Last month U.S. Drone builders Powerus announced they were teaming up with Ukraine’s Swarmer, makers of swarming software. This will give Powerus an advantage in the competition to supply the Pentagon with FPV drones.
Swarming looks like the future. But, as Brett Velicovich, Powerus President and experienced Delta Force drone operator told me, smart software does not replace human pilots but amplifies them.
“Swarming is a force multiplier,” says Velicovich. “It’s not about taking the human out of the loop.”
One Ace Pilot, Many Drones
Powerus is one of 48 companies in competition in the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance Program to rapidly ramp up production of low-cost FPV attack drones. The U.S currently produces perhaps 50,000 drones a year, and rapid escalation is needed match the millions made yearly by Russia and Ukraine.
But as Velicovich notes, the U.S. does have the drone operators to handle such a fleet.
“Every single drone will have to have some sort of swarm technology,” says Velicovich. “Otherwise we just will not have enough pilots.”
The technology pioneered by Swarmer allows one operator to control a set of reconnaissance and attack drones. The swarm flies itself, giving the pilot multiple eyes in the sky, and multiple munitions to call down at will.
“Right now our greatest resources are the pilots,” says Velicovich. “When striking a target with an FPV, about 99% of that is on the pilot and just a little bit on drone. Swarming gives an operator ability to hit a target from multiple different directions at once.”
Swarmer’s collaborative autonomy technology has been used for over100,000 missions in Ukraine, and the company has built up a level of trust. After some bad experiences with early AI which promised a lot and failed to delivery, FPV operators are wary of automated systems. But Swarmer has built up a reputation for effectiveness, and when the company launched an IPO in the U.S., the share price went up eightfold in the first day of trading.
Swarmer typically includes a hardware device the size of a smartphone. This can be retrofitted, but Velicovich believes integrating this proven technology into their drones will give them a big head start over the competition. He notes that of the other Drone Dominance contenders, only Auterion can offer swarming capability, which he believes will be essential for U.S. small drone operations.
“It’s battle-tested,” says Velicovich. “It’s been proven in Ukraine, the greatest drone warfare laboratory on Earth. That’s very important when you need to persuade U.S. officials that it is going to work every single time.”
Velicovich knows the value of battle-tested weapons, having served in Iraq and Afghanistan, documenting his experiences in a 2017 book, Drone Warrior: An Elite Soldier’s Inside Account of the Hunt for America’s Most Dangerous Enemies. Somewhere along the line he acquired the soubriquet of “world’s most dangerous drone expert.”
He is impressed by the capabilities of modern commercial drones compared to the military hardware he used in the early 2000s. But while a 2026 quadcopter has more on-board intelligence than the original Predator he operated, he does not see AI replacing pilots any time soon.
“Technology like Swarmer is about giving the pilot more tools,” says Velicovich.
Why $5,000 For An FPV Is A Gift
Some analysts believe that it is not realistic to expect U.S. companies to make FPV drones for the $5,000 that the Drone Dominance competition currently calls for.
FPVs may only be $500 in Ukraine, but this is because they are largely made from Chinese components and labor is cheap, or in the case of volunteers, free. Further, the price does not include a warhead which is typically an old RPG warhead from stockpiles at zero cost.
U.S designs need to follow Pentagon rules about imported components, have high labor costs, and have to meet demanding military specifications. The warhead needs an approved electronic safe and arm device, which is a significant expense. Factors like these are why the Marine Corps’ LASSO killer quadcopter costs more like $70k.
But to Velicovich, $5k for an FPV sounds generous.
“We currently sell hundreds of FPVs to the U.S. military and they are nowhere close to $5k,” says Velicovich,
As he sees it, the $5k is a way of rewarding whoever can produce an effective solution, giving them money to scale up their operation and further improve the technology. It’s a way of building up good suppliers.
“China subsidizes, their drone industry, Russia subsidizes theirs, the only way for the U.S. to get ahead is if the government helps drone manufacturers,” says Velicovich. “That sort of price is a gift for whoever wins. If you put the incentives in, you make a healthy market.”
So this sort of award is an essential boost to a sector which has been lagging behind the competition.
“We need to catch up and build the US drone industrial base at the speed of war,” says Velicovich.
Important Supporters
Technology is not standing still, and Powerus is working to add capabilities which go far beyond the Pentagon’s current basic requirements and what Swarmer adds. This will likely include features such as advanced autonomous flight and automated target recognition. As AI advances, drones will become ever more capable.
Powerus has some high-profile supporters, including Eric and Donald Trump Jr., and a recent $30m investment from Unusual Machines indicates credibility inside the industry. The firm’s interceptors have proved themselves in Ukraine and the Air Force is now buying them at scale.
This week, the company displayed Guardian-1 interceptor drones launching remotely from a container on a robot boat in Ukraine. There is an obvious path here to containerized drones launched from all types of land, sea and air vehicles and controlled by remote operators.
Velicovich is in a better position than most to see the future of drone warfare, having been involved in its early stages in Iraq and Afghanistan and its evolution in Ukraine. His vision of swarms of low-cost drones controlled by a handful of elite operators combines established technology with hard-won battlefield experience. It is not just about better drones: it’s about giving the maximum advantage to the pilots who are the military’s most valuable resource.
