Auburn Engineering receives unmanned aircraft system from FMS Aerospace
Published: Apr 28, 2026 12:00 PM
By Dustin Duncan
Auburn Engineering faculty, students and representatives from FMS Aerospace stand with a donated Skyron X unmanned aircraft system outside an Auburn Engineering facility.
Auburn Engineering has received a fully operational unmanned aircraft system from FMS Aerospace, a Huntsville-based provider of aircraft modification and flight test services, placing a full-scale system in the hands of students and faculty.
The donation includes a Skyron X system with two identical aircraft, a shared payload equipped with visible and infrared imaging and a full complement of spare parts, including propellers, wings, booms and batteries.
The Skyron X has a wingspan of approximately 16 feet and can remain airborne for three to four hours, allowing it to cover large areas in a single flight.
“It’s not a hobby drone,” said Brian Thurow, chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering. “This is the type of system our students are ultimately working toward designing and understanding in practice.”
Phillips said the system has logged only about 10 hours of flight time and was donated after the company’s mission shifted, making it a better fit for an academic setting.
Phillips, an Auburn alumnus who earned a physics degree in 1988, said the connection to the university helped drive the donation. Jacob Child, ’24 aerospace engineering and current flight test engineer at FMS Aerospace, as well as Noah Phillips, ’25 Business Analytics and current graduate student in business information systems helped connect the company with Thurow.
“We’ve got a lot of Auburn people in our organization,” Phillips said. “It just made sense.”
The aircraft is being received through the Department of Aerospace Engineering but will likely be housed in the Department of Biosystems Engineering. There, its capabilities align with agricultural applications such as large-scale field monitoring.
“This is really a university-wide resource,” Thurow said. “The users of a system like this aren’t just aerospace engineers.”
Thurow said potential applications include agricultural monitoring, construction site surveying, stormwater assessment, wildfire detection using infrared imaging and post-disaster response support.
Compared to smaller drones, the system’s extended range and endurance allow it to operate over much larger areas, making it particularly valuable for time-sensitive or large-scale data collection.
For students, it’s a chance to work with the kind of system they’re being trained to design.
“This is the end product of what aerospace engineers design,” Thurow said. “Now our students can see how those systems are actually used and applied.”
Thurow said the system will provide opportunities for analysis and experimentation, giving students insight into how these systems are built, operated and improved.
He added that the donation is notable not only for its value but also for its condition. Universities more commonly receive surplus or outdated equipment, but the Skyron X is modern, functional and immediately deployable.
“These things don’t just fall in your lap every day,” Thurow said.
Media Contact: , dzd0065@auburn.edu, 334-844-2326