The Civil Air Patrol’s North Central Region held its regional small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) training exercise in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, bringing together nearly 20 members from five of the seven states in the region.
South Dakota Wing, Civil Air Patrol, is supporting an effort by Swiss drone manufacturer Wingtra to develop “human recognition” software to search for missing people on the ground. SD Wing is the first unit in CAP to have photos processed with the Beta version of this new software.
During the recent AE weekend in Onida, 14 cadets from six SD Wing squadrons earned their Cadet sUAS badges.
South Dakota Wing, CAP, has been assigned the newest Uncrewed Aerial System (UAS or drone) by CAP’s National Headquarters. The X10D is the latest military-grade UAS produced by Skydio, a US based company. It has the most advanced IR camera on the market today and the company boasts that the color camera will zoom to 160 times a normal image.
FEMA praised SD Wing for the quality of its drone photography after responding to a call for aerial imaging after deadly tornados in Iowa in May. Iowa Wing requested support from the South Dakota drone (UAS) team. A FEMA official said the Wingtra results were the best UAS imagery they've ever seen from Civil Air Patrol, yielding a resolution of less than two inches per photo pixel.
Civil Air Patrol’s South Dakota Wing flew aircraft and drone photography surveys over Ellsworth Air Force Base to document the scene where a B-1 crashed on Jan. 4. Acting in its role as the auxiliary of the Air Force, Civil Air Patrol was tasked by the Air Force Interim Safety Board to fly photography surveys around the area of the crash, which happened as the bomber was attempting to land.
CAP members from around the state participated in a training exercise in Pierre. The mission included air visual and electronic (ELT) search, aircraft to ground team communication, and unmanned photography drone 3D building mapping.
Col. Mike Beason, South Dakota Wing Civil Air Patrol (CAP), was invited to be a member of the first national training class for a new category of photography drone aircraft. CAP uses drones, formally known as small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS), for aerial mapping, damage assessment, and missing person searches. CAP’s new hybrid drones take off and land vertically, like a rotary UAS, but fly like a fixed-wing UAS.
Maj. E.W. Filler, of Big Sioux Composite Squadron, spent two weeks at Nellis AFB in Nevada this month, helping active-duty Air Force personnel train for use of remote-sensing drones.
CAP has 2,500 aUAS drones nationally. South Dakota Wing did the first-ever actual CAP SAR mission using a drone. The small drones also great for STEM and Aerospace Education.
