The drone trade stands at a pivotal second as Challenge ULTRA demonstrates unprecedented integration between navy unmanned techniques and civilian airspace, probably unlocking new potentialities for industrial past visible line of sight operations and establishing vital precedents for airspace administration that might rework how all drones function within the Nationwide Airspace System. In a panel dialogue at AUVSI’s Xponential final week, stakeholders describe the undertaking.
Challenge ULTRA readies demonstration flights this summer season
By DRONELIFE Options Editor Jim Magill
A collaboration bringing collectively the Division of Protection and entities representing the state of North Dakota, Grand Forks County and personal firms is anticipated to exhibit the feasibility of flying unmanned navy autos laden with cargo over lengthy distances, by way of civilian airspace.
Members of the crew behind Challenge ULTRA (UAS Logistics Site visitors Response Autonomy) lately gave an replace on the group’s effort in a presentation at AUVSI’s Xponential 2025 convention in Houston. A collection of demonstration flights scheduled for this summer season, is deliberate to hold payloads of as much as 55 kilos greater than 60 miles from Grand Forks Air Pressure base to Cavalier House Pressure Station and again.
“That’s a frightening job. This has been troublesome and for the proper causes,” mentioned Christopher Hewlett, of the GrandSKY Analysis Firm, the undertaking’s director. He mentioned his job is to make sure that all of the undertaking crew members work inside all each navy and FAA guidelines and laws designed to maintain everyone protected.
“To ensure that us to step in — in partnership with everyone else concerned on this course of — to alter these (restrictions), and to scale to an operational assemble that adjustments the paradigm … it shouldn’t be one thing that’s simple,” he mentioned.
The Northern Plains UAS Check Website in Grand Forks has led a collection of simulations to judge potential contingencies for the undertaking. “The Northern Plains EAS check website is the first execution on the initiative, leveraging intensive flight testing and analysis capabilities, which is able to create higher operational effectivity for our nation’s armed forces,” mentioned John Sawyer, senior UAS analyst, Workplace of the Beneath Secretary of Protection for Acquisition & Sustainment (OUSD A&S).
The undertaking brings collectively: OUSD A&S, the Northern Plains EAS Check Website, Grand Forks County and GrandSKY, an area UAV-specific enterprise improvement facility. Different members of the Challenge ULTRA crew embody NASA, the Air Pressure Analysis Laboratory, the FAA and several other trade companions.
“ULTRA goals to reinforce airspace situational consciousness and visitors administration inside the Nationwide Airspace System and to develop dependable logistics and provide supply to distant navy places,” Sawyer mentioned. Different targets of the undertaking embody growing BVLOS capabilities to function a mannequin for interconnecting far-flung DOD installations, “integrating small UAS capabilities to enhance high quality of life for navy personnel and households, and growing counter-UAS applied sciences to reinforce bodily safety,” he mentioned.
“So in a nutshell, our objective is to offer set up commanders with the aptitude to securely combine counter-UAS operations, UAS operations, manned air visitors operations and autonomous logistics operations inside DOD installations and between DOD installations, and within the airspace that not solely the Division of Protection controls, however out within the Nationwide Airspace System and a managed airspace as properly,” Sawyer mentioned.
Shawn Maines, with the OUSD A&S, mentioned classes realized from Challenge ULTRA, will show to be relevant to U.S. troopers working within the battlefield.
“I can suppose again to my days of being out in area coaching workouts or being in the course of Iraq,” he mentioned. “For those who’re conversant in that, logistics might be an absolute nightmare, proper? So, I believe what we’re actually making an attempt to do is getting an ‘simple’ button.”
He mentioned the undertaking’s baseline goal is to fly 10 round-trip missions between the Air Pressure Base and the House Pressure Station. The 67-pound cargo-carrying UAV will probably be delivering vital provides, reminiscent of instruments and tools.
Trevor Woods, government director of the Northern Plains UAS Check Website, mentioned the Challenge ULTRA flights won’t be happening in restricted navy airspace, although it is going to be taking off from GrandSKY, which is situated on the Grand Forks Air Pressure Base. “It’s nonetheless a Class Delta airspace that each one different customers now have entry to,” he mentioned. “So, now we have to adjust to the entire civil guidelines and laws.”
He added that the flights will exhibit how such long-range navy missions might be completed whereas flying in FAA-regulated airspace, sharing the sky with non-military manned and unmanned autos.
Thomas Swoyer, founder and president of GrandSKY UAS Flight Check Heart, mentioned Challenge ULTRA represents the end result of what the power was designed to perform when it was established a couple of decade in the past.
“GrandSKY is a flight operations heart. It’s situated on Grand Forks Air Pressure base underneath a 50-year floor lease, however it’s an independently operated and financed operation. We’ve got introduced collectively funding from the state of North Dakota and the non-public sector,” he mentioned.
The 217-acre facility, the primary location within the U.S. to obtain approval for BVLOS flights, affords tenants and companions entry to the Air Pressure runway and tower assist and has operated a ground-based sensor level system since 2018.
“We purchase quite a lot of completely different plane from there,” Swoyer mentioned. “We make the most of all that infrastructure for these flight operations.”
Hewlett mentioned the extent of cooperation concerned in bringing varied gamers collaborating in Challenge ULTRA collectively has confirmed to be a frightening problem.
“We’re now in a singular place and that distinctive place comes with an amazing quantity of interoperability and collaboration with any variety of federal businesses,” he mentioned. “For us, it’s been an act of will. 100% of this crew that we assembled is superb as a result of we will’t even inform you what number of issues pop up on the final minute … and must be solved.”
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Jim Magill is a Houston-based author with nearly a quarter-century of expertise protecting technical and financial developments within the oil and gasoline trade. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P International Platts, Jim started writing about rising applied sciences, reminiscent of synthetic intelligence, robots and drones, and the methods wherein they’re contributing to our society. Along with DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared within the Houston Chronicle, U.S. Information & World Report, and Unmanned Programs, a publication of the Affiliation for Unmanned Automobile Programs Worldwide.
Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, an expert drone providers market, and a fascinated observer of the rising drone trade and the regulatory setting for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles targeted on the industrial drone house and is a global speaker and acknowledged determine within the trade. Miriam has a level from the College of Chicago and over 20 years of expertise in excessive tech gross sales and advertising for brand spanking new applied sciences.
For drone trade consulting or writing, E mail Miriam.
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