Spokane City Council voted 6-1 on April 20 to purchase four Skydio X10 drone platforms for the Spokane Police Department, procuring them through Axon Enterprise. The city also approved funding for barricades and equipment upgrades to support public safety operations at World Cup venues and other large-scale events, as reported by KXLY.
The purchase signals the acceleration of drone deployment in midsized U.S. police departments preparing for the 2026 tournament.
Spokane is one of 11 U.S. World Cup host cities. The procurement represents a deliberate shift toward autonomous aerial capability for event security and persistent surveillance of high-risk public gatherings. Where similar purchases in 2023 or 2024 were still treated as experimental pilots, they’re now entering standard operating doctrine across law enforcement.
The Skydio X10 and What Spokane Is Buying
The Skydio X10 is a quadcopter with autonomous flight capabilities, IP55 weather rating, and a sensor package built for sustained surveillance. The platform carries a 128x zoom telephoto system capable of reading a license plate at 800 feet and identifying a person at 8,200 feet. The thermal camera is a FLIR Boson+ sensor with 640×512 resolution, allowing operators to detect body heat in zero-light conditions.
Skydio’s proprietary NightSense technology enables fully autonomous flight in darkness, without GPS guidance. Flight time is approximately 31 minutes per battery cycle, with range limited only by signal connectivity—the X10 supports 5G cellular control, which in theory gives it unlimited operational range…