Breaking Barriers: Military UAS Project Paves Way for Commercial Drone Integration in National Airspace

The drone industry stands at a pivotal moment as Project ULTRA demonstrates unprecedented integration between military unmanned systems and civilian airspace, potentially unlocking new possibilities for commercial beyond visual line of sight operations and establishing critical precedents for airspace management that could transform how all drones operate in the National Airspace System.  In a panel discussion at AUVSI’s Xponential last week, stakeholders describe the project.

Project ULTRA readies demonstration flights this summer

By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

A collaboration bringing together the Department of Defense and entities representing the state of North Dakota, Grand Forks County and private companies is expected to demonstrate the feasibility of flying unmanned military vehicles laden with cargo over long distances, through civilian airspace.

Members of the team behind Project ULTRA (UAS Logistics Traffic Response Autonomy) recently gave an update on the group’s effort in a presentation at AUVSI’s Xponential 2025 conference in Houston. A series of demonstration flights scheduled for this summer, is planned to carry payloads of up to 55 pounds more than 60 miles from Grand Forks Air Force base to Cavalier Space Force Station and back.

“That’s a daunting task. This has been difficult and for the right reasons,” said Christopher Hewlett, of the GrandSKY Research Company, the project’s director. He said his job is to ensure that all the project team members work within all both military and FAA rules and regulations designed to keep everybody safe.

“In order for us to step in — in partnership with everybody else involved in this process — to change those (restrictions), and to scale to an operational construct that changes the paradigm … it shouldn’t be something that’s easy,” he said.

The Northern Plains UAS Test Site in Grand Forks has led a series of simulations to evaluate potential contingencies for the project. “The Northern Plains EAS test site is the primary execution on the initiative, leveraging extensive flight testing and research capabilities, which will create better operational efficiency for our country’s armed forces,” said John Sawyer, senior UAS analyst, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment (OUSD A&S).

The project brings together: OUSD A&S, the Northern Plains EAS Test Site, Grand Forks County and GrandSKY, a local UAV-specific business development facility. Other members of the Project ULTRA team include NASA, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the FAA and several industry partners.

“ULTRA aims to enhance airspace situational awareness and traffic management within the National Airspace System and to develop reliable logistics and supply delivery to remote military locations,” Sawyer said. Other goals of the project include developing BVLOS capabilities to serve as a model for interconnecting far-flung DOD installations, “integrating small UAS capabilities to improve quality of life for military personnel and families, and developing counter-UAS technologies to enhance physical security,” he said.

“So in a nutshell, our goal is to provide installation commanders with the capability to safely integrate counter-UAS operations, UAS operations, manned air traffic operations and autonomous logistics operations within DOD installations and between DOD installations, and in the airspace that not only the Department of Defense controls, but out in the National Airspace System and a controlled airspace as well,” Sawyer said.

Shawn Maines, with the OUSD A&S, said lessons learned from Project ULTRA, will prove to be applicable to U.S. soldiers operating in the battlefield.

“I can think back to my days of being out in field training exercises or being in the middle of Iraq,” he said. “If you’re familiar with that, logistics can be an absolute nightmare, right? So, I think what we’re really trying to do is getting an ‘easy’ button.”

He said the project’s baseline objective is to fly 10 round-trip missions between the Air Force Base and the Space Force Station. The 67-pound cargo-carrying UAV will be delivering critical supplies, such as tools and equipment.

Trevor Woods, executive director of the Northern Plains UAS Test Site, said the Project ULTRA flights will not be taking place in restricted military airspace, even though it will be taking off from GrandSKY, which is located at the Grand Forks Air Force Base. “It is still a Class Delta airspace that all other users now have access to,” he said. “So, we have to comply with all of the civil rules and regulations.”

He added that the flights will demonstrate how such long-range military missions can be accomplished while flying in FAA-regulated airspace, sharing the sky with non-military manned and unmanned vehicles.

Thomas Swoyer, founder and president of GrandSKY UAS Flight Test Center, said Project ULTRA represents the culmination of what the facility was designed to accomplish when it was established about a decade ago.

“GrandSKY is a flight operations center. It is located on Grand Forks Air Force base under a 50-year ground lease, but it is an independently operated and financed operation. We have brought together investment from the state of North Dakota and the private sector,” he said.

The 217-acre facility, the first location in the U.S. to receive approval for BVLOS flights, offers tenants and partners access to the Air Force runway and tower support and has operated a ground-based sensor point system since 2018.

“We buy a variety of different aircraft from there,” Swoyer said. “We utilize all that infrastructure for these flight operations.”

Hewlett said the level of cooperation involved in bringing various players participating in Project ULTRA together has proven to be a daunting challenge.

“We’re now in a unique position and that unique position comes with a tremendous amount of interoperability and collaboration with any number of federal agencies,” he said. “For us, it’s been an act of will. One hundred percent of this team that we assembled is amazing because we can’t even tell you how many things pop up at the last minute … and need to be solved.”

Read more:

• Grand Forks County Partners with GrandSKY for Cutting-Edge UAS Development
• University of North Dakota and GrandSKY Collaborate on NASA-Funded UAS Weather Forecasting Project
• North Dakota’s Vantis UAS System Opens Mission and Network Ops Center: The Heart of Vantis

 

Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.