Between commercial application, consumer use, technological advancements, and military use, drones have spiked in popularity over the last decade. The global drone market is expected to grow from $28 billion in 2023 to $166.7 billion by 2031.
In the midst of popularity and innovation, AgEagle Aerial Systems Inc. looks to keep innovations expanding. AgEagle is a global UAV industry pioneer engaged in delivering a unified line of high performance flight hardware, sensors and software.
Discussing how real-time intelligence is vital to successful field operations, on behalf of AgEagle, is the company’s CEO Bill Irby. Irby has more than 25 years of senior management experience in uncrewed air and maritime systems, actuation hardware, ISR systems, and communication systems. Additionally, he is also the Chairman of the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and serves as an advisory board member of Ghost Robotics.
What is AgEagle?
AgEagle Aerial Systems Inc. is a global technology innovator focused on enhancing situational awareness by providing customer-centric, advanced robotics solutions and services. The Company is listed on NYSE American under the ticker UAVS, and is currently focused on high-performance drones, sensors, and software for automated aerial intelligence. These solutions can solve mission-critical problems for the defense industry, and additional government and commercial sectors. We have a global network of more than 200 resellers in over 75 countries worldwide and believe any customer that wants better awareness using an aerial solution should be interested in our products.
What industries does AgEagle serve and who are some of your customers?
AgEagle’s solutions deliver valuable, actionable, and data-driven insights across many industries. Some examples are defense, military, public safety, agriculture, construction, and environmental monitoring and conservation. Our customers include the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Border Patrol, French Army, as well as State Farm, Cargill, Ameren, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, BHP, and Firmatek.
Can you talk about AgEagle’s initial focus and recent strategic shift?
AgEagle was originally formed to develop professional-grade, fixed-winged unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, and also commonly called drones) and aerial imagery-based data collection and analytics solutions for the agriculture industry – hence our name. As the company grew and the technologies advanced, the team realized that many other industries could benefit from the technology, including the defense space. As a veteran and an executive with many years of experience with military technologies, I joined AgEagle in early 2024 to help lead its efforts in zeroing in on this area. Today, AgEagle is a leading provider of full-stack drone solutions for customers worldwide across a variety of industries and we are heavily focused on the defense, military, and government verticals.
What are your company’s products?
AgEagle’s professional fixed-wing drones, high-resolution drone sensors and intelligent drone software solutions are a cost-effective, efficient, and safe way to plan, capture, and process accurate aerial data. We provide high-performance fixed-wing drones, our eBee™ branded products, to conduct autonomous, safe flight operations for mapping, photogrammetry, and surveillance purposes. The eBee is ultra-light, and the eBee family of drones are the first Group 1 UAVs to be approved by the FAA for Operations Over People (OOP) and Operations Over Moving Vehicles in the U.S. as well as being NDAA-compliant. They have performed over one million flights globally, are hand-launched, and able to operate across vast distances Beyond-Visual-Line-of-Sight (BVLOS).
We also offer a wide range of drone cameras to suit every mapping job — from land surveying and topographic mapping to urban planning, crop mapping, thermal mapping, and more. AgEagle also provides complete software platforms for drones, including everything needed to automate unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operations, manage equipment and teams, fly safely, and analyze data.
How are drones used in the defense space?
As the world advances with cutting-edge technologies, we are seeing a real need for the defense industry to evolve as well. In order to be successful in field operations, militaries and defense contractors need real-time intelligence, which can be provided by high-performance drones like ours. These solutions provide the military with capabilities to rapidly map large areas autonomously for seamless coordination of forces, or for real-time surveillance, protecting operations and improving mission effectiveness in a variety of terrain. Our systems have been design and built specifically to collect and process accurate near real-time data that helps commanders define the environment, observe threats, and coordinate mission operations.
The battlefield is also increasingly using drones. Having accurate geospatial data has become critical during combat. The data can reveal area obstacles, choke points for traffic and mission operations, concealment of elements that may not be visible otherwise, fields of fire, mobility corridors, and road networks.
What are your expectations of the use of drones for the defense in the future?
I expect the use of drones will continue to increase drastically. They are more cost-effective than many other situational awareness assessment technologies. Additionally, they provide added protection for soldiers by providing valuable information and removing some risky intelligence gathering needs. With the enhanced information gathered, they are also meant to protect civilians and provide more effective combat strategies. We believe that drones are also going to progress further to provide even broader reaching services to this industry.