Skydio X10 Helps Illinois PD Rescue 3 In Kishwaukee River

Cherry Valley Police Department in Illinois used a Skydio X10 with thermal imaging, a spotlight, and a speaker payload to locate and guide three stranded people out of the Kishwaukee River on the night of June 25, 2026. All three were unhurt when the Cherry Valley Fire Protection District took them to safety.

The Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office requested the Cherry Valley drone shortly after 9 p.m. The terrain along the river was dark and difficult, the kind of search where a ground team can pass within meters of a victim without seeing them.

The X10 was airborne in minutes. The thermal camera locked onto the three subjects almost immediately, and the spotlight and speaker on the airframe turned the drone from a sensor into a two-way communication device.

The drone stayed in the air for roughly 72 minutes from launch to recovery. That is two full battery cycles for an X10, which is the difference between a rescue closed before midnight and an extended ground sweep that lasts past sunrise.

How The Rescue Unfolded

As WREX reported, Cherry Valley PD did not initiate the call. Winnebago County Sheriff’s deputies were already searching the riverbank when they asked the agency to send up its drone.

The X10 launched, pushed downstream, and found the three subjects with thermal in the dark vegetation along the water. Once located, the drone operator used the onboard spotlight to mark the position and the speaker to talk to the group directly.

The three followed the drone toward the riverbank, where Cherry Valley Fire Protection District personnel met them and escorted them out. No one was hurt during the rescue or the medical assessment afterward.

That outcome is the program’s stated mission. It is also the kind of case ground teams have always solved eventually, just slower and with more risk to everyone involved.

Why Cherry Valley Sent The X10 And Not The Avata 2

Cherry Valley PD operates a small mixed fleet: the Skydio X10 for outdoor work and the DJI Avata 2 cinewhoop for indoor sweeps and tight confined-space flights. For this call there was no choice to make.

The Avata 2 is a 410 gram (14.5 oz) FPV-class drone with a 4K visible-light camera and no thermal payload. It is purpose-built for fast indoor maneuvering, breach support, and obstacle-rich short flights, and it is excellent at exactly that.

What it cannot do is find a human body heat signature against a cold river at night. That job belongs to the X10 and its FLIR Boson+ thermal core, which is why the X10 went up and the Avata 2 stayed in the bag.

Combining Skydio and DJI in these specific models was a smart call by Cherry Valley. The why is operational: you use the Skydio for the kind of search-and-rescue work where the thermal core does the heavy lifting, and for indoor entries you go with the Avata 2.

By the way, the Avata 2 was used a few days ago by the Sacramento Sheriff’s Office to disarm a barricaded suspect.

The Spotlight + Speaker + Thermal Combo

The X10 is the same airframe Denver Police flies, the same airframe Arvada PD used last week to track a Target shoplifter, and the same airframe Orlando Police deployed across an 11-drone metro network this month. What makes it the dominant search-and-rescue choice is the combination of payloads it carries.

The thermal core handles the find. A high-zoom visible-light camera handles the confirm. The NightSense spotlight illuminates the scene for both the camera and the people on the ground. The integrated speaker lets the operator give the victim instructions without a megaphone, a phone, or a relay through dispatch.

NDAA compliance is the other reason a small agency picks the X10 over a cheaper alternative. The Cherry Valley call would have been just as recoverable on a DJI Matrice 30T, but the federal procurement and grant environment no longer makes that an easy choice.

What This Says About Small-Agency Drone Programs

Cherry Valley is not a large department. The village had a population of roughly 3,100 at the last census, and the police department runs accordingly.

A small agency standing up a two-aircraft program with a Skydio X10 and a DJI Avata 2 is the new template. The X10 covers outdoor search, pursuit, accident scene, and surveillance roles. The Avata 2 covers indoor breach, confined space, and tight tactical entries that no fixed-camera platform can match.

The total hardware investment is in the $30,000 to $50,000 range depending on docks, payload options, and training. That number sits comfortably inside a single annual federal grant cycle for most municipal agencies, and the operational ROI shows up on calls like this one.

DroneXL’s Take

The Cherry Valley rescue is the cleanest argument for a small-agency drone program I have read this month. Three civilians located in heavy darkness, talked to through a speaker on a flying robot, and walked out of the riverbank without a single ground unit having to wade in.

The 72 minute sortie time is the line that should get quoted in every grant application for a small-town SAR program. That is not a demo flight. That is the operational reality of what an X10 plus a trained operator delivers on a Thursday night call.

The X10 + Avata 2 split fleet is also worth flagging as a pattern. We are going to see more small agencies adopt this exact two-aircraft setup over the next 12 months, because it covers the full operational envelope at a price a village of 3,100 can defend at the next budget meeting.

This is not the first time a police department flies more than one brand at once. It is called having options.

If Cherry Valley decided to use the Avata 2 for indoor entries and the Skydio X10 for long-range or search-and-rescue work, it is because they picked the right tool for each job. Other departments should be paying attention.

Photo credit: Skydio, Cherry Valley Police Dept.