Vigilant Aerospace Highlights Onboard DAA and Airspace Management Deployments at UAS Summit & Expo 2026

I am going to make a presentation that is really about the operationalization of a lot of these concepts. So I’m really excited to do this. This is just a small fraction of what we’re working on. But it’s an opportunity for you to see some of these concepts in the field.

And I’m going to tell you a little bit, first of all, about the company, just a little bit of background. I’m going to talk about our onboard detect-and-avoid system that is designed for small UAS, primarily Groups 2, 3 and 4. Occasionally it can go on a Group 1 or 2. I’m going to talk about a couple of projects using ground-based detect-and-avoid systems and airspace management, particularly ahead of Part 108 and Part 146. As Lisa mentioned, I was on the aviation rulemaking committee that helped to draft those rules. And then I’ll talk about a large project that we’re doing in Oklahoma right now, which is very exciting, primarily focused on large UAS, and then finally announce a couple of programs that we have where you all can get involved, which is the thing that I’m most excited about for this presentation.

So a little bit of background about us. I’ll go through this very quickly. So we say we’re the leading independent provider. We provide a detect-and-avoid system, either onboard or ground-based, that can be adopted and adapted for any number of aircraft of different sizes and platforms. This is based on two NASA patents that we licensed. It’s based on years of research, contracts with FAA, who’s very generous in supporting our research, contracts with NASA and contracts with the Air Force in order for us to develop this system.

It is designed to follow the standards to allow it to be used in a variety of operations, primarily for small UAS, and then follow a 44807 exemption process for large UAS as that develops. It is designed for both UAS and advanced air mobility, which is really where we’re seeing a lot of growth. FlightHorizon is the family name of that product, and so I’ll talk about that a little bit. It has been used really in projects with NASA, the FAA, and the Air Force.

So this is what the user interface looks like, and I show this primarily so that I can explain very quickly what the thinking is that’s going on in the software behind the scenes. So we’re a software company. We integrate with a variety of pieces of hardware off the shelf, including the DeTect radars. They have a booth here, so I encourage you to go look at some of their equipment.

This system is tracking well clear, so you’ll see the small white aircraft with the cylinder around it. That yellow is a well-clear distance, similar to some of the things that Marcus was talking about. In this case, it’s using FAA standard algorithms and it’s providing a warning on that. So the system is constantly tracking using transponders and in many cases other sensors like radars, calculates those trajectories in under a second and then provides those warnings.

So we have four variations I’ll mention very quickly. FlightHorizon TEMPO is the large ground-based version that’s intended for usually multiple radars, fully cloud hosted. FlightHorizon PILOT is the onboard system, and I’ll show you some pictures of that. FlightHorizon DEFENDER is a portable, backpackable counter-UAS system with a small radar that was supported by the Air Force for development. And then FlightHorizon ALERT is our new, very low-cost small airport and critical infrastructure protection system, single node, monthly cost, that is using all this technology but at a much lower cost.

So I’m going to show you a little bit of information on our onboard system. We’re very excited about this. This is something that emerged from the NASA patents and a lot of development we’ve done. We usually have one or two small radars. So you can see in this diagram we have integration to the autopilot. And then we have transponder receivers. And all that information is used in our software to then provide this constant monitoring process and to be able to send to the ground control station or to our own display warnings about what air traffic might cause a loss of well clearance. So it’s constantly calculating that.

Here’s some of our real equipment. We fly this equipment and this is the actual setup that we use. These, again, are for usually Group 3 and larger aircraft.

So this is a system that we developed for the Air Force Research Lab. These are some pictures of how those two radars are used on board in the software so that we can track aircraft that are going across that field of regard. This is an actual screenshot from the software running with radars, pulling in data from targets that are being flown in front of those radars.

This is one of our test platforms. This is our NDAA-compliant but low-cost test platform so we can fly radars around. Huge amounts of tuning and algorithmic work that we’ve had to do to make that operational. And we’re very excited about that. But we also have additional more advanced systems for larger UAS.

The whole system is really designed for fixed-wing because it’s using ACAS X, which some of you may know about. That is essentially the successor to TCAS, and that allows the aircraft to create those avoidance maneuvers and follow those to have kind of a least disruptive flight.

We actually have two national law enforcement agencies that have evaluated these products and have adopted this for their growing fleets to provide safety as they begin to fly larger UAS Groups 2, 3 and 4 aircraft for national response, emergency response and other uses.

This is our viewer for this. So on the ground, it has automatic onboard capabilities, but you can also see here it’s actually able to display the field of regard of that radar and show you exactly what the system is seeing onboard and exactly what warnings it’s receiving and what it’s planning to do so that if you want to, you can have a pilot in the loop and go ahead and take those warnings.

We also have ground-based systems. So this is a system that we’ve deployed. This is FlightHorizon TEMPO. We have a partnership with UND Aerospace that we started early ’25. And this is a real picture of that system using one of UND Aerospace’s radars to track aircraft around Gorman Field, not far from here, where UND Aerospace and Paul Snyder’s group of UAS programs do a lot of their testing. So we were very excited to do that.

We’ve recently had some additional opportunities to collaborate with UND Aerospace and provide some capabilities. So we have a common operating picture. We’re integrating the radar. We’re integrating ADS-B. We have built-in baseline detect-and-avoid as a critical part of everything we do. So we’re doing those calculations all the time. We’re able to track all of that traffic and then be able to support beyond visual line of sight and education and research for UND Aerospace.

Recently in April, we took the system out to Camp Grafton, had it running there as well. And there are a lot of partners in that exercise. We’re able to bring the capabilities on the trailer and demonstrate that. And then just a few days ago, we completed another. This is a picture of that display in the trailer that was flown in April.

And then in September, we also had a system in Williston where we supported UND Aerospace in one of their training exercises, particularly working on emergency response and providing this fielded system to pull that data in from their radar and allow them to be able to see all of this on a single screen with that baseline detect-and-avoid and tracking of the aircraft.

We also have another project. This is in western Oklahoma at the Infinity One Spaceport. So we’re proud of this. This is a large area, low altitude surveillance system. So it’s to support both autonomous spacecraft and development of mostly Groups 3, 4 and 5 military aircraft. This is an operationalization of this system where you’re pulling in radar data from multiple radars across the state of Oklahoma and pulling that into the cloud with lots of redundancies, redundant power, redundant satellite, fiber optic connections, and creating that same airspace picture with that same detect-and-avoid as a baseline function.

So this is a picture, this is actually a live picture that we took of the system operating, tracking traffic. We have monitoring systems in place at multiple locations across the U.S., so we are certain that our radars are always working, that our servers are always working.

The system is expanding dramatically. It’s covering, capable of covering about 24,000 square kilometers right now if all of the radars were turned on and put edge to edge. But obviously there’s some overlap, but it will provide a large operating area for large, particularly military, UAS and spacecraft to be able to launch at that facility.

And we have a very ambitious program that the Oklahoma Department of Aerospace and Aeronautics, which owns and operates this system, is working on. So we’ll be excited over the next year to see how that goes. Again, it has all these baseline functions built in, and that’s a real picture of those radars running right there.

So there is an ability to do logging and reporting. That’s something I haven’t really mentioned. But that’s built in so that all of this data is continuously kept. This allows us to quickly support regulatory filings, waiver and exemption requests, and to be able to track incidents, learn from those. And that’s an important function across all of our systems.

Finally, I’m going to talk about three programs that we are very eager to have you participate in. The first is with FlightHorizon PILOT. We have a UAS OEM program. We are looking for UAS manufacturers who would like to try, test out our onboard detect-and-avoid system. We have a few of those partners that we’re going to be announcing soon, and we’re really excited about that.

If you would like the system to be an option, out of the factory for your users to have an onboard DAA system that is being adopted by, for example, national law enforcement agencies, then this would be something we would be eager to talk with you about.

We also have our FlightHorizon ALERT system, which uses the same technology, but without a radar to make a very low cost single sensor node that can go into the field at critical infrastructure. We have data centers. We have small airports that are using systems like this.

And then finally, FlightHorizon TEMPO. So if you have a program, a facility, we are talking to facilities not at the same scale, for example, as what’s going on in western Oklahoma. It doesn’t have to be that big. We are able to bring this system out. We’re able to show it to you.

We’d be happy to host you and have you come look at what we’re doing at any of these locations. We do have work here in Grand Forks, and we’d be happy to, I’m sure, talk with you about that or host you in Western Oklahoma and talk with you about your facility or program.

So please feel free to get in touch. Here’s our contact information, and we’d be happy to talk with you in any of these capacities. Thank you.