Transparency and community acceptance

Adam Bry is the co-founder and CEO of Skydio, the largest US drone manufacturer and, as of today, the company behind a $3.5 billion commitment to expand American manufacturing over the next five years. We spent the day at Skydio's San Mateo headquarters for a full tour of their facilities.

On the tour:

• The rooftop dock array (drones as cloud infrastructure)

• DFR Command, flown live

• The "wind wall" stress-testing hardware 24/7

• R10, the new indoor tactical drone

• F10, a fixed-wing thrown and caught by a robotic arm

• X10 water rescue demo with the auto-inflating rest tube

The $3.5B announcement involves a new US facility five times the size of the current one (Skydio's fifth expansion in eight years), over 2,000 new Skydio jobs, 3,000+ additional roles across the US supply chain, and more than $1 billion directed to domestic suppliers under a new program called SkyForge. Skydio already manufactures more dual-use drones than any company outside of China. This is the bet to keep it that way.

The backdrop: 60,000 drones shipped, 3,800+ customers, 1,200+ public safety agencies, every branch of the US military, and 29 allied nations. Skydio DFR now arrives on scene first 71% of the time and resolves nearly a quarter of calls without dispatching a patrol unit.

Adam Bry: https://x.com/adampbry

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

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(00:00) A flight every 30 seconds 

(00:57) Rooftop docks 

(03:26) Tour roadmap 

(04:42) Adam's RC airplane origin story 

(06:10) Flying a dock drone, live 

(10:04) The "force multiplier" moment 

(12:16) Multi-drone operations 

(14:17) Unarmed sensor platforms and the China context 

(15:29) Why community acceptance surprised Adam 

(19:31) The wind wall 

(20:40) R10, built for indoor tactical 

(23:30) Flying R10 through a barricaded-suspect scenario 

(27:30) Reading oil and gas gauges with a drone 

(29:26) F10, the fixed-wing caught by a robotic arm 

(30:40) X10 water rescue demo