(soft music)
(logo whooshing)
(soft music)
(logo whooshing)
- [Narrator] The Interagency UAS program
has been evolving rapidly over the last few years.
The different missions that are provided
have enhanced the agencies work in many ways.
We will focus this discussion on its integration
into wildland fire operations.
There is an increasing need
for the contracted type one drones
to perform intelligence surveillance and recon.
The use of unmanned aircraft has proven
to help incident management teams with live feed infrared
during low visibility and night operations.
Aerial ignition with the Ignis system
is also in high demand.
The implementation of UAS for Earl ignition
is reducing exposure to personnel and is essential
when poor visibility hinders manned aircraft.
Today, we have Gil Dustin, Justin Baxter, Matt Dutton,
Adam Ridley, and Steve Stroud to explain the UAS positions
and how they conduct operations safely.
(upbeat music)
- There are a multitude of federal policies
that govern the UAS program.
We all work under the umbrella
of the Federal Aviation Administration or FAA.
All of our inner agency, remote pilots
are carded by the FAA as remote pilots under part 107.
We also have Department of Interior Policy
and US Forest Service Policy.
The National Wildfire Coordination Group
governs our operational standards.
And for UAS, we have a standards guide
called the Interagency Fire
Unmanned Aircraft Systems standards.
There are four UAS positions cataloged
in our incident qualification and certification system.
They are UAS manager, UAS pilot,
UAS data specialist, and UAS leader.
All four of these positions can be plugged in
based on the scenario we have in play
and the objectives we have for UAS (indistinct)
And I'm gonna throw this over to Matt
and he's gonna talk about
our training and qualifications process.
- When we think about the four UAS positions we use on
on incidents, wildfire incidents, and in particular
the pilot position is probably the position
that we're utilizing most often most heavily type three
and type four UAS fly, situational awareness flights.
IR flights, mappings flight,
the formal training through NWCG that we do have
for our pilot is S373
which is unmanned aircraft system incident operations.
And that training is really about safety of flight
operating on incidents in what we call the fire traffic area
integrating with manned aircraft,
communicating effectively using the language
that a manned aircraft expects on an incident.
- The process of becoming a UAS pilot
or any of the four positions that Gil had mentioned
starts with becoming a remote pilot for the government.
So it starts out with A450,
once you go through the A450 class
and some IAT pre-work,
that gives you the prerequisites to then start the process
of becoming a UAS pilot.
- So Matt and Justin, there's essentially two weeks
of classroom training
before you can actually go out on a fire and fly UAS.
So is there any on the job or field training requirement
for people certified.
- S373 training is pretty intensive field
exercise-based training, training pilots
through a variety of scenarios
that one might find on any incident.
We like to integrate different incidents, mission profiles
outside of wildfire, to include search
and rescue investigations, et cetera
and successful completion of that training
moves pilot training into the next phase,
which is kind of performance-based training
on real life incident.
So a task book is issued to trainees
after they complete S373.
So S373 is a knowledge-based class.
And then with the field exercises that we use,
it's kind of a practicum,
successful completion of that leads to the task book,
which trainees take into the field
and can use those tasks books on wildfires,
prescribed fire, search and rescue, any incident.
And those paths that are identified in the task book
are all performance-based and specific to what,
what are we asking them to do in the password?
- Safely and effectively integrate UAS
into the fire traffic area.
So the tasks range from what needs to be done
or what needs to be accomplished before you fly
on an incident all the way up into how to safely
and effectively integrate UAS into a fire.
So how to correctly speak to air attack
or other cooperating aircraft,
how to set up and deconflict
before any sort of mission is undertaken.
- So on one end of the spectrum,
it's being able to use the radio
and communicate to people on the ground,
people in the air attack, helicopters and manned aircraft
and then also how to use the aircraft itself.
The GCS, set an altimeter,
requests flight areas, and ceilings to operate in.
- During S373, we train our pilots
four different scenarios that they'll encounter
on a wildfire on an incident,
one which is there's no other aircraft in the area.
The second is an aircraft shows up while they're in flight.
The third is there's an aircraft on scene
and how to coordinate
and deconflict with an aircraft that's already working.
And then the fourth
and probably most common is that air attack is on scene.
So the expectation as our pilots
are working through their task book
is that they're put into situations
where they not only need to deconflict
with other aircraft on scene, where there is no supervision
but also working with air attack, with hella base
to make sure that we can ensure safety of flight
and deconfliction.
(upbeat music)
Starting the communication early is also key
but we all know that fire is a dynamic environment.
So the plans that elevates has, or the UAS pilots have
at the morning briefings don't necessarily
stay the priorities for the rest of the day.
The number one thing that we wanna do
before we launch an airspace
is make sure that we've communicated
and deconflicted our airspace and what we're gonna do.
That starts with the UAS pilot calling hella base
and letting them know when and where,
how long we're gonna be operating UAS.
We do not expect hella base
to do any sort of deconfliction for us,
but we do want them to know where we're gonna be operating
because they're the ones that are gonna send
the helicopter up to do the next round of bucket work
or the next crew shuttle.
So inevitably the message that we give to hella base
of wind and where we're gonna be operating
what we're noticing or what we're seeing is that
there is a gap in the current training
for those positions that are either manning the radio
or the expectation that we're putting on people
that they haven't trained or seen before
that the message of when and where we're gonna be operating
isn't always passed on
to the helicopters that are gonna be out in the field.
When air attack is on scene that that responsibility
falls on air attack
and that I think they're used to operating in that capacity.
What we've seen with the radio operator
in the morning at hella base might be doing something else
in the afternoon.
And that message that we're operating is not getting passed
from either one radio operator to the next.
So they're either unaware that we're operating
or it's just not something that they're trained on
that that message needs to be passed to the helicopter
before they launch.
- [Gil] And as we're figuring that out as pilots,
I think we have a strong culture of doing what's right
as we continue to identify gaps
start to close those gaps through education,
through training and through integration of the element
of an operational period that we're all contributing to.
(upbeat music)
- We're here evaluating the the Metairie 600 aircraft,
Zenmuse XT2 DGI camera
and also the drones amplified ignace payload
which is a plastic spear dispenser, so it.
The ping pong balls
as they're commonly referred to has a chemical in it
called potassium per manganese.
And when you inject the ping pong ball
with glycol or antifreeze,
you get a reaction about 30 to 45 seconds later.
The reason we use ping pong balls
is because we can drop it from the air,
they ping-pong down through the trees
and get to the ground level
so we can establish a backing fire
which generally ecologically speaking is more healthy
for the forest, and it doesn't generate crown fire generally
because we can control the intensity of the heat.
If we start at the top
and bring a line of balls across the top
and then step that down the ridge,
you create a less intense fire
and just generally under burn
the large fuel masses generated under
out of many years of conditions they've had
since the previous fire.
So that's really the intent.
We're finding it beneficial
because normally we have to hike people down the hill
and either fire up by hand
which generates a lot more heat
because it's more difficult to get up and down the slope
or we use conventional helicopter PSD machines.
Problem with that is the generally flying low and slow
in hazardous conditions with a manned aircraft.
It's very effective for landscape
and being able to burn large areas if needed.
This is more of a pinpoint precision tool
and also because of the forward looking infrared camera,
we can fly in essentially zero visibility
where other aircraft can't fly manned aircraft.
So it's an excellent tool
for what's called ISR, Intelligence Surveillance Recon,
the ability to look at things
when a manned helicopter flight recon is unable
and they're also not able to fly
in what what's called instrument flight rules,
IFR conditions.
So we can fly essentially in zero visibility
out to about five miles with this aircraft.
So it's been very beneficial.
(upbeat music)
- [Instructor] The way that we start the firing.
So we'll take the aircraft off
we'll fly it over to the location.
For instance, this one we were flying
from generally about this position here
which is about a mile and a quarter away.
And the altitude delta between the two is about 1200 feet.
So we were flying a mile and a quarter putting the aircraft
at about 1300 feet, so that we're clear of any obstacles,
the other nice benefit of this, as you can see
the white line that's out around the burn area.
So that is what's called a geofence.
So we can actually clear that geofence
and we can build a new geofence.
So if we just wanted to burn out this one drainage,
we can geofence around a specific area.
And then if the aircraft ever leaves that area,
the Ignis machine will automatically stop dropping
and give us a notification that we're flying outside
of the geofence.
(upbeat music)
- On the call when needed contract side of the house,
better cameras, longer flight times,
the aircraft are gonna be flying
either all day or all night.
The idea is to launch them
before the helicopters and everybody else spools up
in the morning and bring them back into their base
long after the air tankers lead planes
and helicopters has left for the day.
And I'd like to hand it over to our data specialists, Adam
to talk about some of the different products that we produce
with contract UAS sensor package.
(upbeat music)
- [Adam] Usually you're putting an aircraft up
with some kind of a product in mind
whether that's real-time situational awareness video
communication related directly to division or branch
but depending upon the sensor package
and the mission profile,
we can produce a variety of different products.
On the tactical side, we're talking more
about real-time video that can be relayed directly
to either ICP or with some additional technology
personnel on the fire line directly.
This is an example of an EO/IR mosaic
that we built for the skid fire in New Mexico in 2019.
This shows high resolution,
daylight imagery on the left
and high resolution imagery on the right,
they were processed separately but as you can see,
they match up pretty well,
and we use the combined EO and IR imagery
to derive a new fire perimeter
for a fire that had previously not been mapped.
- If you just have one takeaway, we'd like you to be aware
that there is in fact, an Interagency Fire UAS program
and these systems are out flying every day on fires.
(upbeat music)