The drones are already here. The question is who builds them, who flies them, and who captures the economic value they create.
For more than two decades, uncrewed aircraft have proven themselves across agriculture, infrastructure, logistics, public safety, and national defense. The technology is not in question. What remains unresolved is whether the United States will build the workforce, capital, and manufacturing base required to lead the industry it pioneered.
Future Flight is Sharon Rossmark's blueprint for that leadership. Drawing on more than a decade at the intersection of drone technology, workforce development, and industry strategy, Rossmark traces three systemic gaps that will determine who leads uncrewed aviation for the next generation:
- A workforce pipeline that cannot fill the jobs the market is already creating
- Capital flowing toward hardware while the human infrastructure behind it goes unfunded
- A manufacturing base dangerously dependent on foreign supply chains
Underlying all three is the absence of a coordinated national strategy one that small businesses, educators, and the industry's broadest workforce depend on every day.
With a Foreword by Dr. Robin R. Murphy, Raytheon Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, Future Flight moves across sixteen chapters from the geopolitics of who owns the sky, to the talent deficit reshaping hiring, to the private capital and defense spending redrawing the industry's map, to the integrated national strategy the next decade requires.
The technology is ready. The markets are real. What remains is the decision to lead.
Future Flight is essential reading for executives, policymakers, educators, investors, and community leaders shaping the systems, policies, and institutions that will define the future of uncrewed aviation.
Sharon Rossmark is the Founder and CEO of Women and Drones, and has spent more than a decade at the intersection of drone technology, workforce development, and the strategic future of uncrewed aviation. She has worked directly with operators, educators, investors, and policymakers across the industry, combining that field experience with a senior corporate executive's understanding of how industries adopt and fail to adopt disruptive technology. Rossmark is a sought-after speaker and advisor on workforce pipelines, capital allocation, and manufacturing policy in the uncrewed aviation sector. She has co-authored three children's books introducing young readers to drones and aviation; Future Flight is her first full-length work for a business and policy audience.
Robin R. Murphy, Ph.D., is Raytheon Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University and a leading voice in field robotics and disaster response. She led the first deployment of small uncrewed aerial systems to a major disaster response, at Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and has since studied drone deployments at events including the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and Hurricane Harvey. Her work focuses on the gap between capable technology and the human systems, training, policy, and institutional readiness needed to put it to use.
