The VT Group has announced that Daniel Bertram has joined the organization as president of the Unmanned Systems line of business and member of the Senior Leadership Team. In this role, he will have responsibility for the vertical and horizontal expansion of the group’s US services offering worldwide. Continue reading
Category Archives: Non-Military & Commercial UAS
MLB to Supply 5 UAS for US Fire Control
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Building and Fire Research Laboratory Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Program, in Gaithersburg, MD, has just awarded a contract worth $927,500 to the MLB Company of Mountain View, California for five Unmanned Aerial Systems to collect data characterizing the location of a fire perimeter spreading through wild lands, fuels and atmospheric conditions. Continue reading
FAA Grants COAs to El Dorado, Kansas
The El Dorado Times in Kansas reports that the FAA has granted two Certificates of Authorization (COA) to the City of El Dorado to fly Unmanned Aircraft at El Dorado Municipal Captain Jack Thomas Memorial Airport for the next 12 months. The COAs are renewable and are granted by the FAA to public entities desiring Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) operations and allows the entity to use defined airspace for specified times and include special provisions unique to each operation.
The City of El Dorado applied for the COAs earlier this year after signing an agreement with Flint Hills Solutions (FHS), a local UAS solutions provider. The agreement includes the delegation to FHS by El Dorado to be the COA technical application administrator as well as the UAS designated operator for the City at El Dorado Airport.
Miami Police Buys Honeywell T-Hawk
The Miami-Dade County Police Department has finalised a deal to buy a T-Hawk from Honeywell and officially applied for permission from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last month to begin flying it around the county. The 20-pound UAS has cameras mounted on the sides, can fly for 40 minutes at a time, reach 10,500 feet, and cruise at up to 46 mph.
Honeywell's T Hawk
Police in Houston have tested UAVs, and a Sheriff’s office in Colorado has a drone to look for stranded hikers, but no one has yet deployed a UAS in a large metropolitan area. The Army and the Air Force have more than 7,000 UAS overseas, and 44 other countries use the devices, but this is new territory for civilian law enforcement agencies. Already a number of parties have voiced concerns about the privacy issues raised by having overhead surveillance of this nature.
DIY Drones Factory Announces New Products
The amateur enthusiasts at the DIY Drones Factory announced that they are working on a dozen new products at the moment, and, in the spirit of the open source community, reveal some details on their blog in the name of transparency.
Read more details here
Arizona Gets 4th Predator
Arizona received its fourth unmanned aircraft system last Tuesday in the form of a Predator-B. Continue reading