SHORT RANGE UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS: DOING YEOMAN'S WORK, In a promising new pilot program, short range UAS systems are rapidly changing the way coast guard units do their work.

Lt. Trevor Clark, aids to navigation program manager/design engineer for Civil Engineering Unit Oakland, conducts a damage assessment in Hilo Harbor, Hawaii, after Hurricane Lane using Yuneec’s hexacopter drone.

All Photos Courtesy of Lt. Trevor Clark, Aton Program Manager/ Design Engineer, Civil Engineering Unit Oakland

SHORT-RANGE UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS: DOING YEOMAN’S WORK

In a promising new pilot program, short-range UAS systems are rapidly changing the way Coast Guard units do their work.

By CRAIG COLLINS

On June 17, 2018, not long after the 990-footcargo vessel American Spirit, fully loaded with ironore, grounded in Duluth Harbor, Minnesota, Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit (MSU) Duluth had learned nobody had been injured. But an important question remained: Did the harbor have a pollution incident on its hands?

Within a half-hour of the grounding, Chief Scott Lenz of Station Duluth’s Aids to Navigation Team had left his son’s baseball game and was on his way back to the harbor. In a phone call with his sector command, he learned the nearest Coast Guard Air Station, in Traverse City, Michigan – 342 miles away, by air – was preparing to dispatch a helicopter and crew to survey the harbor for signs of pollution.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, as part of a Coast Guard pilot project, Lenz’s unit had been the first recipient of a short-range unmanned aircraft system (SR-UAS), the Typhoon H, a battery-powered hexacopter less than 2 feet wide, weighing a little over 16 pounds and equipped with a video camera. Lenz thought the new drone could do the job faster and with significant cost savings. “I said: ‘I’m about 35 minutes out of Duluth. Can I get there and put this UAS up?’ We had never done it before. No one in the Coast Guard had ever done it before. We didn’t even really know how to do it.”

It was true: Nobody had ever used a drone to perform an aerial pollution verification for the Coast Guard. But the whole point of the new program was to figure out what was possible with a short-range UAS. Lenz was told to launch the drone. “In 15 minutes, I verified there was no pollution,” he said. “The images I get off this thing are way better than any Coast Guard helicopter crew is going to get with their iPhone ® , shooting while hanging out over the side of the helicopter. This is instantaneous. I’m sharing them with the MSU, with district, with staff – within minutes, and not two or three hours later.”

According to Lt. Cmdr. Ryan Lampe, who manages the short-range UAS program for the Coast Guard’s Office of Aviation Forces, the use of small drones for routine survey and inspection work isn’t all that groundbreaking in itself. The systems are pretty simple, actually: remotecontrolled aircraft outfitted with digital cameras. And yet, Lampe said, he doesn’t remember the last time the Coast Guard was this excited about a new development.

An SR-UAS takes video of at-sea gunnery exercises for the crew of the CGC Terrapin.

All Photos Courtesy of Lt. Trevor Clark, Aton Program Manager/ Design Engineer, Civil Engineering Unit Oakland

“We’re not doing anything fundamentally different in the Coast Guard with these systems,” Lampe said. “We’re doing the same jobs we’ve done forever. We just get to do them faster, safer, and more cheaply.” In his 15-minute survey of the scene in Duluth Harbor, Lenz prevented an expensive chain of events: the flight of an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter and crew from Traverse City to Duluth; probably an overnight stay, because of poor weather; and the loss of that helicopter and crew in Traverse City. Altogether, Lampe estimates that this event – the Coast Guard’s first use of a short-range UAS – saved the service nearly $100,000 in less than 30 minutes.

It seems painfully obvious that using a small drone to film 15 minutes of video, instead of flying a helicopter and crew across Lake Michigan and the state of Wisconsin, is a more efficient use of resources. But it was literally impossible before spring 2016, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released its draft Part 107 regulations, governing the non-recreational use of civilian UASs weighing less than 55 pounds – regulations that weren’t finalized until August 2018.

Using these new regulations for guidance, the Coast Guard’s Office of Aviation Forces launched its Group-1 UAS Prototype Program Initiative – the GUPPI program – as a test and demonstration project to explore the capabilities of short-range unmanned aircraft systems. After training and licensing its first group of remote pilots, the service has distributed short-range systems, so far all of them Typhoon H hexacopters, to seven units. According to Lampe, the early success of the program has prompted an expansion phase that will train more pilots and send short-range systems, including possibly an alternative to the Typhoon H, to at least nine additional units.

The program’s parameters, Lampe said, allow the use of these systems for most Coast Guard mission areas except law enforcement, counterdrug, and search and rescue operations. The service is approaching the use of SR-UAS for these operations cautiously, due to privacy concerns.

Two things about the GUPPI program make it completely different from a typical Coast Guard acquisition. First, the Typhoon H can be ordered online by anybody, for a price starting at $750. “One of the commandant’s precepts,” Lampe said, “is to find state-of-the-market equipment and not to waste a lot of money trying to develop and manufacture these things ourselves. We’re using the best the market has to offer, at a reasonable cost, to increase our capability.”

Second, the SR-UAS being used now by Coast Guard personnel will be an effective bridge to longer-term solutions. There are currently no servicewide guidelines for their use, which is focused solely on exploring SR-UAS capabilities. Those guidelines will come, Lampe said, after the Coast Guard learns more about a capability it has yet to leverage in a meaningful way. “A fundamental difference between the GUPPI program versus other traditional acquisition and procurement programs,” he said, “is that we are learning how to use this new capability at the deck-plate level, so we’re not yet providing something to somebody with a full spectrum of support. We’re depending on them to learn from it and tell us how they use it.”

In just a few months, the Coast Guard’s new shortrange UASs have demonstrated they can do a lot. Lenz and his team have used theirs for a number of missions, including aerial surveillance and reconnaissance before and during President Donald Trump’s visit to Duluth, a few days after the American Spirit grounding, and an August visit from Vice President Mike Pence.

Out West, Lt. Trevor Clark, aids to navigation (ATON) program manager/design engineer for Civil Engineering Unit Oakland, is in charge of aids to navigation along the entire West Coast. His unit received its SR-UAS in early August and within 60 days had used it for shore-launched inspections of fixed aids to navigation from California to Washington; for a post-Hurricane Lane damage survey of Hilo Harbor on the big island of Hawaii; for taking video of at-sea gunnery exercises for the crew of the CGC Terrapin; for ATON inspections launched from small boats; and for inspecting the structure of one of the outbuildings adjacent to the Point Bonita Lighthouse, near the Golden Gate Bridge.

A distant photo of Point Bonita Lighthouse, San Francisco Bay. Using the Typhoon H SR-UAS, the ATON crew was able to inspect the structural foundation on the northwest side of the lighthouse from a distance of about 20 feet.

All Photos Courtesy of Lt. Trevor Clark, Aton Program Manager/ Design Engineer, Civil Engineering Unit Oakland

Clark’s team has also used it for close inspection of the 112-year-old Mile Rocks Lighthouse, about a mile southwest of the Golden Gate Bridge. Though its light tower was removed more than 50 years ago, the lighthouse’s first story remains an important aid to navigation. Set amid heavy currents, rough surf, and a cluster of other rocks, it’s virtually inaccessible by boat, so a helicopter landing pad was placed atop the base to allow access for inspection and maintenance crews. With the SR-UAS, Clark’s team is no longer dependent on putting a helicopter and aircrew in the sky just to have a look. “With the UAS,” he said, “we can get close enough to monitor Mile Rocks’ condition, and better plan for repair work.”

On a couple of occasions, Clark’s SR-UAS has proved not only faster and cheaper than the traditional Coast Guard solution for a certain application; in the rough surf of the Pacific, particularly in the Northwest, it’s also a tool that can reduce risks for both boat and aviation crews. In Grays Harbor, Washington, Clark’s team confronted rough seas when it came time to inspect a pair of old range towers, about a half-mile from the harbor, that were slated for demolition. A few dozen cormorants had taken up residence and built nests in the towers, and Clark and his team, in order to get the appropriate demolition permit, needed to see if there were any hatchlings, nestlings, or juveniles among the birds. “I didn’t really recognize the danger of sending a boat out there until I went out there myself in that small ATON work boat,” Clark said. Within five minutes of his arrival, the surf had intensified from about a foot or two to 2- to 6-foot swells, and he promptly turned back for the harbor. Once on shore, he sent out the UAS to take pictures and video and document the colony’s status.

The GUPPI program is the Coast Guard’s first step toward what is likely to be the widespread adoption of short-range UAS technology throughout the service. “There isn’t a single rate or a single mission in the Coast Guard,” said Lampe, “that couldn’t use this for something. There aren’t that many things that happen in the Coast Guard that have the potential to affect the entire Coast Guard, and this is one of [those] things. Short-range UAS is going to make life significantly better for the far-flung, forgotten dark corners of our organization.”

An additional advantage of using off-the-shelf, commercially available systems, Lampe said, is that they can be easily replaced: Despite the versatility of the system used by the Coast Guard, short-range UAS is a new technology, and like all new technologies, its current generation will probably be obsolescent in about 18 months. If the service’s first experience with short-range UAS is any indication, there will be a lot more systems in service by then, and over time Lampe expects to see a diversification of the SR-UAS fleet. “Eventually we’re going to have a list of authorized systems,” Lampe said, “because there is no one-size-fits-all piece of equipment. Some units will have one system, and another unit will want a different one, and a third unit may need both. We’d like for them to be able to pick and choose, to use what works best for them.”

The Coast Guard’s adoption of short-range UAS is happening fast – and after a few months of using his drone in Duluth, Lenz expects the pace to accelerate as other units catch on. “If I can do this, anyone can,” he said. “Five years from now, these things are going to be at every Coast Guard unit.”