LAKOTA, N.D. — The use of unmanned aerial drones, whose stealth and lethal accuracy helped revolutionize modern warfare high above the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, is now raising eyebrows across the plains of North Dakota.
Among 3,000 acres of corn and soybeans and miles from the closest town, a Predator drone led to the arrests of farmer Rodney Brossart and five members of his family last year after a dispute over a neighbor’s six lost cows on his property escalated into a 16-hour standoff with police.
It is one of the first reported cases in the nation where an unmanned drone was used to assist in the arrest of a U.S. citizen on his own property. It also was a sign of how drones, in all shapes, sizes and missions, are beginning to patrol American skies.
The Grand Forks Air Force Base has been flying drones since 2005, when it switched missions from flying tankers to unmanned aerial systems. So, too, have the storied Happy Hooligans of the North Dakota Air National Guard, which has flown drone missions in Iraq and Afghanistan from its base in Fargo.
Predators operated by Customs and Border Patrol completed more than 30 hours of flight in 2009 and more than 55 hours in 2010, mapping the flooded Red River Valley areas of North Dakota and Minnesota. In 2011, the Predator B flew close to 250 hours in disaster-relief support along the northern border.
The Grand Forks base, which now has two Predators flying, expects to have as many as 15 Northrop Grumman Global Hawks and six to eight General Atomics Predators/Reapers. That will add an additional 907 Air Force personnel to the base.
For this wide swath of eastern North Dakota, that is part of the appeal: jobs.
The University of North Dakota has eagerly partnered with the military and defense contractors, and often operating behind locked doors and secrecy, university officials are working to make the area a hub of unmanned aircraft activity. The state has invested an estimated $12.5 million to make it happen. The local economic development office has added a drone coordinator in charge of recruiting more companies to join the 16 drone-related ones that have already set up shop.
“Where aviation was in 1925, that’s where we are today with unmanned aerial vehicles,” said Al Palmer, director of the university’s Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Research, Education and Training. “The possibilities are endless.”
Far from just being a menacing aircraft capable of bearing Hellfire missiles and infrared cameras into combat, Unmanned Aerial Systems, the preferred term in the industry, now include variations small enough to fit in a hand and that look as innocent as remote-controlled hobby airplanes.
Drones can quickly search rural areas for lost children, identify hot spots in forest fires, monitor field crops - or allow paparazzi new ways to target celebrities. The government has predicted that as many as 30,000 drones will be flying over U.S. skies by the end of the decade.
Questions persist, however. Can drones fly in domestic airspace without endangering airplanes? Can they be used in a way that doesn’t invade privacy? Who’s watching the drone operators - and how closely?
“All the pieces appear to be lining up for the eventual introduction of routine aerial surveillance in American life - a development that would profoundly change the character of public life in the United States,” the American Civil Liberties Union warned in a policy paper on drones last year, titled “Protecting Privacy From Aerial Surveillance.”
In the North Dakota case, fearing that the Brossarts had armed themselves, local law enforcement asked for the assist from the Predator - unarmed but otherwise identical to the ones used in combat - that’s stationed at the Grand Forks base as a SWAT team converged on the property.
It put Rodney Brossart front and center in the debate over domestic drones and what can happen when authorities are given the ability to watch everything from above.
“I’m not going to sit back and do nothing,” Brossart said recently, sitting in the shade outside his small house where farm equipment, trailers and the top half of a school bus sit in the yard in various states of disrepair. As drone use expands nationwide, he’s worried. “I don’t know what to expect because of what we’ve seen.”
Groups from the Electronic Privacy Information Center to the American Library Association have joined to raise concerns with the Federal Aviation Administration about the implications of opening up U.S. airspace to drones, as have members of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus.
The federal government already has been quietly expanding their use in U.S. airspace.
Even as the wars abroad wind down, the military has been pleading for funding for more pilots. Drones cannot be flown now in the United States without FAA approval. But with little public scrutiny, the FAA has issued at least 266 active testing permits for domestic drone operations. Statistics show unmanned aircraft have an accident rate seven times higher than general aviation and 353 times higher than commercial aviation.
Under political and commercial pressure, the Obama administration has ordered the FAA to develop new rules for expanding the use of small drones domestically. By 2015, drones will have access to U.S. airspace currently reserved for piloted aircraft.
“Think about it; they are inscrutable, flying, intelligent,” said Ryan Calo, the director of privacy and robotics for the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. “They are really very difficult for the human mind to cleanly characterize.”
While drone use in the rest of the country has been largely theoretical, in eastern North Dakota their presence is growing.
A local sheriff’s deputy recalls looking up from writing reports in his patrol car one night to see a drone quietly hovering over him. Don “Bama” Nance, who spent 20 years in the Air Force before retiring to Emerado, now cuts the grass on the base golf course.
“They’re always overhead on the third hole,” he said.
Business, Pages 19 on 07/30/2012