Australian single-use drone maker eyes flying debut
As drones transform modern warfare, another drone company is about to join market leader Droneshield on the local bourse.
But Canberra-based company Boresight is a bit different from its Australian-listed peers.
Born in 2020 from Canberra-based private defense technology company Criterion Solutions, Boresight specializes in making inexpensive drones for target practice.
“We are designed to appeal to the anti-drone market, particularly people who shoot down drones,” Boresight CEO Justin Olde told AAP.
“They needed a cost-effective way to shoot down drones, but they also needed something that was a good testing and training tool.”
ASX-listed defense contractor Electro Optic Systems has become particularly adept at shooting down drones.
But Mr. Olde said it was expensive to buy $2,500 drones from JB Hi-Fi just to destroy them.
Differences in how each drone pilot flies their drone have also created inconsistencies in the testing of EOS’ anti-drone technologies.
“It needed to be accurate and repeatable and designed for a testing, evaluation and development environment rather than a guy flying a drone around, and Boresight was born from that,” Mr. Olde said.
Boresight currently has offices in Huntsville, Alabama, and Nottingham, England, and sells inexpensive drones to the militaries of 14 countries.
Its customers include the US War Department and four branches of the Australian Defense Force.
“It’s a great business model; if our customers are good at what they do, our drones fly once,” Mr. Olde said.
Boresight’s simple drones sell for “high hundreds, low thousands” of dollars.
“We have a low-cost product that we sell in volume,” Mr. Olde said.
Boresight will list on the stock exchange on Wednesday following an $8 million IPO, giving the company a fully diluted market cap of $48 million.
According to its prospectus, Boresight sold 1,638 drones in 2024 and 2,175 drones in the 2025 calendar year.
The company had revenue of $4.3 million for the year ending June 30, 2025, and recorded a loss of $722,430 for the period.
It plans to use funds from the listing offering to expand its manufacturing and engineering teams, increase U.S. production, and increase production capacity.
Investors hope Boresight will follow the success of Sydney-based company DroneShield, whose shares have more than quadrupled in 2025 as the war in Ukraine shows the importance of anti-drone technology.
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