Posted on 07/12/2012 10:56:57 AM PDT by Steve Peacock
The federal government’s expanded use of drones over U.S. airspace for “humanitarian assistance and homeland security” purposes soon will receive a boost of assistance from the private sector.
A cadre of contracted “subject-matter experts” will help devise national policies and procedures governing unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.
In order to “facilitate the safe expansion” of the Obama administration’s domestic drone deployment, the U.S. Air Force Safety Center, or AFSC, will outsource to industry the assembling of this expert crew, according to a Sources Sought document that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor discovered via routine database research.
The release of a formal Request for Proposals to provide those services is imminent.
A recent amendment to the procurement – known as the RPA Advisory & Assistance Services initiative – indicates that the bid request will be made public this week.
The AFSC’s Remote Piloted Aircraft, or RPA, Safety Branch, which oversees “safety policy, global mishap prevention strategies and processes,” said the outsourcing of this “safety expertise” will play a critical role in integrating drones into the National Airspace System.
The endeavor also will enable the Department of Defense to execute its plan to establish 65 regional drone Combat Air Patrols, while additionally providing “functional safety capabilities in support” of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom missions, the solicitation said.
Helping to clear a backlog of RPA cases under investigation at the Air Force Central Command and the Air Combat Command also falls within the purview of this procurement.
The department intends to hire a single prime contractor – which must be a U.S. firm –responsible for filling several subject-matter expert positions. According to a Summary of Required Services document, approximately seven analysts and engineers will comprise the RPA safety crew.
Positions slated to be created for the expert drone cadre include an “operations research analyst” and an “airspace/air traffic control expert.” Those contractors will interact with representative of the major military commands and the Federal Aviation Agency generally to help safely expand drone operations in U.S. airspace.
A pair of “systems safety engineers” and a “human factors expert” specifically will be tasked with analyzing “aviation safety trends,” involving evaluations of existing “mishap reports and data.” The document did not include statistics revealing the extent of such drone “mishaps.” Those experts also will coordinate safety efforts with other unmanned aerial system – or UAS– users, both governmental and non-governmental, “to identify common problem areas and share potential technical solutions.”
Among those other entities is the Electronic Systems Center, or ESC, a key Air Force unit responsible for many Defense-wide military command and control projects around the globe. ESC, headquartered at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, oversees “some of America’s most valuable defense assets.”
Those assets include the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, or Joint STARS, whose primary mission “is to provide theater ground and air commanders with ground surveillance to support attack operations and targeting that contributes to the delay, disruption and destruction of enemy forces.”
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research and Engineering, known as MITRE Corp., was identified in the document as a non-governmental partner with whom the engineers would work. MITRE, for example, later this year will host a panel meeting on behalf of the Office of the Secretary of Defense to explore UAS “sense and avoid, or SAA, science and research.”
The defense secretary’s office, in a Request for Information on SAA data, acknowledged that “a key challenge to integrating UAS into the National Airspace System is a means for UAS to sense and avoid other aircraft.” The meeting will take place Nov. 14-15 at MITRE’s McLean, Va., facility, where the Office of the Secretary of Defense will lead an assessment of “ongoing science and research initiatives.”
The gathering also will seek to identify “areas where industry and the research community desires government guidance.”
This article originally was published via WND.com on July 8, 2012. Under agreement with WND, rights have reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock.
A team at the University of Texas successfully spoofed the GPS and took control of a DHS drone, for about $1,000 in off-the-shelf parts. Does anyone think that the bad guys won't be able to do this?
EDITED TO ADD (7/9): It wasn't a DHS drone. It was a drone owned by the university.
The first sentence talks about domestic drone use. However, later in the article, CENTCOM is mentioned along with Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, the E-8C Joint STARS is mentioned for some reason.
But it will be OK once we have a Republican president, after all like the PATRIOT act, if you aren’t an illegal or a terrorist what do you have to be afraid of /sarc
At this point, there needs to be a loud advocacy organization whose goal is to stop the use of such drones in most situations.
That is, effectively outlaw the use of drones in US airspace except for limited, unique purposes. Each use must be approved by a senior government official by name, who is personally responsible for both any misuse and any accident resulting from use.
An absolute prohibition on such aircraft being weaponized or even weapons capable.
Strict limits for use in surveillance, a lower and upper limit for airspace altitude, that such aircraft be equipped with commercial grade and broadcast range collision avoidance radio beacons that can be detected on the ground in the clear, not encrypted or on unusual frequencies.
Such drones must also be limited to only a middle range of sizes and weights. That is, no very small or very large drones. And very tight rules for the use of airship drones as well.
“Register drones, not citizens.”
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