REMOTE-SPLIT OPERATIONS

Last year, I flew a small uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) in Idaho. I’ll be the first to admit that doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment, until you learn that I was 300 miles away in Portland, Oregon at the time. That same day, my Embry-Riddle colleagues in Florida, Texas, and Hawaii each took a turn at the controls. This was made possible by the Internet, of course, but also a type of flying called Remote-Split Operations (RSO).

RSO is frequently employed by the military to conduct operations with its larger UAS, like the MQ-9 Reaper and the RQ-4 Global Hawk, but it remains relatively unknown among civilian UAS pilots. However, that is likely to change as RSO opens up new possibilities for students, researchers and others who need access to drones and the unique capabilities that they provide but cannot be physically present where and when the flight is occurring.

BORN IN BATTLE

“As far as the military goes, RSO really became mainstream in the 1990s,” according to Dr. David Thirtyacre, the chair of the Department of Flight at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide Campus. “The basic idea here is that there is geographic separation between the Mission Control Element (MCE) and the Launch and Recovery Element (LRE).”