Seeing a drone does not tell you what it is doing. Completing a delivery does not establish a logistics network. And demonstrating a technology does not necessarily make it ready for everyday operations. For Tom Swoyer, those distinctions define the next phase of work at GrandSKY.
On our recent Dawn of Autonomy podcast, Swoyer connected the dots between air domain awareness, military logistics and the practical challenges that still stand between successful demonstrations and routine drone operations. His vision extends beyond more flights or more sensors. He wants an integrated system that helps operators understand the airspace, complete useful missions and deliver a service customers can actually sustain. “How do we make this repeatable? How do we make this scalable?” he asked. “How do we make this a reliable and economically viable solution?”
Those questions offer an operational lens on Project ULTRA, where the next breakthrough may depend as much on closing a surveillance gap or improving a business model as on the aircraft itself.
Air Domain Awareness Connects Safety, Security and Logistics
Swoyer described GrandSKY as a UAS flight operations center where companies can test aircraft, sensors, command-and-control systems and ground equipment. Through Project ULTRA, a public-public-private partnership involving the United States Air Force, Grand Forks County and GrandSKY supports work on logistics, sensor integration and military operations in the national airspace. Air domain awareness connects those activities.
Rather than treat traffic management and counter-UAS as separate problems, Swoyer starts with their common requirement: knowing what occupies the airspace and understanding how it affects an operation. “It’s all one thing,” he said.
An aircraft does not need hostile intent to create risk. A civilian pilot approaching an area where teams conduct laser engagements can interrupt a mission without intending any harm. “So it’s total awareness of what’s going on in the air wherever your operable area is,” Swoyer explained.
That operating area might encompass GrandSKY, the airspace around Grand Forks Air Force Base or a much larger portion of North Dakota. The geographic scale changes. The need for context does not.
T-Rex Showed Why Detection Alone Is Not Enough
The August T-REX activities put that concept into practice. Swoyer described teams demonstrating drone swarms and laser engagements while University of North Dakota aircraft continued their regular flight training nearby. GrandSKY contributed ground-based sense-and-avoid capabilities to help teams monitor the airspace and conduct the exercises safely.
The event brought together military organizations, university expertise, industry technologies and GrandSKY’s infrastructure. It also exposed the persistent challenge that detecting an object does not automatically provide enough information to decide what to do about it.
“We have enough sensors. We can see something out there,” Swoyer said. The harder task involves determining whether a small object is a drone rather than a large bird, then processing that information quickly enough to support an appropriate response. “We’re getting there, but we’re not there yet,” he lamented.
Swoyer sees earlier detection and layered sensing as important parts of the solution. Placing sensors farther from the protected location can create more time for identification, but teams must synchronize those sensors and turn their observations into usable information. Collecting more data only helps if the system can make sense of it.
Sensor Fusion Needs Open Connections and Lower Costs
That brought the conversation to integration. Swoyer does not believe every vendor needs to build a complete, self-contained solution. “I think they should perfect the parts and pieces that they’re really good at and bring them to a broader system,” he said.
The opportunity lies in combining different sensors into a coherent target track that operators can use. Swoyer also wants more straightforward API sharing so technologies can connect without extensive proprietary requirements. “Whoever can win the fusion game of fusing multiple sensors together into a single target track,” he said, “that’s the winner.”
But technical performance represents only part of the equation. Swoyer said some system deployments cross the $10 million mark. That makes them increasingly difficult to justify, particularly if they primarily provide awareness. “That cost has to come down,” he explained.
He wants teams to leverage existing infrastructure more effectively and connect smaller technology developers with larger integrators. A promising component needs a practical route into an operational system, not just a compelling demonstration.
Drone Logistics Must Solve the Destination Problem
Project ULTRA’s logistics work makes those integration challenges tangible. GrandSKY already flies to Cavalier Space Force Station. Under Task Order 4, Swoyer said the team plans to add flights to Camp Grafton South. He estimated approximately 75 to 100 flights across the two destinations. But he resisted describing the routes as corridors. “That implies you’ve got this safe little hallway, and that’s not the way this goes,” he said.
The destination presents a particularly important challenge. At Cavalier, Swoyer said radar coverage reaches down to approximately 800 or 900 feet above ground level, but not to the surface. The waiver governing the operation requires the team to know that another aircraft does not occupy the relevant airspace. Without sufficient electronic coverage, the operation needs a visual observer at the destination in radio contact with the operator, if not a second operator. That requirement adds travel and staffing to each mission.
Camp Grafton South offers a different opportunity because GrandSKY’s ground-based sense-and-avoid coverage reaches the restricted airspace there. Swoyer said that creates an opportunity to explore remote landing and departure without placing an observer at the destination.
The broader objective goes beyond flying out and returning to the same launch point. Swoyer wants one remote pilot to support a flight that lands somewhere with potentially different elevation and weather, then comes home.
A Drone Delivery Network Needs More Than Aircraft
Swoyer’s longer-term ambitions include reaching Minot Air Force Base and supporting missile field logistics. However, extending operations means confronting coverage gaps, altitude considerations and weather across a potential 280-mile one-way flight. It also means preparing for what happens when a mission does not go according to plan.
“What is our response process if the drone has to make an emergency landing 140 miles away?” he asked. Where does the aircraft land? Who retrieves it? How does that person handle it safely?
Swoyer floated the idea of “AAA for drones,” a recovery relationship with personnel trained to collect and transport an aircraft. He presented it as a possibility, not an existing service arrangement. That example captures a larger point. An operational network needs support services, contingency plans and people who know what to do when the aircraft stops flying. It also needs a business case.
Swoyer acknowledged that today’s drone operation does not yet compete economically with sending personnel and supplies by road. That candor matters. Project ULTRA is not simply exploring whether a drone can complete a mission, but also what must change to make that mission worth repeating.
Grand Sky’s 2027 Priorities Target the Remaining Gaps
Aircraft availability remains another constraint. Swoyer described a thin market for the Group 3 systems he needs, aircraft capable of carrying at least 25 kilograms over roughly 120 to 130 miles round trip. Suitable platforms exist, he said, but demand can make them difficult to obtain. “I need 50 pounds heading towards 100,” he said. “That becomes a meaningful payload to deliver.”
Business models also need attention. Swoyer sees potential for customers to purchase outcomes rather than equipment, whether agricultural data through a monthly service or military capability through contractor-owned, contractor-operated drone services.
For 2027, he expects GrandSKY’s beyond-visual-line-of-sight coverage area to expand from approximately 2,400 square miles to almost 5,000. He also anticipates work on highway crossings, larger aircraft and gap-filling sensors that could reduce the need to station observers at remote landing sites. Each priority addresses a different barrier to routine operations. Together, they show where Swoyer wants GrandSKY to go next: beyond proving that technologies work individually toward demonstrating that an entire service can work reliably.
“You’ve got to have the use cases that the industry, the market wants, that your end user needs,” he said. That is the next frontier for Project ULTRA, to make air domain awareness serve missions people actually need, under conditions they can sustain.