A collaboration between Tablet Command and Skydio will provide the incident command board with drone situational awareness.

At Ascend '26, Skydio's user conference for executives developing and expanding drone programs spanning public safety, national security, energy and utilities and critical infrastructure, the firms made their first public demonstration of the integration on Sept. 23–24 in Summerlin, NV.

The platform used by agencies to oversee their drone operations and carry out missions is still Skydio DFR Command. Skydio drones can be launched by pilots in less than 20 seconds, and they can autonomously arrive at situations in less than 90 seconds—often before the first unit does. Up until now, the incident commander oversaw units, assignments and tactical benchmarks in one program while that aerial perspective resided in another.

By sending a predetermined set of mission data—such as aircraft location and real-time video—to Tablet Command, where it displays alongside the units and assignments the incident commander is currently monitoring, this connection closes that gap. A more comprehensive operational picture is created at the command level by the commanders, company officers, and units handling the incident receiving aircraft position and video.

For fire departments, the value is a size-up that is sent to the command post instead of a separate screen and incorporates the view from above. The similar pattern links Drones as First Responders intelligence to the incident record managers already use in disaster management and law enforcement. In the meantime, Tablet Command's benchmark timestamping and offline operation remain unaltered; the record is integrated into the agency's existing event timeline.

"We’re excited to see Tablet Command and Skydio working together on this integration," said Assistant Chief Kyle Fekete, of the Louisville, KY, Fire Department. "Bringing drone intelligence into the incident command workflow gives our firefighters and incident commanders better information earlier in the response. We look forward to seeing the integration continue to develop in the months ahead."

"Tablet Command offers integrations with a range of drone providers, but this is the first that takes both the integration and the user experience to the next level," said William Pigeon, CEO and co-founder of Tablet Command. "It delivers a real-time video feed directly to the Tablet Command user and lets them switch between thermal and standard video views. Seeing this in a live demo was jaw-dropping. The user can see the drone's location on the map and switch the video feed at their own choice, not the operator's. Paired with Skydio's DFR Command, this truly gets us closer to having eyes in the field, providing a size-up before the first unit has left the station. We see this as the beginning of our next phase of drone integrations." 

Agencies present at Ascend '26 witnessed the integration at the Tablet Command table, although it is now undergoing cooperative development.

In September 2026, the two businesses used Skydio aircraft and docks for cooperative flight testing. Tablet Command was used to generate the aircraft position and streaming footage. Details about availability, licensing and enablement will be revealed later.