Proforce Limited, the Ogun State-based company that built its name making armoured vehicles for the Nigerian army, has been quietly expanding its aerospace arm into something considerably more offensive. Proforce Airsystems, the company’s UAV subsidiary led by Chief Executive Ade Ogundeyin, now produces a full product line spanning eight platforms, from fixed-wing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft to loitering munitions, making it one of the few private defence companies in sub-Saharan Africa to have moved from concept to verified operator contact entirely within the domestic market. At the centre of that line are two First-Person View (FPV) tactical UAVs, the PF Meteor 1 and the PF Meteor 2.
The Meteor family’s emergence is worth examining in the context of everything happening around it. Nigeria is simultaneously dealing with ISWAP’s own armed FPV drones attacking military outposts in Borno State, a counter-drone buildup that has seen the Nigerian Air Force train on new radar systems and handheld jammers, and a broader push by domestically funded startups like Terra Industries to fill the capability gap ISWAP has been exploiting with commercial technology. Proforce Airsystems is part of that same wave, and the Meteor platforms represent its contribution to the most immediate tactical problem: how a Nigerian soldier closes a target without flying something that costs more than it destroys.
Two Platforms, One Design Logic
The PF Meteor 1 is the baseline aircraft in the family. Proforce Airsystems describes it as a 7-inch FPV tactical UAV, meaning the frame size common to high-performance racing quadcopters, though here adapted for military payload and range rather than agility alone. Its published specifications show a 25-minute flight time, a 30-kilometre operating range, a maximum speed of 100 kilometres per hour and a ceiling of 3,000 metres above sea level. The listed payload capacity is 2.5 kilograms. Power comes from a 6S 9,500 milliamp-hour lithium polymer battery, the aircraft carries GPS for navigation and horizontal stabilisation for targeting stability, uses an Extended Range Long Range System (ERLS) receiver for control, and transmits high-definition video. Proforce also lists EW, or electronic warfare, protection as part of the specification, though the company has not published technical detail on what that protection entails.
The PF Meteor 2 is the expanded version of the same concept. Proforce Airsystems describes it as a “next-generation loitering munition UAV engineered for precision engagement, advanced navigation, and uncompromising mission reliability,” and the specification numbers reflect that step up: 35 minutes of flight time, the same 100-kilometre-per-hour top speed, a longer 40-kilometre operating range and a higher 4.5-kilogram payload capacity. Proforce’s marketing for the Meteor 2 also characterises it as an enhanced 10-inch FPV platform, consistent with the company’s website describing the Meteor 1 as a 7-inch and the Meteor 2 as a 10-inch design, where both figures refer to the diagonal propeller-to-propeller frame dimension common in FPV drone manufacturing. Larger frames carry more and fly longer; the trade-off, as always with battery-electric propulsion, is that payload and endurance pull against each other, and neither aircraft’s specification clarifies what payload weight the published endurance figures assume.
Both platforms join a wider product line that already includes the PF Hornet fixed-wing ISR aircraft, the PF Eagle 3, the PF Maximus, the PF Archer, the PF Arkanos, and the PF AG 16. Proforce Airsystems’ own website describes the Hornet as a “tactical reconnaissance platform” with a 34-kilogram maximum takeoff weight and a 3.9-metre wingspan, positioning it clearly in a different category from the Meteors; one runs persistent ISR missions over wide areas, the others hit specific targets at closer range.
From Training Room to Army Exhibition
The Meteor 2 has moved from product page to verified government contact faster than most Nigerian-made defence platforms manage. In February 2025, Proforce Airsystems conducted a five-day intensive training programme at its own facilities for seven Chief Superintendents of Police from the Nigerian Police Force’s Airwing Division, equipping them specifically to fly the PF Meteor 2 for surveillance, reconnaissance and tactical security missions. That the company trained serving senior police officers on an operational aircraft, rather than showcasing a prototype to prospective buyers, represents a meaningful step from concept to active government use, even if it falls short of a confirmed military procurement.
In August 2026, Proforce Airsystems appeared as a special guest exhibitor at the 27th Nigerian Army Combat Service Support Training Week, held at the Nigerian Army Ordnance Corps, Abalti Barracks, in Ojuelegba, Lagos. The event, opened by Lieutenant General Waidi Shaibu, the Chief of Army Staff, through his representative Major General Adebayo Adeyinka, was themed around developing an adaptable Combat Service Support Corps for joint and multi-agency operations. Proforce’s own social media coverage described the exhibition as “more important than a trade show,” a framing consistent with a company positioning itself for sustained institutional engagement rather than a single contract.
Earlier in 2026, at the Nigerian Army Day Celebration (NADCEL) held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Proforce Airsystems displayed the PF Meteor 2 and PF Hornet platforms alongside a Drone-Mounted Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) system, which combines aerial mobility with subsurface sensing for counter-IED applications. Unmanned Africa has separately covered the related Proforce Galaxies subsidiary’s display at the same event, where the company showed the PF Spectra mobile command platform and ATLAS satellite imagery analytics. The picture that emerges from both displays is a conglomerate deliberately building across every layer of a battlefield network, from strike drones through C4ISR to satellite intelligence, rather than pursuing single-product defence contracts.
Where Proforce Airsystems Fits Nigeria’s Drone Landscape
Proforce Limited was incorporated in 2008 and grew primarily as Nigeria’s largest private armoured vehicle manufacturer, exporting its PF ARA MRAP to Chad and attracting attention when Wagner Group forces were photographed operating the vehicle in the Sahel. The company’s pivot into aerospace, formalised with a 2022 Memorandum of Understanding with French UAV manufacturer AERACCESS to co-produce surveillance drones and establish a Drone Academy in Nigeria, preceded the Meteor family, though the Meteor platforms appear to be designs Proforce Airsystems developed independently rather than through that original French partnership. The company’s website does not link any specific product to the AERACCESS arrangement.
The Meteor family sits in a different market segment from the platforms this site has covered extensively in Nigeria’s other indigenous efforts. Terra Industries, which has raised roughly $52 million in venture capital and is building its second factory in Accra, Ghana, is pursuing a broad autonomous systems mandate spanning aerial drones, the armed Duma unmanned ground vehicle and a counter-drone interceptor. The Nigerian Air Force’s own R&D Centre builds the Tsaigumi ISR platform for institutional military procurement. Proforce Airsystems occupies a third space: a private defence integrator with an existing base of senior military and police clients, producing small, cost-effective FPV systems tuned for the immediate operational problem its buyers actually face in the field rather than for a future export market or a venture investor’s presentation.
The specific configuration the Meteor platforms imply, a sub-5-kilogram FPV weapon at 100 kilometres per hour with EW protection, maps precisely onto the threat profile this site has tracked in detail: ISWAP’s armed commercial drones over Borno and Yobe, and the asymmetric cost advantage insurgents have held over conventional military forces in the northeast. Whether the Meteor family’s stated EW protection and extended operating ranges are sufficient to hold an edge against the same commercial platforms ISWAP uses, many of which have shifted to frequency-hopping firmware and some of which use fiber-optic tethers to defeat radio jamming entirely, is a technical question the public record does not answer. What the record does establish is that by August 2026 Proforce Airsystems had trained serving officers, appeared at an Army chief-presided exhibition, and displayed its platforms alongside a ground-penetrating radar at NADCEL, a trajectory that distinguishes it from the many Nigerian defence startups that have announced and not delivered.
