thing up in the air; within minutes of arrival they’re getting footage immediately and can get that back to the leadership at the unit.” Post-hurricane responses can use drones to assess damage in the affected areas and around the local port without needing to use a flight crew, saving the aircraft and crew for instances when a full Coast Guard rescue is definitely needed. Facilities inspections can be done with software mapping, rendering a 3D image of the facility for an inspection. Hill said this new technology may even make it possible to inspect buoys and towers. Some units are beginning to employ their short range UAS in support of search and rescue cases, aerially scanning the local waters for missing boaters. “I say ‘everything,’ but I actually mean it,” said Hill. “The applications are pretty endless for the Coast Guard.” Depending on the mission and the location, the range of technology can be dizzying, and the Coast Guard is still identifying and testing out its workhorses in the fledgling program. But Hill foresees a time in the very, very near future when the service will have a range of options to tailor its response. “I want to operate this like a golf bag,” said Hill. “Right now, we have a 5 iron, but we’re using it for driving, putting, everything. We’re working toward having an entire golf bag of these things that can do all sorts of missions, polar operations, inspections, AI-driven search and rescues… the technology is out there.” Reservists are among those testing the technology—both those embedded as part of “blue-guard” units and also those at port security units around the country. (Hill said the PSU mission and deployments to foreign countries will have an additional layer of rules and regulations, depending on the agreements between the U.S. and the host nation.) But some reservists are bringing skills from interactions using the technology at their civilian jobs, notably with DoD and local police departments. In fact, Hill said he communicates often with other partner agencies within the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense to leverage their knowledge. Agencies like Border Patrol, FBI, DEA and ATF have developed the use of this technology and have authored many policies governing it. Last December, the Coast Guard worked with the Navy 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59 to launch an aerial drone from the Coast Guard Cutter Emlen Tunnell, a fast response cutter forward- deployed to Bahrain. The launch was done as part of Digital Horizon, a three-week event focused on integrating new unmanned and artificial intelligence platforms. It would be an understatement to say the pace of learning and adaptation is breakneck right now. The technology is so new and, simultaneously, so crucial to operating at the speed at which the world is moving. The training, the research and development, and the policy changes are all being researched, built, developed and executed in a cycle. A sequence of unmanned aerial assistance in Coast Guard operations. From planning, to deployment, to detection, to surveillance, unmanned systems are a low-cost alternative to responding units for visuals and information to enhance mission capabilities and mitigate tragedies. 24 RESERVIST . Issue 2 • 2023 CELEBRATING CELEBRATING 70 70 YEARS OF THE RESERVIST YEARS OF THE RESERVIST
