[drone-list] North Dakota Sheriff's Dept preparing to deploy UAVs
Gregory Foster
gfoster at entersection.org
Sun Mar 4 02:25:15 PST 2012
@sUASnews (Mar 4) - "Grand Forks Sheriff's Department launching UAS
program" by Chris Bieri of @GFHerald:
http://www.suasnews.com/2012/03/12582/grand-forks-sheriff%E2%80%99s-department-launching-uas-program/
It looks like the Grand Forks Herald has been reporting a LOT of articles
about UAS's:
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/search/order/date/keywords/UAS
In part, that must be because the University of North Dakota has embraced
the opportunity to become a locus for research, education, and training for
unmanned aircraft systems:
http://www.uasresearch.com/home.aspx
It is therefore appropriate that The Center for UAS Research, Education
and Training's homepage prominently features an image of a Department of
Homeland Security Customs and Border Protection General Atomics MQ-9
Reaper "Predator B" drone, as five of DHS's seven MQ-9's are based in
North Dakota at the Grand Forks Air Force Base:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper#US_Homeland_Security
In December, Brian Bennett [ @thingsblowup ] of the LA Times reported "
Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks
Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June"
in the first widely reported case of American citizens being arrested by
local authorities with the assistance of drone surveillance provided by
federal authorities upon request from a local law enforcement agency:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/10/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211
On September 13, 2010, North Dakota Senator Byron L. Dorgan convened a
field hearing "at 8 a.m. in the Red River Valley Room of the Memorial
Union, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks" on the subject of "The
Integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) Into the National Airspace
System (NAS): Fulfilling Imminent Operational and Training Requirements".
North Dakota Representative Earl Pomeroy was also in attendance, helping
convene a check-in meeting to spur cooperation between the FAA and Defense
officials. Secrecy News' Steven Aftergood [ @saftergood ] archived a copy
of the complete transcript of the meeting, including all statements by
witnesses and prepared testimony included in the record:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2010_hr/uas.html
Senator Dorgan described the context for the meeting in his opening
statement,
The hearing is about the subject of unmanned aerial
vehicles, and most particularly, the issue of training and
operations for UAVs in this region. Grand Forks and this region
of North Dakota is slated to become a major UAV center. We will
have the Predators and the Global Hawks. We'll have fleets of
Global Hawks and Predators stationed here at the Grand Forks
Air Force Base. We have Homeland Security, which flies UAVs
here. The University of North Dakota Center for Aerospace
Science is designated by law and in the DOD descriptions as the
center for UAV research. I did that because we fly unmanned
aerial vehicles in all kinds of weather, and I had visited
Nellis and Creach a number of times and discovered they do
quite well when it's warm, flying over desert sand, but they'll
be flying them in other areas of the country as well, and the
world, and having a center for research of UAVs here, connected
to the Air Force and the University of North Dakota, one of
the--probably the preeminent aviation school in the world, just
made a lot of sense.
The Senator goes on to describe reasons for convening the meeting and
mentions a kickoff roundtable discussion 19 months earlier:
Here at the University of North Dakota, at the Center for
Research for UAVs, there's a lot of work going on, on sensitive
technologies and radar and so on, on just this very subject.
About a year ago, February 16, 2009, we met in this room, not
in a hearing, but in a roundtable discussion, and we had a very
substantial discussion about what needed to be done and the
timelines to do it, in which to create routine training and
operation capability for UAVs here in this region. We had the
Air Force and the FAA talk about creating a working group, and
from that meeting, a working group was created and has been
working between then and now.
The February 2009 confluence of "Federal and state dignitaries" in Grand
Forks coincided with the opening of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Unmanned Aircraft Operations Center of North Dakota.
http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/news_releases/archives/2009_news_releases/february_2009/02162009.xml
The reason for the presence of drones in Grand Forks can be dated to 2005,
when then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued a " report to the
Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission [which] noted the strategic
importance of maintaining an air base in the north central United States
and specifically cited the Grand Forks base for an 'emerging mission'
involving UAVs, the fastest growing mission area in the Air Force."
http://conrad.senate.gov/pressroom/record.cfm?id=276203
In the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission's Final Report to
the President (Sep 8 2005), page 151 (Chapter 1, "Air Force") indicates
the Grand Forks Air Force Base mission was realigned from a KC-135 tanker
hub "to include the Department of Defensebs intent to bed down a family of
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)":
http://www.brac.gov/finalreport.html
The drones have had nests prepared to come home to roost for quite some
time, much longer than might be gauged by the amount of welcome attention
garnered by a controversial Congressional mandate in the FAA
Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2012: " Not later than 270 days after
the date of enactment of this Act [(February 13, 2012)], the Secretary of
Transportation, in consultation with representatives of the aviation
industry, Federal agencies that employ unmanned aircraft systems
technology in the national airspace system, and the unmanned aircraft
systems industry, shall develop a comprehensive plan to safely accelerate
the integration of civil unmanned aircraft systems into the national
airspace system."
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2012/02/faa-uas.html
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h658/show
It is important to understand the scope of the bureaucratic inertia (and
agility) that has been painstakingly transformed into kinetic motion over
time as well as the actors involved, their dispositions, and constraints
(or lack thereof).
The unmanned aircraft systems industry is represented first and foremost
by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International [ @auvsi ]
which lobbies Congress (and presumably other "government, industry, and
academia" officials) on behalf of its more than 7,000 members and "2,100
member organizations from 60 allied countries":
<http://www.auvsi.org/home/aboutus/>http://www.auvsi.org/home/aboutus/
Lobbyists from AUVSI frequently speak with elected officials, 53 of whom
are members of the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus [ @CUSCaucus ],
co-chaired by Representatives Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-CA-25) and Henry
Cuellar (D-TX-28):
http://unmannedsystemscaucus.mckeon.house.gov/
Representative Buck McKeon also speaks directly to AUVSI members, as in
his keynote at the AUVSI Unmanned Systems Program Review (Feb 7-9), here
documented by Zaid Jilani of Republic Report:
http://www.republicreport.org/2012/mckeon-drone-lobby-speech/
http://www.auvsi.org/events/auvsievents/auvsisunmannedsystemsprogramreview/Proceedings12/
During his keynote, CodePink co-founder @MedeaBenjamin interrupted the
proceedings and was forcibly removed. "War Bucks" McKeon, unruffled,
continued: " Wouldnbt we all like to cut our swords, and pull our
ploughshares and live in total world peace? Ibll tell ya, it's
not...thatbs not happening."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsLLVW88k20<http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2011/08/hijacked-by-code-pink.html>
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-mckeon-auvsi-drone-20120208,0,341564.story
Finally, returning to the theme of the original link, here is a list of
all currently planned upcoming AUVSI events, including a webinar March
14th titled "UAVs Take to the Sky for Law Enforcement":
http://www.auvsi.org/AUVSI/Events/Calendar/?ShowAsList=True
gf
--
Gregory Foster || gfoster at entersection.org
@gregoryfoster<> http://entersection.com/
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