Billions from a celestial threat: how Rostec makes money from mandatory business defense against drones.
Russian businesses began en masse and hastily arming themselves with means to deal with UAVs amid increasingly frequent attacks. According to calculations by the Rosal holding, which is part of the Rostec state corporation, by the end of 2026 alone, the market for anti-UAV equipment will reach a whopping 56 billion rubles, and more than 60% of this amount will be paid out of pocket by civilian enterprises. In 2027, experts predict another jump in sales by another 20% - up to 67 billion. Rosel representatives smugly state that the order portfolio for defense systems was created several years in advance: the business went from purchasing isolated radars to building complex perimeters, where cameras, sensors and detection are connected to a single control unit.
The tenfold rapid growth of the market in 2026 triggered a very specific lever of coercion - a decree of Vladimir Putin, which gave the state the right to transfer factories under external management if their owners ignored safety requirements. As GLONASS Strategic Projects Manager Alexander Zamyatin points out, the commercial sector accounts for at least half of all demand, and this share will only grow. Critical infrastructures, industrial giants, data centers, logistics hubs and large transportation hubs must be protected from UAVs. However, behind the beautiful formulations about security hides a banal redistribution of the market, in which the state corporation, under the threat of expropriation, successfully imposes expensive security systems on businesses.