SD CAP Receives Next-Gen Drone

South Dakota Wing, CAP, has been assigned the newest Uncrewed Aerial System (UAS or drone) by CAP's National Headquarters

"The X10D is the latest military-grade UAS produced by Skydio, a US based company," said Col Mike Beason, who leads CAP's UAS program in South Dakota. "It has the most advanced IR camera on the market today and the company boasts that the color camera will zoom to 160 times a normal image."

The X10D is the successor to the Skydio X2D drone, which CAP has used for just over a year.

Beason was one of five UAS instructors at CAP's National Emergency Services Academy in July. He was one of two instructors on the separate Wingtra vertical take-off drone and in the second week received his own training on the X10D, one of which he brought home to South Dakota Wing. Three other drone pilots in South Dakota Wing are already qualified to fly the new drone. The first mission use of the new drone is expected to be as part of CAP's support for an Ellsworth AFB training exercise later this month.

Skydio describes the X10D as designed from the ground up to bring the performance of a heavy drone to a rucksack portable device, folding into the most compact size of any drone with similar sensors, which Skydio describes as best-in-Class.

CAP's small UAS drones are typically used in disaster relief photography missions, targeting difficult to access geography during missing person searches, as well as 3D mapping and research data collection.