The United States Department of Transportation has selected Chula Vista as one of 10 states, local and tribal governments as participants in the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration pilot program.
The White House’s initiative partners the Federal Aviation Administration with local, state and tribal governments, which then partner with private sector participants to safely explore the further integration of drone operations.
Other selected sites are: Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Durant, Oklahoma
San Diego
Virginia Tech Center for Innovative Technology, Herndon, Virginia
Kansas Department of Transportation, Topeka, Kansas
Lee County Mosquito Control District, Ft. Myers, Florida
Shelby County Airport Authority, Memphis, Tennessee
North Carolina Department of Transportation, Raleigh, North Carolina
North Dakota Department of Transportation, Bismarck, North Dakota
City of Reno, Nevada
University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska
Chula Vista’s test site is on a small portion of the 375 acres reserved for a future university and innovation district.
“While we wait for the university to get built out, the city of Chula Vista has allowed this site to be used for drone testing,” said Cindy Gompper Graves, president and CEO of the South County Economic Development Council.
She said Chula Vista applied to be a testing site two years ago and even had its location inspected by the secretary of commerce.
The U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration evaluated 149 proposals according to the requirements outlined in a screening information request.
Chula Vista allows companies like Action Drones to come to the site and test the sensors of the drones, not the drones themselves, Gompper Graves said.
Chula Vista-based Action Drone started when CEO Darryl Anunciado moved from Point Loma to Chula Vista. He said he was bored one day and started building stuff using radio controlled parts.
Then one day he built a radio-controlled airplane and posted videos on Facebook. He immediately got requests from people wanting to buy the planes.
He said the company took off from there. He started reading and learning more about drones and created his company, Action Drone.
Then the company started building drones for Siemens and worked with Boeing.
Currently, Anunciado said, the company is in discussion with the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Navy as potential clients.
“The drone industry is still relatively new,” he said. “When we started there were no instructions, we had to learn on our own. Then we got to point where we got really good at making the drones that we were able to sell them for an actual profit.”
He said Chula Vista makes a good testing site because there is no interference with airports and there is always good weather for testing.
Gompper Graves said having Chula Vista as an official department of transportation site could be a big financial opportunity for the city.
“What we’re hoping to do is look at this as an economic opportunity,” Gompper Graves said. “Whether it is to help Action Drone take their company to the next level, get more contracts and keep those jobs in Chula Vista or whether we’re looking at other companies coming to Chula Vista coming here to test the technology and building the region up as a UAV hub,” she said.
According to the Department of Transportation, the potential economic benefit of integrating unmanned aerial systems in the nation’s airspace is estimated at $82 billon and could create 100,000 jobs.
