The Evolution and Current State of small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS)

In this episode of From the Crows’ Nest, host Ken Miller sits down with Dr. David Thirtyacre, Assistant Professor in the College of Aeronautics at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. David is the Chair and Chief Pilot for the Department of Flight and currently instructs at the undergraduate and graduate levels in Flight Operations, Aerodynamics, Aircraft Performance, Unmanned Systems, Airborne Robotics, and Aviation and Aerospace Simulation Systems. He retired from the USAF with 27 years of duty in the fighter community with over 3500 hours piloting fighter aircraft and was a pioneer in the use of unmanned systems.

They discuss how sUAS are used in current conflicts around the world and the capabilities they offer, including signals intelligence (SIGINT), tactical communications and networking, and as a weapons system. David also shares his thoughts on how artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving the use of sUAS and what the future holds for this advanced technology.

To learn more about today’s topics or to stay updated on EMSO and EW developments, visit our homepage.

Creators & Guests

Host

Ken Miller

AOC Director of Advocacy & Outreach, Host of @AOCrows From the Crows' Nest Podcast

DT

Guest

Dr. David Thirtyacre

IB

Editor

Ish Balderas-Wong

Producer

Laura Krebs

RC

Editor

Reese Clutter

What is From the Crows' Nest?

Featuring interviews, analysis, and discussions covering leading issues of the day related to electromagnetic spectrum operations (EMSO). Topics include current events and news worldwide, US Congress and the annual defense budget, and military news from the US and allied countries. We also bring you closer to Association of Old Crow events and provide a forum to dive deeper into policy issues impacting our community.

Ken Miller: 00:28

Welcome to From the Crow's Nest, a podcast on electromagnetic spectrum operations or MSO. I'm your host, Ken Miller, director of advocacy and outreach for the Association of Old Crows. Thanks for listening. In this episode, I sit down with doctor David Thirtyaker, assistant professor in the College of Aeronautics at the Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. We discuss the evolving use and technology integrated on small UAS systems, unmanned aerial systems.

Ken Miller: 00:55

Before I get to my guess, if you follow our show, especially the bonus episodes that we've been releasing every other week, that will eventually be pulled into our new subscription service here in in the near future. You'll know that this is a pretty big week here in February 28th on Capitol Hill. You certainly wanna grab your popcorn if you're into if you're into this sort of thing, but, if if you tuned into our bonus episode last week when I sat down with the colonel Jeff Fisher, retired US Air Force colonel Jeff Fisher. We talked a lot about the Ukraine war aid bill. That bill is coming back to congress here on February 28th, which we expect to pass with just enough drama to keep us all interested, but it's certainly an important vote here, that we'll be watching very closely.

Ken Miller: 01:41

We also have the first of 2 continuing resolution deadlines on March 1st, to keep the federal government open and fund it. Now for those of you not familiar with our convoluted budgeting process, these continuing resolutions were passed because congress was unable to pass individual appropriations bills at the by the end of the fiscal year on September 30th last year, 2023. So DCRs have been ongoing and extended, and in December, they decided to do another CR and break it up into 2 deadlines, March 1st and then March 8th will be the deadline for the for the 8 other appropriations and that's the big one because that has defense. And so we're, once again, on the cusp of will the government shutdown or not. So I was just in meetings in DC last week.

Ken Miller: 02:34

There's a lot of uncertainty, but an expectation that a shutdown will be avoided. The political will is not there to do that, but there's still a lot of uncertainty because it's there's just a lot of variables in play. So whether that progress comes here in the next week, comes in the form of another short term CR, a long term continuing resolution, to the end of the fiscal year or something, an omnibus bill that pulls them all together into 1 package or individual bills that breaks them apart and it'll probably be in that order. No one no one knows, but, to help us with the latest inside scoop, I'll be sitting down with DC consultants, Madison Arcangeli and Katie Nazartova next week for a bonus episode that will be released next Wednesday, March 6th. It'll be a great discussion to kinda dig into the the uncertain landscape.

Ken Miller: 03:23

They're on Capitol Hill every day. They they are talking to all the people that are making decisions, and so they're able to share with us kinda what they're hearing, and it's probably the best way to really kinda get a unfiltered understanding of of what's gonna happen, both politically and in terms of policy. So if you're an AOC member, you'll get a chance to participate in the live recording of that episode which takes place on Tuesday, March 5th. You can be a part of that. You can listen in.

Ken Miller: 03:49

You can ask questions, comment. You can do so anonymously. So if you're an AOC member, look to your email for more information. If you're not an AOC member, you can still listen to the episode when we release it on Wednesday next week. Okay.

Ken Miller: 04:01

So with that, I welcome doctor David Thirty acre to from the crow's nest. As I said at the top of the show, David is assistant professor in the college of aeronautics at the Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. Embry Riddle is a global campus and David is located up in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, which, unfortunately, we did not know when we recorded our interview. So thank you, David, for getting up so early to be with us, before dawn. David is the chair and chief pilot for the department of flight and currently instructs at the undergraduate and graduate levels in flight operations, aerodynamics, aircraft performance, unmanned systems, airborne robotics, and aviation and aerospace simulation systems.

Ken Miller: 04:42

He is retired from the US Air Force with 27 years of duty in the fighter community, with over 35 100 hours piloting fighter aircraft, and he was a pioneer in the use of unmanned systems. So, David, welcome to From the Crow Census. It's great to be here with you.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 04:57

Thanks, Ken. Appreciate it.

Ken Miller: 04:59

A few months ago, I had the honor and privilege of moderating, AOC webinar. You were the guest presenter on the on this topic of small UAS systems, kind of where are we at today, where is the technology taking us. It was a great presentation, so I wanted to have you on the show to have a little bit more of an informal conversation on the same topic. It's a topic that's gained a lot of attention here in the news. In our last episode of From the Crow's Nest, we were talking about it in terms of how UAS small UAS systems are being used in Ukraine as well as you know every day we're hearing about how they are being used by Houthi rebels in Yemen in the Red Sea.

Ken Miller: 05:37

So this is a technology that's out there proliferating, evolving very fast and I wanted to have you on to kind of help us break it down. What are we seeing? How are we competing? And where do we need to go for that? So by way of introduction, thank you for, agreeing to be on the show.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 05:53

Oh, I love to be here. I appreciate it, Kim.

Ken Miller: 05:55

So just to begin, you know, the world is we have a lot of conflicts going on around the world right now. Ukraine, as I mentioned, Yemen. Almost every day, small UAS systems are in the headlines in some way being used for a number of different capabilities or roles. Could you talk a little bit about what you're seeing today and how UAS systems are being used across the capability spectrum?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 06:22

Yeah. There's, obviously, an awful lot going on in this area, you know, and when you when you look at the the combat side of it, you know, you have, you know, back in the, boy, the early days of, operation Iraqi freedom and and all that, there was a lot of use of the IEDs and things like that. You know, that was kind of a new not a new technology, but it was something that is that can be used be used by a not too technically savvy, I guess, is my point, you know, group that can make a make, you know, that made massive, a massive damage on on our forces with IEDs and things like that. And, you know, the the small UAS side is just kind of the next evolution to that. It's kind of the next piece of that.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 07:01

And, you know, you think about the ability to get these small aircraft that, you know, can carry a decent little warhead and be able to put that wherever you want. You know, that's a that's a game changer. And, you know, frankly, it's that kinda asymmetrical type of warfare that as a, you know, as a as a military, you're always looking at, you know, trying to take advantage of it but also trying to defend against it. So it's it's a really interesting area. And, you know, over the last about 10 years is when this has really taken off.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 07:30

There's been some some technological advances over the last 10 years with a lot of the miniaturization of things, with the battery power, with the brushless motors that are that are out there for all these things. There's all sorts of things that kinda came together to make all this possible. And, you know, it's really only been over the last 10 years that you've really been able to to put something together that, you know, anybody can get out of a box, you know, from one of the the the big box stores and be able to go out and fly something right now. Back when, when I kinda got into this about 8 years ago, we had a contract to teach a federal agency. And one of the things I wanted to show him was how absolutely easy it was to drop things off it.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 08:06

And at that time, I took a, like a little a bag of powder, and I just should had a quick little demonstration on being able to drop that on a crowd of people. You know, those little things like that. And when you're trying to stop a technologically advanced force from coming in, having these asymmetrical capabilities, it's demoralizing. It's fairly cheap. It's fairly effective, you know, and the defenses for them are, you know, keeping pace, but they're still not everywhere.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 08:35

So, anyway, I guess the point here is that this is the, you know, kind of the standard progression of some new technology like this that's, that's coming out. And then when you couple that with the ability to fly an autonomous route. So, you you know, the billet maybe not autonomous, maybe the automatic route is a more realistic way to talk about that. But being able to program an aircraft to fly to a certain position, you know, you you look at 15, 20 years ago, the idea of of somebody be able to buy something like that, you know, from a store and just be able to go do that just it just wasn't a reality. But now it is.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 09:06

You can take an aircraft. You can program it where to fly. You can tell it what you wanna do. And with just a little bit of of programming knowledge, you can go out there and you can do, do all sorts of damage. So, anyway, a long answer to your question there, but, you know, the technology is there.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 09:20

The products are out there now, and it's just a matter of these these things being used in in different roles now, whether it's intelligence gathering or whether it's, you know, releasing some sort of a ordinance on top of something you normally couldn't get to. You know, you can't reach them with regular fire, but now you can get to them with a, with a UAS or something. So, this is, yeah, this is the future. You know, when you start coupling this with AI, it's it's where things are going.

Ken Miller: 09:45

Well yeah. And and I wanna dive into a little bit about the role of AI and how that's evolved as well but you know kind of building on what you had said you know I think one of the alarming things is and you made a good point about this is the dual use technology aspect of a lot of these small UAS systems. Commercial uses, obviously, you can, you know, on the commercials in the commercial sector, you can get them for a lot cheaper than you can and then of course our solution to a lot of these small UAS systems in combat you can hear about it in in the red, you know, in our operations in the red sea. We're shooting down drones with, you know, missiles and so the the cost imbalance is is is there. And so could you talk a little bit about from a commercial perspective before we get into the military, how is the commercial sector influencing or driving the availability of the small UAS systems for the dual use purpose in military operations by many of our adversaries?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 10:42

Well, you know, it's, it's pretty interesting in this area because it's one of those that there's more that technologies available and things are built and programmed and everything prior to there maybe being even a use case for it. So it's one of those things where the capabilities are out there. You know, when you look at when you look at the the evolution of these, of these, small UAS and and the capabilities that they have, there really wasn't a, hey. We're gonna go build this to do x, y, or z. It was, hey.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 11:11

We have the capability to do this. Let's let's make these little quadcopters and things like that. So the technology was there, and it's looking for a use. And that's kinda still where we're at with a lot of this. These aircraft are made on the commercial sector.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 11:24

A lot of them are built for fun. They're just for recreation, but they have a lot of other different, different capabilities. And it, you know, it's kinda like the, the the computer hacker mindset where you find a vulnerability and you find a capability and you you and you use that in order to exploit information. It's the same with this. And, you know, what's what's happened with the manufacturers of this.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 11:46

So, you look at at you know, a DJI product compared to products that say the US is putting out and and frankly, there's no comparison. You know, a good example of that is with the, the infrared, imaging capability. When you look at some of the aircraft, for example, we have uh-uh what's called a Matrice 300 that has a, a very good, it's a 620 infrared sensor on a thermal sensor on it. And the sensor is so good that you can buy it from DJI, but because of ITAR, you couldn't sell it to anybody else. You know?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 12:20

So it's one of those where that technology is just advancing and the capabilities of that IR camera, it was better than some of the, the equipment back in the military had 20, 25 years ago. This stuff is better than that. So you have the technology that's there, and it is and it's just getting better and better, and it's getting smaller and smaller and faster and faster. And that technology, on the commercial sector is, you know, kinda looking for, again, looking for the jobs out there. Multispectral sensing is a great example of that.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 12:52

You have these great sensors, but it's like, okay. So how do we use this? And and how do we use this in farming? We have these great capabilities, but what does it mean? So the technology is leading the use cases.

Ken Miller: 13:04

Is it a matter the commercial sector a greater leeway for experimentation, failure, risk then you might get in in a in the US government per se where you can have the hacker or the hobbyist or whoever just kind of toying around with it, seeing what it can do. And if it fails, it fails. If it succeeds, it succeeds. And is that kind of stimulating some of this or more so than you might see from other technologies?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 13:32

Well, I think the the the cost of failure for a lot of this, given you're thinking about applying it to something, the cost of failure is very low. When, again, you made the comment about the, you know, shooting down a $10,000 drone with a, $2,000,000 missile type thing? The consequences of failure when you're when you're doing this is very low. I mean, you can you can acquire systems that can go do some serious damage with, you know, fairly low low cost. But the, the big disparity between the US companies and and what they're putting out again over at DJI, which still is probably 75 to 80% of the market is DJI just because their products are so dang good.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 14:09

You know, and that, that technology is looking for looking for a place. You know, when you look at the numbers of DJI products in the United States, I suspect that general magnitude is probably 2 to 3000000 platforms that are, that are in the US that are flying around, if not if not more. So it it's kinda crazy where that's come from. And, you know, the US is trying to catch up, but we have a big problem with, being able to compete at the price level that companies like DJI have. It's just difficult to be able to produce something that's that good for the for the prices.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 14:39

When you look at, you compare a DJI product to a US product and the US products are getting pretty good but the US products are generally 4 times the cost as a, a form model. So there's a there's a pretty good price disparity.

Ken Miller: 14:54

In combat, you know, it's kind of well recognized that, you know, you're you're you're trying to increase cost, risk, and latency on your your your opponent and trying to decrease that on yourself. And it seems like on the UAS problem, it's it's quite turned around quite a bit, you know, where the the risk is increasing us because, obviously, the the the threshold for success is different from a US perspective. You know, the cost is greater in terms of the solution. And and and even the latency, the decision making time is is is increased versus some of the asymmetric threats. So so one of the ways that we can maybe start to switch that is to really dive into what is behind a lot of these UAS systems.

Ken Miller: 15:33

That's the artificial intelligence behind it, the technology that is just I mean, it's mind boggling to me. I it's I'm not, someone who is technologically savvy in that way, so I just sit back and your presentation at in the webinar was just, like, what the capabilities AI can can do today. So I wanna talk a little bit about that. You mentioned at the beginning of your comments, you know, obviously, back in the war in Iraq, you know, there was a remote controlled IEDs, and you obviously had kind of that communication line between a device and someone who's controlling it. Now it's not just remote control, but it's actually a machine that's thinking on its own, collecting information, analyzing, and you're less controlling it and more just monitoring it or maybe setting it in a direction.

Ken Miller: 16:21

So could you talk a little bit about where AI is today in terms of being used on these small UAS systems?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 16:27

Yeah. You know, there's a AI is one of those things that, you know, just gets thrown out all the time and and, you know, in conversation. And there's a lot to it as far as the capabilities and, you know, how it's being used today. I think I've in the the webinar, I talked about everybody thinks about AI. They think about the, you know, the the the futuristic droids that are on on Star Trek or Star Wars or whatever it might be and things like that that are they're doing that's that's the, you know, that's the far that's the that's the the kind of the the eventual goal, if you will, of this is to have something like that that's that's much smarter than a human that is able to to adapt everything and basically is, you know, acts like a living being.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 17:10

But we're not even close to that yet. I mean, we're back still on the machine learning side, basically. There's a lot going on in those areas for, for being able to use that that technology and get there. But we're really talking about machine learning. And when you back that even off one more, a lot of people get confused about the difference between, you know, doing something automated versus doing something with artificial intelligence.

Ken Miller: 17:31

Break that down a little bit because I think that some of these distinctions are really important as we start to think about how we need to address the problem.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 17:38

Yeah. Absolutely. Programming an automated route is strictly, you know, putting GPS points in the aircraft and having it follow those those points to a certain place, and then do whatever you want. You know, there's been programs out there for, for years and, and autopilots that have the capability to do this. I mean, they're literally under a $100.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 17:57

You can buy 1 and program your own to do all sorts of stuff. But you can program them to go do something, and that's more of what we call an automated route. It has a tasking in there. You've put the tasking in there, and it goes and does it. It might calculate the best way to do it, the orientation to be able to fit in this flight plan.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 18:13

It might do a little bit of that, but that's really again, it's still just coding. It's not any of the, it's not any of the machine learning side of it where you're taking the time to actually teach the program. But, you know, keep in mind though that this stuff, it's all still it all still starts as code. It's not like you all of a sudden you have the Terminator out there who's doing everything on its own. The coding of it is still what what's driving it.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 18:37

So when you start getting into artificial intelligence now though, now you're you're able to start allowing it to make decisions without you being in the loop. So for example, if you had and this this might exist in some aircraft out there, but your general prosumer type of, type of drones aren't gonna have that. But they might have the capability to go out and just make decisions. K. There's, like, obstacle avoidances built into the drone, and it's gonna fly around it.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 19:03

That's automated. Right? It sees something. It knows how far away is. It's programmed to stay this far away, and it's gonna use this route to get around it.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 19:11

It's a total another story if you're saying, hey, I want you to go to point a to point b, and I want you to go take pictures of this, and it figures out how to do all that itself, and it goes and does it makes decisions on its own. You know, those are 2 very different things. So the automated route compared to artificial intelligence are are very different. So, anyway, the point being though that, you know, you have these training models, and I think we brought up the test down there they did in, in in Las Vegas with the pilot in the simulator and the AI flying another aircraft. There you go out in dogfights.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 19:43

And that's that's, you know, that's a great that great point. So they what they've done is they they took the model that they've come up with to to fly against another aircraft to do a dogfight. And what they did with that then is they taught it how to do it. So in other words, they took in literally, like, it would be you and I going and going to fly, you know, 10,000 flights in this same scenario. They basically took the different things that could happen and taught it and had it fly and see what worked and what didn't.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 20:15

So it's building up this database inside of the, the artificial intelligence that's able to now, you know, it has a look back. And it if if this happens, then this happens. And now you're you think about it's going through trillions of computations, more than that, a second. In order to figure out what that is, and it's and it goes back through all those because, oh, this didn't work. This, oh, this didn't work.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 20:36

This didn't work. This kinda work. Oh, this one worked in this scenario, and now it's gonna apply that. And so the ability to take something that might not have any experience in something and then have a training model, which is critical that it's accurate training. But you have a training model that you can infuse there, and now it it's been there and it's done that, you know, several million times when it would take us forever to be able to learn how to do that.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 20:58

So, anyway, that's, kind of a convoluted, discussion about that. But, yeah, the difference between automated and actual, AI and and where that goes. And then eventually, we get into the point where you're talking about the ability to give something a mission. I mean, just I I you need to go do this. This is what you're trying to do, and it figures out how to go and do that whole thing and make decisions basically on its own.

Ken Miller: 21:21

And then and then at what point, you know, I oftentimes when we talk AI in in military capabilities, at some point, we we have the ethics conversation in terms of that decision making ability and they did that man in the loop, man on the loop, or or however you wanna word it. When you're talking about the capabilities of AI, I and and I have one of your slides up on my computer and you kinda break it down between artificial narrow intelligence, artificial general intelligence, and then artificial superintelligence and the last being more of the machine consciousness. Like, at what point how how does the how does the the the the ability for us to influence from a human perspective kind of those that decision making process to make sure that the execution of any task is is ethical, adheres to admission, and all the other kind of qualities we need to reduce risk?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 22:16

Yeah. That's a that's a that's a big question. There's lots of lots of, thoughts in this area. You know, again, it's one of those where some people wanna ignore this stuff and and, and and move on to something that they can tackle, but this is the future. And, you know, that it it's something that we have to I'll never forget when, I think I was down in, Yuma at a in a close air support conference with the the marine corps, and it was just at the introduction of a GPS guided weapons.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 22:45

And I remember the discussion was that, oh, we're not gonna ever use these things in a close air support role. And then a, a general came in and said, guys, you can ignore this as much as you want. This is the future. This is happening. You guys need to figure out how to do it.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 22:59

You know, and that kind of an attitude is kinda what we need to have with artificial intelligence. It's here. It's gonna happen. And other people are gonna be using it against us because they might not have, you know, if you are if you are, basically the, the inferior force technologically and by numbers and everything else, you really don't care about any collateral damage that might occur because it's, 1, probably not gonna be your side. But number 2, you know, the the the risk cost is, is so different.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 23:28

So my point being that when we start getting into to AI and the ability to give something a mission, and I think what you're talking about is the the lethal authority. So at what point in time does something have the ethical and moral and even legal side of making a decision that it can use lethal force? You know, we have lots of problems with that, and we see problems with that in combat all the time where, you know, what is self defense? When can you defend yourself? When can you when can you fire?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 23:58

When can't you? What do you have to have as far as the, enemy identification and that it's, you know, lack of friendly and all these type of things that we've gone through. So now you're talking about something with AI being able to make a decision on the use of lethal force. And, you know, that's one that it's easy to say, well, we're gonna push that down the road, but it it's in it's here now, and our adversaries are gonna be using that against us. So we have to figure it out so that that, you know, we have we have, you know, something that we can live with, I guess, on the the bottom line because you think about you think about you you send something out with you might have a, you know, this a lot of conversation now and and it's out there now, you know.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 24:38

You can see, I think Australia is doing some of this where you have an aircraft that might have a drone with it, fairly capable drone. That drone might have it might have some air to ground ordinance on it. And the aircraft is now now telling the drone what to hit. Well, that's great, but now we get into the next level where something maybe gets shot at an aircraft. At what point in time can this make its own decision to go take something out, and what has to be in place to do that?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 25:03

So you start thinking about that and about what our minds do when we are gonna go employ ordinance, making sure it's the enemy, making sure there's no collateral damage, making sure it's legal from, you know, some other points of view. You know how that goes. All those things now has to go into that into that AI. And it's gonna be interesting. You know, I think there's a lot of that, as we see with cars now.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 25:25

You know, some of the automated features that cars have, they're making. There's there's literally decisions going on, you know, with the the automated cars running into this or that. And it's just so much more complex when you start talking about lethal force.

Ken Miller: 26:34

Yeah. I I I noticed that, you know, pretty much with the increase in attacks from the Houthi rebels. Yeah. A lot of the articles coming out of there in terms of US strikes, a lot of those comments will be preceded with self defense strikes self defense strikes. And that terminology is being used a lot more frequently to kind of set that standard of here's how we can here's a threshold by which we can reliably respond and I think that that a lot of that type of conversation is gonna start to flow into how we you know, program systems and stuff to to to to to learn from that and say, here here's the threshold.

Ken Miller: 27:10

Here's the self defense threshold. Okay. Now you can respond. It'll be interesting to see how that continues to evolve.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 27:16

Well, you know, and kind of bring this around full circle. When you start thinking about countermeasures and you start thinking about, whether it's it's, some sort of electronic attack, whether you're talking about, you know, comms or you're talking about, influence that are my high high power micros, whatever it might be. The ability now to to jam spoof, whatever you wanna call it, against some sort of AI thing. So now putting out signals that it might interpret the wrong way, you know, that becomes a big part of the game. And that's where, you know, talking to a a lot of you know, with the questions that we got out of the, the webinar, that's a area that's very interesting.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 27:59

Obviously, the, old crows, you know, and everything and and and current crows. How is that gonna be done and what kinda tools are we gonna have? Because now you have say it it is electronically identifying something. There might be a size. There might be emissions.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 28:13

There might be a signature of, you know, the infrared signature. There might have been prior intel. All these things are going in there. Well, now what happens when you start spoofing something that's coming out there? Spoofing signals or something like that.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 28:26

It can be a complete game changer because now there's not the human mind in the middle of that going, that doesn't make sense. That aircraft cannot do, you know, 5,000 miles an hour. You know? So that part of it gets really interesting too. So the countermeasure part of this, I think, is is is really, really interesting.

Ken Miller: 28:44

You kind of establish you you that that segue perfectly because I did wanna kind of talk a little bit about the electronic warfare aspect of all this. Obviously, with AOC, that's our mission. You know, your background is as a fighter pilot, US Air Force. Obviously, you're you're well very familiar with how traditionally EW has been used in an air to air or air superiority concept. Could you talk a little bit about from an UAS perspective now that you're in the classroom and you're you're teaching the UASA technology, how has that changed the EW picture or what we can do with EW using UAS systems?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 29:19

Well, you know, it doesn't take a rocket science to scientists to take a look at it, realize that your free space path loss when you get up right next to something is is almost negligible, you know. And I think I had it on one of my slides where I was just comparing, you know, kind of a, you know, if you're standing off a 100 kilometers, which is, you know, kind of a, you know, standard area for a standoff to be the amount of power required compared to, you know, if you're a 100 meters away. And that is, a a really, interesting because, you know, you can sit there and say, well, yeah, but we could shoot down something that came in here. Oh, yeah. What if there's 800 of them?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 29:55

You know, what if there's 800 of these $1,000 things that comes in? You know, you think about too, you know, around around ships or something like that with all the emissions and all that. Now you you know, it yeah. Sure. You can you can defeat 1 or 2.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 30:08

But, you know, now when you talk about swarms and everything getting in there, it it's a total different story.

Ken Miller: 30:13

And and you're seeing you the the use of more use of, one way drones or, you know, I guess, the the kamikaze, effect where it's it's not meant to come back. So you put that into a swarm. You only need to be successful one time if you're the adversary. You need to be successful, you know, 100, a 1000 times if you're the US. Right.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 30:31

Right. Yeah. And, the ability to use these for different roles too because now, you know, just like you think about different aircraft we might pair together to go to a mission, now you have the same small UAS that can do multiple missions too. You can have a jamming package you put on one of them. And, you know, these you think about a jamming package, you know, we think about, you know, pods and big things like that.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 30:52

It could be something extremely simple that can go, that go on these again because the power requirements aren't very high. So you now have multi role small UAS that can be involved in this too. So you have some going out to do imagery. Maybe you have some to go out to create a 3 d model. You have some going out to do some jamming in that area, and you have some that might have some projectiles or something else on it.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 31:13

The ability to mix and match those for what you're going against, you know, is pretty it can be can be pretty interesting. You know, and then you get into the what I consider kind of the real cool stuff which is the ability to air drop this kind of stuff in the different places. So now, you know, you think about force projection, you know, the ability for us to get in somewhere and use some of this technology the other way. So the defense of this, you know, there's there's a lot of defensive systems out there, and this has been an area that there's there's I call it the, the glossy brochure area. There's a lot of companies out there that have come up with cool, you know, cool glossy brochures on how it works.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 31:52

And then there's some that have come up with some really, you know, absolutely proven systems that are out there that are in use today. But as usual, you know, in the on the military defense side, we tend to completely overcomplicate everything. Right? And we make the, you know, we make the $10,000,000 thing to take out the $1,000 thing. So that there is a lot of that going up.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 32:11

There are a lot of defensive systems is what I'm saying. And we are, you know, now with these these new threats, it does takes that, you know, that poke in the chest for the US to get going sometimes in these areas. But there are there are a lot of defenses. I don't wanna make it sound like there aren't defenses for this stuff. There is a ton of things in the industries just ramping up big time, all sorts of different capabilities.

Ken Miller: 32:30

What are some of the most exciting technologies you see just generally in terms of defensive technology is it more on the we talk a lot in at AOC here you know the HPM front or laser technology, or is it more in the still in the radio frequency, or is it more in the form of fires? What what are some of the technology that you think goes, like, this is this could be game changing if we ever are able to field it.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 32:54

Well, right. And and, well, I mean, there there are systems out there that are fielded and and a lot of them, quite a few of them. The the different systems are again, we try to over complicate this. We try to make one system that does absolutely everything. Right?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 33:06

I mean, that's kinda the the standard problem we run into all the time, you know, like we've seen with aircraft over the years and everything else. We try to, to make, you know, we have it comes out as a specific, specific role, but we end up adding everything to them. Well, the same kind of thing for this is the the to take out a small consumer drone isn't that hard. Taking out something that is hardened with on the military side or something is more difficult. So you're gonna have systems that have different capabilities against these.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 33:33

But, yeah, you hit the nail on the head. You know, these aircraft, they use GNSS. K. So they're using, you know, they're using, you know, GPS and and multiple foreign systems. You know, now you'll you'll start one of these aircraft up.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 33:45

It used to be you had, you know, 6 GPS satellites. Well, now you have, you know, what do we have to the day? We are flying an albatross which is applied aeronautics. Interesting test. We're flying, right away rules.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 33:56

Big fixed wing drone against the helicopter. We're doing live flights with this. Pretty interesting. But anyway, that came up. Typically, we had 32 satellites with it.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 34:04

So we're not just to be able to say GPS. Well, it's not GPS anymore. It's, it's the whole other countries. It's Russia's glowness. It's, Baydoo.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 34:11

It's all these different, these different systems that are out there now, and these drones are using all those. So it's not just we're just not jamming GPS. But my point being here that there is the capability to jam those, and those typically, you know, are extremely low, powered powered systems. So the ability to jam that is great, but now we're got the point where a lot of these autopilots are able to navigate via acceleration. So they're still able to get a pretty good idea where they're going based on acceleration just like the old nurse navigation units that that we've had in the military forever.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 34:42

It's measuring acceleration. So now you're having that capability. So does it actually need to have GPS or GNSS or not? Most of them still do of the, the smaller stuff. So there's capability to take that out.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 34:53

Anytime you do that, though, what are you taking out of your own? So you think about if if you're getting attacked with a swarm, you have to put something out fairly high energy to take care of all these, to get rid of all these aircraft. If you're talking about a single or a few, you have a lane now you can do things on. So there's different there's gotta be different levels of that, of that defense. You know, I could talk about it anything.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 35:14

The high powered microwave is is that's my favorite. I did a bunch of work on that about, boy, 20 years ago with the the research labs out there and, very interesting capabilities with that. And that has the the capability to get to not just disrupt the signals that are coming off, but actually disrupt, you know, what's really going on inside the inside the electronics of the aircraft. So there are all those all those things we've talked about. Those are all different capabilities.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 35:40

Then you talk about GPS spoofing. GNS spoofing might be something to do that do in there. There's just all sorts of defensive, possibilities. And, of course, you have in the end game, my my favorite, is the shotgun.

Ken Miller: 35:55

So now you've been how how long have you been at Embry Riddle University?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 36:00

I've been full time full time faculty for about 10 years now.

Ken Miller: 36:03

10 years. So, I mean, I think most of our listeners will probably have an idea of what Embry Riddle University, Aeronautical University is and its role a global leader in kind of you know education in in this field. To to kind of wrap up our conversation I wanna talk a little bit about the manpower side the training side one of the initiatives in the AOC that we are focusing on is helping establish a talent pipeline in electromagnetic spectrum operations and obviously when we talk about small UAS systems and our our the technology that we're putting out there to to defend against it or to or to, have superiority in that area we need the talented people behind that coming from through the services, through private education, through places like Embry Riddle University. As a professor there, could you talk a little bit about maybe the the the growing challenge or the continuing challenge of making sure that we have that talent pipeline so that we have the people in the right places making the decisions on this technology?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 37:04

Yeah. That's a great question. You know, these, my wife always reminds me of this whenever I get get, a little peeved about some of the decisions that are that are being made. And she always reminds me that universities are businesses. It's no different.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 37:17

You know, the university is a business. And if something isn't going to bring in more students in that, then it's not gonna it's you're not gonna do it. So, my point with that is that a lot times are things that you and I might think are absolutely critical that needs to be done. We need to have training and and education in these areas. But universities, you know, again, just as a whole are gonna look at and go, yeah, how many students is that gonna bring in?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 37:42

You know, is that really something that we wanna go down that? Is it really time for that? You know, what's the timing? So that's a good that's a question there. A conversation I have all the time is about timing.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 37:51

And and when do we increase the capabilities as far as UAS? And it's it's really interesting because as, you know, we're pretty much the the biggest, the oldest, university out there that's dedicated aerospace. But trying to get people to understand that UAS and autonomous systems, whether it's, you know, cargo planes, whether it's, you know, SpaceX, totally, you know, autonomous launches and everything going on. That is the future of aviation. And, you know, as flyers, you know, and aviators, we sit here and go, I really don't like that.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 38:24

And that's fine. But it it's the future, and we have to accept that. So a lot of my conversations and my point here is a lot of my conversations that I have is about that point. We are not gonna be doing flight training. So we do a lot of flight training, you know, at Embry Riddle down at our Prescott campus at Daytona Beach.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 38:39

We have Cessnas and and DA 40 twos down there where we do all over the flight training. Matter of fact, I think somebody once said about a quarter of the, the pilots out there in the US have have a degree or have spent some time at Embry Riddle. So anyway, at what point in time do we start changing that and getting into the UAS side? And it it's slow to change. But anyway, you know, getting back to to, your your kinda your question is where where is that?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 39:03

Again, there's kind of an issue with university. A lot of times we'll go and, you'll get somebody who has a degree in coding, software engineering, whatever it might be. They might not know much about artificial intelligence coding and all that. And that has to be, you know, that that's follow on training wherever they wherever they go. So kind of the problem we have and and, you know, Microsoft and Intel have both kinda run into this is that the universities aren't producing coders and and people as fast as as they need them.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 39:30

So they've come up with their own academies. They have their own places where they train people for what they want. And, you know, that's kind of the landscape that we have right now is the need for that is so high and a lot of the universities just aren't producing it. Now having said that, you know, we have degrees in UAS, engineering and technology. You know, we we have all of our degrees are focused somehow on aerospace.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 39:51

So we have a lot of these, lot of these degrees. We have we have them, you know, in a lot of the intelligence side of things and and, and applied that way. So we have a lot of these things, but there's there is a big gap between where this is going and what, you know, universities are actually, actually putting out. And a really interesting thing that's happening right now just as far as the flight and the use of UAS in general, not talking about, you know, way up high-tech tech but is the community college side. So we're partners with several community colleges across the US and they are really, you know, teaching the user capabilities of this stuff to to a lot of their students.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 40:29

So, anyway, the workforce development side, but a lot of that as far as the flight part of that is going on in the community colleges. But then that AI and that a lot of that, you know, there's a few universities out there that do quite a bit of that, but it's just it's just not enough. And that's where, again, that's where everything's going. So that's what that's what we need to get to.

Ken Miller: 40:47

Yeah. You hit on the the key point, and the idea is is the demand from a people side there strong enough for a university to really invest in this. Do you think as a professor at a university, we are doing enough beef, you know, in secondary education, elementary, high school on up to prepare students for what the universities need in this area in terms of experience with coding and an an understanding of the sciences stem, aspects of EMS and so so forth so that they can even make a decision. I went to college. I went to grad school.

Ken Miller: 41:22

You're always a little bit behind the curve in terms of what you're really aware of what you need for your own self. So you're you're trying to make decisions in college. You don't know what the world is like. So how can what can we do? What what can the universities do in partnership maybe with the government or however to kind of push that down a little bit more into the educational area, the the secondary education?

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 41:44

You're starting to jump in a topic that would probably be good for another another podcast. But but, you sure

Ken Miller: 41:48

it will be. But I I thought I'd t I I tease it with you a little bit here.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 41:52

Yeah. No. Absolutely. But, you know, I think you you asked, are we preparing for students for this, you know, the middle school, high school area? And the answer is absolutely not.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 42:00

I mean, absolutely not. I'm involved quite a bit with, local schools around here. And frankly, you know, we have the ability to go into a school and do dual enrollment where I can go and I can teach a class, a 100, 211 class to the students, and they're actually getting college credit for it. Schools aren't interested in that. They're trying to survive right now is is basically what I'm seeing.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 42:20

And the the interesting things that could be thrown in there just aren't anymore. You know, matter of fact, just general state of of the education today in the public schools, we have where I live, probably all about 50% of the students go on to college because the other ones have learned, you know, things in the trades that they're doing. Unfortunately, our high school had a great, auto shop, a great metal shop and wood shop, and all that's closed now because of, for several reasons. But basically, don't have the budget, to operate it and the liabilities and things like that are too high. So we've taken a lot of things out of the schools and I don't think we're teaching the things that, you know, are the future.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 43:00

So what really makes it frustrating is when you talk to the students, they are really excited about you. Talk to them about, hey, this capability AI to do this blah blah blah. They are extremely excited. But trying to get that back into the front end of the education system is difficult. You know, it's state by state.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 43:16

Don't get me wrong. There's some states that are doing a very good job at this kind of stuff. Personally, where I'm at, it's not good. So we need to do a lot more in those areas in order to, to excite students about it and get them interested in some of these things. Because, again, that technology is it's gonna be everywhere.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 43:31

It's like it's like, you know, 40 years ago when computers first started being, in the schools. You there's a lot of people that push back and says, why in the world do we need to have a computer in the school? You know, and now you just kinda, you know, you kinda laugh at it. It's the kind of, you know, a little bit of a a Monday night, quarterback in there. But still, I mean, it's it's the same thing with this technology, with AI, with all this.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 43:53

It's the future and we need to embrace that and it needs to be taught in, all the different places at all the different levels because, you know, we're we're getting behind the world right now as far as our education and what we're doing with our students. And, we're gonna continue to fall behind if we don't make some changes here.

Ken Miller: 44:08

Well, I think that is excellent observation and charge for for our community as we move forward in this area. And so with that, I, you know, I wanna thank you for taking time to join me here on from the crow's nest. This is a great conversation. I I it's one of those topics that we could probably continue on, and I'll spare you because I know it's it's just day breakout where you're at and, but we could keep going because everything touches on this in some way. So there there's no there's no limited tangential issue, to talk about, but I appreciate you taking the the time this morning to, join me here on from the.

Dr. David Thirtyacre: 44:43

Yeah. Absolutely, Ken. This is like you said, these are great conversations, and they're the conversations that that that need to happen. And, unfortunately, they're not happening in a lot of places, so it's great that you're bringing this out to, to, the old crows and everything. This is, this is some some some conversations that, a lot of people need to hear.

Ken Miller: 45:00

Well, hopefully, we'll continue to have those conversations here on on the podcast. It's a it's a great forum to kind of start to peel back some of those layers on that. So I really appreciate your support. You bet. Anytime, Ken.

Ken Miller: 45:11

That will conclude this episode of From the Crow's Nest. I wanna thank my guest, doctor David Thirtyaker, for joining me. Again, if you're an AOC member, look for an email with more information on how to join the recording of our next bonus subscription episode next week. If you're not an AOC member, you can still access that episode when it is released on Wednesday. Also, please take a moment to review, share, and follow our show.

Ken Miller: 45:35

We always enjoy hearing from our listeners, so please let us know how we're doing. That's it for today. Thanks for listening.