By Dronelife Options Editor Jim Magill
(Editor’s word: That is the second in a collection of tales on efforts to determine new counter-UAS protocols within the U.S. to guard high-profile sporting occasions and demanding infrastructure from the potential threats posed by drones flown by careless or hostile actors. The primary installment examined a authorities push to broaden the authority of state and native regulation enforcement businesses to take a number one position in making certain safer skies over World Cup soccer event occasions. This story will deal with how the states of Kansas and Missouri plan to make use of the funds to finance counter-UAS operations to guard World Cup associated occasions in Kansas Metropolis.)
With six World Cup matches slated to be performed between June 16 and July 11 within the cross-state border metropolis of Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, the neighboring states of Kansas and Missouri are every gearing up efforts to determine counter-UAS operations to guard the matches and related occasions from potential disruptions brought on by undesirable drone visitors.
Every state will obtain a portion of a $250 million grant, which the Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA) is distributing to 11 states internet hosting World Cup occasions and to the Nationwide Capital Area (NCR), in affiliation with the nation’s 250 birthday occasions. Missouri, the place a lot of the World Cup occasions within the two-state area will probably be sited, will obtain about $14.2 million, whereas Kansas is earmarked to obtain $5.3 million.
In an interview with DroneLife, Murl Riedel, chief of employees of the Kansas Freeway Patrol, stated the KHP would administer the distribution of grant monies for his state, with $2.5 million going to the Freeway Patrol itself, and the rest of the funding to go to sub-applicants, together with the Kansas Metropolis, Kansas Police Division.
“We’re grateful to the Division of Homeland Safety for this funding. And we’re additionally trying ahead to working with the White Home Job Drive on the FIFA World Cup and the Kansas 2026 host committee and our different companions within the space,” Riedel stated.
He stated the funding would go towards buying counter-UAS expertise and coaching each for the Freeway Patrol and for the Kansas Metropolis, Kansas Police Division. “Kansas Metropolis is a border city; it sits on the border of the 2 states,” Riedel stated.
A lot of the focus of World Cup occasions within the area will focus on Arrowhead Stadium, the house of the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs on the Missouri facet of the state line. World Cup athletes are also scheduled to coach and apply at three designated Workforce Base Camps within the area: the Compass Minerals Sporting Fields, in Kansas Metropolis, Kansas; the KC Present Coaching Facility in Riverside, Missouri, and Rock Chalk Park on the College of Kansas in Lawrence.
As well as, Kansas Metropolis, Missouri will host the FIFA Fan Pageant™ in affiliation with the soccer event. Riedel stated the area’s counter-UAS operations “can be set as much as help these websites to offer companies at these areas.”
He stated the grant helps the set up of each detect-and-identify expertise in addition to drone mitigation expertise designed to deliver down UAVs thought-about to pose an imminent hazard to individuals or property. To ensure that a grant recipient to high quality to deploy the latter sort of kit, its personnel are required to endure coaching on the FBI’s Nationwide Counter-Unmanned Coaching Middle (NCUTC) in Huntsville, Alabama.
The grant program stipulates that counter-UAS funds could also be used to amass a number of kinds of detect-and-identify applied sciences, together with: lively radar, passive radar – radio frequency (RF), electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) cameras, EO/IR sensors, RF directional finders, passive acoustic programs and distant ID beacon receivers.
Mitigation gear and software program, similar to jammers, spoofers and UAS-intercept expertise can be permitted for buy below the grant, with the stipulation that this gear “might solely be utilized by FBI-trained and licensed personnel with a licensed federal company or division or individually licensed by regulation,” in accordance with FEMA’s Discover of Funding Alternative for the grant program.
Though he didn’t specify what particular sort of counter-UAS gear the KHP would buy with its grant funds, Riedel stated the KHP would have “a number of” officers educated in the usage of drone-mitigation gear in time for the start of the World Cup occasions.
“You possibly can think about as this grant program was out there to all 11 host cities, all of these regulation enforcement businesses now have the identical burden on them to get their individuals by means of the coaching. It’s a giant effort to attempt to prepare all of these individuals,” he stated.
Though the FEMA grant program is particularly focused to offer funding to arrange counter-UAS operations in time for the World Cup matches and America 250 occasions, as soon as the infrastructure is in place and the regulation enforcement officers are educated in its use, these programs will probably be in place and out there for additional use to detect and deter rogue drone incursions sooner or later.
“We will definitely use this gear to help the World Cup occasions. After which we anticipate utilizing these counter-UAS programs in Kansas for different occasions, whether or not they’re giant public gathering occasions or if there’s one thing recognized associated to important infrastructure,” Riedel stated.
Missouri’s portion of the FEMA grant funding would strengthen the state’s “capacity to detect, determine, monitor, or mitigate unmanned plane programs, often known as drones,” the Missouri Division of Public Security stated in a current press launch.
“As we plan with our native companions in Kansas Metropolis, we’re taking into consideration each potential menace associated to World Cup matches and different FIFA-related occasions. This contains being ready for potential threats from hostile actors who make the most of expertise, together with unmanned plane programs,” DPS Director Mark James is quoted as saying.
“Kansas Metropolis will probably be one of many most enjoyable locations on the planet for soccer followers subsequent 12 months, and the State of Missouri is working with native officers and regulation enforcement companions to make sure guests and residents are secure and safe at FIFA matches, Fan Pageant, and all associated occasions,” Governor Mike Kehoe stated.
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Jim Magill is a Houston-based author with nearly a quarter-century of expertise masking technical and financial developments within the oil and gasoline trade. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P World Platts, Jim started writing about rising applied sciences, similar to synthetic intelligence, robots and drones, and the methods during which 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.
