Drone regulation, detection, and mitigation with Tombo Jones

[Music] Earlier this year, there was quite a bit of speculation when lights began to dance across the night sky along the East Coast. Some were in a various actor might have been operating in our air space as well, others were concerned that actor might have in fact been alf looking to confiscate neighborhood cats. While the vast majority of those did turn out to be people just flying drones, it did leave me curious as to what regulations there are when it comes to flying a drone in our air space. And one kind of countermeasures do we currently have in place to detect and maybe even mitigate possible threats. And thankfully Virginia Tech's Tombow Jones was kind enough to answer all those questions and more. Tombow is the director of Virginia Tech's Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership where he leads their work as a federal aviation and demonstrated designated UAS test site. Tombow now talks a little about what's required to fly a drone in the United States as well as what some of the technology is that we have when it comes to detecting and maybe even mitigating against drone threats. He also shared some of the plans that Virginia Tech has to create a new center to help mitigate this threat in terms of national security. And he shared his insights as to what UNI can be looking for when we start to see lights dance across the sky at night. And of course don't forget to rate, follow and or subscribe to the podcast. I'm Travis Williams and this is Virginia Tech's curious conversations. You know the past few months I guess are maybe even longer than that. There's going a lot of buzz about stuff that people have seen in the air. And there's been a lot of speculation I think just from the general public about that. So I'm really curious when you doing what you do, you see something like that. What is your first thought as to what that is? Yeah I think it's a great question Travis and it's a worthy question for our industry. Well first of all my first thought when I see a drone answer your question directly when I see a drone flying it really depends on what the drones doing just because it's flying I don't necessarily think that it's doing anything wrong. You know the FAA is work really hard and our industry and the test sites and the organizations many of which were part of can work hard to legitimize operations and to bring about the benefits that drones do for good. But it's true that like any other technology technology can sometimes be used for bad right. And so when I see a drone flying though I don't necessarily think that it's doing something wrong. You know oftentimes I think perhaps it's a commercial operator that has the right FAA training to do the flights or maybe it's a recreational operator who also for a recreational operator nowadays they also have to have a certification from the FAA where they get trained on the rules and regulations about where to fly. And what to do the times that I will get concerned is when I see a drone doing something that I know is not allowed under the regulations and there are some very specific regulations about what drones are allowed to do and what they're not. And so that's when I'll get concerned but for the most part when I first see a drone you know I think hey here's here's a technology this out doing a job that you know oftentimes can be done safer than it can be done. In the traditional methods such as inspecting roofs for a hell damage it can be safer than sending somebody up on a roof such as inspecting a power line for a damage it can be safer than flying a helicopter along the power line and I'm a helicopter pilot by trade so you know I'm sure all my fellow helicopter pilots think I'm a trader there by saying the drone can do it safer but the truth is we know that the drone can do it safer. So my first thought is not that it's bad is that it's probably it's probably up to good unless unless I see something that it's doing it like flyover people. So many people don't know that a drone so when you get your recreational certificate or your commercial certificate you know you learn the rules and regulations and one of the primary rules is you're not allowed to fly a drone over people and there's a few exceptions but you know the safety reason for that is if the drone quits it could injure someone right if it were to fail. And there is a rule that came out a few years ago that outlined how you could flyover people if you could pass certain test methods to show that if the drone were to strike someone it would not cause you know a fatality or a significant injury we actually happen to have one of the only test methods there to in the nation but we have right here Virginia Tech something to be proud of we have the only one of the only two test methods to test drones for safe operations over people and that's an partnership we have with the Center for Inju about mechanics which of course I'm sure you know that it's not going to be a good thing. Of course I'm sure you know it's famous for their helmet testing so they have a lot of experience in the injury testing and. Our team has experience with drones teamed up with their team has experience in injuries and we work with the F.A. to get that approval so that that's just one of the examples of. A rule that many folks don't understand or know that's that's the F.A. is a matter for safety reasons. What if you just see lights fun in the sky do you automatically think it's a drone or are you maybe like maybe maybe this is a tea I don't know. Yeah yeah I don't think it's easy at all I don't think it's a UFO although I suppose that's that's possible. You know traditionally our skies have been filled with traditional aviation so what we call now crude aviation right what we you and I traditionally would have thought. Just call airplanes and helicopters usually that's my first thought I tend to think it's a drone only when certain I see your here certain things right. And they have different lighting schemes usually so are in it that's a great way for people who see an aircraft in the sky to try to try to determine whether it's a traditional aircraft or a drone. First of all they're both legally allowed to fly at night drones are a lot of flight night crude aircraft are allowed to fly at night obviously. Crude aircraft have there's F.A. regulations that are very specific about how they have to be lit they have to have position lights similar to the way that boats do or that sorry they're called navigation lights. Essentially where you have green on one side and red on the other so that people can tell the orientation of the aircraft the same way that that as I suggested boats do. You know they're required to have a white tail light on on those aircraft they require to have a landing light that is on during certain times those other lights have to be on at all times the landing light has to be on when it's in particular on you know 10 miles from an airport on the way to an approach as an example. And it will have strobes on the end of the wings too as a requirement and or what we call anti bang lights is the slang term but essentially it's anti collision lights so when you see those lights on an aircraft and they can be positioned slightly different on a helicopter than an airplane. But if you kind of understand the requirements of where those lights have to be and the fact the ones that have to be on all time you can sometimes realize that's an airplane instead of a drone or that's a helicopter instead of a drone. A drone what's different is a drone to fly at night is required to have lighting but there's not a specification on what the lighting array looks like or where it needs to be positioned it simply has to have a light on that can be seen from three miles. And so drones oftentimes don't have nearly as many of those lights and frankly they're there unless we're talking about you know really large department of defense size drones the drones that we're talking about just don't have the tight you know wingspan to put position lights on for example that are spread apart 12 meters like you might see on a sesna. They may have green and red lights which make it a little confusing because you can't tell off our way it is but generally speaking you might be able to tell the difference in the two between because the lighting schemes are very different another huge to is noise right so. Drones they're not all electrically driven you know there certainly drones that are gasoline gasoline engines or other propulsion engines that are more traditional in nature in terms of noise but a lot of the drones that we see today that are flown and they're you hear about the news that are all off the shelf. Like DJI drones which are probably the most common in the United States or Scott Eodron's which is another company that sells a lot of drones in the United States. Those type traditional commercial off-shield drone drones are electric driven so they sound very different right then the aircraft then a helicopter or an airplane and so if you can hear the aircraft you can also oftentimes tell. Whether whether it's an electric driven motor or or a traditional you know engine that has that type of deeper. So I think those are a couple of cues they're pretty helpful one thing that's kind of a I'll share this with you Travis the New York the New York times actually thanks to your teams help and connecting me up with them they did a really good article on. Some of the drone sightings and we talked about in the interview that I did with them about how if you see an aircraft in the sky and you don't know whether it's a drone or an airplane. A great way to reference that and determine and it's not foolproof because not all airplanes and drones have this but something like 75% of the aircraft flying in the sky that number changes every year but have a transponder that's called an ADSB transponder and you and I can just get on apps like for flight which is a pay subscription but they're plenty of free ones like flight radar 24 and plenty of others. And you can if you know it'll show for example you can look and see okay I see an aircraft over here to the west and you bring the app up and it will literally say there's a helicopter operating 2000 feet above you in two miles to the west like you'll see it on there's kind of like. You're causing your phone for Google maps and you can see oh that's probably that helicopter. I'm looking at or oh by the way that's probably that Delta Airlines and I just don't realize how high it is right like so You can that's a great method to maybe calm to concerns if you're trying to figure out if it's a drone You're looking at or an aircraft and you may be able to quickly determine That indeed is an aircraft and that New York Times team they they did their due diligence They took a lot of those drone sightings and the cell phone camera on Location data and we're an orientation data and we're able to determine indeed this was a passenger carrying aircraft indeed This is a helicopter, you know indeed And in most all the cases at least the ones that they share with me that they that they were able to rule out that they actually were not drones Wow that is that is phenomenal I'm so glad that you got to talk with them and you got to share that with them And I'm excited to try that try some of those apps out for myself when I sort of see things in the sky I think they will help calm some possible some nerves around my house. Yeah One last thing while we're talking about being able to look at an aircraft and determine Signatures through electronic means I talked about transponder right on the traditional aircraft There's a rule for drones. It's called remote ID and if folks are interested they can look at it I will share that the FAA has taken great strides in Working to ensure that you know when a drone is being operated by somebody that there is some Some ownership that or should I say some responsibility that can be can be captured and for law enforcement to be able to determine who who is flying that drone right And so the way remote ID works is it requires that all drones that operate And all drones that have manufactured after September of I think it was 23 and drones that were manufactured before that date have to put their own transponders on and essentially their broadcasting A packet of information, you know, the best way to describe is kind of like license plate information That a law enforcement officer can has the ability to interrogate that drone with their phone because it uses The transponder uses either Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to transmit um and so if they're within close proximity of that drone That you know that operator it gives information about the drone in terms of its 3D position in space But important information gives is what the registration number of that drone is it all drones have to be registered Um, and so they'll be able to tell who's operating the drone and it also tells them from what location the operator is flying the drone Which is also super valuable should law enforcement want to go ask Because you know may they may have the same questions that I have it could be a legitimate drone flight Um, and they may just want to go ask or maybe it's A drone that's being flown in a place it shouldn't be such as Over a stadium during the football game, right that actually happened in Virginia Tech and uh And some of the law enforcement folks who were able to determine find the person who was flying the drone and who just didn't know any better basically he he was Uh flying in video and and did not did not realize he was flying in Uh a TFR which is a restricted flight temporary flight restriction um Which occurs over games and so you know Our industry is getting better and smarter and the f.a. Is leaning hard and trying to educate people But there's still some folks out there that operate not ignorance You know the same way that happens when you and I drive to work every morning There's some people that aren't very good drivers right the don't The don't know the rules don't follow them. We're trying to do better. So yeah I think that I've seen some people maybe operating out of ignorance. I may have but I may be guilty of that um Yeah, that's true. We all are that might be a perfect transition to talk a little bit about counter US because that drone That was that was I told you was flying over Virginia Tech during one of the football games that it was a it was a drone detection system that found that drone okay um And this has been there's been a lot of news recently about drones obviously uh flying you know in the New Jersey area the New York area Uh concerns there even some in Virginia to be more specific and this is public knowledge There have been drones that have been flown uh that have been detected by by humans so like people hearing it On some of our uh eastern shore on NASA bases that were not detected by drone detection systems that were on site there And there have been drones obviously the tower 22 incident uh overseas where uh Some soldiers were killed where drones flown in uh to that base and sadly killed some of our service members uh It flew in undetected There have been different instances of drones being used for in a various reasons and that that brings up You know, I've talked a little about a lot about drones for good But we're also doing work here to try to uh assist um in the counter US space uh and the reason we're trying to do that is because Virginia Tech has a has a A mission to work um and assist in national security to work in that realm and so we partnered with the national security institute and we're working on a Department Department of Defense project to stand up, you know right now we're an FAA test site This is to stand us up as a counter US test site as well and so we're gonna establish the infrastructure To test and evaluate Systems that are designed to detect drones and evaluate the systems ability to determine Whether or not the drone is operating legitimately and then what to do about it in terms of mitigations and how it will be mitigated and so we're uh Pretty excited to be about being able to work in that realm too uh to help with national defense At the department of defense level and then also Uh looking to do some work uh at the federal Other federal agency level and state state level for for example, we did some of this work already for the department of justice and working on helping them keep contraband out of prisons and uh and Certainly there are a number of critical infrastructure sites that many different entities across uh our state i'll just say Virginia is looking to protect that we're Eager to help assist there so this new counter US site um that we're in partnership with national security institute we're pretty excited to be standing up this coming year Well, and i want to ask you about that but first i'm a little curious because we started this conversation talking about all these regulations and all these different things that the drones uh have to do drone operators have to do and it It made it sound like well. Yeah, it doesn't sound too complicated to To detect where they're where they're at and that they are drones, but i know it just can't be that simple So nor what are some of the the the biggest challenge is when it comes to detecting these drones Yeah, absolutely that's a great question. So um You know drones are actually much harder to detect typically because they're smaller in quieter right um Then improve the aircraft. There's a matter of fact a lot of our research and trying to keep Prood aircraft and drones from hitting each other Has been and can it can it how easy is it to see a drone to to miss it drones have to get way to all of their aircraft Including balloons by the way. Well actually all aircraft have to give way to balloons But including every other type aircraft the drones are the bottom of the total pull right now But um way so so balloons are at the top of the total pull like higher balloons Yeah, so if i fly an assessment and i'm part of the hooking flying club And i see a balloon and i have to get way to that balloon and it's really if you think about it At first it seems kind of like wait Why would the rule be like that because it's a balloon more important. It's really about maneuverability, right? So a balloon can only move in one axis and that that that happens to be with the wind right i mean they can go up and down But they're always moving on one asmuth and so that's why they're they're they're top of the higher or in terms of uh right away Yeah, huh Well, I thought that might be because they're the best looking but that makes a lot of sense You're using floor artly. Yeah, I think so absolutely No doubt um Anyway, we're talking about how how difficult it is to detect a drone so because drones typically tend to be much quieter than much smaller Um Even if you're following the regulation and have one light on your drone that can be seen from free miles You know, it's not nearly as lit up as a traditional aircraft Would be and so I think probably the biggest two factors are That they're small and they're quiet um and so that makes them much harder to detection But there are a lot of ways to detect them There are and it this goes for all aircraft detection You know if you're trying to detect crude aircraft to get out of the way if you're trying to detect drones in order to Determine that there's an aircraft there and then to be able to determine whether it's on a legitimate mission or not um Is that you can detect them uh, obviously uh with the naked eye which is really hard to do you can detect them with radars That's no surprise anybody like i'm sure that um while they have a smaller radar cross section You know radars and there are companies out there that are working really hard at this radars can be tuned to detect the smaller aircraft Most of the challenges with that sometimes uh comes with filtering out things like birds but anyway radars work well You can do acoustic detection of drones so they do produce an acoustic signature right um And so there are um Companies that work uh, you know specifically with acoustic detection microphone arrays and um a acoustic uh software uh systems that use machine learning for example to uh determine and filter out and determine if there's a drone present And actually the technology can even be taken further where You could catalog and determine what type of drone it is you're listening to right? It's that's really challenging to do but but there's the people working on it um Another one is EOIR that stands for Electro optical infrared which basically means a camera that can see it day and night Um, and so they're they you know, there are camera systems that also are working in this space to be able to detect drones Um, and so those are probably the three most popular. I will tell you that um There's one that people most people probably don't think of that actually um Works really well and it's the spectrum Uh, and what's meant by that is Most drones uh, they're being operated the way that the manufacturer designed them to be operated Are broadcasting a signal a communications link back to the person who's flying the drone right if it's being manually flown for sure It'll tell the world operator where the drone is that's called telemetry and then the drone operator is operating you know their their controls so like joysticks and those signals are being sent to the drone right so that so there's a lot of communication going back and forth right as well as a camera feed communication signal so there's a lot of RF spectrum that's being broadcast from a drone and most commercial self-systems that's either wildfire Bluetooth which is not a secure broadcast signal but essentially they are producing typically a they're broadcasting some type of radio signal and so that's another way to detect that there's a drone there right well I assume that detecting the drone is one measure of counter UAS once we detect a drone and maybe we decide that this is not a drone that we want to to be here what what else can we then do to maybe prevent any other sort of nefarious act yeah so in and counter UAS there's two pieces there's first the detection piece which we just talked about and then there's the mitigation piece and that mitigation piece is the piece where you know you have determined that a drone is operating where it shouldn't be there's nefarious and that you mitigate against it and I'll just share that there are a lot of regulations against this right now like there there are a lot of regulations that keep just anybody from being able to mitigate and that's a good thing right we we've seen a lot of people misstagnose what they think is a drone and it's a commercial airliner so we don't want people the wrong people being able to mitigate drones right but um but this second piece is mitigation and that comes in a myriad of different ways it could be kinetic um and kinetic uh drone mitigation is really kind of what it sounds like it's you know you're basically interfering physically with the drone it could be shooting it out of the sky with you know your traditional like like you might shoot ammunition out of a gun it could be shooting a net towards a drone that's also considered kinetic because it interferes with the drones ability to fly or in some way you are using um you know physics to knock it out of the sky in terms of interfering with it with an object um you can also take a road drone also with our spectrum so there's two things you can actually mitigate it by flooding it just with high energy spectrum which causes it not to be able to communicate and usually what happens there it depends on the level of of energy directed at it usually what happens is it may lose its link and so most drones are programmed to then go somewhere um it could lose its GPS signal if you use a GPS jamming device and then it will also go to wherever it's programmed to go actually it can't go to where it's programmed to go to it may land in place it may hold its position it may even crash if it interferes you know runs into another drone in the example of a swarm but their spectrum interference there you can also if you know what's strong it is which this is this is really graduate level stuff in counter US but if you know what drone that you're observing and you want to defeat it there's something called takeover so RF takeovers where you actually flood it with the right communications uh telemetry data um so that you're telling it now that you're the actual one that's controlling right you're you're essentially overpowering that the person who's controlling it with your higher level energy proper protocols for the drone um to respond to and then you control it that's really the safest way to take it over because if you think about it if a drone is in a ferries sea flying over a stadium and I just knock it out of the sky now I've now I've taken one risk that you know possibly it was nefarious and was gonna hurt somebody but I'm also possibly gonna hurt somebody about causing it to crash on to them right so that seems like it might cause more problems than it's worth yeah yeah quite possibly so RF takeovers another way um those are the two most common is using RF or kinetic to uh to take over a drone um I mentioned that you know there's a lot of regulations around who can do this and and I'm glad there is right I mentioned why that is I'll share with you that it's really tightly held right now and I think that's a good thing until we can get some county U.S. systems to do a really good job because different systems have weaknesses and strengths and different areas and oftentimes you need a ray of systems to be able to provide that umbrella but to give you an idea we're talking about the Department of Defense uh the Department of Energy the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Interior those are the agencies that are allowed to do mediation work right now your state police can't your local law enforcement can't unfortunately you know and sometimes they legitimately need that so I'm hoping we get to a place where we can safely do a better job of determining you know when a drone needs to be mitigated and when it does it and have those those resources in the right hands but um I will share with you you know in a future state what would be optimal there's there's something LCAFAs working on that we've been done a lot of research on here at Virginia Tech and we're really proud of because we've been the only test site to work on this but sorry the only test site to work on every single FAA program with this and that is called UAS traffic management and that is basically a NASA construct that uh it was born in nascent is now in the FAA that all drones they share their they share the airspace by communicating through particular software programs where they request and reserve uh different airspace both static and dynamic and what I mean by that is maybe a column of airspace static or maybe dynamic like I am specifically at this place moving at this speed and just a small bubble around me this protected right so all these drones are sharing not only where they're going to be but who they are that they're legit um so between that which is which is coming in the future and uh remote ID which you know that that rules out it's a great thing it still needs some improvement in terms of detection range and some of the information that's provided but those type things will allow counter UAS operators in the future when they see a drone to be able to you know determine not not necessarily automatically assume the worst they can determine is this drone legitimate is it on a legitimate mission um and then by process of elimination determined you know possibly this isn't a very strong and we need to pay close attention to it and it'd be good when we're at that state we're not quite there yet but yeah it sounds like in in the perfect situation or maybe a better situation we would look at drones more like we do automobiles on the road where we're able to look at a license plate oh there this car's registered they don't seem to be doing anything crazy they're okay yeah I think that's really good analogy and I assume with all of what we've just talked about counter wise we're gonna solve all of that with this new center that we're we're working on right we're gonna do our best that's for sure no in all seriousness I think we have a huge value to add back to the industry um in terms of security both at the local state and federal level would be the the end state and um taking the expertise the national security institute has in department of defense work and our expertise that my team has in uh drone work um and partnering those together and working with uh the department of defense offices that we're first working with on this uh was really set us up for success to be able to have a center where these counter US systems that are under development can come here and we can really evaluate their strengths and their weaknesses and evaluate their efficacy how well they work and then work to pair up different systems strengths and weaknesses so that uh these the critical infrastructure the resources that we need to protect uh as a nation as a state as a locality can be done so in the most efficient manner and that does so in a way that makes sure that uh you know our interest is is preserved yeah and I'm not right in saying that this testing and research center will have both an an indoor clean space and then also an outdoor space yeah that's why isn't important to have both of those yeah absolutely so the indoor space uh is going to allow us to do a lot of testing around uh RF spectrum and a protected environment uh acoustic evaluation and the protected environment so as you suggested a sterile environment also radar cross sectioning but as you suggested in a sterile environment um and so we can learn a lot about the counter US systems and also we can catalog a lot of different things about drones that can be utilized by these counter US systems in the indoor lab and in the outdoor lab will be a place where we're we're able to take these counter US systems and deploy them the same way that they would be deployed in Washington D.C. the same way they would be deployed overseas and bases that we want to protect our service members at and that outdoor environment where we would expect them to be able to operate and then we can fly a fleet of different types of drones and properly evaluate uh how well they work in that outdoor environment so it's a validation of the things we learn in the indoor environment and the end state would be uh coming out of the outdoor environment we'd be able to make really strong recommendations on you know which systems uh work best which system can be improvement in the specific areas in which they can be improved uh as well as to provide them information uh those companies information for them to improve their product yeah that all sounds extremely exciting I'm excited to just learn more about it and to see what you all do you know I learned so much about drones and just talking to you I didn't realize I was going to also learn anything about hot air balloons well there's a theory that it's just a really big scot there in the ton of space but the truth is we often we often uh realize that we're having a share of that our space so understanding what everybody's trying to do is an important facet of being an aviator and thanks to tombo for talking to us about all things drones if you or someone you know would make for a great curious conversation email me at [email protected] I'm Travis Williams and this has been for genutics, curious conversations. 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