SkyDome

Skydome is the largest indoor Anechoic Chambered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle experimentation facility in the United States, and a transformational investment in Oneida County's Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Test Site. It provides year-round, indoor testing of advanced drone technologies, including artificial intelligence-based flight controls and autonomous swarms of small drones.

Skydome supports collaborative efforts between the Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate and the UAS Test Site, leveraging the region’s high tech commercial and academic ecosystem supporting the development of technologies for Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) to operate safely and securely in the National Air Space (NAS).

This $13 million project, created and developed by Oneida County, is funded by $4 million from the county, and supported by a $4.5 million grant from the CNY Rising Upstate Revitalization Initiative (URI) and $4.5 million grant from the Mohawk Valley URI. State Senator Joseph Griffo has also secured a $950,000 grant for the facility.

The Skydome test site is part of the ever-growing 3,500-acre Griffiss Business and Technology Park, a former U.S. Air Force Base, which is now home to a multitude of high-tech, world-leading companies in cyber security, quantum computing, manufacturing among others that employs nearly 6,000.