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7 Best Drone Stocks to Buy in 2026

U.S. military actions in Venezuela and elsewhere are sending drone stocks flying higher. The brand-new Rex Drone ETF (ticker: DRNZ

), an exchange-traded fund focused on drone stocks that launched in October 2025, is up 25.6% in the past month, advancing 20.5% in the past week as of Jan. 7.

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Here’s a look at some of the most prominent drone stocks available to investors:

Drone Stocks Market Capitalization
AeroVironment Inc. (AVAV) $17.7 billion
Ondas Holdings Inc. (ONDS) $5.5 billion
Kratos Defense & Security Solutions Inc. (KTOS) $18.1 billion
Rocket Lab Corp. (RKLB) $44.8 billion
Draganfly Inc. (DPRO) $232 million
L3Harris Technologies Inc. (LHX) $61.6 billion
Red Cat Holdings Inc. (RCAT) $1.4 billion

AeroVironment Inc. (AVAV)

The Arlington, Virginia-based company has a market capitalization of $17.7 billion. The company has reported triple-digit sales growth in the past two quarters. AeroVironment products include unmanned aerial systems (UAS), tactical missiles and electric vehicle charging solutions.

“What I like about this stock is that it recently pulled back to a major support price area around $230 a share,” says Jason Brown, a stock market analyst at TheBrownReport.com. He notes that the stock has plenty of room to run before reaching its prior price high, just below $420.

Although the company missed earnings views recently, Brown says its 151% year-over-year quarterly revenue growth, to $472.5 million, shows it’s adding contracts quickly. Costs associated with a recent acquisition put a dent in earnings, but analysts expect strong growth this year.

Ondas Holdings Inc. (ONDS)

Ondas develops unmanned aircraft systems as well as secure private wireless networking systems. This is a volatile stock, with a beta of 2.35; it sports some wide price swings, not unusual for a stock with a market capitalization of just $5.5 billion.

The company has notched triple-digit sales growth in the past three quarters, and analysts expect those levels to continue into this year. Ondas shares are trading at new highs after emerging from a nearly three-month consolidation.

As a small company, it doesn’t have a wide following on Wall Street, but among eight analysts on TipRanks’ rating service, the consensus view is “strong buy.”

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions Inc. (KTOS)

The Round Rock, Texas, company has shown accelerating sales growth since late 2024. Earnings growth has been more uneven, although Wall Street is eyeing steady increases in the next three quarters.

The stock has returned 219.6% over the past year as of Jan. 7. As the nature of warfare has changed to rely more on relatively inexpensive drones capable of doing significant damage to targets, Kratos has joined the industry-wide rally.

Kratos is a top-performing stock within Cathie Wood’s Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (ARKQ). This stock is squarely in the growth category, and does not pay a dividend.

Rocket Lab Corp. (RKLB)

Rocket Lab develops spacecraft and systems and provides launch services for government and commercial customers. Although the stock has a market cap of $44.8 billion, it’s especially volatile relative to the broader market, as indicated by its beta of 2.2.

That may be due in part to the company’s heavy debt load, which it’s using to finance growth. Its three-year revenue growth rate is 45%.

“This stock since late 2024 has been a rocket, pun intended,” Brown says. He points out that it’s moved from about $10 in October 2024 to its current price above $80. “What I like about this stock is not just the uptrend in the chart but the diverse segment of customers from commercial, scientific and government,” he says.

He cites the growth potential of the company’s Neutron rocket, destined to carry larger payloads. Its first launch is expected in the first quarter of this year. “This could open up higher revenue streams as well as attract new customers and lend to more upside,” Brown says.

[Read: Best Travel Stocks and ETFs to Buy in Tariff Turbulence]

Draganfly Inc. (DPRO)

Many of the entrants to the drone space are smaller, newer companies. Some, like Rocket Lab, were managed deliberately for robust growth. Draganfly isn’t in the same category, judging by its stock performance. The company makes unmanned aviation software and gear for government, commercial and academic customers.

The Canadian company, which went public in late 2019, has been ramping up its sales growth in the past two years, although the company is still in that zone where startups report losses. If the situation doesn’t turn around, investors may eventually become impatient.

With a market cap of just $232 million and ongoing losses, Draganfly is not yet a favorite of institutions, which look for more stability. It’s a component of the DRNZ ETF, and doesn’t have much research coverage, yet the consensus rating of four analysts on TipRanks is “strong buy.”

L3Harris Technologies Inc. (LHX)

Although this is a much larger company than others with a more narrow focus on drones, L3Harris is small relative to peers in the defense industry, says James Harlow, a chartered financial analyst and director of research at Novare Capital Management in Charlotte, North Carolina. The company has a market cap around $61.6 billion, smaller than companies such as Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) and Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC).

“L3Harris is a unique company in the defense space given its smaller size, more nimble positioning, opportunities for margin expansion and its focus on faster-growing areas of the defense budget,” Harlow says.

He says that L3Harris tends to be “platform agnostic.” Instead of building airplanes and ships, it supplies components, mission systems and the “brains” of those platforms. This allows L3Harris flexibility rather than being tied to just a few large programs.

“A key pillar of L3Harris’ financial strategy has been to expand profit margins, which it has been successful in implementing, driven by cost savings initiatives, exiting lower margin businesses, (using) smarter bidding processes and growing internationally,” Harlow says.

The company has increased its dividend for 24 years in a row, and has posted a one-year return of about 55%.

Red Cat Holdings Inc. (RCAT)

This small-cap company specializes in software systems for drones and other robotics products. Its navigation and mapping business provides imaging tools to collect detailed location and mapping data. The company also develops systems that plan and control flight operations, as well as analyze data in real time.

This stock is something of a mixed bag: Sales growth has been ramping up in recent quarters, with that trend expected to continue into this year. Earnings, though, are nonexistent, despite the company being publicly traded since 2017. It launched on the over-the-counter market, but it made its Nasdaq debut in April 2021.

Brown sees pros and cons when it comes to this stock’s potential for investors. He notes that its Nasdaq IPO price was $4; it’s currently trading near $11. “So although the stock is higher than its previous years, the most recent eight quarters show a miss on either earnings per share or revenue and sometimes both,” he says.

“However, if you are looking for a low-priced trade, the stock could move up to resistance of $16, which shows a potential upside of $5 from the current price,” he adds. Three other Wall Street analysts who cover the stock give it a consensus rating of “strong buy” and a price target of $15, representing upside potential around 28%.

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7 Best Drone Stocks to Buy in 2026 originally appeared on usnews.com

Update 01/08/26: This story was previously published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.

Trump wants new coal plants built in the US. The price tag could be astronomical

(CNN) — It’s been 13 years since the last large coal-fired power plant was built in the US. Now, the Trump administration wants to build another two, but experts say even federal support likely won’t make that feasible.President Donald Trump and his administration have made no secret of their preference for coal-fired power, arguing it is an important source of firm, always-on electricity prized by large users like data centers and industry.Most of their efforts have been directed at keeping existing coal plants operating longer, but last month, the administration announced it would give more than $100 million in federal funding to two proposed plants in West Virginia and Alaska.These projects are in the planning stage, and the federal money will be used for early-stage feasibility studies. If they are built, it would be a momentous turn of events for coal-fired power in the US. However, that’s a big “if” because the cost could be astronomical to build coal plants with proposed carbon capture — a technology that would stop most of their plant-warming pollution from escaping into the atmosphere, storing it instead.🏭 Learn more about energy and climate on CNN’s Weather App It would cost more than $10 billion to construct a 1.6 gigawatt coal plant outfitted with carbon capture, like the proposed one in West Virginia, according to an independent analysis prepared for the Wyoming Energy Authority this year. Similarly, it would cost more than $8 billion to build a plant the size of the 1.25 gigawatt Alaska project.It’s more than double the cost of building a natural gas plant with carbon capture, and more than four times the cost to establish new solar, according to the Wyoming analysis (this analysis did not factor federal tax credits into building costs). Only erecting a new nuclear power plant is more expensive.Those price tags are “stunningly high,” energy data analyst Seth Feaster said. And that could stop the projects before they even start.“My baseline reaction is these plants will never get built,” said Feaster, an analyst at global energy firm the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “The cost of that power is going to be far higher than the other forms of energy that are out there, including gas, solar and wind.”Even existing coal plants have slowly been on their way out for years, too old and costly to compete with cheaper natural gas and renewables. The new plants say they’ll utilize carbon capture — technology with bipartisan support. It got a hefty tax credit in former President Joe Biden’s 2022 clean energy law and Biden’s EPA nodded to it as a technology coal plants should utilize to control their emissions. The funding for the new coal plants came from money that Congress initially designated for reducing and capturing carbon emissions.But the technology is still “not proven,” said Phil Wagner, associate director of research and analysis at energy consulting company McCloskey by OPIS, which tracks coal and electricity markets. “If it can be done, it’s going to be put on natural gas plants first. They’re already lower cost; they’re already 40% of the power grid. It’s less carbon to capture.”“It’s still super uncertain whether either of these (new coal) plants will be built,” he added.An Energy Department spokesperson for the Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office said the projects had been “competitively selected,” but did not answer CNN’s questions about DOE’s criteria to fund the projects, or whether the projects had demonstrated outside funding or buyers for their power. Developers for the projects did not return CNN’s requests for comment.The Trump administration is “committed to stabilizing, optimizing, and growing the American coal industry while restoring coal as a cornerstone of the US energy mix,” the Energy Department spokesperson said.Coal’s resurgenceEnergy demand is a big part of why coal has made an unexpected comeback, despite its costs. US power demand has ballooned in recent years, driven by artificial intelligence data centers and their need for always-on power. The entry of data centers to the market has also spurred a race to make sure there’s enough energy on the grid to handle times of peak demand during the hottest summer days and coldest winter nights.“Unlike renewable energy sources, coal plants can generate electricity at all times of day and in all weather conditions,” Michelle Bloodworth, president and CEO of coal-fired power plant trade group America’s Power, said in a statement. “This makes them critical for ensuring electric reliability.”The Trump administration has gone to great lengths to keep old coal plants from retiring, citing the need for reliable power on the grid. The most consequential move the administration has made is rolling back a suite of EPA rules that cracked down on air and water pollution from the plants. But Trump’s Energy Department has gone further, ordering several plants to stay open beyond their retirement date — even ones that are broken and inoperable.Their efforts have shifted the needle; the US last year recorded a jump in its greenhouse gas emissions, driven in large part by power plants burning more coal.But even though coal plants are seen as reliable stalwarts of the grid, it’s not always the case.Two semi-recently built coal plants, Comanche Unit 3 in Colorado and Sandy Creek in Texas, have experienced severe mechanical issues and outages that have lasted hundreds of days. Sandy Creek has sat idle since a major failure last year and isn’t expected to be turned back on until March 2027. And Comanche 3 has experienced more than 40 unplanned outages due to mechanical issues; the most recent one has lasted about a year.Comanche Unit 3 “is perhaps the major source of unreliability on our electric system,” said Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office. “We certainly have not seen coal units as being the most reliable units in the mix.”In addition, the Comanche unit’s spate of unplanned outages has increased the price of its power, said Keith Hay, managing director of policy at the Colorado Energy Office. Hay added that the unit’s mechanical problems “literally date to its initial construction period” owing to frequently malfunctioning equipment and poor maintenance.Feaster called Comanche 3 and Sandy Creek “two of the biggest problematic coal plants in the country.”Bloodworth, the CEO of the coal plant trade group, said the two outage-plagued plants are outliers, and that 18 other coal-fired units that came online in the early 2010s haven’t experienced as many problems.“We would caution against drawing a broader reliability conclusion from two units out of 20,” Bloodworth said.Wagner, the coal energy analyst, said the Trump administration will probably get more bang for its buck with rules and funding going toward propping up existing coal plants, compared to new builds.The $100 million the Trump administration has given the new projects is “almost less than a drop in a bucket,” he said.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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