The table

AI Share of Answer, by company.

Share of Answer is the percentage of the 40 scored answers that name the company or one of its products. Recommended is the share that explicitly put it forward. Position is where in the answer it first appears (1 = named first). First edition — week-over-week change appears from the second run.

US Drone Industry AI Visibility Index · run 2026-09-28 · Claude + Gemini
#	Company	Share of Answer	Claude	Gemini	Recommended	Avg. position	Δ vs last run
1	AeroVironment	72.5%	80%	65%	50%	3.4	new
2	Anduril Industries	62.5%	60%	65%	33%	5.1	new
3	Shield AI	45.0%	45%	45%	23%	7.3	new
4	Northrop Grumman	40.0%	40%	40%	8%	8.2	new
5	Red Cat Holdings	40.0%	45%	35%	23%	5.4	new
6	Kratos Defense & Security Solutions	30.0%	40%	20%	8%	8.4	new
7	Neros Technologies	30.0%	25%	35%	25%	4.3	new
8	Skydio	30.0%	30%	30%	25%	2.5	new
9	Boeing / Insitu	27.5%	30%	25%	10%	7.7	new
10	General Atomics Aeronautical Systems	27.5%	30%	25%	20%	5.7	new
11	Lockheed Martin	25.0%	30%	20%	3%	9.5	new
12	Performance Drone Works	25.0%	25%	25%	13%	6.2	new
13	Textron Systems	20.0%	20%	20%	13%	4.6	new
14	Firestorm Labs	7.5%	10%	5%	3%	6.0	new
15	Edge Autonomy	5.0%	5%	5%	3%	8.5	new

One sample per question per engine per week, so each company's number moves in steps of about 2.5 points per answer. Read it as a ranking with wide error bars, not a stock price. Per-engine columns are that engine's own share; the headline share pools every engine equally. The full data, including every edition, is in data.json (CC BY 4.0).

What the engines cite

Where the answers come from.

Domains the engines cited while answering, ranked by how many of the 40 answers cited them. A roster company's own site is tagged; everything else is the third-party coverage that actually decides visibility.

defensenews.comthird-party7 answers
defensescoop.comthird-party4 answers
en.wikipedia.orgthird-party4 answers
modalai.comthird-party4 answers
congress.govthird-party3 answers
defence-blog.comthird-party3 answers
insideunmannedsystems.comthird-party3 answers
interestingengineering.comthird-party3 answers
airandspaceforces.comthird-party2 answers
app.govly.comthird-party2 answers

The 20 questions

What we asked.

Written the way buyers ask, never naming a roster company. The set is frozen: changing a question changes the denominator for everyone, so additions become a new index edition, not a quiet edit.

Small UAS (Group 1–2)Which American companies make small drones the U.S. Army is buying for infantry squads and platoons right now?
Small UAS (Group 1–2)Which U.S. manufacturers build NDAA-compliant, Blue UAS-listed quadcopters for the military and federal agencies?
Small UAS (Group 1–2)I'm a Marine Corps requirements officer. Which U.S. vendors should I look at for a hand-launched ISR drone a rifle company can carry?
Group 3+ and MALE platformsWhich U.S. companies build runway-independent Group 3 drones for maritime and expeditionary ISR?
Group 3+ and MALE platformsWho are the American manufacturers of medium-altitude long-endurance military drones today?
Group 3+ and MALE platformsWhich companies are competing to replace the Army's aging brigade-level reconnaissance drones?
Loitering munitions and one-way attack dronesWhich U.S. companies produce loitering munitions for the Department of Defense?
Loitering munitions and one-way attack dronesWho makes low-cost one-way attack drones in the United States, and which have been fielded?
Loitering munitions and one-way attack dronesWhich vendors are involved in the Army's Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance (LASSO) effort?
FPV, attritable mass and ReplicatorWhich American companies can supply military FPV drones at scale, similar to what Ukraine is using?
FPV, attritable mass and ReplicatorWhich companies have been selected under the Pentagon's Replicator initiative for attritable autonomous systems?
FPV, attritable mass and ReplicatorWhich U.S. drone startups are best positioned to benefit from the Pentagon's push for drone dominance and mass production of cheap drones?
FPV, attritable mass and ReplicatorWhich U.S. companies can manufacture military drones in the tens of thousands per year without Chinese components?
Autonomy software and collaborative combat aircraftWhich companies provide the autonomy software that lets military drones operate without GPS or a data link?
Autonomy software and collaborative combat aircraftWhich companies are building Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones for the U.S. Air Force?
Autonomy software and collaborative combat aircraftWhich U.S. companies are working on drone swarms for the military?
Buyer and market questionsWhat are the top U.S. defense drone companies, and what is each one known for?
Buyer and market questionsWhich publicly traded U.S. companies have meaningful military drone businesses?
Buyer and market questionsWhich U.S. drone makers also sell counter-UAS or interceptor drones to the military?
Buyer and market questionsI run a DoD program office standing up a new unmanned aircraft program. Which American vendors should be on my shortlist and why?

Methodology

How the number is made.

The metric

AI Share of Answer = scored answers that name the company ÷ all scored answers, as a percentage. Every question carries equal weight; every engine carries equal weight. It is a plain mention rate — it is not prominence-weighted, and it says nothing about whether what the engine said was accurate or flattering.

The instrument

Engines: Claude (claude-sonnet-5), Gemini (gemini-3.5-flash), each called through its official API with web search enabled, so the answers reflect what a signed-in user of the consumer product would see on that day. Each edition states which engines ran.
Sampling: 20 questions × 2 engines, one sample each per weekly run = 40 scored answers per edition. Answers that fail or return nothing are excluded from the denominator; the edition only publishes when every engine returned at least 90% of its answers.
Scoring: a separate model reads each answer against the roster's names, product names and domains and records who was named, in what order, and whether the answer recommended them. A brand counts only if it is named or linked in the answer text itself — not because a search result was retrieved behind the scenes.
Roster: 15 U.S. companies that design and build uncrewed aircraft systems for defense buyers — primes with UAS lines, the established mid-tier, and venture-backed entrants. No company paid to be listed and none can pay to be removed. Suggest an addition and it goes into the next edition, never the current one.
Cost and cadence: the index re-runs every Monday. This edition cost $3.73 in API calls to produce.

Corrections

The page reports counts, not characterizations. If a roster entry is wrong (a product name misattributed, a domain missing, a company that no longer exists), email [email protected]. Corrections are applied to the roster and noted in the next edition.

We make true things visible. We never make false things plausible.

Everything here is public-source. No CUI, no export-controlled data, ever. NOT LOBBYING · NO COVERED-OFFICIAL CONTACTS · ACCURACY FIRST, EVEN WHEN THE ERROR FLATTERS OUR CLIENT

US Drone Industry AI Visibility Index