Valkyrie Aero

05/25/2026

This Memorial Day, we want to take a moment to honor the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to this country.

Behind every name on every wall is a family that has carried an unimaginable loss — parents, spouses, children, siblings who never stopped grieving.

Today is for them.

To the fallen: we remember you.
To the families who carry this loss every day: we see you, and we are grateful.

Please take a moment today to reflect on what this day truly means.

05/20/2026

Two stats that should be read together.

In March 2026, Russia launched more than 6,400 one-way attack drones at Ukraine — the most in any single month of the war. Ukraine intercepted 89.9% of them, the highest success rate of the war, up from 80.2% in December. Some independent analyses put the figure even higher.

That's a remarkable achievement. Ukraine has built the most experienced and effective air defense in the world, layering mobile fire teams, F-16s, electronic warfare, and interceptor drones in a way no other country has managed.

And 10% still got through.

When you launch thousands of drones a month, 10% is hundreds of successful strikes. Substations. Thermal plants. Hydroelectric facilities. Oil terminals. Cities.

This is the math of cost-imposition warfare. The defender doesn't need to be inadequate — they just need to be imperfect. And at scale, imperfect is enough.

The lesson is uncomfortable. The most experienced air defense in modern history, fielded by a country whose survival depends on it, is still letting hundreds of strikes through every month because the economics of throwing missiles at drones simply don't add up.

At Valkyrie Aero, we built around a different question. Not how do you intercept every drone — but how do you change the cost equation enough that the attacker can't sustain the campaign. Cheap interceptors. Persistent platforms. Crews who fly this mission as a profession, not an emergency response.

The defenders who win this war aren't the ones who build perfection. They're the ones who change what the attacker can afford to lose.

05/15/2026

On Sunday, March 1, 2026, an Iranian drone struck a French military base near the port of Abu Dhabi. No injuries were reported — but the broader picture of that day tells a far more serious story.

On the same day, Iranian drones and missiles struck targets across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, and Kuwait. Six American soldiers were killed at Port Shuaiba. The Ras Tanura refinery in Saudi Arabia was forced offline. A tanker transiting the Strait of Hormuz was set on fire.

The pattern is consistent. Iranian one-way attack drones, launched in waves from hundreds of miles away, targeting allied military and energy infrastructure across the region. Some get intercepted. Some get through. And even the ones that get intercepted cause damage — debris from a destroyed drone still falls on the ground it was aimed at.

This is the threat the modern battlefield is built around. Not a single sophisticated weapon. Hundreds of cheap ones, designed to overwhelm any defensive layer that wasn't built with cost-imposition in mind.

At Valkyrie Aero, we think about this as a coalition problem. The drone war doesn't care whose flag is flying — American bases, allied bases, energy infrastructure, and critical logistics are all in the same threat environment. The platforms that defend against it have to work across the same geography.

The Valkyrie Gunslinger was built for that geography. Manned. Persistent. Designed to engage one-way attack drones at the cost the threat demands. Already flying on a proven airframe in 18 countries.

The threat is moving fast. The defense has to move with it.

05/13/2026

On the morning of March 1, 2026, an Iranian Shahed-136 one-way attack drone struck a tactical operations center at Port Shuaiba, Kuwait. Six US Army Reserve soldiers were killed — the first Americans lost in the Iran war.

Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida.
Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska.
Master Sgt. Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota.
Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa.
Maj. Jeffrey R. O'Brien, 45, of Waukee, Iowa.
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert M. Marzan, 54, of Sacramento, California.

All six were assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed at a March 2 press briefing that the drone "penetrated US air defenses." It flew low, flew slow, and struck the top of the operations center directly.

The Shahed-136 has been used against power grids in Ukraine, oil refineries in the Gulf, and now against American forces deployed in the region. Cheap. Persistent. Launched in waves from hundreds of miles away.

At Valkyrie Aero, we think about this constantly — not as an abstraction, but as an obligation. The Valkyrie Gunslinger was built specifically to engage this class of threat. Manned, persistent, cost-effective, on a proven A-29 platform. Cheap interceptors against cheap threats. The math has to work.

Every American forward deserves to know the air above them is being contested by the right platform, with the right weapons, at the right cost.

That's the work. We're committed to doing it.

05/11/2026

Two days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a striking admission in a public video statement.

"A few weeks ago, I ordered the establishment of a special project to counter the drone threat. It will take time, but we are on it."

Israel operates arguably the most advanced and battle-tested layered air defense system in the world. And its Prime Minister just told the country publicly that it doesn't have a complete answer to the drone threat it's currently facing.

That matters — a lot.

The Iranian Shahed-136 has become the defining one-way attack drone of the modern battlefield. It flies low, cruises at around 130 knots, costs between $20,000 and $50,000 to produce, and carries an 88-pound warhead. It has been used to strike infrastructure across Ukraine, oil facilities across the Gulf, and military bases across the region. Iran has launched thousands of them since the war began on February 28.

When a sitting head of state — one with access to the world's best military intelligence — says this threat will take time to solve, that's the most important kind of signal in this space. It confirms what operators have been saying privately for two years.

At Valkyrie Aero, this is the gap we've been building toward. The existing fleet of fast jets and high-end interceptors wasn't designed to engage this class of weapon at scale. The Valkyrie Gunslinger was — slow enough to engage, persistent enough to loiter, and cost-effective enough to sustain.

The drone threat is real. The work to build the answer is happening. We're proud to be part of it.

05/08/2026

Something deeply concerning happened at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana this past March — and it deserves far more attention than it's getting.

For seven straight days, waves of 12 to 15 unidentified drones flew over the base. Barksdale is home to B-52 strategic bombers, nuclear-capable cruise missiles, and serves as headquarters for Air Force Global Strike Command — the command that oversees the entire U.S. ICBM force.

According to a confidential briefing leaked to ABC News, the drones had non-commercial signal characteristics, long-range control links, and were resistant to jamming. They operated directly over the flight line and exited in ways that suggested deliberate efforts to avoid detection. Analysts assessed with high confidence that the incursions would continue.

The base was forced into a shelter-in-place order. The flight line had to be shut down multiple times. Two drones were recovered — but officials weren't even sure they were the ones involved.

This isn't an isolated incident. Air Force bases from Ohio to Utah to the UK to Germany have reported similar intrusions. Langley AFB had unidentified drones circling for 17 straight nights. NORTHCOM has been warning Congress about this for over a year.

At Valkyrie Aero, we're focused on one specific piece of this puzzle: the manned air-to-air layer that can engage drones over sensitive airspace when ground-based systems aren't enough. But the bigger point stands — every installation in this country needs a layered drone defense architecture, and right now, we don't have it.

The threat isn't coming. It's already here.

05/06/2026

US Business News ran a piece that cuts right to the economic reality behind the drone war.

The argument is simple. The most expensive, technologically sophisticated fighter aircraft ever built are struggling against one of the cheapest weapons systems on the planet. A single F-16 sortie to intercept a Shahed-136 runs $450,000 or more when you count flight hours, weapons expenditure, and tanker support. The drone it's chasing costs $20,000.

That math doesn't hold up. Not over a week. Not over a year. Not over the decades this threat is going to define.

The article explores why the defense industry's default response to drones, throw more expensive interceptors at the problem, is running into hard limits. Stockpiles are finite. Missile costs are rising. And the platforms currently doing the work weren't designed for this fight in the first place.

We were honored to have Valkyrie Aero included in the reporting. The reason we built the Valkyrie Gunslinger the way we did, on a proven A-29 platform with guns and guided rockets, was to change the cost equation. A drone kill for a few thousand dollars instead of several hundred thousand. Three and a half hours on station instead of thirty minutes.

The economics of modern warfare have shifted. The defense establishment is starting to shift with them. This piece lays out why that matters.

Link here:
https://tinyurl.com/9zhdhaym

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04/29/2026

Economic Insider published a piece exploring a quiet shift happening in modern air combat.

For thirty years, the image of the fighter pilot has drifted away from its roots. Modern pilots manage systems that engage targets 100 miles away. They rarely see what they're fighting. The skills of close-quarters flying that defined aerial combat from World War II through Vietnam are still taught, but increasingly set aside.

The drone war is pulling those skills back into the cockpit.

The article walks through why the rise of cheap one-way attack drones is forcing a reconsideration of what air-to-air combat looks like at the low end. When the target is a nine-foot-wingspan Shahed cruising at 120 knots just above the treetops, you can't solve the problem with stealth or speed or BVR missiles. You need a platform that can slow down, get behind the threat, and engage with guns and guided rockets.

We were honored to be featured in the piece. It gets at something we've believed from the start at Valkyrie Aero: the future of counter-drone warfare is going to look a lot more like its past than anyone expected.

Worth a read if you're thinking about where air combat is actually heading.

04/10/2026

Thank you Military World for highlighting Valkyrie Aero's Gunslinger cUAS platform. As an operational A-27 platform, we are honored to do our part in the fight against the Shehad attack UAV threat.

Our partnership with Embraer will allow for the production of the A-29 Valkyrie Gunslinger bringing even more capabilities to the cUAS fight.

03/09/2026

We’re proud to partner with Embraer to bring our Valkyrie Gunslinger cUAS technology to the A-29 Super Tucano. Gunslinger is Valkyrie Aero’s manned cUAS platform, designed to deliver cost-effective effects against Group 2 and Group 3 unmanned aerial systems.

Tech meets tactics in Valkyrie’s proprietary AI suite, which integrates electronic warfare, weapons, and sensors into Embraer’s proven A-29 platform. This enables real-time, enhanced cUAS tactical decision-making on the battlefield, supporting the Find, Fix, Finish of unmanned threats.

Valkyrie Gunslinger is TRL 9 operational on Valkyrie’s A-27’s which are on contracts with USAF and USN.

| Embraer and Valkyrie Aero are partnering to bring cutting-edge, Artificial Intelligence‑enabled Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) capabilities to the A-29 Super Tucano through Valkyrie’s Gunslinger. It’s AI (Artificial Intelligence) suite further enhances the A-29 C-UAS capabilities that currently rely on existing, integrated sensors. The A-29 equipped with Gunslinger offers extremely effective and low-cost counter drone capabilities, leveraging the Super Tucano’s advanced tandem cockpit, extended loiter time, and agility. Read full news: https://bit.ly/4rbyRtA


| A Embraer e a Valkyrie Aero anunciaram hoje uma parceria para trazer tecnologias de última geração, com utilização de Inteligência Artificial, para potencializar as capacidades de combate a Sistemas Aéreos Não Tripulados (C-UAS) do A-29 Super Tucano por meio do sistema Gunslinger. Com sistema IA aperfeiçoando as decisões contra os C-UAS no campo de batalha suportando a detecção, rastreio e neutralização de ameaças não tripuladas. O A-29 equipado com o Gunslinger oferece capacidades C-UAS extremamente eficazes e de baixo custo, aproveitando o avançado cockpit do Super Tucano, juntamene com sua ótima autonomia e agilidade. Leia notícia completa: https://bit.ly/4srgEsZ