Colonel (ret) Shane Riley, Co-Founder of RXR Worldwide, who served as the Director of Military Support UAS/Launched Effects for the Oklahoma National Guard, has shared his insights into an exercise staged in fall 2024, focused on improving coordination between drones and manned aircraft in disaster scenarios where evacuation routes and incident awareness are critical.
The Oklahoma National Guard led a simulation of a fast-moving wildfire threatening Weatherford, Oklahoma. Designed to test emergency response capabilities, the scenario challenged agencies to coordinate drone operations for situational awareness without endangering manned aircraft already operating in the airspace.
Col. Riley noted that:
“The complexity of deploying multiple agencies’ drones in a rapidly evolving domestic emergency required tools and practices that were unavailable locally.”
Industry-supported, open architecture exercise
The exercise was a multi-agency UAS integration effort conducted by the Oklahoma National Guard in partnership with Southwestern Oklahoma State University, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol and the Weatherford Fire Department.
According to Col. Riley, the Guard pursues drone integration “as a supporting domestic response agency,” while also enhancing “wartime mission readiness to deploy drones and manage airspace.” These dual responsibilities are at the heart of what he described as the Guard’s “dual use” role.
Drones have the potential to transform disaster response through improved situational awareness, rapid damage assessments, and critical supply delivery. Yet, Col. Riley emphasized that:
“The full potential of drone response remains untapped due to the lack of airspace management tools and standardized methods to integrate first responder drone operations.”
Refining those interagency practices was the core purpose of the exercise.
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Core objectives and execution
According to Col. Riley, the limited-objective exercise focused on four foundational capabilities necessary for interagency drone response:
- Air Boss Function: Integrate UAS into the Incident Command structure, advising on air asset status and adapting deployment as conditions change.
- Detect-Identify-Track Procedures: Identify both agency and non-compliant aircraft systems operating in the area.
- Redundant Communications and Control: Ensure adaptability in dynamic environments, especially when new systems or intrusions enter the airspace.
- Dynamic Task Management: Demonstrate effective coordination when drone operations require real-time alterations.
Industry partners were invited to test these capabilities in a real-world scenario.
Alare Technologies provided the Blade 55 drone platform to simulate non-compliant or dynamic drone behavior, triggering detection and avoidance maneuvers. Skydio supported the National Guard’s drone operations with the Skydio X10. Airwise Solutions supplied a situational awareness tool to help fuse multiple airspace inputs into a unified picture.
TrellisWare Technologies contributed a shared radio network for redundant communications and the Oklahoma Guard’s ATAK server hosted the common operating picture. Menet Aero deployed a tethered drone to serve as a persistent data and communications backbone.
The simulated wildfire forced agencies to continually adjust air and ground deployments. Weatherford Fire acted as the Incident Command, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol managed evacuation routes and the National Guard provided Air Boss and communications roles.
Operational insights and scaling complexity
Over a 72-hour period, the interagency team established communications networks and tested common operating picture redundancy. Col. Riley noted that:
“The complexity of establishing control of a complex airspace enabled response quickly highlighted the need for software defined radios, common operating picture platforms and low altitude radars as part of a deployable package for first responders.”
As the scenario unfolded, the Incident Commander (IC) introduced increasing complexity. This included dynamically rerouting aircraft and simulating intrusions by non-compliant drones, requiring detection and avoidance actions from participating agencies. When the Blade 55 was launched into the exercise airspace, the IC successfully directed agencies to adjust altitude and maintain safe separation within their operational zones.
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Key findings and recommendations
The exercise confirmed four pivotal capabilities essential to drone integration during emergencies, each tied to the Guard’s dual-use role:
- Airspace Surveillance: “Local response must have systems capable of identifying compliant and non-compliant drones in temporarily restricted response airspace,” Col. Riley noted, emphasizing the need for “low-altitude radar identification and automatic dependent surveillance broadcast integration.”
- Unified Airspace Picture: A common display is vital for planning and executing aerial operations.“Incident commanders must have a unified display of information to integrate the airspace picture for staff to understand,” he stated.
- Redundant Communications: Agencies need reliable digital and voice communications to pass time-sensitive information across units.
- Skilled Personnel: Response organizations must be equipped with staff capable of operating these systems effectively under pressure.
Col. Riley also highlighted a key lesson regarding telemetry loss. Observers noted that many drones are configured to automatically return to base when signal is lost – a potentially dangerous behavior in crowded airspace:
“The best practice recommendation for integrated operations was that response drones should be programmed to safely decrease altitude at the point of signal loss,” rather than becoming what he called a “lost signal projectile.”
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A “present-day necessity”
For Col. Riley, the integration of drones into emergency response is an immediate operational need. He stated that:
“Establishing the integration of drones into complex interagency response is no longer a futuristic concept but a present-day necessity.”
While a number of federal and state agencies are working to address integration challenges, Col. Riley believes the FAA and Department of Defense must consider further delegation of authorities and resourcing to the National Guard. Doing so would enable Guard units nationwide to serve as a “domestic response and protection tool to proliferate drone integration capability across the U.S.”
Although the wildfire scenario in Weatherford was fictional, Col. Riley warned that “the risks in our airspace will only accelerate.” In his view, proactive efforts like Oklahoma’s UAS integration exercise offer both a national defense advantage and a potentially life-saving domestic benefit.
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