Drone City
About
About Drone City
Drone City develops and manufactures uncrewed systems for air, land and maritime operations. Its engineering covers heavy-lift aircraft, distributed drone swarms, airspace sensing and delivery-network concepts, combining vehicle hardware with communications, navigation and mission software.
The company targets logistics, public safety, infrastructure and defence missions that require coordinated autonomous vehicles or operation beyond a single visual flight area. Drone City develops prototypes and production systems at facilities in New York State, integrating propulsion, payloads and command tools around customer operating requirements.
Team
- Mehdi Salehi - Founder and Chief Executive Officer - Leads Drone City's unmanned-systems research across aerial, ground and maritime platforms, including heavy-lift and extreme-environment programmes.
Timeline
Events
- 2026-03-16 - Award - AFRL network recommends Drone City for $100,000 Stage 1 award
The selected project covers autonomous drone airdrop and advanced stabilization. Drone City founder Mehdi Salehi is principal investigator, with AFRL researcher Elizabeth Bentley serving as co-principal investigator. The work sits within the network's Quantifying Performance in Extreme Environments programme.
Source - 2025-12-10 - Award - Drone City selected for NATO DIANA's 2026 programme
Drone City was named in NATO DIANA's 2026 company cohort. The selection provides access to accelerator sites, test centres and allied defence users. The company was selected in an autonomy, maritime, sensing, communications or related dual-use challenge area.
Source - 2022-08-15 - Deployment - Drone City completed New York's first drone delivery
The flight was completed on 15 August 2022. Drone City positioned the operation as New York’s first drone delivery. The milestone supported the company’s autonomous logistics programme.
Source
Relations
Relationships
- AFRL Regional Network - Mid-Atlantic
$100,000 Stage 1 Research Award - The AFRL Regional Network - Mid-Atlantic recommended Drone City's autonomous drone airdrop and stabilization project for a $100,000 Stage 1 award.
- NATO DIANA
Programme Participant - Drone City selected through NATO DIANA.
Context
Comparable profiles
- Aerix Systems
stack adjacency - Autonomous Flight
- FireSwarm Solutions
stack adjacency - Autonomous Flight
- Marble Aerospace
stack adjacency - Autonomous Flight
Shared workflows
- Tornyol
workflow adjacency - Autonomous Drone Companies
- Voltair
workflow adjacency - Autonomous Drone Companies
- Brumby
workflow adjacency - Autonomous Drone Companies
- Buoyant Aero
workflow adjacency - Autonomous Drone Companies
- Kalam Labs
workflow adjacency - Autonomous Drone Companies
- Paladin
workflow adjacency - Autonomous Drone Companies
- Skyways
workflow adjacency - Autonomous Drone Companies
- HyLight
workflow adjacency - Autonomous Drone Companies
- Zeitview
workflow adjacency - Autonomous Drone Companies
- Easy Aerial
workflow adjacency - Autonomous Drone Companies
- DroneUp
workflow adjacency - Autonomous Drone Companies
- PABLO AIR
workflow adjacency - Autonomous Drone Companies
Context tags
- Autonomous drone systems participation - Workflow - Reviewed July 15, 2026 against the company overview and structured profile evidence: autonomous drone companies.
- Autonomous flight - Capability - Reviewed July 15, 2026 against the company overview and structured profile evidence: autonomous flight.
- Heavy-lift cargo drones - Capability - Reviewed July 15, 2026 against the company overview and structured profile evidence: heavy lift cargo drones.