FedSift Market Reports · No. 01Published 26 Sep 2026Data as of 25 Sep 2026
Where the Drone Money Goes
What the U.S. government actually bought under its own unmanned-aircraft code, who won it, and the pockets where buyers keep asking for sellers and not finding enough of them.
$647.2M
Obligated under PSC 1550 in FY2025 — 3.1× FY2024
460
Contract actions in FY2025, from 87 distinct vendors
70.5%
Of FY25–26 dollars taken by the top 5 vendors
2.4×
Drone notices are Sources Sought at 2.4× the government-wide rate
01 — Scope
What was measured, and what it is not
Drawn from 36,632,588 federal award records and 231,862 SAM.gov solicitation notices. Every figure below is a live query, not an estimate. Four limits matter enough to state before the numbers.
Read these four before quoting anything
PSC 1550 is a floor, not the market. It is the government's own supply code for Unmanned Aircraft — airframes and complete systems. It excludes most counter-drone hardware (which files under 334511, 5865, 332993), most payloads, and most drone services and R&D. Real total drone spend is materially larger than the $647M headline.
FY2026 is incomplete and is excluded from every trend. Award records thin out sharply after May 2026 — 5 actions in June, 1 in September — which is the USASpending reporting lag, not a market collapse. Do not read FY26 as a decline.
IDIQ ceilings are filtered out. Only definitive contracts and task orders (award types A–D) are counted, so these are obligations, not vehicle ceilings. Nothing here is inflated by a $500M IDIQ that has never been ordered against.
Bid counts are unavailable, so "struggling to find sellers" is measured differently. The offers_received field is unpopulated across this slice, so single-bid rates cannot be computed. Section 05 uses two proxies instead — Sources Sought rate against a window-matched government-wide baseline, and requirements re-posted repeatedly — both comparative, so ingest effects cancel.
02 — Size
The dollar line is lumpy. The activity line is not.
Obligations swing hard year to year because a handful of large platform awards dominate any given year. Action count and vendor count are the cleaner structural read — and they climb steadily.
Obligations under PSC 1550, by fiscal year
$ millions · definitive contracts and task orders only
761.5
118.2
141.3
241.8
164.8
212.1
647.2
n/a
FY19
FY20
FY21
FY22
FY23
FY24
FY25
FY26
FY2026 is hatched and unlabelled: its bar is drawn at the partial total recorded so far, which is incomplete reporting rather than a decline. FY2019's $761.5M is a single-year platform spike, which is why the dollar series should not be read as a trend line on its own.
Contract actions under PSC 1550, by fiscal year
count of awards · the structural signal
208
154
186
271
266
313
460
n/a
FY19
FY20
FY21
FY22
FY23
FY24
FY25
FY26
Actions rose 154 → 460 from the FY2020 trough to FY2025, a near-tripling in the number of separate buying decisions. That is the government building a habit, not placing one big order.
03 — Buyers
Nine dollars in ten are Defense
Across FY2023–FY2026 to date, the Air Force, Army and Navy together obligated $1.06B of the $1.28B visible across the top eighteen buying offices. The Army writes the most contracts; the Air Force spends the most money.
Top buying offices, PSC 1550
$ millions obligated · FY2023 → FY2026 to date
Air Force
$447.2M · 166 actions · 61 vendors
Army
$366.1M · 394 actions · 76 vendors
Navy
$251.3M · 98 actions · 40 vendors
State Department
$99.6M · 26 actions · 8 vendors
SOCOM
$37.5M · 25 actions
Energy
$34.3M · 8 actions
Customs & Border Protection
$13.3M · 43 actions
Interior
$8.3M · 124 actions
FBI
$5.1M · 30 actions
Note Interior: 124 separate actions for $8.3M — an average buy near $67K. Civil agencies buy small drones constantly and cheaply. That is a different business from selling Group 4 platforms to the Air Force, and it is reachable without a cleared facility.
04 — Winners
Five firms, seven dollars in ten
Across FY2025–FY2026, 109 distinct vendors took PSC 1550 money. The top five took 70.5% of it and the top ten took 88.2%. The remaining 99 vendors split roughly $107M. The table below runs over the longer FY2023–FY2026 window, so its rows will not sum to that share.
Vendor
$M
Actions
Buyers
Shape of the business
General Atomics Aeronautical
190.8
19
4
Large platforms, few big orders
Leidos
174.9
174
1
One Army customer, high order volume
Anduril Industries
148.2
7
3
Few, very large awards
Kratos Unmanned Aerial Systems
145.0
13
3
Target drones and jet UAS
AeroVironment
126.1
27
2
Group 1–2 tactical
Quantum-Systems
58.7
4
1
New entrant, concentrated
Northrop Grumman
55.3
6
1
Navy platform work
Insitu
54.7
47
3
ScanEagle family, sustainment-heavy
Griffon Aerospace
38.7
27
1
Targets
Ranks 10–12 by dollars are Platform Systems ($32.2M), Stream Techno ($32.0M) and AEVEX Aerospace ($27.2M). The three rows below are shown for their order volume, not their rank.
Atlantic Diving Supply (ADS)
23.2
179
19
Reseller — 19 buying offices, 179 small orders
Skydio
8.8
96
9
Small-unit sales across many customers
Shield AI
7.9
1
1
Single award
FY2023 → FY2026 to date. The first nine rows are the nine largest vendors by obligation, in order. The two rows worth studying are ADS and Skydio — 275 actions between them across 28 buying offices for $32M combined. That is the shape of the accessible end of this market: many small orders, many customers, no platform programme.
Anduril took $148.2M across seven awards. ADS took $23.2M across 179. Both are real drone businesses; only one of them is enterable this year.
05 — Where the money actually lands
Twenty-one awards are two-thirds of the money
In FY2025–FY2026, 585 contract actions carried $907.7M. Twenty-one of them — 3.6% of the awards — carried 66.7% of the dollars. Meanwhile 491 actions under $1M, 84% of all awards, split just 7.5% of the money.
Dollars vs. awards, by contract size band
share of each total · PSC 1550 · FY2025–FY2026
Share of dollarsShare of awards
Under $25K 32 vendors
0.1% of $ · $1.3M
14.5% of awards · 85
$25K – $250K 72 vendors
3.3% of $ · $30.1M
58.3% of awards · 341
$250K – $1M 21 vendors
4.0% of $ · $36.6M
11.1% of awards · 65
$1M – $10M 18 vendors
25.8% of $ · $234.1M
12.5% of awards · 73
$10M and above 12 vendors
66.7% of $ · $605.6M
3.6% of awards · 21
Both series are percentages on the same 0–70% scale, so the bars are directly comparable. The $1M–$10M band is the interesting one: 18 vendors, 73 awards, $234M — large enough to matter, small enough that a specialist without a platform programme can win one.
Which industries the money is coded to
NAICS
Industry
$M
Actions
Avg $K
336411
Aircraft Manufacturing
638.3
559
1,142
336413
Other Aircraft Parts & Auxiliary Equipment
244.4
52
4,700
334111
Electronic Computer Manufacturing
194.3
204
952
541715
R&D, Physical & Engineering Sciences
58.9
14
4,207
541330
Engineering Services
54.6
45
1,213
334511
Search, Detection & Navigation Instruments
38.0
33
1,152
332999
Misc. Fabricated Metal Products
13.5
88
153
334220
Wireless Communications Equipment
5.3
42
126
FY2023 → FY2026 to date. If you register under one code, 336411 is where 72% of the actions sit. But 336413 — parts and auxiliary equipment — averages $4.7M an award off only 52 actions, and is the code the sustainment work files under.
06 — The seller gap
Where buyers keep asking and not finding
A Sources Sought notice is a contracting officer saying, in public, we do not yet know who can do this. Across all 201,686 notices posted in 2026, 8.7% are Sources Sought. Across the 499 drone notices in the same window, 20.6% are — nearly two and a half times the rate.
Sources Sought share of notices posted in 2026
same posting window, so ingest effects cancel
Drone / UAS notices
20.6% · 103 of 499
All federal notices
8.7% · 17,547 of 201,686
Axis runs 0–25%. Drone requirements are also disproportionately early-stage overall: 20.0% are Special Notices or Presolicitations against a 13.3% baseline. Buyers are shaping these requirements in public, which is exactly the window where a vendor can still influence the spec.
The gap by theme — 517 drone notices, last 12 months
The top row is the residual category and is drawn to scale for reference; the labelled rows are the themes. Training is the control case: fifteen notices, not one Sources Sought. Where a market is mature, buyers stop asking who exists.
Aerial targets and counter-UAS sit above a third Sources Sought. In both, more than one notice in three is a buyer admitting it does not have a supplier list.
Requirements the government has re-posted again and again
A requirement posted once is routine. A requirement posted five to nine times across six months is a buying office that has not found what it needs. These are the last twelve months, ranked by how many times the same requirement went back out.
Requirement
Buyer
Postings
Span
Read
RFI — C-sUAS Kinetic Hard-Kill Solutions
Air Force
9
Mar → Aug
unmet
RFI — C-sUAS and sUAS Solutions
Air Force
8
Mar → Aug
unmet
White Papers — Organic C-sUAS Dismounted Effects
Navy
8
Jun → Aug
unmet
"Drones"
Army
8
May
re-solicited
cUAS Interceptor, 7ATC
Army
7
Jun → Jul
unmet
"Drone"
Army
7
Jul → Aug
re-solicited
Drone Targets
Air Force
6
Jul → Aug
unmet
DroneBuster 5 w/ PNT
Air Force
6
Aug → Sep
re-solicited
Uncrewed Aircraft System Marketplace (CSO)
Army
6
Mar → Sep
open call
NAWCAD (WOLF) Ship & Air Integrated sUAS
Navy
6
Feb → Mar
re-solicited
112th Signal Drones
SOCOM
6
Aug
re-solicited
RFI — Aerial Targets Branch (EBAY)
Air Force
5
Aug → Sep
unmet
Domestically Sourced Rare Earth Magnets for sUAS
Army
5
Jun
supply chain
DRAFT RFP — Force Protection C-sUAS
Air Force
5
Feb → Aug
unmet
PACAF — Small Unmanned Aircraft System
Air Force
5
Sep
re-solicited
Counter-UAS occupies six of the fifteen most-repeated requirements, and the two Air Force C-sUAS RFIs ran from March to August without converting. The rare-earth magnet notice is the one to notice: the Army posted five times for a domestically sourced component, which is a supply-chain gap rather than a systems gap.
07 — Live right now
Forty-nine drone notices are open today
As of 25 September 2026. The Army and Air Force hold two-thirds of them. Seven of the forty-nine carry a small-business set-aside.
Buying office
Open notices
Set-aside status across all 49
Count
Army
18
Unrestricted / none declared
24
Air Force
15
"No set aside used" (explicit)
18
FAA
6
Small Business Set-Aside — Total
6
Customs & Border Protection
3
SDVOSB Set-Aside (FAR 19.14)
1
Navy
3
DHS Office of Procurement Ops
1
State Department
1
Other DoD
2
The FAA showing up with six open notices is worth flagging — a civil aviation regulator buying drones is a different procurement culture from a combatant command, and it does not require a clearance.
The named niches in the open and recent pipeline
Read directly off notice titles — these are the specific things agencies are shopping for right now, not categories invented for this report:
Niche
Evidence from live notice titles
Who
Counter-UAS, kinetic
50mm weapon-based Air Defense C-UAS; 5.56mm C-sUAS ammunition; Next Generation Counter-Small UAS Missile (NGCM); cUAS Interceptor
Army, Navy
Counter-UAS, electronic
DroneBuster 5 w/ PNT; Titan 4 C-UAS; Counter Drone Detect and Defeat System; C-sUAS Mobile Solutions
Drone Marketplace Commercial Solutions Opening; UAS Marketplace Onboarding of Group 3 UAS; DoW Drone Other Transaction
CBP, Army
Civil & mission-specific
Army Blood Link (medical delivery); UAS for USACE (survey); sUAS LiDAR; Explosive Testing with UAS; UAS debris recovery, Palau; VA building drone cleaning
Army, State, VA
08 — Recompete window
$263.6M comes up for renewal in the next two years
Twenty-eight PSC 1550 contracts held by fifteen incumbents expire between March 2027 and September 2028 — inside the 6–18 month shaping window where a competitor can still influence the follow-on requirement.
Incumbent
Customer
$M
Ends
Anduril Industries
Navy
92.73
2028-01
Northrop Grumman
Navy
30.69
2027-09
Kratos Unmanned Aerial Systems
Air Force
27.76
2027-09
BAE Systems
Air Force
26.05
2027-07
Griffon Aerospace
Army
18.98
2027-03
Leidos
Army
14.35
2028-03
Insitu
Navy
9.93
2027-04
Northrop Grumman
Navy
9.54
2028-03
Anduril Industries
Energy
9.07
2027-05
General Atomics Aeronautical
Air Force
7.78
2027-09
The ten largest of the twenty-eight, in order. Incumbents win federal recompetes roughly 65–70% of the time, so the realistic play on most of these rows is teaming rather than displacement — the exception being where the incumbent is a platform prime and the scope contains a separable sustainment or payload element.
09 — Takeaways
Five takeaways for drone and counter-UAS vendors
Size
Call it "$647M and rising," never "the drone market"
That is one PSC in one year. It excludes counter-UAS, payloads and services, so it is a defensible floor — and a floor is a number that survives scrutiny.
Concentration
The platform tier is closed; the order tier is not
Top five vendors hold 70.5% of dollars. But 491 awards under $1M went to a long tail, and two of the busiest vendors are a reseller and a commercial quadcopter maker.
The gap
Counter-UAS is where buyers are visibly short of sellers
92 notices, 33.7% Sources Sought, six of the fifteen most-repeated requirements, and two Air Force RFIs that ran March to August without converting.
The second gap
Components and domestic supply chain
Rare-earth magnets posted five times. Precision motor components. Blue-list compliance. These are manufacturing problems, not aerospace problems — a different bidder pool.
Route in
Marketplaces and CSOs are the open door
CBP's Drone Marketplace and the Army's UAS Marketplace CSO are standing commercial-solutions calls with rolling onboarding. No RFP cycle to wait for.
10 — How this was built
Every number above is a FedSift query
This report was assembled from FedSift's award and solicitation index — the same data BD and capture teams use for recompete radar, incumbent analysis and Sources Sought tracking. Task-order obligations only; never IDIQ ceilings.
Run the same analysis for your PSC or NAICS code: who is winning, which contracts expire in your shaping window, and where buyers are asking for sellers.
