The article analyzes the structural transformations of Russian industry in the context of external constraints and the need to ensure technological sovereignty in high-tech industries. The scientific hypothesis of the work is the assumption of the importance of cross-sectoral coordination of subjects of industrial policy in order to develop the production of critical products. The digital industrial ecosystem of the unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) industry is considered as an object of research. The purpose of the research is to develop the foundations of the structure of the ecosystem model of the development of the UAS industry and substantiate the feasibility of its application in the interests of improving high-tech industries of the Russian Federation. The article offers the author’s interpretations of the concepts of “digital industrial ecosystem” and “cross-industry ecosystem”, substantiates the principles of functioning of the ecosystem model and its architecture. An ecosystem model of the development of the UAS industry was developed, including management bodies, technical infrastructure, organizational and economic tools, technological clusters and a network of participants. The main distinguishing features of the proposed model from the existing ones are: the distribution of ecosystem management bodies that ensure the autonomy of management at all horizontal and hierarchical levels of its organization; the ecosystem is considered as an instrument of the mechanism of strategic development of high-tech industries involved in the creation of civil-purpose UAS, and provides cross-industry interaction of participants in order to accelerate the development of industrial production and the formation of the UAS market. The ecosystem management model will ensure the possession of up-to-date data of actual and planned indicative evaluation indicators of the state and development of the industry on a time scale close to real, based on the principle of digital transparency.