[drone-list] North Dakota Sheriff's Dept preparing to deploy UAVs

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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