“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.
“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.”
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.
3. 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. 3. 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. Photo courtesy of Trevor Clark
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.”
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.
In just a few months, the Coast Guard’s new short-range 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.