 Here we are again folks, right after noon Ted Rawlson here in downtown Honolulu at the Think Tech Studios overlooking gorgeous downtown Honolulu, of course you can't tell that from the background here because we have all the frame spaces up there, but our show where the drone leads we bring to the community in Hawaii and anywhere who's listening to this show or sees the YouTubes afterwards current topics in the world of unmanned air vehicles, UAVs, drones, whatever you might want to call them. And we mark this show by the people we bring on because they have the expertise, they have the knowledge and the insight to help us push forward in this dimension. Today is no exception, we have with us today from San Diego, put a whole boy, actually a boy many years ago, no longer in that, but they're in place, welcome aboard again sir. Thanks Ted, how are you this afternoon? Pretty good, and notice the sun hasn't quite set in California and it hasn't set here in Hawaii yet, so we're kind of under a common bright blue Pacific right now, together here. Anyway Dave has a lot of experience in the world of UAVs, we'll hear about that in a minute, but what I wanted to do on this pretty good time we have here, and we only have half an hour now, we used to have 45 minutes last time you were on Dave, I think we shrunk that down to half an hour now, but we had Brian win on this show two weeks ago, as you know I think you had a lot to do with setting it up, and Brian had come from a week at the White House where many aspects of expanding the dimensions and the boundaries of drone business, drone technology, drone regulations, the use of drones in our infrastructure and in our world were discussed with the White House Office of Science and Technology, a number of key players in the country were there, and Brian Wynn, AUVSI CEO and president was there. So we talked on that pretty good episode about what this expansion means in terms of the role that the state UAS test sites need to play. As you know we've got these six groupings of states, Hawaii, Oregon, and Alaska combined in one of these FAA authorized UAS test sites, and now we have to examine how to make that test range concept useful and dynamic in regard to the expanding business and the new dimensions of business that were discussed at the White House a couple weeks ago, and we have an immediate need here in Hawaii to get very serious about that. Hawaii, again, is under the Alaska FAA contract, but we have to think here in Hawaii of things that are specific and purposeful in Hawaii that would challenge the rules and the limits of current UAS certification in technology and authorizations for operations and find ways to test and find how to progress into the dimensions such as be online a site over the cliff, far out over the ocean in the tropical environment with the saltwater intrusion and such against the Coalaw background with all the reflections of the GPS signals and such. These complex environments will be stressful and we have to find ways to test in those environments in order to let this new dimension of UAV expansion occur. So without putting you on a spot, Dave, you know what Hawaii is all about since you were born and raised here and went to school here, and you've got incredible background experience in the world of UAVs. Let's first just talk a little bit about that, about your own background and where you've been since graduation and how you've come into the UAV world, then we can figure out how that applies to our test site needs here in Hawaii. Well, I wasn't born in Hawaii. I went to high school there. My dad was stationed there a couple of times. Actually, I was born in Indiana, but that was just a few years ago. That's right next door. H and I had a side-by-side in the alphabet. I did go to, I graduated from Punahou and then I attended University of Hawaii for three semesters and then I went into the Navy and that was a few years ago as well. But during the latter part of my naval career, I was the commanding officer of the, at the time, the Navy's only UAV squadron, which was VC-6. We were flying the old pioneers that we bought from the Israelis and that was back in the mid-90s. And at that time, the services were just starting to look at these, at the time they were calling them RPVs and then the Air Force calls them RPAs or Multi-Pilotated Aircraft. And, but most folks call them unmanned aircraft systems because it's not just the UAV, which is the vehicle, but it's the entire system. And there's a lot of pieces and parts associated with that system, the vehicle, the payload, which is the key part. And that's where I will certainly see the potential for the test ranges to become more involved. 20 years ago, my little crystal ball said, you know, there's something to this unmanned stuff, so I've been doing it for, well, now, like 24 years. But with that as a rough background, within the military, which really was the impetus for the initial development and all the investment by the government, DOD in particular, their mission sets are completely different. I mean, they do a lot of ISR, Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance, which some of that applies to the commercial and civilian sector. But then mission areas like battle damage assessment, fire support, those type of missions really don't play very well in the civil market. Having said that, there are a lot of different applications for unmanned aircraft systems and their payloads. They don't all have to have cameras. I mean, you can put a signals intelligence package on it. You can put radios on board to be like a small satellite to extend telecommunications. So I think we are just beginning to scratch the surface. And that's why AUVSI about five years ago said, you know, we need to look at other markets other than DOD. And some of those that stood out were autonomous cars, precision agriculture, public safety, like law enforcement, disaster relief. And some of those other areas that AUVSI identified, those are the areas where we need to start focusing some of our efforts. There's a lot of smart folks in industry and still in government. I mean, there's some good folks there too. But they, like I said, they have a different mission set. So the test range in between Oregon, Alaska, Hawaii, and then a little bit with Kansas State and Iceland, that particular group needs, and you have a unique situation, fairly unique, not all the test sites. Some of them are landlocked. The one up in New York doesn't have a lot of water. The one in Nevada doesn't have a lot of water. There's some off the east coast, but I think these, the Pacific Partnership test range most certainly ought to be looking at maritime applications. So you go, well, what are maritime applications? If you go back to the Scan Eagle days, the Scan Eagle was initially invented to be to go hunt for fish. So looking for schools of fish. So there's an application that is most certainly in the commercial realm, but not really defense centered. So one of my other assignments was as the Southern California offshore range, officer in charge and then subsequently the operations officer. So I have a pretty good feel for what ranges can do. What what kind of precautions you need to take regarding safety, keeping the range clear of folks that we don't want to get hurt, but it's a big ocean. So but I really think that the Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon test range ought to be focusing on the maritime, some of the maritime applications for unmanned aircraft systems. And then you have all the safety issues related with the range. So that's just kind of generally what I'm thinking. Okay, that's cool. You gave a very small part of your background. You've actually been involved in with Naval Postgraduate School and the GIFIX program up there extensively. So you've actually had a lot of recent participation in in current developments in in the miniaturization of UAS and of the signal distribution from a central command station back to the rear area, for example. So Dave, tell us a little bit about what's going on with the world of technology evolution in that domain of UAS in GIFIX? Well, so GIFIX is the Joint Interagency Field Experimentation, which is a area that is designed to support the combatant commanders. Once again, it's kind of military centric. But having said that, a lot of the industry folks bring some of their new developments. The folks at Stanford have brought in a detection system where they can isolate where other UAVs are operating. So that's one of those areas. They look at a variety of different sensors. They're at GIFIX. And then the other program that is the director for GIFIX is Dr. Ray Bittner. He's also the director for a group called Cruiser, which is a consortium for robotics and unmanned systems education and research. So that's that has some military applications, but they look at the whole scope of educating and researching. Cruiser does a few things. One of the most prominent things they do is they publish a newsletter about once every 10 days. And that's a compilation of press releases, you know, from Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Defense News. So it's a it's a whole variety. And within those newsletters that in anybody in the audience can join Cruiser. If you go to the just Google Cruiser and you've it's there at the Naval Post Graduate School, they have a website and you can just join now. Can you spell that again? So we make sure we spell it right. Cruiser is C-R-U-S-E-R. So it's a different kind of cruiser. It's a different kind of cruiser. There's no eye in there. Right. Okay. But it is a consortium. It's international. So people write articles in Cruiser News. And then there's this unmanned system Sentinel, which is another product that has a compilation of fairly recent press releases. And you would be amazed how much stuff is out there in the press. And that's the thing that I wanted to discuss, because I think that's so important that is informing what we do here in Hawaii or Oregon or Alaska really needs to have the benefit of that daily and weekly scraping, scrubbing of all the information that's being developed around the world that is available in these websites and documents even such as the ones you put out. So one of the I think big roles here we're going to have to figure out is how to inform our our evolving idea of what this test range is going to be good for. You've outlined it that outline for us that the maritime environment is a place we should really focus because we're unique in that. And not only that we have a stressing maritime environment. We also have some stressing landside or land maritime interface as well. So we got that. That's cool. The informing as to what other people are doing, what technologies are available and what industries might be searching for a way to put their equipment at test. That sort of thing information can come from this this daily and weekly scrubbing of information that you're on top of and help us help us see. Well, I think you very well define the challenges associated with the environment there in Hawaii and in Alaska has its own challenges as well. So I think you've done a real good job with that. The and I don't think that the test ranges shouldn't be operating in isolation. I think there's a lot of opportunity for some synergy. We don't need to repeat what the folks in Nevada or the folks in New York or Texas are doing. So we can leverage and share that information. I mean, this is, you know, we're not playing. I got a secret here. It's we ought to be sharing with the other test ranges. But I like I said, I think that the Hawaii environment and as you have said is most certainly challenging to say the least. But it's different from what the other test ranges have to offer. I don't think it's a huge step to try and corral cope with the environment. You just have to make sure you do it safely because, you know, a lot of folks say not not when or not if we have a UAV incident, but when we do because, you know, you got hobbyists that are trying to fly and most certainly Honolulu International Airport right there with Hickam. That's a challenging environment. So you got to make sure that we got to make sure that we keep any operators, not just the the test folks, but we need to inform the public there in Hawaii. Don't be flying your quadcopter underneath Honolulu International. Let's get back to that in a minute after the first break here. What I want to do is just take a little bit of a break and then come back and talk about specific opportunities we could create along the lines you've laid out informed by that gathering that takes place daily of information about what's going on in other areas. We'll come back to that right after our break. I'm Jay Fidel and I'm here with Pete McGinnis-Mart to talk about HIGP and research in Manoa. What about that show, Pete? I think it's great, Jay. Research at Manoa really provides faculty members of the University of Hawaii with an easy way of explaining some of the research activities we're conducting on the campus. For example, I do a lot of space research, whether it's the moon and Mars, but many of my other colleagues do other interesting kinds of work, whether it's exploring the ocean floor in submarines, studying earthquakes and tsunamis, or other activities. So research at Manoa really provides us with a way of telling the general public some of the activities which we're involved in as well as communicating to our colleagues and students. This is a fun science and we really appreciate the activities which research at Manoa enable us to talk about. I love research at Manoa. Come around, join us. It's Monday, one o'clock p.m., every single Monday. Be there, we'll be square. Ted Rawlsson here, folks, with our guest, David Place, down in a place in San Diego. David Place in place in San Diego. David, welcome again. Thanks, Deb. We were talking just before the break about the two things, about the environment in Hawaii that sets the stage for how we need to think about our UAS test range here in Hawaii. And by the way we have the University of Hawaii Applied Research Lab, will be the agency that will be actually executing that. So that's kind of where you went to school, Dave. But then we need to determine and create very robust mission statements that are associated with the testing we could do in that environment that would be useful and interesting to industry, to government, and to the general quality of life. And think of those types of missions that UAS could do that are not possible today with the technology we have today or the authorization principles we have today. But the testing we would do would find those technology barriers, would find those administrative and regulatory needs and create a path for getting that functionality into the system. And then, with that in place, we have to promote and advocate government support, research support and commercial support for that kind of work. That's how I see what we have to do here in making some value out of the FAA test range that's been defined to us. By the way, I'll say that we've had other guests on the show in the past who've talked about the value that the other sites have generated in terms of the information, the data, and the problems and such that have shown up by virtue of the UAS test ranges, which has informed the way the rules are written. So there is a really good coupling here between the experience and the knowledge the FAA gains by these test ranges and how that then turns into rulemaking procedures and limitations and criteria and requirements. So it's not like an isolated thing that sits out there by itself. So these test ranges exist in order to allow challenges to occur to push the UAV functionality beyond its current limitations and find what has to be done technically or administratively in order to make them function. So that's a lot of words. What I was thinking of is the proposed expansion of the Papahonu Mokuakea, the large maritime reserve, fishing reserve that's established between Hawaii and Midway, is being proposed to be expanded quite a bit. A lot of islands in there, a lot of sea conditions, and when you expand something like that, there's a requirement to enforce it or police it or observe it. So you can spend a lot of fuel on manned aircraft and manned helicopters and do your surveys and such, or you could do a lot of that job with small unmanned systems, especially if you're going to go ashore on an island. It would be quite reasonable to think of a small UAV collecting the information that is necessary to proceed your landing and not spend much fuel or much, not trip up the environment much in the process, or in some cases, even collect the information, the imagery or other, even collect physical material from the island without even having to go ashore. So it simplifies and reduces the footprint below the environment by using unmanned air systems and policing some kind of a fragile natural environment like that. So my thought is that if we could create that use of UAS and tie it to the monument expansion, that itself would provide something that has a long lasting value and it would bring in a lot of researchers and a lot of companies who want to participate in that. And that would then fit in what you're talking about, Dave, using the marine environment as it is to form the challenge that we go forth and do testing associated with. Well, you've hit on a couple of key points there, Ted. I mean, any time you're talking about a preserve, it's normally a fairly large area and it takes a significant amount of resources and manpower to survey and identify what are the key components within that reserve, whether it be wildlife, fish, plants. Retrieving something off an island might be a little bit of a challenge, but most certainly a lot of the other sensors that are available in today's market space are there to do collection of probably not a lot of signals collection, but most certainly there are sensors out there that can detect chemical, biological data, and those are the type of data that when you're looking at a preserve and you're going, well, do we have a sensitive area here? Is there an endangered species? And you most certainly can get up close and personal by using an unmanned aircraft system to help resolve some of those issues. So I think there's lots of payloads and I would most certainly think that the environmentalists and some of the industry folks that zoologists, you know, entomologists, I mean, there's just a whole cadre of scientific folks that I would think would be interested in identifying what's available in that preserve and what areas we need to keep away from and why part of the challenge most certainly is going to be the beyond line of sight. But since you're in international waters, you can probably we can probably get away with doing pretty much what we want. And if you're using a small UAS, if you want to do beyond line of sight, you need a little bit bigger vehicle to carry the radios because most certainly when you start putting expensive sensors on board, no matter what you're trying to detect, they become much more expensive and we don't want to lose them because we lost the command link to the vehicle. That's a really good point and the value of something like the Pacific Monument Range would be that we are free to do testing out there. The consequence of losing something is not going to hurt anybody in the process and it might even be recoverable if we put flotation on, for example, and so determining where the technical limits are such as the communication link you mentioned, such as the reliability and the duplicity and multiple systems on board in order to accommodate failure, in order to accommodate sudden changes in the weather. These things could all be developed and failure is an option and then when we develop what the failure mode is, you then come up with a solution that works around that and that's what the FAA is looking for. What is it going to take to make this very simple thing beyond line of sight be as reliable as aviation is today in manned aviation and that's a great way to think of that challenge. There's two others that come to mind, we probably won't have time to think of to talk about them here because we are on a half hour module, but two others that fit the picture very well, also Pacific and also in this domain, somebody else mentioned this to me a while ago, but we've got mosquito-borne illnesses that are going around and one way to take care of that is to have DNA edited mosquito larvae dropped into a pond in some remote location that you can't get to very well and that those edited larvae cause the offspring to not be reproducible or something like that. Anyway, the population goes away after a couple of rounds of reproduction, but what you have to do is get those larvae in a cold condition, get inject them into the forest, into the jungle and down into the pond at night if they're night biters or daytime if they're day biters. That's a complex operation and it's only maybe a quarter mile or half mile, but it's beyond line of sight because it's up over the forest and down in a hole in the forest. So that sort of thing I think would be, that mission would repeat in many places in the monument in terms of injecting a sensor, injecting larvae, recovering something. This same mission has a lot of operations and a lot of values and it also is challenging the limits of where we are today and produces the necessary data in order to fix the thing technically and to work the administrative rules and allow you to operate it. So I bring that one up as a very small example. That's an application I had not thought of, but I mean you mentioned GIFIX-TED and that's one of the tenants behind GIFIX is Go Experiment and if you fail, great, but let's fix it right there on the spot and what better way to fix an issue than instead of saying, okay well I'll go back and work on it in the lab for the next three months and then we'll come back. Do it right then, do it right there. So I think that GIFIX sets a nice model and most certainly that I think that's a pretty good model for the test range and as far as the FAA goes, you know, they don't move quite as quickly as a lot of us would like but their job is to maintain safety in the national airspace. So they are taking baby steps and they're making steps forward like the part 107 and the recent rules, small rules, those are most certainly steps in the right direction and they're just progressing down a very, very focused path. So any data that any of the test ranges can collect will add credence to the data that the FAA needs to develop more rules. So I think that you're right on the mark and there's most certainly huge potential to support not only the FAA but industry and a lot of scientists and you've given an example there that I hadn't even thought of. Okay, that's good and I think you gave an example I hadn't thought of. I think that connecting the Hawaii range operationally in with GIFIX through you perhaps would be a really superb way to get current information flowing both ways. Things that are developed in the range could benefit GIFIX and things you come across and GIFIX could feedback and help us architect out the range. Yeah, the most certainly is true. Like I said the the folks there at GIFIX, I mean they're trying to support Paycom is one of their key customers and I know that the University there has some ties with the Pacific Command but Paycom is one of the primary clients of GIFIX and normally the Paycom Rep is at GIFIX it's once every once a quarter. So we can tie those together. We have one more minute here. I want to throw one more thing in the table before we have to bail out for the weekend but we won't have much chance to discuss it but the big fuel tanks down in Pua Law here in Honolulu, the 28 story high tanks that are having some leakage issues. Those are well big enough to be inspected on the inside by some form of UAS that has no source of ignition on it. There's got to be fuel vapors in there that we have to be careful of. But let's talk about that maybe offline. I think there's another application that's staring us in the face here. Anyway, Dave we are coming to the end of our very short half-hour period. I'm sure we'll talk a lot more afterwards about the ideas that come to mind here but I really wanted to thank you. First of all I'll bring you on once again but thank you so much for the the deep thoughts you've got that you have brought to us from years of knowing you and contact at AUVSI and GIFIX and the industry in general and that's very useful and very helpful to us. We got to find a way to pull that expertise that you sit on top of into our thinking pool here as we construct our state site functionality at the UAS test range here in Hawaii. I think you most certainly have some challenges Ted but I think you also have some great opportunity. Okay Dave place thanks again for coming on and we'll see you again in the next time we get you on the show. Oh kid Oak all right you guys have a good weekend. Okay thanks a lot.