UAS News Podcast — 2013-02-20
Transcript
Alright, welcome everyone to the next installment of the SUAS news podcast series, where we discuss the news and issues relevant to the global unmanned technologies community. I'm your program host, Patrick Egan. Let's say hello and a warm welcome to our co-host, Gene Robinson. Hello, how's it going, Patrick?
How are you, sir? I'm doing good. Another beautiful sunny day in California. And I'm trusting everything's good down there in the Texas way.
Well, we're finally breaking the drought a little bit. We're all happy down here, getting a little rain. So if I fall off, you know why. It's cell phone science.
Alright, we also have Marcus Men. Hello, Patrick. Hey, Marcus. He's our Technology Training Corp rep.
And we're going to get an update from him. But I want to start right away. We have this show is episode 39, Accountability Makes Change. And we have our guest for this.
We'll bring him on a little bit. It's going to be pretty good. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about. But I do want to start, as we always do, with the news and current events.
And I'm going to, you know, I don't know if I, well, I think you saw the Popsci story, Gene, featuring the... I did. Could you select?
That sucker barrel is in fine fiddle there, isn't it, Patrick? You're keeping that one warmed up and ready to go, aren't you?
Well, that's, to be honest, that's an old picture. But I got to break it back out. And I was thinking about that, you know, we could do glamour shots or with a cracker barrel, you know. But it needs some work.
That's an old picture. But anyway, it was a good thing. And the reporter with that one was... We'll get into that a little bit later.
But it was a good story. It wasn't exactly what I said. But we had a very long conversation. And I was able to glean a lot of, let's say, information from her on what the layperson thinks of this technology.
There was also, I don't know if you caught, it just came out, this month's National Geographic. And the cover is, because they sent it to me, is America Strikes Oil. And it's about fracking. But there's an article in there called The Drones Come Home.
And I was one of the fact checkers on that. Did you see that article?
Yeah, you know, and we've had a little brush with Matt Gio ourselves. And of course, we can't talk about that mission. But yeah, they're trying to keep up with it. And I'm glad they managed to get a hold of somebody who knew some of the things that were going on out here.
And they did do those fact checking. So that was a good one. I hope it grows legs and runs a lot. Well, and the funny thing is, I think we probably have a worse reputation than the frackers.
You know, we're probably running neck and neck on that one. All right, well, you know, I know as always, there were a few stories that must have caught your attention. Would you like to discuss those?
Well, you know, one thing that I'd like to make a statement about, Patrick, is that the news has picked up on the drones. And I hate that word. But the news has picked up on unmanned aircraft. They're really starting to carry this more as a sensational story rather than the things that it could be.
We've seen everything from UAEs flown in Antarctica to the big deal with General Atomics getting a contract from UAE for Predators. And you know, it's just growing. And it's getting bigger and bigger. There seems to be no shortage of stories or things to talk about when it comes to unmanned aircraft because it is the topic of the day.
Well, and I think we're going to see more of it. And when you know, I got to be honest, you know, when you depending upon how you list these things, I mean, it's the same deal with the podcast. There's tons of listens off of YouTube. I'm not sorry, iTunes and other places because because people are searching.
They're searching for these drone stories. It's very hot right now. But we have a bad image and the reason we have a bad image. Well, we could kind of go into that too.
But it is sensational right now. People want to know about it. I've been watching all kinds of people are doing documentaries. They're talking about, you know, what these drones are going to do, yada, yada, yada, popular misconceptions.
But I agree. But did you see any any new news stories that caught your attention?
Or was it more rehashed stuff like the Antarctica story you just kind of mentioned? Go ahead with that one. The Antarctica story is interesting in that they did go down and they showed what harsh environments we can operate unmanned aircraft in. I think that was probably the most important thing that the unmanned aircraft preceded the ground crews that went in.
They've flown in some pretty really nasty environments. Of course, it's cold, as one might expect. So you'd have to think that a LiPo battery is going to be pretty cold and motors and electronics and everything else. So I think that is an important notch for us to show capability.
And that's just, you know, one of the kind of upbeat stories that we've seen so far. You and I discussed this past week the FAA's new RFIs, the request for information for people trying to get the new test centers. You know, that's kind of the we've been waiting for this. We've kind of seen things talked about and that's finally starting to get out.
They're making their own press releases and things like that. So something must be about to happen. And, you know, here's hoping that it's good. Right.
Well, that's kind of a moving into the first segment. We'll get into that a little bit more. But those are some good news stories. They're all over the place.
Everybody I mean, everybody's running that story. And I think that rides or goes points right back to what you were talking about, the sensationalism. I mean, every news outlet. Oh, here you go.
You know, the FAA drones be there. But we'll get into that in a second. Marcus, you're part of the news here, too, because I wanted to have you on this morning. I'm going to be speaking at UAS West here in beautiful sunny San Diego.
And I wanted to get an update from you. Who's locked in, you know, kind of lay the land on that deal if you could. Real quick there, sir. All right.
Real quickly. We're still looking really good. March 12th through the 14th. And like you said, San Diego, California.
We're starting off with one of our biggest speakers, Dr. Alton Rameg, Jr., Vice President, General Manager for the Advanced Development Programs for the Skunk Works at Lockheed Martin. And he'll be presenting on next generation unmanned aircraft systems. A look ahead.
We have some other great ones. Ron Stern, Director of Research at G2 Solutions. He'll be talking about the unmanned aircraft systems market forecast, which a lot of people are going to have heavy interest. Brigadier General Louis Edwards, United States Air Force, will be presenting on the US CENTCOM perspectives on UASs.
Brigadier General Ken Tordoff, United States Air Force. US North Coast perspective on unmanned aircraft systems. Colonel Dana Nesheimer, United States Air Force, National Guard Predator, RPA program update. Notice I said RPA, not drone.
Gene. Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Becker, United States Army. And he's going to have a big one on the United States Army's UAS operations update, a warfighter's perspective on these challenges and lessons learned. And these are confirmed military and government guys that will be there.
And it also helps in attendance. We've got, for example, Lisa Fisher from the Government Accountability Office. She and three of our other colleagues will be there looking for networking and opportunities. And they'll be bringing those to the table.
We have the Air Force's A3 Squadron, Army's 82nd, Army's G8. We have the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. Naval Special Warfare Command is going to be there.
Navy POC-4I is going to be there. Northrop Grumman, you know, Cisco, Boeing. I mean, we have the Euretion, the Solipsis, the Zeus program guys are going to be there. These are the people that are going to be there in attendance as well as participating in presenting.
So, I mean, we haven't confirmed they're going to be there. It's going to be a great, great opportunity for people to come out and learn more, you know, for people who have solutions to possible problems to be able to present them. And once again, it's March 12th to the 14th in San Diego, California. You can find more at uaswest.com.
Hey, let me ask you another question. I mean, it sounds pretty military centric, but I mean, I'm going to be there and I'm going to be talking about commercial or small business use. And I know there's a couple of other people. And I've been getting calls from people who want to get into the commercial side of this.
Are you just, maybe you could give us a little insight from a sales perspective, Marcus, are those people calling? Are they inquiring?
Are they trying to get in here? Is it just a cost versus sales?
Because there's not a lot of commercial opportunity. You got any insight on that?
I think in person, I think the commercial is going to be the future. I think. And that's what I believe you and I've conversed on that privately on the side. We do have a decent amount of commercial opportunities.
People that come up present. We have a Robert Fulton from Turbine Biofuels who will be coming out. And he's going to be presenting and exhibiting out there and talking about the alternative fuels for both military government UAVs as well as those for the commercial aspect. Talk about cost efficiency and savings and the opportunities out there.
Well, I just think it's interesting. I mean, I have been talking to more people, like I said, and definitely commercial ventures and money is coming online for the small business use. But we'll have to keep our eyes peeled on that one. And thanks for the insight on that.
I'm looking forward to being there. I'm going to do that. And we're going to do a live podcast. And we're also going to, I think we're going to have a contest where we're going to raffle off a copy of Gene's book, a signed copy of Gene's book first to deploy.
So it'll be a little raffle action going there. All right, well, I want to move into the first segment. And I know, Marcus, you've got to drop off after. But I wanted to get your take on this one too.
But I'm going to ask Gene first. We've got the test site announcement. It's everywhere. It kind of coincides.
And I've been told that the EFF had a lawsuit about privacy. And it's over. They had to sue basically to get the COA information that I had originally requested back in 2009. And I even mentioned to the FAA that if they would have came up with that information back in 2009, I think this privacy thing would be really less of an issue today because they could have pointed back and said, oh, hey, well, we already, here's all that information.
It's right here. This is what people are doing. And this is who's doing it. Have a nice day.
Gene, do you think it is coincidental that we're seeing some action now, even though it's like a better late than never thing? Do you think that the spotlight's on the FAA and they have no choice?
They've got to make a move? Insight, please. Well, let's face it. The momentum has gained significantly in the past year.
And obviously, the pressure is on the FAA since the passage of House Bill 658. And they're going to have to do something. They're going to have to work hard at it. And as we've heard so many times before, they're understaffed.
They're worked overtime. And they're trying to get a lot done with just a few people working it. So yeah, there's going to be a lot more pressure on them. And unfortunately, a lawsuit, it had to take a lawsuit to get that sort of thing going when really the FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act, should be something that should be easily filled.
Understand that they have to worry about national security and that sort of thing. But for a summary of what COAs have been issued, that was kind of beyond me. But you're right. It is coincidental, kind of.
But it's been a long time in the making. Well, and even when I made that, somebody's secretary is going nuts. She's not much of a licker, but she's very, very loyal. Anyway, during that request, I had asked that, or it stated that any national security stuff could be excluded, I understood.
But anyway, we're talking four years here. It's not really plausible. But anyway, I don't want to get too far off on that yet. And we'll talk a little bit more about that.
But Marcus, do you have any insight on that you'd like to talk about? Well, I mean, as far as the testing is concerned, I mean, I heard this morning, I don't know if it's a fact or a rumor or whatnot, but something that the government, Congress, FAA, something of a potential $9 billion in sales out there for this FAA testing center and services. And it's an incredible amount. I don't know if that's a real number.
Like I said, I don't know if it's a rumor or whatnot, but it's out there. Well, I mean, there's a lot of potential. I mean, that was the, you know, it's kind of funny is I deal with my congressperson's office a lot. And one of the aides, you know, rang me up about six months ago.
Oh, what's it worse? You know, and I'm like, well, I don't, you know, I don't know. I mean, we could pull telephone numbers out of the sky, but people are thinking it's going to be worse, you know, billions of dollars. And there'll be lots of action.
You know, I go back and forth on that because I've been involved in some of these test center proposals again, you know, when you, from what I was thinking, and I mean, there's a lot of Chester consultants out there, but from what I'm thinking, it's like, okay, well, let's think of the overhead. What are you trying to capture is the question that I asked. What do you want to have come out here and fly?
Oh, well, we want everything all the way on up to global Hawks. Okay. I cannot come to a test center and support the overhead to fly global Hawk. I just can't.
I'm sorry. I just don't have that kind of bread. So, you know, um, is small business going to benefit from this?
I don't know. It's very, very, uh, hard for people to support that type of overhead. Um, but we'll see. I agree.
Um, I mean, there's a lot of different groups like the, you and I've talked about before that are out there. There's a gene, drop me a thing saying, you know, there's three possible places that most likely they'll pick, but there's one group that I wanted to mention really fast that I believe does have the capabilities and would probably be one of the top places to be probably the ISR group out in Savannah, Tennessee. Um, they have both the training and testing facilities. They have their own, uh, airfield out there.
They have their own airspace that they could fly a test out there. You know, they're probably one of the best ones out there that, you know, deserves to be mentioned in all these big names that are out there. Um, you know, if you want to know more about them, you know, Dallas Brooks is the VP of government relations and Jim Tully, he's the vice president VD over there at the ISR group. That's a place that needs to be mentioned.
And I think people need to know more about that. Yeah. Well, are they working with the, uh, what is the college out there?
Uh, Kyle Snyder was out there for a while. Is that what is it?
I want to like South Tennessee state or central Tennessee state. I don't know off the top of my hand, but do you know if they're working with them?
Actually, I don't know on top of my head either. I could definitely find out for you and bring that up on another podcast for sure. All right. Yeah.
You caught me off guard on that one, but we'll, you know, yeah, we'll have to discuss that more in the future. I don't know. Uh, you know, being Jean have gone back and forth on that and where do we think these test centers will be, and I gotta be honest and I know Jean kind of concurs, but I don't want to speak for Jean that more than likely these sites are going to be around big vendors, uh, and or districts that the, uh, unbanned vehicle caucus, uh, uh, group might have. That's my, my take.
And then also somebody who left a cat out of the bag that, uh, Oklahoma is in the top 10. So there you go. You know, you got your, your race, uh, your race papers going there. Jean, did you have anything else to you consider that, uh, the department of Homeland security is now running their, their RPAS program, their test program at Fort Sill in Oklahoma.
You know, it doesn't, you know, it's not rocket surgery to figure it out. What's going on with, with some of the higher level government agencies. They intend to be out there from this past November, when I threw the summer for potentially a year testing up to 85 different types of RPAs. So that's kind of gives you an indication that somebody's in the running for something out there or they wouldn't be doing what they're doing.
I mean, that's just kind of a simple matter of logic to me. What do you think?
Uh, I would concur with that. And I think the other thing I'm not seeing here is some clear cut criteria for applications. Okay. And I'm going to believe that this is another instance where the FAA is going to crank up the rancor machine.
Uh, people are going to come back when they pick these sites, man, I think there's going to be some heavy duty fallout from, uh, you know, well, what about us and this wasn't fair and what's the criteria and again, I think, uh, even with the proposals and how the FAA failed to lay out this criteria, they've wasted a lot of time and money for, for municipalities that could probably use that money for all,
I don't know, public safety schools, whatever there was nothing clear cut that said like, Hey, if you're in the shadow of a class B airspace, I doubt we're going to let you fly global hawks in there or, you know, predators or some other aircraft that weighs 500 pounds on the approach to, you know, uh, Chicago's, uh, O'Hare airport.
That's not going to happen. Could have probably, you know, save some folks some money, some time, some effort. Um, we're not going to let you fly in, you know, in the approach there at, um, LAX, you know, things like that. I think that, uh, that would have probably been helpful for people, but whatever, you know, I don't work over there.
I don't have to answer the phone. I don't have to have people yelling at me. I mean, they do anyway, but I don't have to really pay attention. I can always hang up.
So that's not my job, but anyway, uh, you know, that's what's going to happen there. Um, you know, so whatever, I don't really care. Anyway, the one thing I wanted to talk about, and we're going to bring on the guests cause we're running kind of long here, but flashing back to the Popsci articles, okay, the reporter commented how our industry, and I kind of made a joke about the fracking deal, our industry's image has reached a kind of a cataclysmic level, which
I have to agree. I mean, every time you look at the drone thing and people are going to, we're going to do this and the privacy thing.
I think it's a red herring. I just think people are totally scared and I want this militarized stuff here. Yeah. Even had it, the, uh, a BSI program review, Jim Williams.
Oh, they're not going to arm drones in the, in the airspace in, uh, over the United States and then, you know, was asked about homelands or not homeland security or the border patrol. And if they wanted to arm him and says, well, we have no control over them. So he kind of contradicted himself. I think people are scared.
Uh, they're not interested. I keep saying that they're not interested in the Taliban treatment. And until it all gets worked out, I think they're just like, whoa, whoa, we don't want that. I've talked about it for the past seven or eight years.
Some people have got me written off as some sort of visionary thing or, or that I'm Monday morning quarterbacking. Uh, Jean, you know me for a long time. You buying any of that?
Or, or, or do you think that's just some kind of common sense view of the situation? What do you think?
Well, I think the American public is waking up now and seeing just exactly what could occur. Um, CNN of course helped us out significantly when they, you know, brought the war to our doorstep and we are now seeing images from the predators and the global hawks. And, you know, that's the folks in America are looking at that going, well, you know, and they're talking about flying that over my hat. And, uh, yeah, Patrick, I mean, we've, we've talked about this since, uh, 2005.
And talk about the privacy issue and everything else. And it's common sense. It's just common sense. And it's not that we're trying to be sensational or anything like that.
It's just the facts. And, uh, unfortunately sometimes the facts can have people more than fiction. Well, and I mean, you know, look at the vernacular. I watched another documentary.
I mean, besides rise of the drones, which was like, gave me the creeps and I'm a proponent, but, you know, watch this other documentary and here's some of the, um, here's some of the verbiage drone porn. I don't know if anybody on the call here knew about drone porn, but you know, the, the videos of the hellfire strikes, I guess there's a whole, uh, underground thing where that's people are watching that
and they enjoy that and talk about it. Uh, people that, that, uh, make a distribute drones are called drone dealers, which to me kind of sounds like a drug dealer or an arms dealer or something else.
Um, and we also have, um, we've got, you know, dronescape and we've got drone valley. Now there's actually a drone valley where all this evilness comes from. Patrick. Yes.
This show, can we comment? You can comment. Well, let me just introduce you first though, before you comment on that. We're moving into segment two, uh, and we're going to bring on our guest, Mr.
Joel Coulter, uh, Joel, say hello. Hello, Patrick. Thanks for introducing me to this wonderful podcast. Okay.
Well, you know, people may not know who you are. Um, you know, you're the vice president of the DC chapter of AUVSI. Cause you please give us a little bio and how you got here before we launch in. Right.
Well, back in oh three and oh four after nine 11, I got pulled into the military experimentation campaigns for wearable technologies, ISR. And at the time I was advising a company called the cyber not, which was the leading wearable because I was back in the day I worked with mission critical tactical training systems for the military in the nineties. And I just saw platforms as another way of giving me access to data. I needed to make decisions and perform and mission critical environments.
So I set up a Homeland security practice for cyber not. And, uh, I had this thing always connected to your data. You jump out of a plane, helicopter, police car, and we create a police car and an ambulance. And we did disaster experimentations with Dr.
Eric Frost, who became the head of the Homeland security Institute at San Diego state university and did some really wonderful UAB things with golden Phoenix and others with, uh, university Arizona and the AMOC in California. And so, yeah, I knew Eric long before we went out to San Diego. I miss him. I, I think he liked the weather.
Um, but so that no five, I got involved in the DOD's IPV six transition for next generation internet and tried to bring the experimental framework in because transition is, is a difficult thing. And cause we have a lot of advanced technologies, but no one really knows what they can do. And then they write policy and they block technology because they really don't know what they're doing. And I went to a meeting at a home, uh, the company, little company called Echo Storm had won the incubator of the year award down in Hampton roads before there was any integrator down by joint forces command.
It was just a field of nothing. And Echo Storm was the first company to locate there. And I met David and Jason Barton and Jason could just come back from George Lucas running the back office of star Wars version two, and because they were throwing all these UAVs over the middle East at the time, and they had a video problem, they had all these video layers and there was no common picture to go to the war fighter or from the war fighter to the NATO commanders. And I met four, five guys and they could, they couldn't show me because it was classified, but they could tell me.
And it was called is res. It was part of the magic program for the Navy. And they got an ACTD for like several million to build the first, uh, full motion video ISR enterprise for multi platform management. All right.
Well, and this is all interesting, but, uh, you need to, uh, kind of throw over this. So what I'm doing now, we're going to directly what you're doing is Chris Anderson was just with, uh, the long now he was talking about DIY drones, do it yourself drones, and he was with my friend, Christopher Zelloff on a podcast last night, right with Gary, I think with Gary Mortimer. Yeah. And so Chris and I are friends because I'm a very much fan of when he went to the, he was the keynote speaker
and he and I have been trying to do civilian and commercial UAS stuff for several years now, but the DOD sucks all the air out of them when you spend 70, 80% of the money on UAVs, there's hardly any time for all the commercial guys and civilian guys to do anything because the duty is spending all the money.
Oh, I thought he was, uh, I didn't watch that, that the, the video cast and it is on the, uh, unmanned operators page over at Google plus, I haven't gotten a chance to watch that, but I thought he was totally, uh, only amateur. I thought he was doing, I'm going to have to watch that. Well, I got asked, I didn't see it last night either. I got asked to watch it, but, you know, he creates a different paradigm with kids sharing UAV designs around the world.
Cause that's the violation of our ITAR. Right. But he's doing open source and I thought he was just doing, um, they were just doing a, uh, basically open source and amateur stuff, which is kind of their niche, but I don't know, I'll have to watch that, but it's pretty interesting where, you know, you have a long history in this and that usually the, the guests that we have on do have a very long history and I mean, you're going way back in a way back machine, there's probably a lot of people going, Hey, wait a minute.
Um, cause I found that in the last six months or a year, a lot of people have come in and joined this conversation and they don't realize, uh, some of the milestones that we've already reached. But I wanted to flash back cause you interjected on some of the new, uh, let's say catchphrases here and you wanted to interject and maybe you could, you could revisit that real quick. Right. Well, you talk about accountability and I, I, I've designed test and evaluation environments and I was frustrated.
I met Jean a while back because he and David Yole has set up a COA down in Texas, which is very nice 500 mile COA and David Yole had been down at Fort Pickett and I saw all these civilian agencies using a national guard base. And I, I got very excited about the fact that if I could make this affordable, can't we help small businesses who are entrepreneurs and innovators in this industry, can't we help them get to environments where they can really show the art of the possible to not just DOD, but the civilian and commercial clients, law enforcement.
And so obviously I, I, you know, Jean and Ivan back and forth about this. And the thing with doing it for itself is just a, a methodology is wrong. It's not going to help the vendors what they're doing. The focus is not on the vendor.
The focus is on owning the data and the FAA and not in how to be globally lead. Oh, I would agree with, with that. I don't think that the plan was that well thought out. Um, I think basically what I had gleaned from it was that they were trying to, let's say be part of the COA expedite thing where they would gather all the data like this, this thing weighs, you know, uh, the whatever aircraft system X weight is four pounds.
It's made of this. It flies like this. It, uh, flies this fast. It has these capabilities.
So you would have that COA dropdown menu, which is even in my mind, you know, oh, okay, so we save about 10 minutes of filling out paperwork. Um, that that's what I'm getting out of the deal. Jean, what are you getting out of that deal?
I know you've been closer to it. You applied for it. You've been hearing about it. Insight.
There is something that's called the Sabre catalog and I was approached years ago on that particular process and the Sabre catalog was designed to put together a list of equipment that was approved by at the time FEMA, which has now become the DHS and that, uh, municipalities and other agencies could, uh, apply for federal funds to acquire. And, uh, I think this is kind of an extension of that and that, uh, those, those 85 selected vendors, uh, who are going to go to Fort Sill, fly their aircraft
and they're going to do, uh, uh, capability studies and do determinations of that, put into this catalog, if you will, and then the municipality can choose from that.
I don't know that the, the COA situation is going to be that much of a help, as you said, because you're still going to have to go through the process of applying for the COA regardless. So, you know, whether the aircraft has been approved for use or not, it may save the FAA a little bit of time in that, okay, they have some sort of air worthiness that they can apply to it, but it still may not be the air worthiness certificates that you talk about. So I think it's just more of the, of the safer catalog concept.
And it's still evolving. I think it's still evolving. It is that, or they haven't made that, that very clear as to where they're headed with this. Right.
Hey, Patrick, this is Joel. There are two global, federal methodologies for bringing technology into the military spectrum. And what is called DISA, Defense Intelligence Systems Agency, that does one vendor a time, you pay $150,000 and that gets you on the CIPRnet or, you know, you get you on the defense network. And DHS had an equipment list after 9-11 for buying police, fire and rescue, buying all kinds of stuff.
So when you ask what kind of testing evaluation data and methodology could you usually get on that equipment list, I found their methodology very lacking. And I found one vendor at a time very lacking because the coalition warrior interoperability demonstration, the $10 million a year program out of Joint Chiefs of Staff, we did all kinds of multi-vendor interoperability test and evaluation. And I tried to give that data to DISA because I said, Hey, you know, we're spending $10 million a year. You should, you should help the vendors get into certification for getting on the military network.
We don't want that data. It's the same thing when I went to the FAA and said, I've got this great methodology the military has been using for, you know, 10,000s of hours assessing UAVs, let's evolve their methodology of a 17 factor assessment that led to the sale of the Buster for millions of dollars two weeks after the, after the activity was performed and FAA didn't want to touch the DOD. Well,
you know, I think that there's a, I definitely think that the way the federal government deals with technology captures information and does these types of studies is compartmentalized and people don't know how to manage them.
And instead of delving into something that's going to be a bunch of work, or they may not understand, they just shun it. And, you know, that, that was another thing I did want to talk about too, was some of the popular misconceptions. And I mean, you know, we are going back here. Okay.
There's a couple of things. This, the, I don't know if people have noticed this, but we have a date for the NPRM for the SBAR and it's a six of 13. Uh, you know, that's going to go out there. We've got the, the SBAR right now is in review at the DOT office of science and technology, and there was a hearing where, um, NASA testified to this committee and they were talking about some of these issues.
And I want to talk about these issues real quick. One of them is sense and avoid separation, assurance, interoperability, communications and human systems in, well, human systems integration is another point. And support of UAS certification requirements. Now everybody's going to probably say, Hey, that all sounds good.
We want to do that. Yep. We've been talking about the same four issues for five, six, seven years or more. And the thing with this is, is even some of this stuff was dealt with on the SUAS arc, uh, when I was on the arc, they had some engineers from NASA on, we had some of them on the show, um, and what happened was that they did a lot of work on this.
It came up with ideas and tests and reports and concepts and things they wanted to do. Summarily dismissed, not even read, didn't even look at it, just like the arc have a proposed guidelines, not even read nothing. Okay. So that's why I say like when I was petitioning for this new arc to be a full, uh, amended charter member, as this shows you the type of contempt, I would call it that the FAA has for people that know what they're talking about.
You got engineers coming in here. Hey, this is how you do it. This is what you told me you want to do. This is how you do it.
And they don't even want to deal with it. It's sad. We're revisiting this. How much, uh, how many years later we're still grappling with the same problems.
So, I mean, is that kind of also what you're talking about, Joel? Have you just gone out the door sliding?
It's a culture of, you know, we have evolved to a culture 30 years ago. No integrator had product. They had services. They were designed to go out, find innovation of solutions, put those solutions together.
But now every large company has a suite of UAVs, sensors, cameras. And so they're vested in their product. They're not vested in a service. And so you're a small guy coming in with a small UAS and got some great ways to handle data, wireless, and they don't want to see you.
They don't want, they want to control the government because they don't want their programs of record to be modified to bring that innovation in because they're trying to develop their innovation because they want to sell a product. Right. And that goes, that goes right back to some other misconceptions where there's a popular misconception here in the United States that the DOD vendors, uh, have this notion where they're trying to open the NAS for everyone and people that espouse that. I got to tell you right off the bat.
If that's what you're espousing, you are out of touch with reality because that is not what's happening here. I don't see that at all. No, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to like anything else like IPV6. They want to control the transition cycle so they can buy up everything they need to maximize their revenue.
Exactly. And that's what this game's all about. I think if people knew, if most people knew that, you know, most of the money are time that you spend involved in this, uh, is basically what amounts to corporate welfare, you know, where, where you're paying money and, and doing things or getting involved. And basically what you're doing is sort of supporting the DOD vendor plan, the business plan.
I don't think people knew that or know that. And I think they'd be very disappointed, but I wanted to flash back to accountability because that's, that's kind of the, the title of this podcast, Joel. And you know, with the EFF, they had to come out, they had to sue. We got this big privacy issue now, but now it seems like the FAA has a little bit of accountability has been put to them.
And now it's like, Hey man, we've got to do something. And we've seen that before. Me and Gene have seen that before. Anytime there's some pressure for accountability, you get action.
They ask you to back off. We got these, we only have a few people here and you back off. And then we just like, go right back into the doldrums for four years. What do you think?
Well, I've been asked to be on three different FAA RFPs already in the last three days. Our team, because of what we've been doing with the Fort Ticket National Guard base, wireless upgrade, ISR enterprise upgrade, it's all about connectivity to collaboration with all this sensor data and mass head. So I know that it's an opportunity. I think that since there's no money on this FAA RFP, so there's not going to be any money coming, whoever wins.
I think that the energy companies, we have to have an alternative strategy to say, who, who would pay to make these centers sustainable and growing. And if we want to make sure that it's not just the traditional DoD large systems integrators who suck all the little innovations out and buy up the companies. And what we need to do is get a private sector involved. People who go buy UAV stuff like energy.
Yeah, I think you're right. But I mean, you know, it's kind of flashes back to what I was saying earlier is can small business support the overhead to fly a Global Hawk?
I mean, we're talking $36,000 an hour to fly that thing. You know, I mean, you get two hour flight, three hour flight and hey, you know, I'm good with receipts for the years, a small business guy. So I mean, I think what you're alluding to is exactly what we're saying. Who can afford to pay and set these up?
Who can afford the radar? I'm looking for radar, you know, and anybody could contact me too, because I'm looking for some surveillance radar myself and I've been poking around and it ain't cheap. You know, we're talking tens of millions of dollars for radar systems. I don't know a small business guys that can to support that.
Well, there's some I work with the radar systems that the Navy deployed around the world and on the port maritime side called Armac and the TV white space. You know, the Navy works on three point five gigahertz for TV white space, which I got involved in because I think there's a shared spectrum strategy that's evolving out of the FCC that ties back into how do we support UAVs if we've got a baseline radar and alert system around the world that the Navy's deployed?
Can we have can we piggyback on that? Can we put that down in these these things like in Texas or North Dakota, wherever these are going to be, because those energy companies are already, let's say, using some of this. Oh, yeah. So the energy companies are not blind to what's going on within DOD.
It's just that they've been hesitant to invest in smaller unmanned systems and sensors. They need the technology capabilities. They're very aggressive about it. But the problem is, other than in University of Alaska, where they can do things that no one knows about, there's not a lot of activity going on with energy.
Right. Well, you know, that goes back to when, you know, where the shell was up there searching for walruses. I was calling out the shell game. Yeah, oh, shell out of the kindness of their heart.
Oh, let's do a study on walruses and seals because we got nothing else to do. That's not really how the energy industry works. But, you know, whatever floats your boat. Now, we're at about two minutes, 30 seconds, and we never really got into the work that you were doing over there at the AUVSI chapter DC.
And I know you guys have an event coming up and I wanted to be able to give you some time to talk about that and give the website address for more info. So go ahead. Right. OK.
So AUVSI DC chapter is team with Virginia Tech and we have a UAS conversation on March 21st at the Virginia Tech Applied Research Center. We are looking for still a couple of speakers. We have a couple of exhibitor tables we have available. And our conversation is on three areas, environmental monitoring, law enforcement and global stability and humanitarian assistance.
And it could be a unique conversation because it's not going to be about the platform. It could be about the wireless sensor packages, all the kinds of things, the innovations that allow civilian and commercial guys to value that data. I want your UAD because I want your data and I can take that data. So this conversation is going to be something we offer.
I mean, I think it's great. I don't. The best way to I put it on the website. Patrick, can I send you the link to it because I don't have it right handy with me, but you can send it out to your group.
Sure. Sure. They can email me at patrick at SUASnews.com if you're interested and I will pass that along. OK.
And coming with the aerobiology and their hybrid systems, I think some universities are taking a leadership role, which is not a bad thing. No, not at all. I, you know, I mean, it sounds interesting. I think that's another aspect that people need to look at.
And I see more people coming in on the business side of that, what you're talking about, the communications, the control, the sensors, what's available and how am I going to get the data I want. So I think that's good. Now, we ran a little long and we didn't really get to talk about some other projects that you are working on, but, you know, interesting conversation, Joel. I appreciate you rearranging your schedule to be on.
Informative, as always. These are these are great conversations, but there's so much information and so much backstory, it's almost hard to cram it into 45 seconds. Thank you, sir, for being on. OK.
I look forward to get back on. And if you all ever want to connect some dots with your radio and IPTV, there's a thing called Emerald Planet TV and they showcase civilian and commercial unmanned systems innovation, specifically in the agricultural precision ag and environmental monitoring. We do it here at the Fairfax Public TV Channel 10. And I have an open thing on Sundays to allow put together panels for people that want to come on and broadcast their innovation.
All right. Well, that's all the time we have. We'll see you next week. Everyone have a good week.