Cheap drones are changing war. This is how they went from a weekend hobby to a weapon.
Ryan Gury, CEO of PDW
Speaking from his home in Alabama, the "da Vinci of drones" reflects on how he unintentionally helped build a "terrifyingly powerful" weapon over the course of a decade in racing.
"Drone racing was always this pure thing, right?" Ryan Gury says.
"But in the back of our heads, I think we always knew that it was extremely powerful and dangerous."
Long before Ukrainians and Russians strapped grenades to cheap consumer drones and sent them to blow up each other's tanks, Mr Gury and other hobbyists were part of a small community that invented and fine-tuned the design for these radio-controlled flying vehicles.
The story behind the creation of the now ubiquitous cheap drone is one of innocent experiment and unintended consequences. Something built for thrills is now rewriting military doctrine…
