December 3, 2025: A trio of American teenagers spent two years developing their drone building hobby into an operation that produces 2,000 FPV drones a month with plans to a thousand drones a day. Now in their twenties, the three partners found ways to reduce costs and increase capabilities of their Neros drones. One of the partners encountered some Ukrainians on social media and that led to Ukraine purchasing 6,000 Neros drones. This led to investors pledging millions of dollars so Neros can increase production to a thousand or more drones a day. That could make Neros the largest producer of military drones in the United States. It all depends on other firms getting into the drone production business. Currently, American drone producers turn out about 100,000 drones a year.

It was Ukrainian innovation and encouragement of entrepreneurship that regularly overwhelmed Russian forces. Drones were an unexpected development that had a huge impact on how battles were fought. Drones were successful because they were cheap, easily modified, and expendable. Modifications and upgrades could be implemented quickly and inexpensively Both Russian and Ukrainian forces were soon using cheap quadcopter drones controlled by soldiers a few kilometers distant using FPV/First Person View goggles to see what the video camera on the drone could see. These drones cost a few hundred dollars each with the most complex models going for about a thousand dollars. Most of these drones carry a small amount of explosives, so that they can instantly turn the drone into a flying bomb that can fly into a target and detonate. Some drones carry more explosives depending on what is needed to deal with a target.

These drones are awesome and debilitating weapons when used in large numbers. A major limitation to the expansion of drone operations is the need for trained drone operators. Ukraine found that many soldiers played video games a lot and were quick to adapt to drone operation, especially because they could use commercial game controllers.