There's maybe $300 of off-the-shelf components (at retail prices) in the pictured air unit. It's the R&D time. The software dev and testing of the the whole sys

There's maybe $300 of off-the-shelf components (at retail prices) in the pictured air unit. It's the R&D time. The software dev and testing of the the whole system would be super expensive. Also there's no mention of their ground station design, how is it controlled by the operator, there's a lot of money and research that has to go into that half of the problem. Soldiers wont put up with the operational peculiarities that hobbyist will. Drones are incredibly fragile because of the weight limitations. 40 minutes of flight time is amazing, probably 2x the best time a hobbyist could build with off-the-shelf parts at that size class.