Getting a desperately needed spare part to an offshore platform or to troops in contested territory often means spending thousands of dollars booking a helicopter and its crew. Texas startup Skyways says its new Skyreach drone can make that flight on its own for roughly a tenth of the cost, and fly more than 1,300 miles (2,092 km) doing it.
Skyreach is a hybrid VTOL with eight electric motors that lift it off the ground like a multicopter and a two-stroke heavy-fuel engine that takes over for cruise, burning the same jet fuel used by airports and armed forces. A generator keeps the batteries charged in flight, so there's no need to plug in or swap batteries between missions.
It has a 22-ft (6.7-m) wingspan and a 7-cu-ft (198-L) bay that loads from the top and opens at the bottom, so the drone can airdrop a package or lower it on a tether without landing. Skyways says it can handle winds of up to 40 knots and temperatures from -5 to 120 °F (-21 to 49 °C). With the lightest load, it can stay up for more than 18 hours.
The company doesn't give a price, or which helicopter its one-tenth figure refers to. But its CEO, Charles Acknin, told Tectonic that Skyreach currently costs about US$300 an hour to run and that Skyways wants to bring that down to $100 with more autonomy.
There's a catch, though, with the 1,300-mile figure: it assumes just 10 lb (4.5 kg) of cargo, one way. With 50 lb (23 kg) on board, the range drops to about 780 miles (1,255 km), and with 80 lb (36 kg) it's down to around 280 miles (450 km), according to the company's spec sheet. Those numbers also assume a steady 70-knot (130-km/h or 81-mph) cruise with no wind, while keeping 45 minutes of fuel in reserve. Skyways notes these are design figures, and that they may change while Skyreach is still in flight testing.
The reason for that extreme trade-off is weight. Skyreach tops out at 360 lb (163 kg) on takeoff and can carry about 100 lb (45 kg) of fuel and cargo combined, so every pound of payload is a pound of fuel left behind.
Skyreach will replace the smaller V2, which has already done real jobs at sea. In 2025 it made cargo runs to RWE's Arkona wind farm in the Baltic, and Skyways has since signed a logistics partnership with DSV. On launch day, Skyways and Shell announced that the FAA has cleared a V2 to fly beyond visual line of sight from Gibson, Louisiana, to an offshore platform in the Gulf, inspecting a pipeline and simulating a cargo drop on the way. The FAA calls it a first-of-its-kind authorization. The flight hasn't happened yet.
The military is the other big customer. Skyreach is the production version of the aircraft behind a $37-million US Air Force contract, awarded through AFWERX in June 2025 to reach full-rate production. The company says the V2 has flown missions for the Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force.
Skyways says it has started production in Austin, Texas, and will begin flying Skyreach with defense and commercial customers in December. "Our ambition is to deploy a network of over 1,000 autonomous aircraft for defense and commercial customers within five years," says Acknin.
Source: Skyways
