North Carolina just won the newest round of the drone factory lottery. Skyeton, the Ukrainian-born maker of the combat-proven Raybird reconnaissance aircraft, will establish its first U.S. flagship manufacturing operation in Fayetteville, investing $3.1 million and creating 162 jobs at an average salary of $70,759, well above the Cumberland County average of $49,382.
Governor Josh Stein made the announcement on July 27, calling North Carolina one of the top places in America to do business. The location tells its own story: Fayetteville sits next door to Fort Bragg, the home of Army Special Operations, and the state pitched exactly that proximity, along with transitioning military talent, as the reason to come.
The Raybird Arrives With 350,000 Combat Hours
Skyeton is not a startup with a render. The company has built aircraft for two decades, and its long-endurance Raybird platform has logged more than 350,000 combat-proven flight hours flying intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. The war in Ukraine turned the company from a niche manufacturer into one of the most battle-tested drone makers on Earth.
The Fayetteville operation will design, engineer, manufacture, test, distribute, and support composite unmanned aircraft from a 28,500-square-foot facility on Dedication Drive near Fayetteville Regional Airport, in a former Black+Decker manufacturing building. Local reporting says Skyeton picked North Carolina over competing bids from Nevada and Oklahoma. The state sweetened the deal with a performance-based grant of $500,000 from the One North Carolina Fund, contingent on hitting job and investment targets.
“North Carolina is the perfect place to call home,” said CEO Rigoberto Sáez, adding that the company is “building the next generation of American unmanned systems.”
The Ukraine-To-America Pipeline Keeps Widening
If this story sounds familiar, it should. DroneXL readers have watched this corridor open lane by lane: Ukrainian manufacturer UDD landed in Ohio with an $18.4 million plant, Kyiv issued its first export permit for finished combat drones this month, and the Pentagon’s roughly $1 billion Drone Dominance program has American units training on Ukrainian designs ahead of Gauntlet II in August.
Skyeton in Fayetteville is the same play from a different angle. The Secretary of War’s stated dream, an America that builds drones at scale again, is activating state by state, and the fastest shortcut to that capability is importing the companies that learned mass production under fire.
Nobody in Washington says that part out loud, so I will: the United States arrived late to the small drone game. Painfully late. What it has instead of a head start is money, credits, industrial parks, and governors competing for factories, and that combination is now pulling the world’s most combat-experienced drone builders across the Atlantic one announcement at a time.
States Are Competing Like It Is An Auto Plant In 1985
Look at the scoreboard by geography. Ohio got UDD. Texas and Utah host the established American primes. Alabama and Oklahoma keep winning defense expansions. Now North Carolina lands a Ukrainian flagship, beating Nevada, where Skyeton Holdings keeps its U.S. headquarters address, and Oklahoma for the prize.
This is the industrial pattern America has run before: foreign automakers in the 1980s, semiconductor fabs in the 2020s, and now drone plants in the middle of this decade. States dangle grants, sites, and workforce pipelines. Companies shop. The map fills in. The One North Carolina Fund money is modest at $500,000, which suggests the real currency was not cash. It was Fort Bragg next door, a regional airport on the doorstep, and a county full of veterans who already know how these aircraft are used.
For Fayetteville, 162 jobs at seventy grand average is real money in a county where that beats the average wage by 43%. The state says the project could add more than $1.4 million in annual payroll impact before a single subcontract or supplier follows the anchor tenant in. For Skyeton, it is a NATO-market foothold with the right zip code and a customer base that speaks its language. Both sides got what they came for.
DroneXL’s Take
Let’s be straight, the “which state wins the next drone factory” question is becoming the most reliable recurring story in this industry, and watching it happen is one of the pleasures of this beat. America was late, admitted it, and is now doing the very American thing: writing checks, clearing sites, and importing the talent that learned the hard way. The weapons are grim. The industrial awakening is not.
My read on why these announcements keep landing near military towns: the companies are not just buying workforce, they are buying users. An assembly tech in Fayetteville who spent eight years at Bragg does not need a seminar on what an ISR aircraft has to survive. That knowledge does not show up in the incentive math, and it is worth more than the grant.
So, which state pulls the next winning ticket? I will not predict a name, but the profile writes itself: a military installation, a regional airport, a governor with a fund, and a county hungry for $70,000 jobs. There is a long list of American towns that fit, and a growing list of Ukrainian manufacturers with export permits in hand. Watch Gauntlet II in August. The companies that perform there will be the ones to watch for the next factory announcement.
Sources: North Carolina Department of Commerce, CBS 17, Business North Carolina, Skyeton.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.
