Published Aug 15, 2023 by Dawn M.K. Zoldi (Colonel, USAF, Retired) According to Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, who kicked off Alaska’s inaugural Global Autonomous Systems Conference here last week, the state has three key ingredients to skyrocket it to drone domination: its people, the place and the policy.
The multi-day event attracted close to 200 attendees, most of whom traveled from afar to the 49th state with hopes of doing business there. These highlights from the event showcase what make Alaska uniquely situated to propel the drone industry.
Whereas Alaska may be flush with natural beauty and resources, at the same time it lacks infrastructure and capacity. Because of Alaska’s enormous and complex landscape, about 80% of its communities lack road systems. These communities rely on a short tugboat season for delivery of materials and bulk fuel. The only other means to connect them to the rest of the world is by way of expensive charter aviation. Alaska’s aviation community, which comprises only 1% of the total U.S. aviation population, accounts for 40% of the collisions.
But Alaska’s leaders view these challenges as opportunities. Dr. Cathy Cahill, director of the Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration (ACUASI) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), emphasized that Alaska’s remoteness, physical infrastructure and other challenges lend themselves to deploying autonomous technology “almost anywhere.”
The combination of such a difficult environment and limited resources sparked the state’s innovation in uncrewed aircraft systems and autonomy. The UAF successfully bid to become one of the original six FAA test sites. It also became one of the first seven lead participants in both the FAA’s original UAS Integration Pilot Program (IPP) and the Alliance For System Safety Of UAS Through Research Excellence (ASSURE). It now holds steady as a lead participant in the agency’s current BEYOND program, successor to the IPP.
This ability to enter into research and development at the inception of the drone industry has enabled Alaska to rack up a significant list of policy and “firsts,” which have enabled historic feats. Ranked high among these, last year, the UAF conducted the first remotely controlled operation of a civilian large drone (a 280 pound Sentry with a 13-foot wingspan), to fly on a general aviation runway into controlled airspace, at an international airport. A culmination of years of coordination with the FAA and the airport, this mission successfully demonstrated the potential of large drone missions for cargo delivery and other essential Alaska missions.
|