The Kansas Department of Agriculture partner will run crop spraying, scouting, fertilizing and seeding beyond visual line of sight, following the model of Thales’s North Dakota Vantis deployment.
Thales and Kelly Hills Unmanned Systems will deploy a beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone network in Kansas. The network will support agricultural operations. The two companies announced the partnership with the Kansas Department of Agriculture. TopSky, Thales’s air traffic control automation platform, will provide the digital backbone. TopSky manages roughly 40 percent of global airspace and operates in more than 100 countries.
The Kansas network will support crop spraying, scouting, fertilizing and seeding. Kelly Hills will handle commercial deployment. Thales will provide airspace integration under FAA regulatory standards. The program targets scalable BVLOS operations that can extend to other U.S. use cases across the national airspace system.
“Thales TopSky has helped safely and efficiently manage the world’s busiest airspace for decades,” said Rob Geckle, CEO of Thales North America. “Now, we’re applying that expertise to the next era of aviation. Together with Kelly Hills, we’re helping unlock the full potential of agricultural drones, improving precision, productivity, and sustainability while paving the way for BVLOS operations at scale across the U.S.”
Kansas BVLOS drone network builds on Vantis
Thales draws on its work in North Dakota. The state hosts the industry’s first FAA-approved data enclave for uncrewed aircraft systems. The Northern Plains UAS Test Site runs the Vantis network. Vantis stores, analyzes and protects sensitive flight data for national airspace integration. Kansas will receive the same core capability for its farming and ranching sector.
Detect-and-avoid systems in the network target risk to people, property and other aircraft. Precision application of fertilizers and pesticides reduces input use and environmental impact. Farmers can cover larger areas in less time than ground crews or manned aircraft.
“Our mission has always been to revolutionize rural skies through the commercialization and integration of autonomous systems,” said Lukas Koch, CEO of Kelly Hills Unmanned Systems. “Partnering with Thales allows us to bring a robust suite of BVLOS tools and capabilities to agriculture, enabling farmers to work smarter, safer, and more efficiently in Kansas. We will bring Kansas to the forefront of this mission and create real solutions that can be scaled to farming and ranching operations across the entire U.S.”
More information is available at Thales.
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