North Dakota to invest an additional $20 million in Vantis as it continues buildout of statewide UAS network

North Dako­ta gov­er­nor Doug Bur­gum has recent­ly signed into law an addi­tion­al $20 mil­lion invest­ment to con­tin­ue the build­out of Van­tis, the statewide UAS net­work and first of its kind in the USA.

The mid­west­ern state has been a leader in unmanned air­craft sys­tems advance­ments for over a decade, but Van­tis is poised to trans­form the state into the nation’s drone epi­cen­ter. 

Van­tis will be use­able by any­one – state and oth­er pub­lic enti­ties as well as com­mer­cial inter­ests – who meets min­i­mum safe­ty cri­te­ria, open­ing the door to advanced BVLOS flights and the oppor­tu­ni­ties cre­at­ed by them. 

NPUASTS, which admin­is­ters Van­tis, received $28 mil­lion two years ago to cre­ate and devel­op a statewide BVLOS net­work. Since then, NPUASTS has worked with lead­ers in the manned avi­a­tion indus­try to devel­op Van­tis’ tech­nol­o­gy and to build out key sites in McKen­zie and Williams coun­ties.

Nicholas Flom, exec­u­tive direc­tor of NPUASTS, said: “We’re incred­i­bly grate­ful to have lead­ers in this state – Gov­er­nor Doug Bur­gum, Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Brent San­ford, our leg­is­la­tors – with the fore­site to imag­ine and invest in the vision of Van­tis. It’s not an exag­ger­a­tion to say that Van­tis is a ground­break­ing ini­tia­tive. It sim­ply doesn’t exist at this lev­el any­where else in the U.S.” 

The North­ern Plains UAS Test Site is one of sev­en Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) unmanned air­craft sys­tem (UAS) test sites in the nation. The mis­sion of the NPUASTS is to col­lab­o­rate with FAA and indus­try part­ners to devel­op sys­tems, rules, and pro­ce­dures to safe­ly inte­grate unmanned air­craft into the Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem with­out neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing exist­ing gen­er­al or com­mer­cial avi­a­tion.

NPUASTS is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing test­ing and val­i­da­tion to ensure that all flights on Van­tis meet the high­est safe­ty stan­dards. This addi­tion­al $20 mil­lion, along with car­ry­over from the ini­tial invest­ment, will be used to expand this tech­nol­o­gy to oth­er areas in the state. 

Jim Cieplak, pro­gram man­ag­er for Van­tis at NPUASTS., added: “This con­tin­ued invest­ment ensures that Van­tis can ben­e­fit the peo­ple and indus­tries across North Dako­ta. We’ve estab­lished key sites on the west­ern side of North Dako­ta, but this fund­ing will allow us to begin the larg­er roll­out of Van­tis, so that North Dakotans can reap the great­est eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of this tech­nol­o­gy.” 

Cur­rent­ly, the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) requires oper­a­tors who want to fly UAS beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) of the pilot to have a spe­cial and cur­rent­ly lim­it­ed waiv­er. Receiv­ing this waiv­er requires a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment of time and resources, mak­ing it a con­sid­er­able bar­ri­er to entry for BVLOS flights.

This means that most UAS oper­a­tors can only fly with­in about a half mile of where they’re stand­ing, which is incred­i­bly inef­fi­cient. Van­tis is a net­work made up of radars, oth­er sur­veil­lance sen­sors, and com­mand and con­trol radios that allow UAS pilots to ‘see’ from the per­spec­tive of the drone, much like a manned pilot in a cock­pit.

Gov. Bur­gum said: “This sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment, sup­port­ed by our admin­is­tra­tion and approved by the Leg­is­la­ture, sends a strong sig­nal that we are com­mit­ted to build­ing on North Dakota’s sta­tus as the nation’s prov­ing ground for UAS test­ing, train­ing and com­mer­cial­iza­tion.

“By con­tin­u­ing to build out Van­tis, we will lay the ground­work for the next wave of UAS inno­va­tors and entre­pre­neurs, diver­si­fy our econ­o­my and ben­e­fit all North Dakotans, includ­ing those in our crit­i­cal agri­cul­ture and ener­gy sec­tors.”

Flom was a recent guest on the eVTOL Insights Pod­cast, where he talked about Van­tis in more detail and its plans going for­ward. You can lis­ten to the episode here.