Sunhillo South Jersey UAS Emergency Management Exercise

Emergency Management UAS Exercise

On June 23rd, 2021 Sunhillo Corporation participated in the South Jersey Emergency Management UAS exercise to promote the benefits unmanned aircraft can provide to New Jersey during a natural disaster such as a hurricane.  Participants included: Atlantic County and Cape May County Offices of Emergency Management (OEM), National Aviation Research and Technology Park (NARTP), N.J. State Police UAS Unit, the NJ Regional Incident Operations Center (RIOC), US Coast Guard, FAA, NASA, among others including industry partners.

UAS Mobile Operations Command Center and ADS-B

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) can be valuable tools in emergency response. They accelerate response and increase the safety of first responders and people in distress. With regulatory approval for routine BVLOS UAS operations in the National Airspace System (NAS) emerging as a near-term priority, the use of UAS in real world disaster response has become a real prospect. For this exercise American Aerospace’s long endurance AiRanger UAS was flown, and a chase plane was utilized as a visual observer.  The aircraft was flown throughout Cape May county with its mission to inspect the coastline, roadways, and bridges coming into Cape May. Having first-hand knowledge of area’s affected by a natural disaster can assist first responders by providing information like debris blocking roadways or bridges, flooded regions, survivors in distress and more potential life saving information. With this knowledge first responders can better prepare how to reach people safely and will inevitably save lives.  

Sunhillo’s primary role in the operation was to provide situational awareness of manned and unmanned aircraft to the simulated NJ ROIC, EOC, and flight operations team.   Sunhillo Surveillance, UAS and ADS-B equipment were located at the Woodbine airport and at the simulated ROIC and EOC which were represented at the NARTP facility. 

Located onsite at the Woodbine airport, Sunhillo set up our Margate II ADS-B receiver and antenna which was hoisted up above the UAS Mobile Operations Center (MOC). The ADS-B receiver was able to view ADS-B equipped aircraft out past Philadelphia and all the way down below Washington D.C. Utilizing Sunhillo’s Surveillance Monitoring System (SMS) display, the ADS-B provide a clear picture of local aircraft for situational awareness to the ROIC and the UAS flight ops team.  Sunhillo’s SMS fed the display located onsite at Woodbine and simultaneously to the NARTP for display at the simulated ROIC.

Sunhillo’s UAS-Connector (UAS-C) was a key component to the exercise providing tracking of the unmanned aircraft performing the surveillance of the Cape May area.  The UAS-C is connected directly to the UAS Ground Control Station (GCS) and utilizes the C2 link which is translated by the UAS-C to track the aircraft without ADS-B or Radar.  The UAS-C can then feed the SMS Display which can display the unmanned aircraft alongside the manned aircraft giving everyone a ubiquitous situational awareness picture.   The attendees to the event at the ROIC where able to see the UAS as well as the chase plane and other manned aircraft.  This provides increased safety and situational awareness of local aircraft. 

Regional Operations & Intelligence Command Center at NARTP

Celebrating our 30th Anniversary, Sunhillo Corporation, an ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified company, has been providing products, services and expertise to the FAA, US DOD, Air Traffic Control (ATC) industry, and Air Traffic Management (ATM) partners worldwide. Sunhillo has become the preferred provider of surveillance data distribution products, services and systems to the FAA, the U.S. DOD, and civilian ATM providers across the globe. Sunhillo Corporation also provides hardware and software engineering, second level engineering support, test and evaluation services. Sunhillo Corporation has provided UAS products and solutions for over five years and has performed live flight operations for NASA’s UTM Task orders with a FAA UAS Test Site.

For additional information on Sunhillo, please visit www.sunhillo.com.

Contact information:

Address: 444 Kelley Drive, West Berlin, NJ 08091

Phone: 1 (856) 767-7676

Email: sales@sunhillo.com

Sunhillo Media Contact:

Doug Walczak

dwalczak@sunhillo.com

Sunhillo Solutions

Providing surveillance data distribution and conversion solutions to the FAA, DOD, and civil aviation authorities worldwide since 1991

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