DroneShield wins $11m purchase order with government agency
DroneShield will deliver a substantial part of the order this year with the remainder expected in March.
Drone security technology developer DroneShield (ASX: DRO) has recorded its largest purchase order to date totalling approximately $11 million from an undisclosed government agency.
The order is for several different types of DroneShield counter drone and Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) equipment.
A substantial part of the order is expected to be delivered this year, with the remainder in March next year.
Payment for each batch of products is expected to be received within a month of delivery, with proceeds spread across the March and June quarters.
DroneShield chief executive officer Oleg Vornik said the new purchase order signalled a transformational next step in the company’s growth.
“From the beginning of this company seven years ago, have demonstrated a consistent progression, first by building and refining our product suite along with a global distributor network, then moving to customer demonstrations, initial smaller sales, repeat million-dollar sales and now moving into the high-millions territory,” he said.
“Over the last 24 months, we have made a significant investment in scaling our operations, to ensure we continue to meet our customers’ delivery expectations as we rapidly scale up.”
Corporate wins
The latest contract follows a number of corporate wins for DroneShield in recent months.
In September, the company was appointed to the Australian Department of Defence Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare standing offer panel which supports and enables the procurement of a range of security services and equipment.
The following month, DroneShield was recommended by the US Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office (JCO) as part of the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) team’s joint solution for C-UAS as a Service (CaaS).
The multi-layered, comprehensive solution leveraged a number of DroneShield’s dismounted, mobile, and fixed-site detection sensors and electronic countermeasures.
November project
In November, DroneShield and partner Quantum Research International were awarded a Small Business Innovation Research project by the US Department of Defence to investigate the use of machine learning algorithms in creating electronic signatures for UAS identification and continuous surveillance of UAS and drone threats.
Also in November, DroneShield welcomed a $3.7 million investment from US defence technology company Epirus Inc to develop software-defined directed energy systems to optimise power efficiency in defence and commercial applications.
The investment took place via the placement of 18.5 million fully paid ordinary shares in DroneShield at $0.20 each, giving Epirus a 4.1% shareholding in the company.