A start-up company in Naples is designing and manufacturing drones primarily for use by law enforcement. Another start-up in Gainesville is also making what it calls unmanned aerial systems earmarked for use by researchers and engineers collecting field data.
Drones are unmanned vehicles and built in a range of sizes. The companies’ philosophies regarding drone technology appear as wide apart as their target markets.
United Drones is tucked into a small industrial park in Naples. There’s no name on the outside of the building – but signage next to the entryway reads “Warning: This is a high security facility, you are subject to video monitoring.” The company logo is rather ominous looking – a stylized skull and propeller.
On a recent visit, the locked door is buzzed open by United Drones co-founder and executive director Gary Brecka, who explained how the company is poised for growth.
“We have a couple of very substantial government, law-enforcement and commercial civilian contracts in place that we expect to come to fruition and as those close we will likely increase our manufacturing facility by about tenfold and hire about 50 new people in the first quarter,” he said.
United Drones presently has about ten full-time employees. The front offices house design engineers. In the manufacturing facility in the back are several men wielding blow torches. Brecka explains they’re hardening a drone command vehicle.
“It can carry five agents, it has four command centers inside it, those are run flat tires, it’s an absolute beast,” he said. “We’re mounting that octagonal structure you see on the left, it’s a rotating 50 caliber gun turret.”
But Brecka stressed – United Drones does not build the large bomb-wielding drones used by the military. In fact, their best-selling product is a land-based drone. He said many of the drone plans under development are for civilian use and their clients are vetted.
“We are very, very sensitive about to whom we would sell a drone. We don’t want these drones to fall into the wrong hands and for the general public to be performing surveillance on the rest of the general public. We want these things to be used for l legitimate purposes,” he said.
Brecka’s statement reflects negative perceptions about the U.S. military’s use of drones in the Middle East against insurgents. Sushila Cherian of Punta Gorda went to Pakistan last year with members Code Pink – an NGO working to end U.S-funded wars and occupations. She said she was shown photographs of the remains of civilians killed by drones in northwest Pakistan that were horrific.
“When a hellfire missile strikes it doesn’t leave a clean dead body, it leaves body parts that explode and you need a shovel actually to scoop up the entrails of a person,” she said.
She says children are traumatized to the point where they become bed wetters and are afraid to go outside.
Sensitivity to public opinion influenced researchers associated with the University of Florida. They’re calling devices they’ve developed Unmanned Aerial Systems or UAS. Thomas Rambo is the chief operating officer of Altavian, which was spun off from UF. He said Altavian produces a small - 10 foot 10 pound - aircraft for scientific and engineering missions.
“What’s neat about this aircraft is that it flies low to the ground and it’s got high resolution cameras on it and you can do stem level identification which means you can look at the leaves on the plant to figure out what kind of plant it is from that,” he said.
And he said replacing manned aerial surveys often done by wildlife biologists with UAS surveillance saves lives.
“The sad fact is about seven wildlife biologists die every year going out and trying to collect low altitude geo-special data. A lot of times what they’ll do is get in a helicopter and hover about 50 feet above the ground and try to count eggs in bird’s nest and that sort of thing,” he said.
Southwest Florida wildlife researcher Dave Maehr and a pilot were killed in a small plane crash in 2008, while conducting an aerial survey of Florida black bear habitat in Highlands County. Because of safety considerations only licensed pilots are permitted to operate drones – or UAS’s -- at elevations over 400 feet or out of the line of sight.
Meanwhile, a Florida Senate Committee has voted unanimously to ban the use of drones by police for surveillance. The FAA has a 2015 deadline to integrate regulations for operation of these vehicles into the national airspace system.
