With its sights set on expanding its beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) infrastructure across the country, Vantis recently signed a long-term agreement to house an operations center at the Grand Sky business and aviation park in western North Dakota, providing unmanned aerial system (UAS) operators and customers from across industries access to monitoring, data collection, and verification, lowering the barrier to entry for federal approval.

Currently, drone operators have to demonstrate to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) they can operate safely while mitigating the risk posed by other aircraft and the people and property on the ground. That’s a big ask if you lack the infrastructure to monitor your UAS and collect the data necessary to support your application. That’s where Vantis comes in.

“The value add is really lowering the barrier of entry for flying beyond visual line of sight,” Nicholas Flom, executive director of the Northern Plains UAS Test Site, which oversees Vantis told AUVSI. “We all drive on the same roads, we all land at the same airports. Right now in UAS, we don't have anything that's shared. It's all at the individual level, and then it becomes really cost-prohibitive and hard to scale.”

In partnership with Collins Aerospace, L3Harris and Thales, the Vantis Mission and Network Operations Center (MNOC) will provide a single, secure network to monitor flight operations, manage contingencies, verify flight completions and save operational data for multiple UAS operators and end-users testing BVLOS operations. Flom estimates the center will be ready this summer to “confirm operational flight approvals, authorize information access, and review documentation, training, and credentials.” The infrastructure includes sensors for aerial system operators broadcasting their position, as well as radar to pick up non-cooperating manned traffic. And to enable long-range flights, Vantis will use a ground-based terrestrial network of control radios that enable control room operators to toggle between locations to track UAS up to a 30-mile radius.

While Vantis hopes to see the project extended for up to 10 years and expand it into the eastern part of the state, its ambitions don’t stop there. “We'd love to see this scaled up across the country, and we're taking that into consideration as we're building it,” Flom said.

The operation is a continuation of a pilot program between the FAA and the state of North Dakota, which has put itself at the forefront of delivering a regulatory and operational framework for UAS traveling at night and BVLOS. Now the state is taking those efforts one step further, by advancing operational flight testing for various UAS operators, as well as industries and public services operating in North Dakota including: the oil and gas industry; road, rail, and power line inspections; cargo and medical deliveries and emergency response services.