Chronicling Cruelty

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has announced the delivery of nine autonomous drones donated by Skydio, an American manufacturer of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine.

Subject drones—Skydio 2+ models, all—are equipped with 4K cameras by which the Prosecutor General’s staff intends to collect photo and video evidence of war crimes across the embattled Eastern European nation. The resultant image catalog will further the Prosecutor General’s ambition to document the more than 115,000 instances of destroyed civilian infrastructure, and human rights abuses perpetrated upon frontline communities and liberated territories throughout Ukraine.

The drones, in point of fact, are of critical importance to the Prosecutor General’s team, which is engaged in the pursuit of justice for the survivors of war crimes and human rights abuses committed since the February 2022 onset of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

In addition to facilitating the donation of the Skydio drones, USAID supports broader efforts to pursue accountability for war crimes and human rights abuses.

In broad strokes, the USAID is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible, primarily, for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance, reducing poverty, strengthening ostensibly democratic governance, and helping populations progress beyond assistance.  

Since 24 February 2022, two USAID-supported Ukrainian human rights coalitions have documented more than forty-thousand incidents meeting the criteria set forth for war crimes by the Hague and Geneva Conventions. War crimes comprise, in part:

• Willful killing
• Torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments;
• Willfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health;
• Extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.
• Compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile power.
• Willfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial.
• Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement.
• Taking hostages.

USAID’s facilitation of Skydio’s donation of drones to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine occasions the most recent U.S. private-sector partnership by which Ukraine has benefited. In addition to Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), USAID has provisioned Ukraine’s people and government with Starlink data terminals donated by SpaceX, as well as laptops and software given over to Ukraine’s schoolchildren and teachers by HP, Inc., JP.IK, and Microsoft. USAID partnerships with U.S. private-sector entities have also supported Ukrainian grain production and export through the AGRI-Ukraine initiative launched in July 2022.

Founded in 2014 and based in San Mateo, California, Skydio comprises personnel possessed of expertise in disciplines such as AI, robotics, aerospace engineering, imaging technology, and electric propulsion. In March 2021, the company became the first U.S. drone manufacturer to exceed $1-billion in overall value.

On 07 February 2023, following a three-year period during which the company’s resources and market share grew by a reported 2,900-percent, Skydio announced it had raised $230-million by dint of a Series E funding round, thereby bringing the company’s total funding raised to $562-million and its overall valuation to north of $2.2-billion.

Skydio’s near-thirty-times growth—which has landed it among North America’s most upwardly-mobile technology concerns—was accomplished against the backdrop of a worldwide UAS market historically dominated by Chinese companies beholden to the policies and aims of China’s communist government. Escalating geo-political tensions have piqued worldwide need for cyber-secure drones suitable for use in Western nations’ critical infrastructure, public safety, and defense sectors.

Since 2022, Skydio has increased its personnel roster by some forty-percent. What’s more, the company’s new 36,000-square-foot, Hayward, California manufacturing facility has boosted Skydio’s drone production capacity by a factor of ten. To meet the projected future demands of its rapidly-growing global customer base, Skydio expects to create over 150 manufacturing jobs at its Hayward facility and other U.S. locations.

Currently, Skydio produces three UAS models: the Skydio X2, the Skydio S2+ Consumer, and the Skydio S2+ Enterprise. Skydio’s UAS platforms are supported by the company’s Skydio Dock docking system and proprietary 3D Scan, Cloud, and Autonomy software suites.

By virtue of their outstanding durability, maneuverability, configurability, and autonomy, Skydio UASs are eminently conducive to Battlefield Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR); cinematic endeavors; law-enforcement overwatch; fire-fighting; search and rescue; bridge, power-plant, powerline, digital distribution, and cell-tower inspection; and job-site security and progress monitoring.

Skydio co-founder and CEO Adam Bry stated: “Drones enable the core industries that our civilization runs on—transportation, public safety, energy, construction, communications, defense, and more—to operate more safely and more efficiently, by putting sensors wherever they’re needed, whenever they’re needed, while keeping people safely on the ground.”

FMI: www.skydio.com