The United States has cleared the way for Virginia-based, ASX-listed DroneShield to sell 70 of its anti-drone guns to an undiscosed Middle Eastern country.

It’s a good sign for Droneshield, which has previously talked a lot about about its pipeline — but now looks like converting leads to actual sales.

DroneShield investors liked the news, sending the stock up 16 per cent to 18.5c.

The order, which was first announced back in June, was $3.2 million for 70 DroneGuns, but it was subject to approval from a US regulator overseeing defence exports. DroneShield (ASX:DRO) at the time said it expected approval within two months.

Droneshield’s  (ASX:DRO) hand-held DroneGun is a rifle-style, battery-powered device that blasts enemy drones with a signal powerful enough to drown out the controller’s inputs, causing the drones to malfunction.

The sale is an important milestone for the company, which at the end of June reported $467,389 in receipts from customer — while last October it was reporting a sales pipeline of more than $100 million.

DroneShield (ASX:DRO) shares over the past year.
DroneShield (ASX:DRO) shares over the past year.

The order was announced to much fanfare. DroneShield said the Middle Eastern country’s Ministry of Defence, which is aligned with the US — hence the need for regulatory approval — has “one of the largest defence budgets in the world” and that it was “just the start of our relationship”.

“We expect to receive substantial, and substantially larger, additional orders for this product and other products for the Ministry of Defence and for other ministries and agencies in-country and elsewhere in the region,” the company said in June.

DroneShield says it is now in the process of manufacturing the products and expects to deliver the first batch by the end of this month.

Oleg Vornik, DroneShield chief, said it was the company’s largest order and the largest known order for tactical drone mitigation products globally in the technology’s history.

“With the company’s near-term pipeline containing multiple multi-million dollar potential orders, this clearance gives us and our customers the confidence that we will be able to deliver our industry-leading products to a wide range  of qualified end-users,” he said.

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