By Joe Brock
SINGAPORE, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Several U.S. drone firms made their debuts at the Singapore Airshow this week, seeking to expand their business beyond the Pentagon to countries in Asia that are increasingly concerned about the threat posed by China’s military build-up.
The lethal success of drones on both sides of Russia’s war in Ukraine has sparked a surge of Silicon Valley investment in drone and military artificial intelligence startups, boosting the valuations of U.S. firms like California-based Anduril Industries and Shield AI.
This wave of interest in the next generation of warfare is reshaping the character of major air shows that have been long-dominated by gleaming commercial airliners, daredevil fighter jets and troop-carrying helicopters.
Drones – from palm-sized quadcopters built for kamikaze strikes to unmanned fighter jets – have moved from the margins to centre stage as military commanders, politicians, intelligence officers and defense industry executives converged this week to assess which technologies might give them the edge in a future conflict in the Pacific.
Though most drones used by Ukraine are domestically produced, companies like Anduril, Shield AI, El Segundo, California-based Neros Technologies and Virginia-headquartered AeroVironment have supplied Kyiv with weapons.
Now these companies are aiming to persuade militaries in Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, South Korea, and Japan that their early battlefield experience and initial Pentagon backing prove they can deliver the cutting-edge systems needed as China builds its military presence in the region.
“They’re looking for the ability to conduct intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance operations while GPS and communications are jammed … it’s what we’re offering to a number of different countries in the region,” Shield AI’s co-founder Brandon Tseng told Reuters at the Singapore show.
Shield AI, whose 9-foot-long (2.7 m), roughly $700,000 V-BAT reconnaissance drone has logged hundreds of hours in Ukraine, announced at the show that it will supply Singapore’s ST Engineering with Hivemind, its AI autonomy software suite for unmanned systems.
ASIA OFFICES OPENING UP
Anduril, which has several Pentagon contracts and was valued at $30 billion in a private fundraising last year, opened offices in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan in 2025. It has secured sales of its Altius loitering munition drones to Taiwan.
Alongside their smaller drones, Anduril and Shield AI showcased models of sleek, stealth‑styled Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), which are around $30 million per unit “loyal wingman” fighter-jet drones designed to fly alongside next-generation manned fighters.
Major U.S. defense firms including Boeing, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are also developing CCAs.
Neros, which has a U.S. Marine Corps contract for its small Archer quadcopter attack drone, aims to establish factories in South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore and Japan to build stockpiles of expendable, explosive-laden drones that could help overwhelm Chinese forces in the event of a Taiwan Strait conflict, said the company’s Asia growth lead, Kenneth Inocencio.
“Imagine you’re a (Chinese) trooper. You’re about to board your landing craft … 5 kilometres (3 miles) away, your landing craft gets hit by 30 Neros Archers. Some of them (below) the water line. Your landing craft sinks like a few kilometres away from the beach,” Inocencio told Reuters.
Neros, which produces up to 200 drones a day at its El Segundo factory, won a contract last year from a coalition of countries to supply 6,000 Archer drones to Ukraine.
U.S. firm Red Cat, which will supply the U.S. Army with its Black Widow short-range reconnaissance quadcopter, announced at the Singapore Airshow that it had received an order for the drone from an unnamed Asia‑Pacific country.
“Because of regional conflicts and uncertainty with China and their intentions, a lot of Asia-Pacific allies are tooling up, a handful of them in a big way,” said Stayne Hoff, Red Cat’s director of business development, Asia-Pacific.
(Reporting by Joe Brock; Editing by Jamie Freed)
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