small strike drones with larger ISR and relay platforms.

AM-FPV is the short-range strike node, with swappable arm configurations, universal payload interfaces, up to 25 minutes of flight time, a 5-pound payload capacity, and a 120-second deployment window. C100 Defense supplies ISR and relay capability around the smaller aircraft, extending AM-FPV operation beyond 20 kilometers while carrying longer ISR flight time and payload options such as Trillium HD40-LVV, PDW Vision Payload, and DragonEye2.

The validation record is stronger than a launch alone. PDW's 9 Mile campaign ran 114 flights over three days in Texas, with C100 command-and-control distances up to 20 kilometers, AM-FPV beyond-visual-line-of-sight operation through a Doodle Labs mesh network, and C100 autonomous flights without GPS navigation. UK Ministry of Defence target-designation trials also paired C100 with a Leonardo DRS STAG 5 laser target designator for ground-launched APKWS rockets.

The competitive field includes AeroVironment, Anduril, Skydio, Red Cat, Shield AI, Teledyne FLIR Defense, foreign FPV supply chains, and internal military drone programs. PDW's distinction is the attempt to industrialize attritable drone production around U.S. manufacturing, tactical software, and a relay/strike stack. Public material still does not disclose delivered unit counts by customer, combat-use performance, production yield, or sustainment burden. If Drone Factory 01 converts test results into volume deliveries, PDW becomes a distributed frontline drone supplier rather than a specialist UAS developer.

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