GISCafe Industry Predictions for 2024  – Dedrone

By Mary-Lou Smulders, Chief Marketing Officer, Dedrone

Mary-Lou Smulders

Four Drone Industry Trends for 2024

How much did the drone industry bring in in 2023? By Statista’s estimate, it was $1.32 billion … in the consumer electronics sector alone. To say that drones remain on a growth trajectory is an early candidate for the understatement of the year. Whether it is for hobbyist use as Statista tracked, for military usage in combat zones like Ukraine, or for commercial usage, the trajectory is clear: as the FAA becomes more comfortable with the idea of drones flying beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), drones are poised to continue reshaping our world in 2024 – for both good and bad.

In this new year, we see four major trends emerging based on this drone usage explosion.

Ukraine and Middle East Conflicts Push Global Drone and Counterdrone Investment
 
There’s a new drone news story coming out of the Russo-Ukrainian War almost every day, from Ukraine’s use of naval drones to its repurposing of fertilizer-spraying drones as bombers and more. Meanwhile, drones have quickly emerged as a major component of the conflict in Gaza. Hamas used commercially-available drones to carry artillery – a technique that Ukraine has used so much, that video of it is publicly available on YouTube courtesy of the BBC. Furthermore, Houthis in Yemen are even using drones to shut down the Suez Canal and target ships heading to and from Israel in the process.

In short, countries around the world are seeing that while they may have thought they were prepared for the next phase of drone warfare, they probably aren’t as secure as they would like. Bloomberg, in its report, said as much.

But what is crucial to understand is that it is not about throwing money at long-lead technologies; rather it is about investing in drone and counterdrone technologies that can rapidly innovate and iterate to push the capabilities of the ever-advancing usage of drones. As the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have both proved, you don’t need an expensive drone to do damage, just one that’s good enough – and right now, the countermeasures being used are ften oorders of magnitude more expensive than the device causing the problem This economic mis-match is happening now, and is doomed to fail. Defense departments around the world need to quickly shift priorities from traditional development cycles to be ready.

Expect Ukraine to Emerge as a Global Leader in Drone Tech Development and Manufacturing
 
Ukraine was one of the pioneers in the use of commercial drones in military conflicts – out of necessity, and it has meant that people around the world can support Ukraine’s existential fight through charities like the Drones for Ukraine Fund. As the current conflict approaches its second anniversary, however, the country is realizing that the innovative approach it has taken to combat its much larger adversary must continually evolve to meet the drone war race of constant improvements and could even provide longer-term benefits beyond usage at home.

In fact, Ukraine plans to make itself far less dependent on aid to obtain drones both from other nations and through charity benefactors. The government has said as much, announcing that it is aiming for 11,000 medium- and long-range attack drones and one million first-person view (FPV) drones to be produced domestically in 2024. That number will not completely cover its needs, but what it will do is improve Ukraine’s capacity for drone manufacturing and innovation, further hasten development cycles and improve its efficiency, as well.

Combined with US lawmakers pushing for bans on Chinese-made drones, a vacuum will quickly emerge. DJI, for example, still manufactures over 50% of the drones sold in the US. Ukraine has an opportunity to fill that gap.

Drone Swarms Will Become a Standard Threat Vector

If it isn’t clear yet, let us state the following as plainly as possible: drones are relatively cheap and are getting cheaper AND more sophisticated. Sure, a DJI Mavic 3 will run you over $2,000; a Ryze Tello, if you can find one, clocks in at just $99, and flying it over a stadium would stop a game just as quickly as a Mavic 3 would. On the military side of things, China just announced the development of much cheaper drone jet engines, making it easier for them to produce more drones and more capable drones at lower expenditure levels.
This military push (remember, investment is going to go up anyway) provides incentives for drone manufacturers to improve drone swarming technology that can cross over to civilian applications. Drones are already capable of amazing coordinated flying for light shows. Now imagine a swarm of drones flying over a stadium carrying something, even harmless baby powder, and dropping it. The panic would be immediate and dangerous. In terms of combat applications, drones’ improved carrying capacities means that they are now even more effective bombers, and coordinated swarm campaigns could rain down devastation on a city or critical infrastructure targets in a short amount of time without effective countermeasures.

In addition to investing in better drones, the wariness around swarms means defense departments will plan and proactively acquire technology for countering both single drones and swarms.

Concerns Mount Around a Potential Grave Drone Event

If you have watched any sports match on TV over the past few years, you might have had the game paused for a drone flying over the stadium; sometimes, you may even have gotten to see the drone. But with cheaper, better drones constantly being released, the odds of more frequent drone events or a truly serious incursion are going up in the United States everyday.
Thus far, we have avoided the worst happening. As drones have become more accessible, though, criminals have gotten better at using drones for their own purposes. Take the southern border, for example. Drug cartels have used drones to smuggle narcotics across the border, and now they’re using drones as bombers, too.

While the wait on Congress to authorize more agencies to use counterdrone technology – not just the very few executive departments that currently have that authority – continues, bad actors continue to enjoy opportunities to strike. The best time to update counterdrone legislation was 2022 or 2023. The next best time is now, before something happens.

Drones are no longer just for hobbyists or the military. They haven’t been for years. But as they continue growing in ubiquity, it’s time for security professionals to be ready for drones delivering huge changes coming to the security industry.

About Author:

Mary-Lou Smulders is the CMO  Dedrone. S her Prior to that, Smulders served as CMO at financial technology company 9th Gear Technologies as well as at crisis communication systems leader AtHoc.  As part of twenty-year career in enterprise software, Smulders  served as Senior Vice President of Global Applications and Services Marketing for Oracle Corporation and has advised on strategic transformation initiatives at Booz & Co. Early in her career, she was an engineer on multiple oil rigs for ExxonMobil and Shell Oil.

Category: Industry Predictions

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2024 at 3:02 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.