Washington Wants American Drone Production to Scale; PR for Neoprimes Is Now Part of the Supply Chain

In December 2025, the FCC added every foreign-produced drone and critical drone component to its Covered List, acting on a White House interagency finding that they posed an unacceptable national security risk. That means foreign-made drone models and even their components can no longer get the authorization needed to be imported or sold here.

Weeks earlier, the Pentagon had launched Drone Dominance, a $1.1 billion program to buy hundreds of thousands of American-made small drones by 2027 while pushing unit prices from $5,000 toward $2,300.

This tracked with the Administration’s desire to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. However, the mandate for drone manufacturers was super abrupt, requiring U.S. companies to fill the gap against a wartime-paced clock.

At a March Senate Armed Services hearing, Chairman Roger Wicker accurately said the country is years behind the drone manufacturing curve. For instance, Ukraine builds hundreds of thousands of drones a month. And China’s drone brands hold more than 90 percent of the global drone market.

That creates a unique problem for our Department of War. The U.S.’ dependence on exquisite, high value but low volume munitions is, as the Iran conflict’s “missile math” problem has shown, untenable. Iran has exposed a huge vulnerability in our defense capabilities: The U.S. is using million-dollar anti-ballistic missile interceptors to defend against relatively cheap, $20,000 one-way attack drones.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, we’ve burned through almost half our inventory of interceptors built for incoming ballistic munitions. They’re not meant for knocking down swarms of cheap, slow and destructive one-way attack drones. The US’ current drone defense is expensive, obsolete, and a liability for us and our allies. We need an alternative that affordably and reliably meets and defeats the threat.

True to our nature, U.S. industry has quickly responded. The Pentagon has shifted its total reliance on legacy defense prime contractors to include a cadre of nimble, forward-leaning manufacturers. Consider this, by the middle of 2026, defense startups have raised more than $14.6 billion, well above 2025’s record $9.6 billion. That means hundreds of new firms representing the best in American ingenuity are rising to the new challenges of warfare.

For instance, Anduril closed a $5 billion Series H funding round at a $61 billion valuation in May. Ondas has almost monthly within the past year executed on an aggressive defense company acquisition tear. Shield AI has raised $1.5 billion at $12.7 billion. And Seasats sold more than $24 million in unmanned surface vehicles to U.S. military customers this past August alone.

The defense industry calls companies like these neoprimes. PR shops should consider them the future. There is a long line of semi-autonomous and fully autonomous manufacturing firms across air, sea, and ground lining up to bolster our security in a quickly changing geopolitical landscape. They deserve attention because they’re addressing defense manufacturing problems that have evolved faster in the past 18 months than they had in the past hundred years. This is a moment in time and history where exponential technologies are defending the world against threats to peace and prosperity. PR needs to lean into the effort.

Reputation is currency

Program managers, service buyers, Hill staff, investors, and the engineers these firms need to hire all read the same publications. A startup nine months out of stealth that wants a program of record can’t wait for the market to discover it. The Pentagon even posts Drone Dominance Gauntlet rankings publicly, which means performance is on public display.
The companies showing up in DefenseScoop, Breaking Defense and The War Zone with real results are the ones buyers suddenly know because they see their name in print. PR pre-conditions procurement officials through brand and performance recognition to act when the next Pentagon ask goes public.

Is it really “Made in America?”

It’s clear we’ve outsourced our supply chains to adversaries for too long. Critical components like rare earth magnets for electric motors almost exclusively come from China and other foreign peer competitors, and most of our manufacturing is farmed out overseas. We’ve lost the art of building domestically at scale.

To right-size the problem at the autonomous tech level, the White House almost overnight banned foreign drones and components; only sovereign supply chains are acceptable.

For PR reps getting into defense, you’ll need to know that one of the top five questions reporters regularly ask is, “Where do the motors, magnets, batteries, and flight controllers our military needs come from?” Manufacturers who list their domestic suppliers have a better feature story probability than those that can’t.

Funding rounds aren’t the news anymore

The media’s recent past record of covering large tech industry funding rounds doesn’t really apply in defense. There is so much money coming into the space that media attention based on dollar amounts is wildly off kilter. Coverage now relies on proof of scale: units delivered, test results, cost per unit, factory square footage, and maybe headcount.

The Pentagon has published its own price and volume targets, so reporters and analysts already know what’s coming. For example, by this past June, Drone Dominance had ordered 22,320 systems, but fewer than 3,000 had been delivered, according to Army Recognition. The new climate requires you to build messages that lean into a goal and how you’ll scale, instead of comparing against the Pentagon’s numbers.

We’re in catch up mode. The whole industry isn’t reliant on just yours or anyone else’s company; 100s of manufacturers are making the same, incremental steps which will lead to an abundance of product availability in short order.

Speed vs. Overclaiming

Autonomy invites big promises. “Fully autonomous,” “swarm-capable,” and “combat-proven” are loaded phrases defense reporters know to question during interviews. Companies can survive missed delivery dates. But blowing a capability claim that puts lives in danger will get picked up by every outlet going forward. ITAR, classification, and customer approvals already limit what these companies can say, so the job is to build the strongest honest story from what’s releasable.

Factories and neighbors

Domestic production means new plants in towns that haven’t hosted a defense manufacturer before. Local press, elected officials, and the workforce pipeline are all part of the greater communications plan. It’s important to overcommunicate and be transparent. A company announcing 500 jobs usually gets a warm welcome, but if people learn from a zoning notice that the plant will build one-way attack drones, prepare for friction. Communicate early and often whenever possible.

Every manufacturer is now playing by the White House’s new rules: build here, build fast and at volume. PR can’t make drones or produce them faster. But PR has a role in ensuring companies are believed when orders go out. Demand in this environment is such that even announcing a backlog of orders ahead of deliveries is an asset worth protecting.

Joel Richman is the founder of Escalate PR, a senior-led technology PR agency focused on defense tech, autonomy, AI, and nuclear energy.