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infrastructure to support integration of drones into the national airspace and advance extended visual line of sight and night operations. It will also be testing drones for agriculture, public safety and weather warning systems.
Among the Choctaw Nation’s partners are AiRXOS, which has a background in working on UAS traf-
fic management projects; AirMap, a provider of Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability software that facilitates drone flight planning and authorization; and Intel, which has experience with drone communications
and integrating computer vision into unmanned systems.
One of the first tests will take place on a tribe-owned 44,000-acre ranch that doesn’t have a built-out road system. The team will evaluate drones’ ability to find lost cattle and deliver medical supplies beyond the operator’s line of sight. The tribe and its part- ners will also conduct night flights to measure variables in crops that could affect yield.
Weather is another area of interest. Grimsley said the team wants to use the drones to gather better data and
potentially improve tornado warnings. The current system gives residents only about 12 minutes’ notice, he added.
In August, the Choctaw Nation will demonstrate its work with extended visual line-of-sight capabilities and night flights.
“I have never seen the momentum moving forward like we have with this,” Grimsley said. “The resources the FAA [has] devoted to it, the attention they’re putting to it, the cohesive kind of plan and kind of attitude within
the government right now [are] very positive.” •
Taking down malicious drones
The Trump administration recently sent Congress a proposal that would allow the departments of Homeland Security and Justice to use technology to detect, disrupt, seize or take down drones deemed to pose a malicious threat.
The bill would apply only to a specific set of “sensitive missions,” such as protecting Secret Service operations, defending Coast Guard vessels or stopping delivery of illegal substances into federal prisons, said Brendan Groves, counsel to the deputy attorney general at Justice. He spoke about the legislation during an event in April hosted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
The ability to spot and take control of a drone found to be operating in an illegal fashion is necessary before commercial drone use can spread, Groves added.
The administration is concerned about drones being used for terrorism and criminal activity. Terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State group have begun using drones in their operations in the Middle East, and U.S. officials are concerned that the practice might make its way to this side of the Atlantic. Drones can also help facilitate more general criminal activity, specifically smuggling, Groves said.
The legislation would effectively create temporary restricted airspace around certain missions and require DHS and Justice
to notify the operators of unmanned aerial systems about the restriction.
Technology for detecting and mitigating drone use is already
on the market, but it is largely for military use and would need
to undergo more testing in an urban environment before being deployed for homeland security and law enforcement purposes, said Anh Duong, program executive officer for unmanned aerial
systems at DHS. The department has not tested mitigation technologies, she added. But there are options that would
allow officials to gain control of a drone by taking over the communication link between the device and the ground controller. It is less likely that DHS would use tactics such as shooting a drone out of the sky, especially in an urban environment with people below, she said.
An important factor in identifying malicious drone activity
will be remote ID technology. It would add the equivalent of an electronic license plate to every drone, and a traffic management system would show the planned and authorized flights of those registered drones. Then a detection system, like one DHS recently tested, could pick up drones that do not appear on the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability, the air traffic management system designed to allow drones to operate in the national airspace.
The technology for remote ID is already available, said Diana Marina Cooper, senior vice president of policy and strategy at PrecisionHawk, but there needs to be legislation or regulation requiring it before people will begin implementing it.
— Matt Leonard
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