Inside the Counter-UAS Response to Drone Flights Over Spokane Wildfires

FBI and local officials describe how a multi-agency task force detected dozens of unauthorized drones, located pilots and worked to keep firefighting aircraft flying

by DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

Federal and local officials are decrying the overflights of drones over a series of wildfires in eastern Washington state, which caused a temporary grounding of firefighting aircraft earlier this month.

The incident occurred after several highly destructive wildfires struck the area in and around Spokane, the state’s largest city, resulting in the loss of some 800 buildings and in the evacuation of tens of thousands or resident. In response to the fires, the FAA had issued a temporary flight restriction (TFR) in five areas near Spokane. The TFRs extended from August 2 through August 15, from the surface up to and including 7000 feet MSL.

A number of firefighting aircraft had to be temporarily grounded for over an hour because of concerns over unauthorized UAS in the restricted firefighting area, Phil Randolph, supervisory special agent with the FBI’s Seattle office, told DroneLife in an interview.

“We always have to ask if those air operations would’ve continued for that hour, would that have been another neighborhood saved from the fire? It’s hard to make that determination but that’s what we’re trying to prevent, and to keep air operations going,” he said.

Randolph said the Seattle-based FBI Counter-UAS Task Force was deployed on the western side of the state, providing oversight operations for the Boeing Seafair Air Show headlined by the U.S. Navy Blue Angels in Seattle, when news broke that the Spokane-area wildfires were causing evacuations of neighborhoods in residential areas.

The recently formed Washington State FBI Counter UAS Task Force includes members of the King County Sheriff’s Office, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, the Seattle Police Department, and the Washington State Patrol.

Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputy Doug Hicks, a member of the Counter-UAS Task Force, traveled from Seattle to his home town on Saturday, August 1 to assist the local firefighting and emergency response efforts. The next day, Task Force members from the King County Sheriff’s Office dispatched counter-UAS equipment to the scene to determine if unauthorized drones flying in the area presented a threat to aerial firefighting operations.

“When they got out there, they immediately started seeing a number of drones in the sky. The following day they did the same thing, they detected several and by this point we decided to get more equipment out there to gain a better understanding,” Randolph said.

According to the Spokane County Sheriff’s Department statement, on August 2, the FBI Counter-UAS Task Force detected 26 unauthorized drones operating in airspace in which the FAA had declared restricted to all unauthorized aircraft. The following day, the Task Force detected an additional 13 drones operating in the restricted airspace.

“At one point, the air boss who controls all the firefighting air missions and works directly with the ground firefighting crews made the decision to ground the aircraft because it was becoming too dangerous because of the drone traffic in the areas in which they were planning to fly,” Randolph said.

Whenever they were able to detect an unauthorized drone and determine the pilot’s location, the Task Force deployed ground intercept teams to contact the drone pilots and tell them to bring their drones down because they were operating in violation of the TFR set up over the entire area.

Although no arrests were made, the team members took the pilots’ information and referred the matter to the FAA for possible further investigation and action.

“And at that point, it’s an FAA regulation that they’re violating, but there’s some criminal statutes that come into play as well. But our primary goal was just to get drones down to make sure that the airways were free for the firefighting air operations,” he said.

Federal, local, county officials work together to respond to disaster

In a press conference held on August 5, Hicks and Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels described the local response to the problem of drone interference with emergency operations.

“I came over from Seattle to help mitigate these drones and figure out what we can do to keep them out of the sky and keep these aircraft flying. We put out mutual aid requests to King County Sheriff’s Office,” Hicks said.

He said the emergency personnel responding to the disaster were stretched thin, because of the number of blazes they were responding to. He said in its first day of operations at the site the FBI Task Force team detected 26 drones within just seven hours.

Task Force team members, who had received training by the FBI is counter-UAS tactics, deployed equipment capable of detecting unauthorized drones and bringing them safely to earth through the use of electronic countermeasures and human intervention, Hicks said.

“It breaks the link between the drone and the controller, and it allows our people to go and find these people. Our equipment shows where the pilot location is. We can go in and talk to that pilot and then we can get them to bring the drone down,” Hicks said.

“We’re not shooting them out of the sky. That wouldn’t be safe. We don’t want a drone falling down and hitting somebody. We don’t want to catch a battery on fire or anything like that. It’s illegal for any of us to shoot drones out of the sky,” he said.

At the press briefing, Nowels emphasized the need for drone pilots to obey all TFRs and other restrictions regarding the operation of UAVs in disaster areas.

“Most people when they get a drone, and they take it out of the box, they don’t read the instruction and all the rules involved. And there are a lot of rules involved because they are qualified as aircraft and there are rules as to where people can fly drones, how high they can fly drones and that is all governed by the FAA,” he said.

He praised the operations of the Task Force members in aiding the local officials in their response to the disaster.

Need to check flight restrictions

Randolph said he understands the motivations of some of the drone pilots operating in the restricted airspace. Some, he said, were local residents wanting to check on whether their own neighborhoods were touched by the wildfires, while others no doubt were looking to capture dramatic images for their social media feeds. But he emphasized the importance of drone pilots checking for FAA restrictions before launching their UAVs.

“The FBI is supportive of legal, authorized drone usage,” he said. “Everyone has a right to use the airspace. But it is a requirement you check the FAA’s B4UFLY website.” The site has links to several websites to let pilots know whether there are active TFRs in their area.

“We want people to be able to enjoy their drones but at the same time they’ve got to do so responsibly, and have got to make sure that they are abiding by FAA regulations, and not violating federal law,” Randolph said.

Read more:

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• FAA Proposes Civil Penalty Against Drone Operator for Alleged Agricultural Flight Violations
• FAA Data Shows Drone Sightings Near Airports Nearly Doubled in Second Quarter