In this paper, a prescribed performance-based distributed neural adaptive fault-tolerant cooperative control (FTCC) scheme is proposed for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (multi-UAVs). A distributed sliding-mode observer (SMO) technique is first utilized to estimate the leader UAV’s reference. Then, by transforming the tracking errors of follower UAVs with respect to the estimated references into a new set, a distributed neural adaptive FTCC protocol is developed based on the combination of dynamic surface control (DSC) and minimal learning parameters of neural network (MLPNN). Moreover, auxiliary dynamic systems are exploited to deal with input saturation. Furthermore, the proposed control scheme can guarantee that all signals of the closed-loop system are bounded, and tracking errors of follower UAVs with respect to the estimated references are confined within the prescribed bounds. Finally, comparative simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed distributed neural adaptive FTCC scheme.