The Fulshear Police Department launched a Drone as First Responder program on April 6, 2026, and the platform doing the work is the DJI Matrice 350 RTK rather than the U.S.-built Skydio X10 that has become the default for many other municipal DFR programs.
The choice matters because it cuts against the broader U.S. public safety trend of moving to American-made aircraft, and because the math behind the decision tells you a lot about where mid-sized departments are actually landing when they have to weigh capability against cost.
The program is funded by a grant from the Texas Department of Transportation’s Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, with a 20 percent match from the city, according to Lt. Bill Henry of the Fulshear Police Department, per Community Impact.
A grant-funded program forces a department to maximize capability per dollar, and that is the lens through which the M350 RTK won.
The Price Gap Is Real
A DJI Matrice 350 RTK fully kitted out for public safety, including the aircraft, a DJI RC Plus controller, two TB65 batteries, and a charging station, lands in the $10,000 to $15,000 range depending on configuration.
Add a payload like the H30T zoom-thermal camera and the total package still typically comes in under $25,000 for a complete operational unit.
A Skydio X10 with a Skydio Dock for autonomous DFR operations is a different conversation. A fully-equipped X10 alone is in the $20,000 to $25,000 range before the Dock, and the X10 plus Dock package commonly lands north of $50,000 once integration is included.
As Community Impact reported, for a department running on a single grant cycle with a 20 percent city match, that gap is the difference between standing up the program now and standing it up two budget cycles from now.
What the M350 RTK Brings to the Mission
The Matrice 350 RTK is DJI’s flagship enterprise platform and the direct evolution of the M300 RTK that already serves hundreds of U.S. public safety agencies.
The aircraft carries up to 2.7 kg (about 6 pounds) of modular payload, flies for up to 55 minutes per battery set with no payload, hits 51 mph (23 m/s) top speed, and uses OcuSync 3+ Enterprise transmission rated to roughly 20 km (12.4 miles) of range under FCC conditions.
It is IP55-rated for rain and dust, with a service ceiling above 23,000 feet (7,000 m) that is irrelevant in suburban Texas but indicates the structural envelope of the airframe.
What actually matters in a DFR context is the payload bay. The M350 RTK supports the H30T zoom-thermal camera, the L2 lidar payload for night and obscured-environment mapping, the P1 mapping camera, and a spotlight payload for active scenes.
A single aircraft can be reconfigured for missing persons, traffic crash reconstruction, fire support, or active-incident overwatch by changing payloads in minutes. The Skydio X10 has integrated sensors that are excellent but less swappable.
Where the X10 Wins, and Why It Did Not Matter Here
The Skydio X10 is built around onboard autonomy running on NVIDIA Jetson Orin compute, with NightSense low-light imaging and obstacle avoidance designed for tight urban environments.
It is the better platform for fully autonomous flight in cluttered airspace and for true Dock-based remote operations where no operator is on scene. For a department wanting to put a Dock on a rooftop and run sub-two-minute responses without a pilot in the loop, the X10 is the cleaner answer.
Fulshear’s program, at least at launch, appears to be an operator-flown DFR rather than a fully autonomous Dock-based system. That changes the calculus completely.
Once a trained operator is launching the aircraft for each call, the M350 RTK’s longer flight time, heavier modular payloads, and lower acquisition cost become the dominant factors.
What the M350 RTK Gives Fulshear Operationally
The published use cases for the Fulshear program include missing person searches, community event monitoring, active incident response, traffic crash investigations, search and rescue operations, and vacation house checks upon request.
That mission set rewards a versatile platform with swappable payloads. Missing persons calls want a thermal camera, traffic crash reconstruction wants the P1 or L2 mapping payload, active incidents want zoom-thermal and a spotlight.
A single M350 RTK covers all of those missions by swapping what is mounted underneath. Running the same mix on a Skydio X10 would either require multiple aircraft or accept the limitations of the integrated sensor package.
For a city that grew 251.99 percent between 2019 and 2024, from 9,906 residents to 34,868, that operational flexibility is the practical version of doing more with less.
DroneXL’s Take
What you need to know: Fulshear’s choice is the one that mid-sized departments keep making when nobody is forcing their hand.
The Skydio platform is excellent, and for departments under federal funding restrictions or state-level Chinese drone bans, it is the only realistic option. But where a department has the budget freedom to choose, the DJI M350 RTK keeps winning on price-per-capability for the standard public safety mission set.
The Fulshear program is also a tell on how the funding category is shifting. A state traffic safety grant funded the entire purchase, and that grant pool will fund more programs like it across Texas before the year is out.
The story to watch is whether those follow-on programs land on DJI or get pushed toward Skydio by procurement language attached to the grant money. That is the actual policy lever, and it is being adjusted quietly while the headlines stay focused on the aircraft.
Photo credit: Fullshear PD
