@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-departme... 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_Securit... 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_release... 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/P... 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... 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@entersection.org @gregoryfoster<> http://entersection.com/ _______________________________________________ drone-list mailing list drone-list@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/drone-list If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. 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