The energy sector has spent years watching drone technology evolve from a novelty into a genuine operational tool. But moving from Group 1 multicopters to large, fixed-wing unmanned aircraft operating beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) over pipelines, power lines, and refineries does not translate to business as usual. It requires a categorical shift that demands a completely different approach to regulatory strategy, program design and operational execution.
Two of the industry’s most experienced practitioners, Charlton Evans, Founder and CEO of End State Solutions, and Nate Ernst, Founder and President of The Tactien Group, explained exactly what that shift requires. Their collaboration represents a rare full-stack advisory model with regulatory mastery on one side and operational program development on the other, designed to give energy companies and infrastructure operators a single, coherent path from concept to certified flight operations.
Two Careers Built on Hard Problems
Evans came up through the Marine Corps as a Harrier pilot and Joint Terminal Attack Controller before transitioning into the unmanned world at InSitu, a Boeing subsidiary and manufacturer of the ScanEagle. He founded End State Solutions in 2018 to focus exclusively on the certification and operational approval work that the industry’s most demanding programs require.
End State has since shepherded five Section 44807 exemptions through the FAA for clients operating large UAS, along with BVLOS waivers and complex airworthiness certifications that include supplemental type certificate work on commercial aircraft programs. Those clients tend to be household names in the energy sector.
Ernst arrived from the operator side, running UAS services from Group 1 small systems through Group 4 platforms, and managing manned rotorcraft and fixed-wing aviation for utility clients. He launched The Tactien Group after nearly 17 years in the industry, including time at the forefront of groundbreaking commercial programs, to solve a problem he kept watching repeat itself. Utilities and pipeline operators were building ambitious large UAS programs with budgets that could not absorb the complexity they were actually signing up for. “The ROI in building those programs has a very thin margin of error,” Ernst said. “I was saying, guys, hold on a second. There are guardrails we need to look at before you build this budget.”
The two men met on a program for Chevron, where Evans was pursuing the Section 91.113 BVLOS waiver for operations in California’s San Joaquin Valley at altitudes up to 8,000 feet, and Ernst was supporting the OEM delivering the AI Ranger platform. “Burden shared, friendship earned,” Evans said. That crucible forged both a professional partnership and a real-world view of what the energy sector actually needs from its UAS advisors.
The Certification and Operations Divide
The two built the collaboration between End State and Tactien around a structural reality most energy companies discover too late. The regulatory approval process and the operational program-building process require fundamentally different expertise, and they have to work in lockstep.
End State operates in the regulatory and airworthiness lane. When a utility wants to pursue a Section 44807 exemption or a complex BVLOS waiver, Evans and his team build the documentation, navigate the FAA’s engineering and flight standards branches and push the hardware certification through to approval. The Tactien Group handles the operational architecture from program stand-up and validation to the standard operating procedures (SOPs), training infrastructure and the safety management systems (SMS) that keep a program healthy after launch. “Tactien is the operational niche specialist,” Ernst explained. “End State is the regulatory specialist. Collectively, we can go into a utility and say, ‘We are your team of advisors, a truly one-stop, womb-to-tomb advisory organization.’”
That division of labor mirrors the FAA’s own review process. The engineering branch under AIR evaluates hardware quantitatively, requiring material descriptions, functional hazard assessments and numerical substantiation tied directly to the concept of operations (CONOPs). The flight standards branch under operations focuses on mitigations, training currency, command-and-control (C2) link architecture and how systems degrade gracefully when they fail. Navigating both branches simultaneously, with documentation that satisfies each, requires a level of institutional FAA knowledge that most energy companies simply do not have in-house.
The CONOPs Is Everything
Both Evans and Ernst agreed that the CONOPs provides the foundational document that determines whether a program succeeds or fails. For Evans, it serves a purpose beyond the regulatory submission. “If a company will run through a concept of operations with us, it always reveals the kind of complexity Nate’s talking about,” he said. “It forces the company to answer questions about what their operation looks like, what their hardware looks like, in ways they haven’t asked themselves before, because they’re inside.”
The FAA will approve an operation based on how convincingly that story is told. The CONOPs must describe the hardware, the environment, the intended function, every mitigation and the full range of contingencies. It drives requirements for both system certification and operational approval simultaneously. Companies that treat it as a formality typically find themselves cycling back through revisions for months.
Ernst added that the CONOPs standards for large aircraft operations bear little resemblance to what works in the small UAS world. Pilot currency models, training programs and SOPs that satisfy Part 107 requirements do not scale up. “Going from 500 Group 1 multicopters to a 350-pound fixed-wing, that’s a totally different animal,” he said. “Your SOPs are a totally different flavor for operations.” Organizations that attempt to graft small UAS program logic onto a Group 3 or Group 4 program are setting themselves up for regulatory pushback and operational failure.
What Energy Companies Keep Getting Wrong
When pressed on the most common mistakes they encounter, both Evans and Ernst gave lessons shaped by hard experience.
Ernst identified three recurring misunderstandings at the entry point of almost every large UAS engagement. First, clients underestimate complexity. Second, they assume that because another organization achieved a similar approval, their path will look the same. Third, they think the process will be timely. “You can conceivably get these approvals,” Ernst said. “But I don’t think there’s an understanding of the levels of complexity in building the program and starting from day one with a fully 44807-approved outfit.” The approvals are achievable. The timelines, costs and documentation burden are not what most organizations budget for.
Evans pointed to C2 link planning as a specific area where CONOPs documents consistently fall short. The FAA’s flight standards reviewers want to see detailed descriptions of C2 network architecture and explicit plans for graceful degradation when links fail. “That’s an area that’s often not well addressed,” he noted. Organizations equally underdevelop crew qualification documentation. The FAA requires more than just certifications held. It wants to see evidence that a specific crew was qualified, current and ready for a specific operation on a specific day.
Building Programs That Last
For organizations assessing their own readiness, Ernst offered a practical self-evaluation framework. Start by asking whether current SOPs are actually sufficient for current operations, not aspirational ones. Then assess whether the organization’s SMS meets industry standards for its size and risk profile. Finally, determine whether a continuous improvement program is in place, one that audits the SMS regularly, maintains training currency at every level, and evolves alongside the technology.
“Those fundamental principles about building a program and scaling a program set that organization up for an easier transition into larger, more complex aircraft,” Ernst said. Companies that build this foundation before pursuing large UAS certification arrive at the FAA with documentation that reflects genuine operational maturity. That maturity shows in the review.
Evans framed the entire certification enterprise as an exercise in earned trust. “Certification is an exercise in trust. Period. End stop. It’s quantified trust,” he said. FAA must be confident that an operation is safe. A well-certified program is not just an approval document. It is evidence of due diligence, documented at every level of hardware and procedure.
The Runway for Large UAS in Energy
The near-term horizon for large UAS in the energy and utility sector is the most promising it has ever been, according to Evans and Ernst.
- Part 44807 exemption activity continues to accelerate as utilities pursue Group 3 and Group 4 aircraft for patrol and inspection missions that currently require manned helicopters at considerably greater cost and human risk exposure.
- Part 108, whenever it arrives, will replace what has often felt like an informal and shifting set of FAA expectations with a legible, defined process.
- Counter-UAS detection has emerged as a major additional technology layer for critical infrastructure operators, accelerated by rulemaking that may extend detection authorities directly to asset owners. Evans is seeing substantial growth in counter-UAS test and evaluation programs, as manufacturers pursue civil airspace approvals to qualify their products for Department of Defense procurement.
Both experts believe large UAS programs over critical infrastructure are achievable. They are happening now with real revenue operations for household-name energy companies. The organizations that succeed are the ones that respect the complexity from day one. The ones that do not tend to call Evans and Ernst after the fact.
And perhaps for all of these reasons, business is booming. End State Solutions is actively hiring an Integration Specialist. Interested candidates should contact Charlton Evans at cevans@endstatesolutions.com.