 It is Thursday noon, folks, downtown Honolulu. Ted Ralston here in the ThinkTech studio with our show, Where the Drone Leads. And as you know from watching this show, as you have been all of you out there for the last four years religiously, we always have a drone item on our table here to talk about display and focus our attention. Today we don't, because we're going to be talking about the other side of dronism, that of counter-drone or counter-measures or protection in the case where the malicious or unintended use of drones may be something we have to take care of. And joining us today from the Washington, DC area, we have longtime UAS expert in many dimensions and many affiliations, Leonard Lejeune. Leonard, are you there? I'm here. And you're dressed in your aloha shirt and ready to go to work, right? Yeah, it's not bowtie Friday yet. Okay, all right. You guys get a chance to break down to a bowtie on Friday. That's pretty cool. We'll get you out here sometime, Leonard. You can go shorts and bare feet and beat your tire all the time and it works fine. The answer is yes. Okay, all right. You've been on the show a couple of times and I think we do need to get you on live here and give you that opportunity. Anyway, Leonard, what's really interesting here is the people who do the financial analysis of where the drone business is going have identified that countermeasures or counter drone or protection may be the largest particular or specific business sector where systems will be bought and money will be spent in the future. And you're kind of in the middle of all that right now, leading some national efforts and thinking about what we do about the emerging drone problem. Certainly in a military situation, in the security situation and even at home in the civil situation. So tell us a little bit about how your path got there and what you can say about what you think where this is all going. Well, as you said, Ted, I've been doing this a long time. And about a year ago, I was working for NASA as part of their Unmanned Traffic Management program, the UTM program. And I'd helped them put together the framework to allow them to continue without me needing to be there any longer. And so the Pentagon was looking at one of their organizations was looking at putting together a counter UAS expert team and approached me and asked me if I'd come to work as their unmanned aircraft or drone guy to be on your staff to work with your scientists or engineers or technicians in the counter side of things. So that's how I got from there to here. Okay. And obviously that reflects a great respect of the views you've gotten and the information you've gotten and the expertise and the connections over years. And so now putting it to use in the protective side. In fact, as you know, I've used a lot of your presentations that you've given at various times. And because they're so well done and so complete in the way they're explored the depth of various issues that it really does reflect the deep knowledge of the, at least the two sides of this, the Washington DC side, which is a snarl of regulations that entwine and overlap. And then the commercial side, which is all Silicon Valley, first to market. So the two frameworks are kind of heading for an interesting interaction here. In fact, thanks to Jonathan Rupretz for that visual view of time on the show last week. But in terms of the counter measures, if you think of the two extreme opposed sides where we have the civil side where we can do, maybe detect and track, but that's about all, on the military side, you have a whole different problem coming at you. You've got to defeat as opposed in addition to just simply track and identify. And we're talking about very quick developing situations and scenarios that need to be reacted. So what are your thoughts on that Leonard in terms of the, the technologies and the methods that can work both on the civil side and then how that has to be modified for the military side or vice versa? Well, you know, it was a number of years ago that people started asking the questions out loud about, you know, what are we going to do when these, when these things start becoming a threat to whether it's the physical security of a facility or, or, you know, maybe a shipyard or a port or, or a rail station or town or, or anything. And, and then of course, you know, that goes into the field of the military thought perspective as well. And consequently, the bad guys on the other side of things picked, picked that up real fast. And what we've learned is that the bad guys, just because they were over there, and I'm thinking now on the military side of things, just because they're wearing sandals and, and, you know, scarves around their head in no way makes them dumb or stupid. You know, we consider that these people have been living in the desert and living off the desert for 10,000 years, which makes them real smart, because that's something I couldn't do today if I had to. And you use that kind of background knowledge and, you know, just forethought into everything you do. And now you hire some brilliant young people, or you find young people in your own ranks, they're very brilliant and smart. You put them to work on these, these problems that they're facing now when they face us as Americans. And consequently, where we have for years, especially for the, since Vietnam, I'd say, been on the technological leading edge of both technology and air power. We've always, you know, we've, since Vietnam, we have thoroughly enjoyed air superiority and technological superiority. Well, the fact is, that is no longer the case today. And that doesn't just apply to the military side of things. We, we are now, you know, it didn't take us long to learn that DHS and, and the DOJ face exactly the same kind of problems. And, and now the Department of Transportation, several other agencies within the government are seeing the same thing now on the civil side. So while we looked at it from a military perspective, how do we, how do we identify, you know, see them, stop them, identify who they are, and then maybe knock them out of the sky? It's not just a military problem. And that's interesting because you're really talking about the reuse or the repurposing of commercially available small low tech drones in a, in a combat situation. And you're sort of introducing in the term of air superiority, there is the low air, the close in air, as well as the big air that we may have thought of as the past. And by the way, I want to compliment you on the lighting in your studio. There's perfect for a guy who's been involved in security for a long time. There's no facial recognition possible. No identification of who the speaker really is. So that's the picture really well. Hey, now we, now we can do a facial recognition on you and check the locks on the door and everything else. Anyway, well, he's a significant guy and he's that's what he does. So anyway, this, this world is changing, isn't it? And that's, it produces in certainly in a situation you're referring to in combat, very quick acting, very difficult to detect and difficult to defeat solutions. But you also know that at the end of the day, we're going to figure this out. And there's going to be some kind of systemic view of what's going on electromagnetically or visually or by radar or a combination of all three to indicate what the what the emergency situation is. So on the military side, that system that situation will self resolve, I would think, just with investment. Yeah, I think it so the way that we're we're going at this right now within the Department of Defense is we are are for one of the first times in recent history, we are combining our efforts with the DHS and the DOJ and some of the other agencies and saying, you know, this is a common problem. And we've all got to learn how to face this and deal with this all together, because it's just not not the same as having, you know, military helicopters flying against soldiers in the field or something like that. The DHS, they fully recognize that, you know, while these things may be carrying drugs across across the border, they may also have spray devices on them that you can buy from any agricultural center. And if you just whip out talcum powder out of that thing, it's going to create a panic, because until the lab verifies that it's only talcum powder, you're going to have people trampling each other and you're going to have whole stadiums, you know, just falling into disarray. So this this is a bigger problem than just the military. And that's great. So we can talk about that transition over to the civil side. The rules are different on the civil side in terms of what people can do. The need for education and with our law enforcement organizations and prosecuting organizations and such in terms of what latitude and limits and constraints they have is an important part of this as well. I think perhaps on the military side is more clear, the civil side is very complicated with the various and unstructured, I should say, unaligned rules, laws and regulations between the various states. And then within a particular area, you've got federal, state, county, local, and maybe tribal administrations or or frames of reference. So there's going to be it on illogical to think they're going to be coordinated rules across there. And there's the issue of inspection. You're right. Historically, and that's going to be a problem that all the agencies are going to have to learn how to come to grips with that. Historically, they have been separate by separate, you know, separate rules, rules of engagement and rules on how you spend your money and how you budget for your your your test and evaluation of how you're going to get from point A to point B. But, you know, recently, what the DOD has acknowledged is that because this is a multi agency wide problem, the DOD has been working closely with the FAA to come up with policies, if you will, that will allow the DOD to work on these problems with regard to the frequency and the NTIA and FCC and the FAA problem, openly on on their ranges, but at the same time to share this information with the proper agencies that need to get their hands on this. So so while we are going to be doing the bulk of the testing on DOD ranges using, you know, DOD assets, the policies that are just now going into effect, in fact, the policy hasn't been released yet, but but I saw a briefing on it today, is that there will be openness between the agencies on sharing on how to do this kind of thing. Let's pick up right after our one minute break here, how that might be applied here in Honolulu. You're breaking up, Ted. I can't hear you. Okay. Well, I say we'll take a break here for one minute, fix the communications, and then come back and talk about how that might apply here in Honolulu. Is Steven Philip Katz? I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and I'm the host of Shrink Wrap Hawaii where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at three o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. It is just afternoon on Thursday, folks. We're heading into the second half of our show where the drone leads at ThinkTech Studios downtown and joining us online once again, Leonard Lejeune out of various places right now out of the Washington, D.C. area. We were talking about the interesting and incredible area of countermeasures, protection, and security in the world of drones. We were speaking just before the break, Leonard, about how perhaps in a signal way here, the various agencies that are affected by potential malicious use of drones are coming together to think of how to do the protection. Department of Justice, FAA, maybe FCC, and DOD. And so as you were leading us in that direction just before the break, the thought comes to mind, how do we take that emerging collective thinking? How do we transmit the fact that that's happening to our various agencies here in Honolulu? And furthermore, how do we reverse that and take their ideas as they see them from the various perspectives here and feed it into that chain where that collective thinking is taking place? Well, I think that that's part of the growth process. It's going to have to learn how to be made. Now, I know that every single one of these agencies has internal newsletters or memos or ways that they put out information. For instance, you know that I'm a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and I'm on their mailing list for all their how to put out different topics to discuss. I'm also a member of the Airborne Law Enforcement Association and they do exactly the same thing there. Inside DOD, the counter UAS, the threat working group areas, we have our own newsletters that talk about these things. There's going to likely have to evolve out on all of this a common thread same sort of a thing, kind of newsletter or something that can be provided to the people who are most interested in following through on how to deal with these problems or what technologies are being made available today, what agencies are doing, what kind of work so that there can be some cross talk going on between the different agencies, different officers, Dallas Police Chief needs to talk to, you know, NASA and NASA Ames. Who do I talk to? Give me a phone number. Give me an email address. Give me a name. That kind of thing is going to have to evolve out of this just like this where us learning how to work together in the counter UAS or counter drone realm is going to have to learn how to deal with it. That's most interesting. So that almost sounds like a social media opportunity or event or what the social media can assist with. Absolutely. And I'm really too old to understand all that stuff, but you're not. And so maybe that's one of the items we can discuss next week when we have a major discussion session out here is how to connect everybody in that regard from an information flow and education perspective, and then get them all our participants to feed their information in whatever form it might be, upline to the where the collective collection of information is going. And you mentioned something interesting earlier, if say some hypothetical Dallas policeman needs to contact NASA, I'll bet today he has to go through a lot of different barriers before he can represent Dallas Police to NASA. So we have to break down those social structures and find a way that his information can get to, we'll say, NASA immediately without being filtered by the normal process here, because we are in such a developing domain. If we expect the local or the standard systems of upwards percolation of information and then move across and then down the other organization, we'll probably not get the speed and the completeness that we want in that communication. Well, you were right. The web is going to be the way to go. The social media aspect of it is going to be the right way to follow. So one area that just comes to mind is when we think of counterterrorism, that's another area that spans everything from local and even tribal police all the way through DOD. And so there are websites that are dedicated to these kinds of things that people who work inside these fields are given permissions and able to access these websites through passwords, through private email servers or whatever. And now there are chat rooms and there's bulletin boards and all of these things. I see the counter UAS realm following somewhat along those same lines. That's interesting. That suggests sort of almost like an intelligence function where you have semantic analysis and different means to take information that's in varied form and convert it to a standard form so that it all fits into a way we can digest it, pull it together and look at patterns, pattern recognition. You can't have an adverse drone activity unless there's drones in the area and there's just people trained to fly them. So there's factors that are left of launch here that can be factored into the situation as well. But it's not all necessarily dire and heavy. What we think of a lot here when we have these kind of conversations is what happens in Honolulu five years from now when we have 500 drones in well-intentioned commercial service delivering tennis bracelets and prescription medicines and pizzas around town or 5,000 for that matter. Just within that structure itself, well-intentioned commercial operations, we have the problem of a potential fault or failure. We have the potential for malicious input and for nuisance factors. So even that, a well-intended system still needs to protect itself through pattern identification and thread identification. So you are familiar with UTM? I am. All right. So UTM is a good starting place. It's a great model to start with. UTM, like ATM, air traffic management, nobody is allowed to operate in the air at certain places, certain altitudes beyond certain thresholds, whatever that threshold may be, without the FAA knowing all about it. And consequently, UTM is going to be the driver behind the same thing for the unmanned aircraft or the drone side of things. Ultimately, now while it's not happening today, ultimately what I see is when you go into Best Buy or Fries to buy that small drone for your $600, $800 drone, you're going to fill out your registration paperwork before you're even allowed to walk out the door. And maybe they'll put that on the price with it for the $5 registration or whatever. But once you walk out the door, your registration is going to be in the system. And when you log on, get ready to fly, the system is going to want to know, can I talk to UTM? Can I talk to the network before I take off? So it's going to all be interlinked at some point, which is going to create a clear picture. Now, this doesn't mean there's going to be human involved. Obviously, we couldn't have a human involved when you've got half a million drones flying at one time in the airspace. It's going to be computer-centric. But there will be the red flags that pop up and tell some controller somewhere. There's a bad thing getting ready to happen over here or something's going on that's out of the norm. And you should pay attention to this. So we're going to see, once again, an opportunity for big data and pattern recognition and threat identification that comes from looking at these large pictures, maybe similar to the way we look at disease growth, for that matter, or even fire propagation. It's the same thing will now apply here in the world of large-scale use of drones, ATM forming the framework for normal ops and these deviations forming the identity of the issue, and then some kind of resolution has to occur. So, fascinating future world, Leonard. And I really hope that the people who are a lot younger than me anyway, and perhaps you, no offense, but are digging into this stuff and coming up with the methods we're going to be using. We do have the electronic thumbprint coming forth on all drones as soon as the ARAC is completed with this work. So that'll be a start in that direction. UTM is a great framework to start from. And I think our well-learned and understood pattern recognition out of intelligence is going to play a role here too. So it's great to have you on again, and it's really appreciate what you're bringing to us, this knowledge that there's going to be joint development of methods and procedures through DOJ, starting with them and FAA and FCC, very important. And I still would like to find a way to have you present that to our crowd next week here when we all gather and talk about that from a Hawaii perspective. So, Leonard. I'm not traveling like I usually, so I'm probably available. Okay. Well, we'll count on that. And we'll figure out how to make the hook up. And Leonard Lejeune, did we show anybody how to get a hold of Leonard here, Ray? Leonard Lejeune, contact our station and we'll put you in touch. Anybody who has interest and knowledge and things to think about and add to the picture and counter drone. Thank you very much, Leonard. And we'll see you all next Thursday.