Airspace Situational Awareness - New Concept for Facility Security
/Since 2016, Safeguards Consulting has been tracking the evolution of drone technologies. As a significant technology innovation and disruptor to multiple industries, the role of drones (UAS) is very promising as a tool for hobbyists, commercial organizations, as well as military organizations.
As security advisors, though, our primary concern is the use of drones not only as a security tool, but also as the security threat that they present. With a very agile and fast platform, the drone represents a threat vector that wasn’t likely with manned aircraft (refer to the 2009 NRC Part 73 requirements for nuclear plant aircraft impact) but is very valid with the small inexpensive platforms available today.
In the United States and in many other countries, 'highways' of drone activity will start to emerge as legal authority for commercial operations are granted. This will not only interest and concern the average citizen, but it will also become a regular discussion among executive teams inquiring about safety and security risks. Therefore, the security executive will also need to become educated about legal drone activity versus illegal drone activity and their ability to address this topic.
Even though we originally identified the threat of drones to an ASIS audience eight years ago, many in the industry have championed the need to address this emerging threat. The legal support for drone threats in the United States has been very limited even though this risk has increased exponentially since then as the technology has rapidly advanced.
Therefore, we now see the new need to be observant of what is happening in the sky above our commercial facilities, the concept of "airspace situational awareness" that has been used for manned aircraft over large geographical areas but is now applicable on a smaller scale for commercial properties and metro areas. In short, airspace situational awareness enables organizations and consortiums to monitor the sky above their properties using detection systems and the same information available to air traffic control agencies and pilots.
This capability of observing threats in the sky was not feasible in the 20th century, but with the advent of drone detection solutions (CUAS), and the new emergence of mandated remote identification on drones and future Universal Traffic Management (UTM) solutions, this will be possible in the coming year.
We can combine broadcasted drone identification information with drone detection solutions to give us a picture of what is flying in the sky above our facilities. And with the correlation of those following airspace laws, we can identify 'good' drones versus 'bad' drones.
As with other foundational security concepts, we can then focus our resources on investigating the drones that aren't cooperating with the airspace notification requirements and take the appropriate and legal action of addressing those potential threats with law enforcement and our internal capabilities.
In summary, we are beginning to now have clarity on what security teams in commercial organizations can enact to not only develop counter drone programs but also implement airspace situational awareness capabilities. We are in the process of performing these services for our clients and we look forward to sharing additional knowledge in the future. Please contact us with any related questions.
