Range of terrain, climate secured Alaska as drone test site

[unhappycamper]

http://www.adn.com/2014/01/19/3281632/range-of-terrain-climate-secured.html

Range of terrain, climate secured Alaska as drone test site
By ELWOOD BREHMER
Alaska Journal of Commerce
January 19, 2014

When the Federal Aviation Administration approved the University of Alaska's proposal to be an unmanned aircraft systems test site Dec. 30, it also approved areas of Hawaii and Oregon, where the university has test range locations.

Ro Bailey is deputy director for the Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the director of the test sites, which will be known as the Pan-Pacific UAS Test Range Complex. Bailey said the university center has partners in Oregon and Hawaii beyond the agreements for range locations and that the Pan-Pacific name is meant to best describe the full range of areas available for testing.

"It's not just about our strategic sites," Bailey said. "It's about all that water that's in between, which gives the opportunity to do some types of test operations that would be more risky than you would want to do over land -- very high speed, very high altitude testing for example."

Additionally, the locations outside Alaska give the complex members the option to test unmanned aircraft systems, or UAS, in nearly all climates and terrains, from the tropics to high-Arctic regions.