PDW

About

PDW, known formally as Performance Drone Works, is a defense drone manufacturer founded in 2018 and headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama. The company traces its roots to the Drone Racing League, where co-founder and CEO Ryan Gury developed expertise in high-speed, high-precision drone engineering before pivoting entirely to military and defense applications. PDW opened Drone Factory 01, a 90,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Huntsville, in August 2025, with capacity to produce up to 350 C100 multi-mission quadcopters and 5,000 AM-FPV attritable drones per month. All PDW systems, including the C100, AM-FPV, PDW SIM simulator, and PDW CORE operating software, are designed, manufactured, and tested at the Huntsville facility using a U.S.-based supply chain. More than 20 percent of the company’s workforce has prior military service.