American enterprise drone maker Skydio has released the Skydio X10 as their latest offering for the enterprise market.

It is a machine the manufacturer is really keen to make sure everybody is aware that its origins are in the United States of America.

Parts. Components. Chips. Software. The works.

All made in America.

Which for us is sad really; because we believe that civilian drone technology should be good technology regardless of where it comes from.

But then, we live in a world where geopolitics exist, and it seems Skydio have picked a side.

Below is the manufacturer’s point of view of what their new baby can offer for commercial operators.

Skydio, the leading U.S. drone manufacturer and world leader in autonomous flight technology, today announced its latest enterprise drone, the Skydio X10.

The Skydio X10 combines new, cutting-edge data capture cameras, unparalleled autonomy, and versatile hardware to serve a range of industries, including energy, public safety, transportation, construction and communications.

It has the sensors to capture every detail of the data that matters and the AI-powered autonomy to put those sensors wherever they are needed. It packs more capability and versatility in a smaller and easier-to-use package than has ever existed.

This drone is the culmination of everything we’ve learned over the past ten years delivering over 40,000 intelligent flying machines and serving over 1,500 enterprise and government organizations. It’s the first drone that we’ve designed from the ground up with full insight into the needs of our most demanding professional users in some of the most high-stakes scenarios.

The Skydio X10 boasts an impressive array of features and capabilities that have never before existed in a single platform, including:

• High-Resolution Cameras: The X10 is equipped with custom-designed high-resolution cameras, including a 48MP zoom camera capable of reading license plates at 800 feet, a 50MP wide field of view camera for detecting minute details like 0.1 mm cracks in concrete, and a 640×512 Teledyne FLIR Boson+ radiometric thermal camera for measuring temperature differences during inspection missions or finding a missing person in total darkness.
• Versatile Airframe: Designed for durability and adaptability, the X10’s airframe is open and modular, featuring four payload bays, replaceable gimbal sensor packages, and an IP55 weather resistance rating. It also includes Skydio Connect, which offers connectivity options for a redesigned point-to-point link, a multi-band radio designed for contested and jammed environments, and a 5G radio for infinite range wherever there is cellular coverage.
• AI-Powered Autonomy: With onboard AI powered by 10x improvements in compute power and 10x higher-fidelity custom-designed navigation cameras than the previous generation, the X10 navigates with more confidence, avoiding thinner obstacles, in more challenging conditions. The all-new NightSense enables autonomous flight in zero-light environments, so operations can run 24×7. The all-new X10 Spatial AI engine enables real-time environment mapping and fully automated modeling at the edge with 3D Scan and Onboard Modeling.
• Unmatched Portability: Even with these advanced features, the X10 is highly portable, capable of going from folded up in a backpack to in the air in less than 40 seconds.

“The Skydio X10 combines the sensors customers need to get the data they care about, with the airframe and autonomy to put those sensors in the most important places at the most important times,” said Adam Bry, co-founder and CEO of Skydio.

“It can do everything expected of leading manually flown drones, but it has the autonomy to enable a scale, scope, and impact that has so far been elusive for the drone industry.

“X10 is a reflection of everything we’ve learned from our customers over the last three years, a technology foundation with a decade of R&D behind it, and the work of an incredibly talented and dedicated team at Skydio. Our end goal at Skydio is not to build drones but to build successful drone programs. The journey is just getting started.”

For the first time, world-class hardware – sensors, modularity, connectivity – is coming together with the autonomy Skydio is known for – taking a huge leap forward thanks to 10x increases in onboard computing power and navigation camera resolution – in an airframe that can go from a backpack to airborne in less than 40 seconds.

The X10 fits right into existing drone operating procedures, but it also opens up a future of more scalable operating paradigms: 24×7 operations with NightSense autonomous flight in zero-light environments, fully automated data capture with 3D Scan, flight control by web browser from anywhere in the world via onboard 5G and Remote Flight Deck, and 1-operator-to-many-drone controls.

We built these capabilities because we envision a world where drones themselves become basic infrastructure, providing a perfect digital picture in real time of the things that matter most to those who need it.

The X10 brings these possibilities to life today. For example:

• Using drones to respond to 911 calls – a concept known as Drone as First Responder or DFR – will have a transformative impact on public safety. Skydio X10 is the perfect tool to get started with DFR. The X10 can be launched on scene by officers on patrol, just as they do today, but then taken over and flown remotely, providing real-time aerial support to those on the ground, and enabling agencies that deploy it to start leveraging remote operations.
• Critical infrastructure operators from State Departments of Transportation to Telecommunications companies to Energy Utilities have started using drones to inspect their assets. X10’s onboard AI and autonomy lowers the training barrier, enabling anyone in the organization to take full advantage of X10’s best-in-class sensors to detect everything from a 0.1mm crack in concrete to a failed solar cell via thermal inspection.

As drones have become increasingly important for critical industries, it’s also become increasingly clear that we can’t rely on systems beholden to the policies of foreign adversaries. Skydio started investing in US-based manufacturing capacity in 2016 at a time when many had written off the possibility of a US-drone company, let alone one manufacturing in the US.

We’re proud to be building X10s at our 37,000-square-foot Hayward, California facility, and we are confident that X10 answers the question of whether a US company can deliver. Organisations adopting X10 will be taking a significant step forward in capability, toward the future of the industry, while also taking a big step forward in security.

We aspire to be in the business of building successful drone programs that solve our customers’ most important challenges, not just building drones. We’ve developed a robust set of services and support offerings, from training to regulatory consulting, and we’ve supported our customers in getting over 20 waivers for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight.

Today we’re also announcing Skydio Extend – a set of APIs, workflows, and integrations that make Skydio an open platform and deliver end-to-end solutions for customers with partners like Axon, ESRI, and Trimble.

As a company, we may not always get things exactly right the first time, but we persist and we will do almost anything in service of making our customers successful. ​​X10 is a reflection of everything we’ve learned from our customers, a technology foundation with a decade of R&D behind it, and the work of an incredibly talented and dedicated team.

Thank you to our customers for enabling us to get to this point, and congratulations to our team at Skydio for pulling off the impossible.

What matters most is what happens next. The success of X10 won’t be defined by specs or capabilities; it will be defined by the impact it makes for our customers and the civilisation they power and protect.

The journey begins today.