UAS Action Summit

By Brett Davis Unmanned Systems magazine Posted on May 31, 2007

North Dakota Promotes Unmanned Systems at Second Action Summit

North Dakota will become the second base for Northrop Grumman’s high-flying Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles in the next few years, as well as acquiring General Atomics Predator UAVs, and is promoting its wide-open spaces and technical know-how to try to push further into the UAS market.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., recently hosted the second Unmanned Aircraft Systems Action Summit in Grand Forks, which brought together high-level UAV officials and highlighted the overall state of the market and North Dakota’s role in it. The event co-organized by the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences at the University of North Dakota and the Coordinating Center of the Red River Valley Research Corridor.

Grand Forks Air Force Base is becoming an Air Combat Command base with a family of UAVs piloted by the 119th Fighter Wing of the North Dakota Air National Guard. It also will be home to UAVs deployed by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection department, which will use the vehicles to help police the northern border.

Michael Pitts, director of the UAS Program Office for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, said the CBP’s third Predator is expected to arrive in September and will be stationed in Grand Forks as the Northern Border Region’s UAS Operations Center. The vehicles will be launched and recovered by command and control from the Air and Marine Operations Center in Riverside, Calif., or by local line-of-sight control.

Pitts said CBP operations on the border with Canada, which will be done in close cooperation with the Federal Aviation Administration, means the agency is “really paving the way for everybody else to follow” in using UAVs in the National Airspace.