K-State Salina Hosts First Responder Drone Summit in April

Kansas State University Salina is bringing together law enforcement, fire departments, and emergency management agencies for a full day of drone education and hands-on demonstrations on April 22, connecting public safety professionals with UAS experts, FAA representatives, and the vendors building the hardware they’re already flying in the field, as reported by The Salina Post.

The Public Safety UAS Summit runs from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Crisis City Regional Training Center in Salina, costs $80 to attend including lunch, and registration closes April 8.

Who’s Presenting and What They’re Covering

The program is built around practitioners who have actually used drones in the situations they’re describing, which separates this from the kind of conference where vendors talk at rooms full of people who drove two hours to watch PowerPoint slides.

The FAA kicks things off with a practical session covering Part 107 questions, BVLOS operations, emergency waivers, and where the regulatory landscape is heading.

Karen Miller, FAA aviation safety technician, and Rick Stevens, FAA team program manager, are presenting. If you’ve ever filed for an emergency waiver at 11 p.m. because your sheriff needed to fly over a search area at first light, these are the people worth getting face time with.

Deputies Adam Luke and Mike Wittrock of the Story County, Iowa, Sheriff’s Office cover large-event drone response, drawing on their department’s direct operational experience deploying UAS at events where crowd size, airspace complexity, and the need to not crash a drone into several thousand people simultaneously all become active concerns at once.

Story County’s UAS program has become one of the more referenced examples of practical public safety drone integration in the Midwest, and the session will include the kind of hard-won advice that doesn’t make it into the press releases.

Captain Curtis Weber from the Lenexa Police Department addresses why more cities are integrating drone technology as a standing capability rather than a special-request asset. Lenexa is one of the more advanced municipal drone programs in Kansas, and Weber’s presentation focuses on the operational case rather than the technology pitch, which is the right order to present those things in.

Deputy Jason Grubbs, also from Story County, covers drone deployment in active shooter situations. This is the session that will be standing room only.

The use of drones in active threat scenarios has moved from experimental to operational at departments around the country, and firsthand accounts of what actually works, what the legal questions are, and what the officers running the drone saw on screen are exactly the information gaps that hold other departments back from moving faster.

The Vendor Floor

Hands-on demonstrations are scheduled from four companies: Unmanned Vehicle Technologies, Motorola Solutions, BRINC, and SkySafe. Each brings a meaningfully different piece of the public safety UAS stack.

BRINC makes the LEMUR 2, the indoor tactical drone specifically designed for hostage situations, active threats, and any scenario where a law enforcement officer would otherwise have to open a door without knowing what’s on the other side. The LEMUR 2 fits under a door, carries two-way audio for crisis negotiation, and has been deployed at real incidents by real departments. Seeing it demonstrated at a training center in Salina is more useful than reading about it online.

SkySafe builds the RF-based drone detection and mitigation platform used by airports, stadiums, and government facilities to identify unauthorized drones and, in authorized deployments, force them to land or return home. For a public safety audience, the detection side of their demonstration is immediately applicable.

Motorola Solutions brings its broader public safety integration platform, which increasingly includes drone data feeds connected to dispatch and command systems. UVT rounds out the vendor floor as a full-service drone program provider for law enforcement.

DroneXL’s Take

I’ll be direct: the most valuable hour at this summit will not be any of the presentations. It will be lunch.

The presentations will be good. The FAA session alone is worth the $80 registration if you have BVLOS questions that have been sitting unanswered for three months.

But the room at Crisis City on April 22 is going to contain people who have flown drones at active shooter scenes, large public events, and search operations in Iowa and Kansas, and those people will answer your specific question about your specific situation in a way that no webinar or certification course can replicate.

K-State Salina has quietly built one of the more credible UAS training programs for public safety in the country. This summit is their annual opportunity to connect the people they’ve trained with the people who are still deciding whether to build a program at all.

If you’re a first responder in the region who has been watching drone programs at other departments and wondering how they actually work on the ground, April 22 in Salina is where that question gets answered. Registration closes April 8. Bring your BVLOS waiver questions and your appetite because lunch is included and someone at that table has been where you’re trying to go.

Photo credit: Kansas State Salina, BRINC.