On February 15, 2019, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) publicly announced the State of Nevada as an award recipient for the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) Technical Capability Level (TCL) 4 operation. This involved Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) flying in high-density urban areas for tasks such as news gathering, package delivery, first responder support and large-scale contingency mitigation.

Drone America was selected as the lead integration and flight team for this historic event. This honor marked the third time Drone America has participated in the TCL program with previous participation in TCL’s 2 and 3.

During TCL4 Drone America completed over 600 beyond visual line of sight flights in the greater Reno metropolitan area, marking a first in aviation history for the United States. Flight operations were conducted from March 2019 through May 2019 and took place in three locations, including rural, sub-urban and high-density urban environments.

Our flight and integration teams faced and overcame several daunting challenges. TCL4 missions included rooftop to rooftop, rooftop to ground and ground to rooftop flights with most seeing our team control three simultaneous aircraft from different locations. Several of these missions also featured multiple remote autonomous take off and landings along with the complexities of live air traffic coordination with three other flight teams.

The majority of the flights were conducted within ATC controlled airspace and took place during all types of weather conditions, from high heat and winds to rain and even snow.

Drone America is proud to have worked alongside the city of Reno, the state of Nevada, the FAA, NASA, TCL4 technology partners and our nation’s first responders during TCL4. Our flight experiences in the field and integration efforts in the lab enabled us to design, manufacture, integrate and fly missions that helped test emerging communications, avionics, air traffic management and detect an avoid technologies from several leading companies. The successful contributions made by Drone America during TCL 2, TCL 3 and TCL4 have helped shape the landscape of UAS integration into the national airspace.