Michael Guest Asks Witness How NDAA Requirements Impact Drone Usage At DHS

2 days ago

During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Michael Guest (R-MS) asked Bryan Farrell, the Interim Director for the Raspet Flight Research Laboratory at Mississippi State University, about the impact of the National Defense Authorization Act on drone usage.

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Transcript

00:00I now recognize myself for five minutes of questioning.

00:05Director Farrell, thank you for being here today.

00:09We have seen that recent concerns over privacy, public safety, and national security have

00:17led to restrictions on drones from certain foreign manufacturers.

00:22Given these concerns and these restrictions, how is the industry affected by requirements

00:28imposed by the National Defense Authorization Act?

00:33Thank you, Chairman Guest.

00:36So I believe that the United States industry is playing catch-up.

00:44I think that the commercial market and first responders have had access to cheaper Chinese

00:51technology in particular for quite a while.

00:56I think that we had heard testimony around the program that DIU has that has certainly

01:02led to advancements and investment in U.S. manufacturing.

01:09I think that the CHIPS Act and other efforts in order to bring the technology back here

01:16to invest in the critical components, the autopilots, the camera systems, have made

01:21a lot of headway.

01:22If you had asked me this question several years ago, I think I would have said we're

01:26pretty far away, but recent investments, recent technology is really showing vast improvements.

01:33The work that we're doing through Project Justice is meant to support DHS components

01:40in their procurement processes.

01:43You heard about the bottleneck at DIU.

01:46One way that we're trying to support industry here is to give them an alternative pathway

01:50for DHS procurement processes where we do our own vetting, we do our own cyber vulnerability

01:56assessments as well as critical component analysis.

01:59That opens the door for DHS components as they choose to request and look at different

02:04technologies to be able to give other manufacturers an opportunity to sell and to ensure that

02:12the components have a safe product at the end of the day.

02:17All that to say is the NDA requirements have truly caused some bottlenecks, but we are

02:24working rapidly to try to alleviate those and enhance the American product and as well

02:29as ensure the safe operations.

02:32Director Farrell, you mentioned Project Justice, a partnership between DHS S&T and the Rasput

02:40Flight Center there located at Mississippi State University.

02:45If one, you just give us a kind of a brief overview of Project Justice and then you mentioned

02:53just a moment ago, but maybe go into a little bit more detail the work being done to support

02:58the Department of Homeland Security.

03:00Absolutely.

03:01So Project Justice was started as the common UAS test site back in 2016.

03:06We exist now in our current iteration as Justice NextGen.

03:11It's the joint unmanned systems testing and a collaborative environment program under

03:15the Air, Land and Ports of Entry portfolio.

03:18As a part of this work, we support all of the components for their UAS testing as well

03:23as research and development needs as it relates to UAS as well as other associated technologies.

03:30So as DHS gets a gap within the UAS world, they'll reach out to us to be able to analyze

03:39that and this can take many different forms.

03:42It can be looking at the landscape of commercial available products.

03:48It can be examining what exists within our research portfolio to understand what can

03:53fit that space.

03:55It can also be custom UAS development.

03:58We've developed UAS that the market wasn't providing for HSI, an entry level drone that

04:04had some really great capabilities.

04:08It can also be items where like Air Domain Awareness.

04:13We just delivered a tool for DHS that provides Air Domain Awareness leveraging the Beyond

04:19Visual Line of Sight capabilities that remote ID are meant to provide and then also a broadcast

04:29or an ATAC system to give situational awareness and we demoed that actually at the university's

04:35campus around a football game scenario.

04:42We've also leveraged the program to support FEMA Region 4.

04:48So we actually flew the Teros in support for Helene as well as Debbie and that was a really

04:55great showcase of a 44 foot wingspan aircraft, 24 hours of endurance that can distribute

05:02live video and tiled imagery.

05:05Those are just some of the things we're doing but truly I think that the portfolio given

05:10the partnerships, given the collaborations with our Ashore Center of Excellence as well

05:18as the other industry partners really opens the gamut for what we can provide to DHS.

05:24Thank you Director Fairless.

05:25My time has now expired.

Michael Guest Asks Witness How NDAA Requirements Impact Drone Usage At DHS

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