American drone manufacturer Skyfish has commercially released its new enterprise drone, Osprey — a sleek, survey-grade machine packed with power, portability, and ambition to replace DJI in the skies.
Osprey is a full-throttle attempt to shift the drone industry’s center of gravity away from China’s DJI and toward an American-made future. Designed and built in Missoula, Montana, Osprey is targeting professional sectors where precision, compliance, and trust matter most — like infrastructure inspection, public safety, and defense.
“The Osprey was originally designed as an American-made replacement for the DJI Matrice 30 or M300,” says Skyfish CEO Dr. Orest Pilskalns. “But Osprey turned out to be an even better drone than the DJI equivalent.”
At just around 13 pounds, Osprey is compact enough to fit in a backpack, but powerful enough to take on complex missions. It boasts flight times of over 50 minutes, a radio range of 3 to 5 miles, autonomous flight capability, and real-time, centimeter-grade location accuracy via RTK. Its standout feature? A cutting-edge remote controller and seamless integration with industry-leading sensors.
Engineers, surveyors, and inspectors can mount Sony’s new 61-megapixel LR1 camera for high-resolution photogrammetry and 3D digital twin creation. These models, accurate to within 1/32 of an inch, offer critical insight for maintaining infrastructure like bridges, wind turbines, and power lines. For public safety and defense operations, the drone supports NextVision’s Raptor EO/IR sensor, offering jaw-dropping X80 zoom and thermal imaging capabilities.
While DJI has long dominated the global drone market, rising security concerns and US government restrictions on foreign-made equipment have opened the door for NDAA-compliant alternatives. Skyfish appears ready to step in. The Osprey is 100% US-made, NDAA compliant, Army DEVCOM certified, and currently in the process of earning Green UAS approval — a rigorous badge of reliability and safety.
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Unlike some US-based startups that rely heavily on foreign components, Skyfish builds its full UAS stack in-house, including its autonomous navigation platform and geotagging tools. That control over the ecosystem means better integration, better data quality, and better support for demanding use cases.
Skyfish’s strategy is also about making high-performance drones easier to use. Osprey’s backpack-sized portability removes the bulk from typical survey-grade setups, streamlining fieldwork without sacrificing precision. It’s a practical answer to real-world needs, whether inspecting a remote wind turbine or scanning a wildfire-hit bridge.
Beyond the tech specs, Osprey represents something larger: a concerted push to create a homegrown alternative to foreign drone dominance. As DJI faces growing bans and import challenges in the US, American drone buyers — especially in government, energy, and telecom sectors — are hungry for reliable options that meet federal compliance standards without compromising performance.
“We built Osprey to show the world that American drone companies can lead on both innovation and execution,” says Dr. Pilskalns. “To everyone who thinks there’s no American-made drone to compete with DJI — well, now there is.”
Whether Osprey can truly unseat DJI in the enterprise sector remains to be seen, but one thing’s clear: Skyfish is no longer flying under the radar.
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