UAS News Podcast — 2012-08-30
Audio not available on SoundCloud — full transcript below.
Transcript
Hello everybody. Welcome to another installment of the UAS News Podcast Series where we're going to discuss the news and issues that are relevant to the global technology, unmanned technologies community. This is where we interview the newsmakers. And I'm your program host, Patrick Egan.
And let's say hi to our co-host, Mr. Gene Robinson. Hello Patrick, how are you this fine week?
Good. Still out here in Colorado at the Battle Lab. It's really nice out here. I'm liking it.
But I'm looking forward to going back to California. Yeah, but how are you doing, sir?
Doing well. We're pretty busy trying to get prepared for this little technical caucus, technical and science caucus in DC on the 13th. So, you never seem to have enough time to do that even when you get plenty of poor warnings. So, we're kind of bustling around getting that taken care of and getting information ready to give some of our congresspeople.
But other than that, we're staying warm down here in Texas as usual and just having a lot of fun with the clear, calm weather to do some flying. Well, that's good. You know, I hope that you go out there and enlighten some folks. I'm sorry I can't go with you.
I think that's a perfect opportunity, the DC thing, to show some of these, the federal elected representatives something different than they're used to seeing. Usually it's the same cast of characters. You're going to get a lot of that. I don't know.
I would suggest bringing a one-page handout so you can hand it out so at least their staffers can read it. Come with out here, show them, you know, hey, we're not, you know, this isn't all predators. I'd go with you, but you're going to Washington and I'm going to Texas. That's funny, isn't it?
It is funny. It is funny. I'm supposed to go down there and speak to the Oklahoma Economic Development Committee, which is where they're meeting in Texas, but hey, you know, it is Lubbock. I guess they want to be at the Texas Tech.
So that's good, you know. Talk to them. There's a lot of stuff going on in Oklahoma with unmanned aircraft systems. They're excited.
They want to move forward, which I'm impressed with. Everybody I talk to from Oklahoma is extremely passionate about the technology. Okay, well this week's episode we're going to focus on firsthand, pardon me, experience and perspective of public safety. So we're going to get a career law enforcement officer's perspective on this technology.
I did want to talk about some of the current events first before we introduce our guest. As usual, I like to talk about my connections on LinkedIn. I'm now connected to Jim Williams. He is the new head of the unmanned aircraft system integration office for the FAA.
And I'm a little encouraged on that. I'm sure he's had two different channels that I'd like to speak with him. And I did email and say I'd like to talk to him. And after the holiday weekend, we're going to have at least a telephone conversation, which I kind of look forward to.
You know, I am hoping we can open the dialogue. I'm going to invite him to come on the program. I don't know if they will speak with the one voice on this program. I'm going to encourage him to do that again.
And, you know, we've always, I think that, you know, I don't want people to misunderstand. We've always held out a helping hand to the FAA. I mean, would you agree with that, Dean?
Yeah, we have. And the unfortunate thing is that the turnover-rated personnel there has been so significant in the last seven years that we've been working with them. We've had a real hard time establishing a relationship where they actually knew where we were coming from rather than trying to be rabble-rousers. And I'm kind of encouraged that Mr.
Williams is willing to speak up a little bit on that one. Well, you know, I think it's important that the FAA be more open about the public process. The last leader of the UAPO office, instead of being public, decided he wanted to be private. And that's just not going to work, you know.
Another guy in another forum brought up a good concept, which was, if you don't want my input, I don't want your rules. And I was like, well, you know, I mean, I don't know, I'm paraphrasing what he said, but it makes sense to me, you know, want my input, you know, kind of, you know, well, family show again. Anyway, so I believe that that's true. I mean, this is a representative thing, public rulemaking.
You don't want my input. You don't want to talk to me. Why should I listen to your rules?
And I think it's... It's just totalitarian. It's what?
It is a bit totalitarian, isn't it? It is. It is. And, you know, so I think it's a good thing.
Plus, we have a lot of empirical knowledge to give them. We've offered them all kinds of stuff. I mean, if you were to put a dollar value on the stuff that we've given them, say, just from business and RCAPA and everything, hundreds of thousands of dollars, if you went to one of these firms that assist the FAA, it would have been millions of dollars in contracts to give them the information that we give them.
And I even believe that the RCAPA proposed guidelines, which are pretty substantial, and something that was immediately implementable, I believe it even says in the pre-fits on that that this was a gift to the American people.
And all these people came in and put all this effort and time into it, basically outlining a plan how to integrate the smalls into the nasty, which wasn't really even read. So it's frustrating. I'd like to change that. I'm going to be optimistic.
I'd like to talk to Jim, and I'd like to see if we can get the process on the right track. So that's one. We had almost another 15,000 downloads last week. So, you know, hot topics.
I did hear back from some people that the last show about monetizing the technology, I think people were looking for us to lay out the five-step plan on how to make money tomorrow, which I think we did talk about. I mean, there are people, there are some people that are saying, oh, it's a fantasy. Oh, it's never going to happen. But people are making money.
I'm making money in this field yesterday. Yeah, people are doing it. So, you know, yes, is it open to the broad spectrum?
No. Is it a tragedy?
Yes. You know. But some people are doing it. You're going to have to be creative.
If you can't make money now, I'm telling people, look, you know, you got to, you have to market your business. You have to position yourself. You have to do something that is going to kind of get you in the public spotlight, and you're going to have to stay there until we get the go code from the FAA. If you sit on the sidelines, you don't do anything, and you just sit there and wait, you're going to be at a disadvantage.
And I just throw that out there. And so we're going to move on. Another thing I want to cover is, I don't know if you saw this, but the SUS News now has a smartphone, iPad version. It's pretty cool stuff.
Gary just rolled that out. It's pretty nice. I don't know if you got to check it out. Gene, did you get to see that?
I did, but my smartphones tend to be pretty smart, and sometimes it doesn't do the things that I think it should. So I still need to work on that to get it to display properly on my phone. Yeah, I got to get a Cole Hopper for my smartphone because it's so old. I actually need to upgrade because mine's so old.
But, you know, I'm on the cutting edge here. But it's pretty cool for people to check out. You should check that out. It's kind of first of its kind in this field.
So Gary did a nice job on that. I also want to throw out there that people should email their questions, comments, and suggestions to either Patrick at SUS News or Gene at SUS News, which I've been getting more and more feedback. It's good. I want to hear from the community.
I want to hear what they have to say, and I want to hear their comments about the show. And I think you probably share that sentiment, right, Gene?
Absolutely. And not only do we want to hear about the show, we want to hear about what they think and the way we should proceed with the FAA and the regulatory process. I think that's going to be some of the data that we need to get to the FAA. This is what people are telling us.
This is what they'd like to see. This is what they would like to do. Bingo. You're on target, buddy.
And, you know, some of that in the feedback I tried to put out there, too, to these people that took the time out of their busy schedule to comment, you know. I don't think people will totally understand the ethos here at SUS News. You know, the advertisers that support the website, we take 20% of whatever ad revenue right off the top, and that is spent on advocacy efforts. The other thing we're doing is we're trying to give the community a voice.
You know, this community has lacked a voice. There has been no voice for this community, and I don't care what anyone says. And that is one thing. That's one idea what the journalism is supposed to be is kind of keep the government in check.
Hey, this is what's going on. And if people in the government don't like it, you know, then they have what they would call a constituency problem, and they need to rectify that problem. And we're here to help steer that. So, you know, it's up to our listeners to say, hey, this is what we want to do.
I had another conversation with some people yesterday. I said, hey, man, you know, don't sit over there on your hands and be frustrated. Write a letter to your elected representative, federal representation, or your governor, or the FAA, and say, hey, I have this business. I want to start hiring people.
I want to start making money. I want to build a tax base. I want to build a technology base. I want to hire students coming out of the school.
I want to do what makes the economy in America go, and I can't. And I can't for many years because we have a process that's dysfunctional or whatever. You know, come up with your own words. I'm not dictating to tell anybody what to do.
But get proactive. Do something about it. But that's what we're here to. We're a vehicle.
So I think you're spot on, Gene. Tell us what you want to hear about. Tell us what you want to do. Tell us what you want to say to the FAA, and we're going to try to give you that voice.
One other thing that ties into last week's show is I don't know if you saw the story about the Chinese UAV, that Avic Thunderbird. Gene, it's 200 kilos, fuel cell, all carbon fiber. That does not sound like the Chinese don't know what they're doing. What do you think?
No, not only that. I also saw where they are going to be opening 11 UA centers across their very large nation. And I'd be willing to bet you that their UA centers are up and flying before ours will be, our six will be. Well, they're already flying around and doing testing.
We don't hear everything. I mean, we did a news story about that Avic contest, I believe it was last year, where they were given a half a million dollar prize, come with 3D drawings, come with a production plan, got to land on a carrier deck. I had called that. We talked about is it going to be a catapult configuration or ski jump.
In the contest, it said you had to land on a ski jump aircraft carrier deck, you know, bingo, twinkie dinkie doo, here you go. And I have to say, again, we're out in the lead. You know, I'm being facetious. It's kind of depressing.
But anyway, that is not backwards. Fuel cell, carbon fiber, yada yada. The other thing is, did you see that what Pyrmal Enterprises invested in the Bluebird company, they're like a pharmaceutical company, primarily, and they invested heavily into an unmanned aircraft systems manufacturer, which is telling me the rest of the communities really, well, not that, but other business sectors are waking up to the potential here. I don't know if you caught that story.
Absolutely. That is a significant business change for Pyrmal Enterprise, let me tell you. They go from pharmaceuticals to unmanned aircraft. That's a big jump.
It is, but it shows that, you know, we're not the only people seeing potential in this industry. And I think that that also coincides with the numbers of the podcast, you know. I mean, 15,000 listens a week or downloads a week is, in my book, it's outstanding. You know, I mean, it's either we're like, you know, the whole community is listening to the podcast, or, you know, do we got all these outside people that are like, hey, I got to get in on this and find out what's going on.
And I think there's a lot of that. I also wanted to talk about Dr. Jerry, one of our back-to-school podcast guests, had a Washington Times story and it was linked on the Dredge Report, so good for him. Yep.
Did we lose Patrick? Okay, a little blank space there, but we'll see if we can continue on. Ken, are you still on?
Gene, I'm still here. Yes, sir. Okay, well, Patrick must have hit the mute button on his Skype phone. We'll expect him back in here shortly.
These sort of technical difficulties pop up every once in a while. I wanted to bring up that I've noticed that more and more commercial airlines are trying to reduce the number of flights that they're having by squinching up the seats a little bit more. They're going to kind of make it a little less comfortable for you. And then from that, they're able to reduce the number of flights that they have to go back and forth between these cities.
Of course, your travel won't be as comfortable, but hopefully they'll increase their margin because they haven't been doing too well lately. So it's been kind of an interesting little deal commercially there for aviation as well. So from here, I would like to go ahead and introduce our guest. Mr.
Ken DeFour is someone who I have known for several years now and have had the pleasure of working with. Mr. DeFour is a longtime LEO. He's a law enforcement officer and is still very active in law enforcement and judicial process and working with civics.
So with that, I would like to introduce you to Mr. Ken DeFour. Ken, would you give us a little bit more about your background and some of the things that you've been doing?
Well, good morning, Gene and Patrick. I sincerely appreciate the invitation to come onto your show this morning and perhaps add a little input into this subject this morning because it's extremely important to me. It really is. It's fascinating.
It's a field that's coming upon us regardless of anyone's thoughts, pro or cons on it. It is something that's coming along and something that I have seen evolve over a number of years. I graduated from the Houston Police Department. Here I'm going to probably give away some of my age statistics, but that's the way it works.
I graduated from the Houston Police Academy in 1958. I have been a certified peace officer now for 54 years. I was blessed during my career with the Houston Police Department and being in several divisions that were high profile and absolutely were the types of divisions that went out into the public and dealt with the public on many different levels. I was a homicide detective for many years, later promoted to captain, and became the captain division commander of the Houston Police Department's helicopter patrol division.
Now I went to that division, I think it was in about 19, it was late 70s or 78. At that time we had a little friendly running verbal gun battle with Los Angeles Police Department because they said they had more helicopters than we did and we said, no, we have more than you do. We had 18 at that particular time, so we flew an awful lot of flights. It was primarily concentrated in patrol flights in support of the ground units.
That was our primary function, although we did do narcotics flights, protection flights when the president would come into Houston and these types of things. In a metropolitan area we covered an awful lot of different type of assignments throughout my career there in the helicopter division. We continue to use helicopters as they do now, and although unfortunately because of the economy and so forth that we're experiencing now in this country, the helicopter force with the Houston Police Department has been greatly reduced, especially the flight hours.
When I was division commander of that unit we always had from three to four helicopters in the air all the time and overlapping flights. Now they're down restricted to only 20, within a 24 hour period they can only fly four hours. It's been drastically cut, so the response time obviously has gone way up. The citizens are not nearly as well protected as they once were by helicopters in the Houston metropolitan area.
That's a very significant decrease in coverage. Well, it is, Dean. And one of the things that again has piqued my interest as far as unmanned vehicles, flight aircraft vehicles is the fact that when I was captain of that division, our cost per flight hour on a Hughes 500 helicopter was running about $79 per flight hour. Now that's not including the salary of the police officer.
We did not include that because that officer would have been on duty and working in some other division had it not been for the helicopter division. So we dealt primarily with fuel consumption, maintenance, this type of thing, approximately $79 per flight hour. Now I mentioned a little earlier that we would have from three to four helicopters in the air at any one time. That's on a 24-hour basis.
So when you multiply $79 per flight hour 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, your cost alone for fuel, and of course obviously fuel, is much, much cheaper then than what it is now. The parts, labor, your mechanics time on pulling inspections on these helicopters were much cheaper then, and it's escalated tremendously since then. So you're talking about a great deal of money, tax payer's money, to keep these helicopters in the air now as opposed to back in the 70s and 80s when I was commander of our division.
This is where I see unmanned aircraft coming into play for cities who find it difficult. And I'm talking about not only your large metropolitan cities like Houston, Dallas, some of these larger agencies, but especially your smaller departments, and you're starting to see that in the more rural areas where I am now as being retired. The flight hours alone, cost per flight hour, is just indescribably less for an unmanned aircraft than it is for a manned aircraft. There are situations where
you need aircraft to check particular areas, whether it's an accident scene on a highway, whether it's a narcotics situation where you're having to do surveillance over an area.
The utilization of unmanned aircraft is coming into its own, and I know there's pros and cons about it, but it is a coming thing. It is going to happen, and we've talked about the FAA's acceptance and regulation on this. It's my firm belief that if the FAA will set out guidelines and regulations simply as they do with private pilots, commercial pilots, that people who can meet these requirements and who can fly these drone airplanes, if you will, for legitimate purposes would far outweigh the concerns that people such as ACLU have on violation of personal freedom.
These are things we need, and it is coming with these aircraft, especially in law enforcement. You see it every day, and you see the need for it in homeland security. We're living in a different world now, and we can't rely strictly on old methods. We have to come along with technology and take advantage of those opportunities that we have now, and I don't mean to dominate this conversation, Jane.
No, no. That's good. I have a question. We just want your wealth and knowledge.
That's what we want, and Patrick, go ahead. Do you have a question?
Yes, this is great stuff, Mr. DePore. You're knocking me dead over here. I love when we get somebody like you on, and you've got some historical perspective.
You're not going to get anywhere else, and I want to say you're not going to be down over with all this information. But I did have a question. You were pioneering this helicopter aerial asset and using it in a major metropolitan area, and then you touched on the privacy thing a little bit. What I've tried to tell people before is they're like, oh, you know, you're going to be spying on me, and you're going to be looking at me in the backyard, and da-da-da-da-da.
Now, you're talking about a few things. The police work, we got the guy on here, he's doing this, it costs that much an hour. To me, it's like I have a mission, I've got to stay on target. But did you have some of these privacy issues when you first started building these helicopter forces was it kind of the same thing with the public, or did anyone see anything different?
And another question I would have on that is maybe you can talk to some of the laws that govern police use of aerial assets as the second part of that question. Well, Patrick, that's a very, very good question, and the short answer to it is yes. We had the same issues when the helicopter division started in Houston in 1970. In 1970, helicopter use by metropolitan police departments, this was quite innovative.
These helicopters were now law enforcement flying over your backyards, your communities, and so forth. Now, it's ironic that heretofore we didn't have complaints on private airplanes landing near airports, nor commercial jets in and out of commercial airports, but you let a police helicopter land at those same airports making much less noise than what a commercial airliner does, we get complaints on it, we would get complaints.
And we had to address that, and it was people, in my personal opinion, that their perspective on law enforcement as opposed to commercial airline pilots landing commercial airliners, they were strictly different.
These same concerns about looking into my backyard or into my swimming pool, they existed. I had to address those as captain of that division. It's again ironic that we're under surveillance every single second of our day. Where do people think that the information for our GPS units that you carry in your car comes from?
The government has satellites that travels over us taking pictures. They can read your license plate from outer space, but yet you don't see the same upheaval in objections to things like this. You go to Wal-Mart, you go to your big box stores, you're under surveillance by cameras there. You go out in the parking lot, you pick your nose, you scratch, you're on camera, and it's everywhere.
That is inevitable now, but yet when you relate the same technology to law enforcement, it suddenly becomes a concern of so many people because now you're looking into my backyard. I have news for people as we're speaking right now on this show. There are satellites looking into your backyard right now. It's a coming technology.
Commercial application for unmanned vehicles is a coming thing. I mentioned to Wal-Mart just a few minutes ago. I recently read an article. Wal-Mart themselves would love to use unmanned aircraft to surveil the traffic patterns in and around their stores.
What is the heavy hours of parking lot concentration as opposed to the lesser areas of concentration? How can they better formulate their property usage?
That's just one aspect of commercial application. It can be used to fly over residential areas for the highway department to plot routes for traffic, future building of highways. There are so many applications. If the FAA set out regulations, in my humble opinion, just like they do for private pilots, commercial pilots, the people who are using these unmanned vehicles, they're going to be responsible.
They're not out here playing with these expensive vehicles, looking into your backyard to see you walk around in your bikini or near your swimming pool. That, to me, is such a lame type of logic to not use aircraft when the benefits, in my opinion, once again, far exceed any deficiencies in it. It could be regulated like anything else. The people using these aircraft are responsible individuals.
Let me give you a case in point, if I might. And again, I don't want to monopolize this, but in the early 1980s, we had an ammonia truck turn over and wreck on the 610 loop in Houston at rush hour. You remember that?
When the call first came in, it was an overturned 18-wheeler, and it was discharging its load, which was a fog. No one at that particular moment knew what that load on that 18-wheeler was. One of our helicopters responded to that call and started circling the scene in order to advise the ground units on injuries where ambulances need to come in, where fire trucks need to come in, where traffic was blocked, where they could reroute the traffic to better relieve the congestion on the freeway and get people away from the danger area.
Unbeknownst to our flight crew at that time, that was an ammonia truck, and ammonia had drifted up into the air, and we were flying at that time at an altitude of 500 feet. Both our pilot and our observer became nauseated and ill because of breathing that ammonia. They were blessed in the fact that they were at least high enough that they didn't get enough to burn their lungs or sear their lungs, but they did become ill. They did become sick.
They had to make an emergency landing in a field about a half a mile from the wreck scene, and they both had to get out of the helicopter. They were throwing up. They were ill. That completely immobilized any air surveillance that we had over that.
Had we had a drone at that time, had we had unmanned vehicles, we could have put them over that scene and continued to advise the ground units of safety precautions to get the fire trucks in, to get the ambulances in and out. There were some people severely burned in that event. Unfortunately, after our crew went down and we realized what that load on that 18-wheeler was, we could not put another helicopter up there. We became totally ineffective.
Had we had unmanned aircraft, we would have been much more efficient in helping the public get out of that type of a situation. That's only one of many, many instances that we've come across where an unmanned aircraft would have been invaluable in its usage. Did that answer your question, Patrick?
I'm sorry. That was excellent perspectives there. I don't want to step on Gene because I think Gene had a question. Why don't you go first, Gene?
Did you have a question? Well, one of the things that I've always been interested in, and that incident that you described there at the 610 loop and I-45 is a very, very kind of urban area. It's very metropolitan. It's just outside of downtown Houston.
I know where that area is and remember that well. Do you think that the safety aspect would still or the risk mitigation is what I'm trying to get to. Would the risk in a metropolitan area like that be mitigated over the benefit that you would derive from an unmanned aircraft?
You think that metropolitan area, say for example in downtown, you needed to go look around buildings, the canyons that they've got down there. Could we put a quadcopter in there or something of that nature and use that effectively?
You think that benefit would outweigh the risk? I do. Once again, now when you're talking about downtown metropolitan area as Houston, as most large cities, you've got tall buildings. Now there's going to be some logistics there that you're going to have to deal with that would be a little uncomfortable for unmanned aircraft because with tall buildings in downtown areas and I'm talking specifically about Houston, which is primarily a Gulf Coast city, we have a prevailing south wind almost all the time.
It is difficult even to fly a manned helicopter through the downtown area with the wind coming around these buildings. You get severe turbulence that affects the helicopters. Now I witnessed something, Gene, just recently that was very encouraging to me because the stability of an unmanned vehicle is so greatly increased by computers. The demonstration that we just saw recently where an unmanned vehicle was flown by computer rather than by hand and in turbulent wind, it still remains stable.
There are some situations downtown where perhaps either a manned or unmanned vehicle would be difficult to operate. But again, when you're operating an unmanned vehicle by computer, the stability of it is unbelievable. This would address some of the concerns for downtown areas, flying downtown. Once again, metropolitan areas have horrendous traffic problems.
They have horrendous homeland security issues during parades, football games. To have unmanned drones flying over I know our own stadium here in Houston for the traffic patterns coming into these sports events where there's a large congregation of people during parade, the safety factor of the people on the ground depending on unmanned vehicles up there is just unbelievable. The cost per flight hour that would be so greatly reduced, the price for the vehicle itself, the security that it provides. I recently read an article where the technology has increased to the point.
Here's one place, the Logan International Airport, they have these in operation. They're surveillance cameras. The example they use is the cameras looking at a particular part of the airport. This camera knows, they're called smart cameras, they know what is supposed to be in the frame of that picture.
If someone walks into that frame and sits a briefcase down which could contain a bomb and walks away from it, the camera immediately recognizes that that briefcase doesn't belong in that picture and it alerts the operator. They send security forces there to check out the briefcase. This has been in Logan International Airport in operation now for over a year. Studies have shown that the attention span of anyone watching real-time surveillance cameras is about 30 minutes.
After about 30 minutes the human mind starts wandering to the ball game or what's going on at home and you lose focus on the true surveillance of the areas you're watching. Unmanned vehicles with similar cameras on board them would not have this issue. They would not have that problem. The public is going to pay one way or the other in taxes for either increased crime or law enforcement officers on
this street to address increased crime or they're going to pay for less costly vehicles such as these unmanned aircraft to fly over areas that are suspicious, that's a threat to law enforcement, that's a threat to the citizens and be preemptive in preventing many of these criminal issues that could be addressed far before it happened.
So like I say, we're in this era of homeland security, terrorism, increased narcotics traffic across our borders. The drawings are used for border patrol right now between Texas and Mexico and people don't seem to have a problem with this. But it's just looking into my backyard that they seem to have a problem with when in reality it's done all the time. But they're just pinpointing these unmanned vehicles that you're dealing with right now.
Did that answer your question? Yep. That was a good one. I wanted to touch right back on it and it may have gotten left out because we did cover a lot of territory.
But again, the SOPs and the existing laws that kind of governed your air assets when you had a little pushback on the helicopter thing, could you maybe address that a little bit more please? It was and like I say, we did have to address many of the complaints the citizens had about noise of the helicopter, about flying over people's residential areas and looking into their backyards and their swimming pool or whatever. Our policies, guidelines, rules and regulations of the Houston Police Department was and still is very specific.
The reason and the only reason that you're going to circle someone's residential establishment in a subdivision is because you're on a call. You're looking for a burglar, you're looking for a hijacker, you're looking for a rapist, a thief that's in that area. You lose the effectiveness and the pilots know this, the observer knows this. You lose the effectiveness of eye in the sky if you're in one stationary position circling.
Let's take that one step further. Let's say someone did want to look into your backyard, a police pilot wanted to look into your backyard. How obvious would this be, a police helicopter circling your house?
Even on legitimate police calls, we're going to receive complaints from citizens, why is there a helicopter flying around my house? Well, it's because we're looking for a residential burglar that ran through your yard. Oh, okay. I'm sorry.
Thank you so much. We have written policies. The guidelines are set just exactly like they are with the FAA on what pilots can and can't do. The altitude they can fly over residential areas as opposed to open, these guidelines are there.
It's like the state law and the federal law that police officers have to follow. They follow their departmental guidelines which says you don't play with the aircraft, you don't fight sea and neighborhoods. You're on a police assignment and that's what you... Of course, I have to admit I'm somewhat biased having been a police officer all my life.
But if you're trusting an officer out there to carry a gun and to protect your life and property, then why on earth can't you equally trust him to be as responsible with a piece of aircraft equipment and use it properly? If you trust him in one area to protect you, why not another?
I fail to see the logic in not doing that. Well, I think there's a general... Very good point. And these are excellent points and you answered my question there that you have SOPs in place and there are federal laws and state laws that protect the public.
I do think that there's a generation that has a distrust of the government, law enforcement, blah, blah, blah. And that's unfortunate. But I do think the technology is common and people will get used to it. One day it will be much too about nothing.
But you're right. I don't think people understand that too. It's like if I'm a police officer and I'm horsing around with a piece of taxpayer-paid for equipment, more than likely I'm going to get fired. And there goes my career.
Absolutely. Or I'm going to be called in and the chief is going to have a chat with me. And I may be busted down to one of the dog catchers. I don't know what the policies are.
You're not more wrong. Exactly. You're going to have a nice chat. You're going to say, what are you out there doing?
So I agree with all that. And again, Mr. DeFore, excellent, excellent perspective, excellent, let's say, perspective of this historical perspective. I really enjoy what you're having to say because I think it gives people that perspective that they don't see.
And I think, you know, I keep saying that this is something that we as a community need to do to help educate people and say, okay, well, this is how it's going to be used and this is how they use it now. And I don't think people kind of equate it to the manned air assets and what we're going to do with the unmanned air assets. And I think it's excellent perspective. What do you think, Gene?
Well, that's why I wanted to get on here. You know, like I said, Gene and I have worked together before. And a lot of folks don't know this. You didn't get to it.
But he does a lot of work with tech as a search. And they've been on some pretty high-profile cases like the Kaylee Anthony case and Natalie Holloway and Aruba and stuff like that. And Ken has been on many searches and he's a very effective director. So I've seen him in action and I really think his background and his knowledge brings a lot to that arena.
And to have him speak so positively about the use of UA from a law enforcement aspect I think is just tremendous and really appreciated. Gene, if I could just take a brief moment once again. You mentioned Texas Equal Search. And you're well aware of this particular case.
Three months ago we had a two-year-old little boy missing from his home. There was a lake approximately three feet deep in the ground. We used an unmanned aircraft to fly the search pattern over that lake. The camera picked up a little red dot.
The little boy was wearing a red shirt. And the family obviously was very distraught. We spent a week out there searching for the little boy. And it was the drone airplane that was flying in the air.
And it was the drone airplane that picked up the image of the little boy in the lake. We were able to retrieve his remains. And other than that, at that particular time, as I said, a circumstance, we would not have found that little boy had it not been for that unmanned vehicle that we used on that particular search, bringing some degree of closure to the family. And certainly we had probably close to 200 searchers out there from law enforcement agencies, the fire department, Texas Equal Search.
The man hours that was being expended on that was greatly reduced when the airplane spotted the little boy and we were able to recover his remains, again showing the positive aspect of the unmanned aircraft. Yes, and that's a great point to leave the show on. We've got 20 seconds left. It goes fast around here.
Mr. DePorte, thank you so much for being the guest. Very informative. My pleasure.
Thank you both. Okay. And I hope to meet you sometime in the future. Gene, have a good week and I'll talk to you soon, buddy.
Everybody out there, have a good week and we'll see you next week. Thank you. You too, Patrick. We'll see you everyone.
Bye. Bye.