Neros

Neros entered the Pentagon's mass-drone programme as a Phase 1 runner-up and is now the test case for whether commercial FPV production can clear US military acceptance standards. The company shipped all 2,400 ARCHeR drones contracted under Phase 1 but only 1,040 (43%) passed the acceptance gate, making Neros the defining data point in a programme that finished roughly 10,000 units short of its 30,000 target . The result triggered Phase 2 price caps of $4,500 (long-range strike) and $3,500 (urban assault) and an August 2026 Deadline to remove Chinese motors and batteries from all contracted platforms.

Founded in 2023 and headquartered in El Segundo, California, Neros was co-founded by Soren Monroe-Anderson (CEO, MIT Electrical Engineering graduate, 2020 MultiGP World Champion) and Olaf Hichwa, both former professional drone racers who visited Ukraine in 2023 to study battlefield FPV requirements. Their flagship product is the ARCHeR, an 8-inch FPV quadcopter carrying a 4.5 lb payload over a 12-mile range. The company was building approximately 1,500 Archers per month, with two-thirds flowing to Ukraine and 500 per month to the US Army, Marine Corps and Special Operations Command. Total funding stands at $121 million, and the Army budgeted over $36 million for the programme in 2026 under its Purpose-Built Attritable Systems contract .

Neros sits at the intersection of the consumer drone-racing world and state-funded defence procurement. Its 87.5/100 Phase 1 Gauntlet score placed it 11.8 points behind winner Skycutter, and it returned for Phase 2 Stage 1 at Camp Grayling, Michigan (8-20 June 2026) alongside two Ukrainian firms . Phase 2 is the decisive test of whether the ARCHeR can meet tightened acceptance criteria while absorbing the supply-chain changes that the Chinese-component ban demands.