This tech startup is putting drones in soldiers’ backpacks - Fast Company
For years, China has been beating America in combat drone innovation. Performance Drone Works is trying to bring back the competitive advantage.
Matt Higgins was at ground zero within hours of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Higgins, who was at the time working as Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s press secretary, saw the rubble—and the rebuilding—firsthand.
Twenty-three years later, Higgins gets that same feeling of unease when he looks at the war in Ukraine. Russia is developing new combat drones at record pace, bringing the state of technical warfare to a new frontier. Through his company, Performance Drone Works (PDW), Higgins aims to help Ukraine fight back.
“Ukraine raised the stakes dramatically, because it became a real-time display of the asymmetrical power of a sophisticated drone fleet,” Higgins says. “Bad actors are taking notes.”
Cofounded by Higgins, Ryan Gury, Nicholas Horbaczewski, and Trevor Smith, the Huntsville-based company developed the C100, a backpack-size drone that incorporates anti-jamming radio technology and AI tracking features to stay safe from interference.