Drone America Savant in Beyond Line of Sight Operations

            Mid-February of 2017, a record setting flight was completed above the Nevada desert. A small, fixed-winged unmanned aerial aircraft flew a distance of over 39 miles at an altitude of 1,500 AGL to deliver a small medical care package to a predetermined location. What made this flight so unique is that the delivery mission completed by this small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS) operated under Beyond Line of Sight conditions for over an hour before delivering its payload upon landing at Hawthorne Industrial Airport. To accomplish this task, the team from the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems utilized a team of ground observers to maintain safety, as well a Cessna 206 containing aerial observers (Barker, 2017). In addition to additional safety observers, the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems team also required a Certificate of Authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate Beyond the Line of Sight at its own designated test site (Barker, 2017).

            In this particular test, the potential application is apparent; deliver medical supplies to those in need where more conventional methods are not practical. The scenario that this flight was operating under was that of a lost hiker (Barker, 2017), but could have easily been a remote hospital or, taking from the current disaster in Texas, hurricane victims stranded by a flood. Beyond its use during disastrous situations, a system such as this can deliver commercial goods to corporate buildings or individual households (i.e. Amazon Delivery), provide relatively low-cost border patrol surveillance, or even simple long-distance courier services. All of which would provide ample reason for the private sector to pursue Beyond Line of Sight unmanned aircraft capabilities. A major human factor in the development of Beyond Line of Sight UAS is the need for a constant sense and avoid system. In traditional manned aircraft, a system failure of all onboard sensors can still be overcome to a certain degree by the pilot’s ability to simply look out of the cockpit window. While obviously not as accurate and technical as any onboard radar and communication systems, it still provides some level of control to keep the aircraft from colliding with obstacles both in the air and on the ground. Unmanned aircraft don’t have that same luxury if they lose any onboard communication system. Because of this, they must rely on onboard detect and avoid systems. The most likely candidate for this would be the NextGen required ADS-B system to display its position to all other ADS-B equipped aircraft while reading their location. The drawback to this is that not all aircraft are equipped with this system yet. This would leave blind spots in the UASs detect and avoid capabilities, and essentially “hide” the UAS from aircraft that do not yet have the system installed. Additionally, personnel using the ADS-B system must be properly trained in understanding the types of aircraft nearby and any problems they may be facing, such as a UAS operating autonomously due to a lost link situation.