Skydio’s first fixed-wing drone, the F10 Lightrunner, flies at up to 100 mph for up to two hours, the company says. It launches from a robotic arm with nobody on site. Skydio announced it on 24 September at its Ascend conference in Nevada. It reaches customers in 2027, at a price Skydio has not given.
Every Skydio aircraft until now, including its current X10, has been a multirotor. Police agencies keep them in rooftop docks and send one to a 911 call ahead of officers. Rotors limit how far that drone can go. The F10 is Skydio’s pitch for rural counties and power lines, where the distances are longer.
How it launches without a runway
Skydio calls the system Robotic Takeoff and Landing: “a suction-based robotic gripper” that launches the aircraft and catches it again. The F10 weighs 7 kg with batteries. Skydio rates it for launch and landing in winds up to 27 mph, and it carries a parachute.
It lives in a MegaDock, which holds up to five aircraft so several missions can run at once. A battery charges from 10% to 90% in 45 minutes. The sensors are a 64 MP camera, a 48 MP telephoto and a FLIR Boson+ thermal camera. Skydio lists the aircraft as NDAA-compliant, which federal buyers require.
The claim and the arithmetic
Skydio says one MegaDock puts nearly 3,000 square miles within reach, from a 30-mile flight radius. That figure holds: a 30-mile circle covers about 2,800 square miles. It also promises “a 15-minute response time” across a rural county that waits 45 minutes for police today.
At its top speed of 100 mph, the edge of a 30-mile radius is 18 minutes away, before launch time. A 15-minute response reaches about 25 miles. Skydio has published a specification sheet, not flight test results.
The distances also run into a rule. Flying 30 miles from the dock means flying far beyond any pilot’s sight, and the FAA has not finalised its rule for routine flights of that kind. Until it does, each operator needs a waiver or exemption.
Chief executive Adam Bry called the F10 “the most advanced fixed-wing drone that has ever existed”. Skydio says its existing docks number more than 1,000 at public safety agencies, flying close to 100,000 missions a month. Its first partners for the new inspection software announced alongside the F10 are AEP, Chevron, Dominion Energy and Southern Company.
