About Drones & Defense: our methodology and editorial standards
The drones and defense methodology on this site is deliberately narrow: we map who builds unmanned systems and where the money is disclosed, and we stop short of telling anyone what to buy.
Who publishes Drones & Defense
Drones & Defense is published and edited by Jonathan Teplitsky, and every full article on the site carries that name in its header byline and in its structured data. There is no anonymous staff pool and no syndicated wire feed behind the bylines. If a page does not name an author yet, treat it as unfinished research, not as a finished guide.
The subject matter is the defense and dual-use unmanned systems sector: aerial drones, ground robots, maritime unmanned vessels, counter-UAS, and the public companies and funds with exposure to them. The audience is people doing their own research before they touch a broker, not people looking for a signal to copy.
The drones and defense methodology in one paragraph
Our methodology starts with the primary document and works outward, never the reverse. A company earns a profile because there is something verifiable to point at — a filing on SEC EDGAR, an award notice in the Department of Defense contract announcements, a program page published by the service itself, or an agency record from DARPA or the Defense Innovation Unit. Regulatory context comes from the FAA's unmanned aircraft systems program. If a claim cannot be tied back to a document of that kind, it does not get written as a fact — it gets written as a question the reader should go answer.
What this site does and does not do
This site produces research frameworks, not verdicts, and the distinction is enforced page by page.
| We do | We do not |
|---|---|
| Define categories — pure-play, prime, autonomy, payload, counter-UAS — so comparisons are apples to apples. | Issue ratings, scores, stars, or "top pick" labels of any kind. |
| Show which primary document answers a given question, and how to read it. | Publish price targets, valuation calls, or forecasts. |
| Name the failure modes in how a sector story is usually told. | Tell any reader to buy, sell, or hold a security. |
| Say plainly when a company's drone story is press releases rather than programs. | Offer personalized financial advice — we are not licensed advisers. |
Where a page uses the word "best" — as in best drone stocks — it means best to research first, and the page says so in its own body text. It never means best to buy. Any page that cannot honour that distinction does not get published.
Sourcing standards
We link to the entity's own primary source on first mention, and never to a financial aggregator. That rule exists because aggregator pages restate filings with a lag, drop segment detail, and occasionally mis-map a ticker to the wrong legal entity — a real hazard in a sector full of similarly named subsidiaries and recent reverse mergers. Reading the filing directly costs a few extra minutes and removes an entire class of error.
- Financials: the company's own 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, or prospectus on SEC EDGAR — not a summary of it.
- Contracts: the awarding organisation's published announcement, with the award language read in full rather than the headline dollar figure.
- Regulation: the regulator's own page or docket, because counter-UAS and airspace authorities change through rulemakings, not through press coverage.
- Vendors: the manufacturer's own site for what a system is, paired with a government source for whether anyone actually bought it.
We also draw a hard line between a specific number and a research framework. If a figure is not in a document we can point you to, we do not print the figure — we tell you which document carries it and what to look for inside it. A page that reads like it is missing a statistic is usually a page that refused to guess one.
Disclosure and conflicts
We hold no positions in the securities covered on this site, long or short, directly or through single-sector funds. That policy appears in the site footer on every page, with the full terms on the disclaimer page. We do not accept payment from any covered company for coverage, placement, ranking, or link inclusion, and no covered company reviews a page before publication.
The site does carry a newsletter and may carry advertising or affiliate arrangements in future. If that ever happens, the arrangement will be disclosed on the page it affects and it will not change which companies appear or how they are described. See the full disclaimer for the formal version.
Corrections policy
We correct errors on the page where they appeared, and we do it visibly. Silent edits are the standard failure of online finance publishing: a number changes, the date stamp refreshes, and nothing tells the reader that the earlier version was wrong. Our practice is different in three specific ways.
- Material factual errors — a misattributed contract, a wrong entity, a misread filing — are fixed and the change is noted on the page, not just quietly overwritten.
- Review dates move only on real review. The updated date in the byline reflects an actual re-check against sources, never a cosmetic republish to look fresh.
- Framework changes are versioned in prose. If we change how a category is defined, the affected pages say what changed rather than presenting the new definition as if it had always been there.
How to reach us about a correction
Corrections reach us fastest through the contact page, and the most useful ones include the page URL, the sentence at issue, and the primary source that contradicts it. Company representatives are welcome to submit corrections on the same terms as anyone else — a filing, an award notice, or an official program page will move a page; a marketing claim will not.
For the fuller mechanical version of our classification and verification process, see the methodology page. To see the standards applied, start with the company directory, the defense and drone ETF coverage, or the unmanned systems section.