North Dakota’s Unmanned Aircraft Coalition Against the Coronavirus

By Matt Dunlevy

In these unprecedented times, we need to remind ourselves of the silver linings: society is going to pull through this mess and we have things to look forward to. One of them is what’s happening with Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS).

It is through the calamity we face as a society that the value of drones comes front and center. Drones are tools for remote sensing, and the term “remote” is synonymous with “distance.” This highlights the fact that UAS pilots, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, are called “remote pilots in command. Social distance is latent in its credentials.

Drones are born out of the need for higher levels of safety, and the levels of social distance they afford make them perfectly suited to fight the pandemic.

Take Google, for example, which started using drones to test the feasibility of deliveries much the same way Amazon is doing. Google’s Project Wing has effectively doubled the volume of their deliveries of baby food and other basic human amenities due to the virus. This is in no small part because of the many shelter-in-place orders. During such times, they are the only option for the general public if one wants drone delivery in North America.

In North Dakota, however, UAS pioneers have not been idle. The state caught on to the need for UAS-based delivery permissions and capabilities before Wing started making strides. A North Dakotan UAS company, for example, used a drone to deliver the script of the Grand Forks mayor’s State of the City speech in 2016, and the Northern Plains UAS Test Site (NPUASTS) delivered the powerpoint remote control to the Governor in the State of the State speech with a drone in 2020.

While these small demonstrations are indicators of the shape of things to come, some monumental progress was made in early April in North Dakota when Sen. John Hoeven called on the Administrator of the FAA to give expedited permissions to the NPUASTS in order to deliver medical supplies.

I’m captivated by the strong leadership in our state while we power through the coronavirus, particularly coming out of Gov. Doug Burgum’s office. To his credit, Gov. Burgum has been a vocal advocate of the UAS industry and is aware of SkySkopes’ coalition to use UAS to eradicate COVID-19. Additionally, Lt. Gov. Brent Sanford has been at the national vanguard of UAS as the head of the Northern Plains Unmanned Systems Authority, the parent organization to the NPUASTS.

The UAS coalition of North Dakota entities rallying around the cities of Hillsboro and Grand Forks is maybe the most incredible flight operation I have ever seen in a lifetime of aviation.

The partnerships, the mission sets, the technologies and the flight purpose have all come together to show how UAS can help get the nation back at full strength.

Through the NPUASTS’ missions, the virus emphasizes the state of North Dakota’s ability to maintain its consciousness of and commitment to social responsibility. Furthermore, the test site has been the champion of a statewide network of UAS radars to help UAS fly beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) commercially, and at scale, probably before anywhere else in the United States.

Dr. Amy Whitney and the innovation center at the University of North Dakota could not possibly be doing any better at fostering the UAS business ecosystem. The team quickly recognized the need to prove out the aggregate impact of UAS emergency response capabilities against the virus, including with the HUBNet Radar. These missions culminated in a collaboration with NDSU to use UAS to spray disinfectant from the air in places such as playgrounds to protect children from the virus, deliver medical supplies to relevant community health personnel, and use UAS thermal sensors in research-designated areas seeing if people had elevated body temperatures symptomatic of the coronavirus.

That such UAS missions, executed in a medically safe fashion, are ways to fight the virus, and because North Dakota is perhaps the capital of the drone world, pilots do not see this as an opportunity but as their duty.

This is not the first time UAS entities in North Dakota have converged on Hillsboro. Many assembled around Traill County in May 2017 in what proved to be the dress rehearsal for the UAS virus combat missions. Xcel Energy was sponsoring a mock disaster scenario with General Electric, having a simulated tornado ripping through the cities. This was the first time a Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAS had been used to task sUAS commercially in the United States, and the lessons learned served as the foundation for the team to have a home court advantage against the virus.

Much of this comes from the genius of Hillsboro’s Mayor Terry Sando, one of the mission’s architects and “air bosses.”

He is currently the military liaison for North Dakota’s Congressman Kell y Armstrong and spent a career in military intelligence where he retired as a USAF full-bird colonel. UND’s Research Institute for Autonomous Systems with meteorology professor Dr. Mark Askelson as its executive director, has shown a stunningly nimble quick response capability, as it brings the new concept of electronic observers to the mission.

The “Electronic Observers,” a novel concept in the UAS industry, maintain the remote situational awareness brought to the table by L3Harris’ RangeVue technology. This operation was the first real-world use of the L3Harris Unmanned Beyond Visual Line of

Sight Network, which, as a UAS radar, is the predecessor to the NPUASTS’ statewide UAS radar network.

Drone use has increased in a logarithmic fashion and the virus doesn’t seem to be slowing it down. Despite the hard times we are all experiencing, I believe this is something positive in the Midwest. Certain businesses, such as in the utility sector, have actually done well during these otherwise unprecedented times, in part because of its use of drones.

I cannot help but congratulate the largest utility companies on the West Coast for their understanding and advocacy of the use of UAS, and how they are able to define the role of UAS pilots as essential service personnel.

Energy companies still use drones at scale during the pandemic to prevent wildfires and blackouts while the virus is out in the open. One of the worst things the country could have is a blackout at this critical moment in human history, or worse, a wildfire. That the energy companies are keeping drones in the air, to me, should remind us that there is light also at the end of the tunnel of the pandemic.

While much has changed over the past several weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic, one thing that has not changed is how businesses use drones. In fact, if something good is to come from the worldwide emergency it just might be that businesses have learned to utilize drones even more. If anything can be considered a silver lining to these onerous times, one is that the UAS frontier in the Midwest and American West is starting to crystallize.

Matt Dunlevy is the president and CEO of SkySkopes, based in Grand Forks, N.D. The company has several offices in North Dakota, with a footprint also in Minnesota, Oregon, California and Texas.