GrandSKY

Beyond the Buzz (episode 12) - GrandSKY 

June 18, 2025 

Trevor Woods: Thank you for joining us here for Beyond the Buzz. This is a special anniversary edition of Beyond the Buzz as we celebrate one year of doing this format, and this is our 12th episode. I’m thrilled to be joined by Tom Sawyer, president of Grand Sky. Tom, thank you for being here today to help mark this milestone with us. 

Tom Sawyer: Yeah, congratulations on a year. That’s fantastic. I’m happy to be here. 

Trevor Woods: Tom and I have known each other for a while. The test site and Grand Sky have worked together for a while, so I’m really looking forward to this conversation. We can learn a little more about Grand Sky history in this particular UAS ecosystem and how we’ve worked together. I know a lot about you, Tom, and I know a lot about Grand Sky, but for those of us who are not familiar, can you give us an overview of Grand Sky and, specifically, the uniqueness of what you bring to this UAS ecosystem? 

Tom Sawyer: Sure. That’s a big question. In its simplest form, Grand Sky is a place where we focus on UAS flight operations. We call it the Grand Sky Flight Operations Center. We are physically located on Grand Forks Air Force Base. It’s 217 acres, and we have invested roughly $35 million in infrastructure. That has allowed our tenants, partners, and some other investors to invest almost $160 million in facilities, hangars, office buildings, and things like that to support their UAS-related businesses. 

At its core, Grand Sky is a development in three phases. The first is the physical real estate. You have to have a place, the dirt, so to speak. The second part is infrastructure. We have access to the Air Force base runway. We are supported by the Grand Forks Air Force Base tower. Emergency services are available if needed, thankfully not needed. Then there are the taxiways, ramps, utilities, and all the other things needed to conduct flight operations and run a successful business. 

And then last but not least is airspace. First and foremost, I believe we are airspace developers. We are creating access to airspace in a physical place, specifically at Grand Sky, so companies can come and fly UAS safely and sustainably there. 

Trevor Woods: As you talked about the infrastructure, I can imagine this is probably an area where, when organizations come and want to work with you, they don’t realize how much infrastructure they need until you tell them. Can you add a little more detail? I suspect people think, “I want to go fly an aircraft,” but there’s probably more than meets the eye. 

Tom Sawyer: There is. Some aircraft are runway-dependent. MQ-9 Reapers, for example, and there are not many runways in the United States where you can fly an MQ-9 Reaper. To do that, you’ve got to have an apron. You’ve got to have a hangar to store the aircraft. You’ve got to be able to fuel and defuel the aircraft. You’ve got to be able to operate the aircraft successfully. The aircraft pilot or operator needs a ground control station. You need all the infrastructure, from electricity to data management to Wi-Fi, everything needed to do that. 

And those people need lunches, they need to occasionally use a restroom, and they’ve got to be able to do all their regular daily-life things. They need to be able to work out at a gym. So all of those elements matter. Then you get to taxiing the aircraft to the runway, taking off, maintaining physical separation from other aircraft, and working it into the queue. We’ve got frequency deconfliction. We manage all of those aspects, not to mention all the legal requirements for flying a civilian-owned large UAS from an Air Force base runway. We have worked all of that out, and it’s all in one place in one binder. So now we have a process where you can show up at Grand Sky and get flying very quickly. 

Trevor Woods: That’s incredible. If I recall correctly, one big differentiator for Grand Sky versus other places that offer similar services is that you also have an on-site ice machine. 

Tom Sawyer: We do. You’d be surprised how important that on-site ice machine is. 

Trevor Woods: We’ve seen incredible growth in the UAS ecosystem here in Grand Forks and across North Dakota. From your perspective, how has this industry evolved from the early days to where we are now? 

Tom Sawyer: That’s a fun question, because when we started Grand Sky in 2015, there was no real legal authority to fly UAS commercially in the United States. You were there, and we knew it was going to happen at some point. But here we were, trying to convince people to invest millions upon millions of dollars into Grand Sky, into a concept that was not legal. There was no legal pathway or framework to say, “Here’s how this will work.” 

As we grew, we could put a hangar in place. That didn’t mean we were going to fly a UAS yet, but we knew we would need a hangar eventually, and we would need to put all these other tools and infrastructure in place. Ultimately, it was step by step, little step by little step. Your organization was instrumental in helping us and our partners get the aircraft in the air. The Air Force was a huge partner in this, saying, “Yeah, we’re okay with this.” That made the FAA say, “If you’re okay with it, then I guess we’ll be okay with it.” 

I’m oversimplifying, but I remember those early days of flying aircraft. We used chase planes. We had situations where an aircraft was in the air, an MQ-1 at the time, and the chase plane started developing smoke in the cockpit at 9,000 feet. The guys were already on bottle oxygen anyway, but now they’re smoking in the cockpit, so they have to declare an emergency and come back in. Now I have an unchased MQ-1 in the air, so that aircraft has to declare an emergency. The system worked. Everyone landed safely, and there was no damage to any aircraft. But building those processes and procedures in those early days set the stage for us to credibly look at the FAA and say, “We have the safety procedures in place. This is how we’ve exercised them in the past, and here’s our pathway for moving forward.” 

Those early days were definitely the crawl-walk-run scenario, and I like to say we’re not really running yet. I think we’re speed-walking. We’re walking with purpose. 

Trevor Woods: That’s a great recap of the early days. We’ve come a long way, and it’s exciting to see where things move forward. We’re on the cusp of seeing some new regulations and new guidance, but a lot of that did happen, and you alluded to this earlier. We’ve worked together quite a bit. Grand Sky and the test site have had a strong partnership over the years. What originally drew you to work with us? Besides physical presence, we’re both here in Grand Forks, but what part of this partnership do I bring to the table that helps Grand Sky? 

Tom Sawyer: The Northern Plains test site brings an incredible value proposition to Grand Sky and to anybody else. What you bring is the regulatory knowledge and experience to work with our operators and put their concept of operations into the right format so the FAA can say, “Okay, we understand what you’re trying to do here.” 

What you taught me is that there’s a process and a procedure, and if you follow the process, even if it’s slow, you get to an operational flight by the end of the day. It starts with how you even present the concept of operations to the FAA. How do we work with the different organizations that want to fly? You don’t just come in and say, “Here’s what we want to do,” and expect approval. There are a lot of pitfalls in the approval process. The UAS industry has new executive orders and we’ll understand how those work in the future, but it is a highly regulated industry with imperfect regulation at this point. 

So we need a guide. We need the traffic cop to help us align around those regulations. Frankly, that’s what the Northern Plains test site brings to the table. If you take the site out, maybe calling it the Northern Plains Regulatory Authority would be much cleaner about what you guys are really doing. 

Trevor Woods: I appreciate that. Considering the last 10 years we’ve been working together, are there any standout moments that are still front and center in your memory? 

Tom Sawyer: 2018 stands out directly in my memory. That was when we all got together, General Atomics, Northern Plains test site, and Grand Sky, to create a beyond visual line of sight capability using ground-based sense and avoid. I didn’t know what any of those things meant at the time. I didn’t know what GBSAA meant or anything like that. 

General Atomics came to us and said, “Flying with chase planes is getting expensive.” Okay, how do we fix that? They wanted to use the Air Force base’s radar to put a system in place where someone could look at a screen and I wouldn’t need a chase plane anymore. I remember you and Nick Flom saying, “Oh, yeah. We can do that.” It took a while, actually a lot of time. We needed the Air Force, and they stepped in. We needed the state of North Dakota, and the state stepped in. Your organization stepped in. 

I differentiate you from the rest of the state because the governor’s office was like, “Yeah, we’ll support this.” Grand Sky brought the legal relationship with the Air Force so they could provide their radar feed. You brought the regulatory part with the FAA to say, “Here’s how this will work.” That has been the core foundational element that separates Grand Sky from other test locations around the country: this large beyond visual line of sight flight volume we have. 

Trevor Woods: And it should be known that it’s now 2025 and that system is still operational. 

Tom Sawyer: It is still operational. If it’s a good-weather day, somebody’s up flying using that system. From a simplified perspective, it continues to bring value. It’s an incredible piece of history, and I remember the regulatory hurdles we had to overcome to get there. I also still look at it and say this is the junior varsity system of what Vantis is going to be. As Vantis grows across the state and possibly outside the state somewhere in the future, its roots came from this little system here at Grand Sky. 

Our system has single points of failure all over it, and we’re not investing heavily in replicating that because ultimately we believe Vantis will be the product that we all use across the state. We’ll continue to operate that system until Vantis is ready to take it over. 

Trevor Woods: And if any of my FAA friends are listening, we have mitigations in place for those single points of failure. 

Tom Sawyer: Yes. 

Trevor Woods: Now let’s bring it to where we are today. We’ve had this incredible opportunity with the Department of Defense, specifically with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense out of the Pentagon. Can you talk a little about our partnership and how it has shaped larger UAS initiatives like Project Ultra? What is Project Ultra, and how is it setting up scalability and solving problems for the rest of the nation? 

Tom Sawyer: Coming back to our partnership and relationship, Northern Plains has made it possible that I don’t have to invest in all the regulatory knowledge. I can reach out to your organization and get the best regulatory experience and knowledge in the country. In my opinion, we’ve worked with a lot of folks, but your shop is always and continues to be the best. So we don’t work with anybody else anymore. 

From a Grand Sky perspective, we have made the investments in infrastructure that you haven’t had to make. You haven’t had to put hangars and runways and all those things in place. That’s what we do very well, and you do the regulatory part. I think of it this way: once the wheels of an aircraft leave the ground, it’s your world. You’re the regulatory experience. Once they’re on the ground, that’s my world, and that’s what we know how to do very, very well, including all the ground support and infrastructure required to make that happen. 

All of your regulatory experience over the last decade, all the concept-of-operations work, case studies, white papers, safety risk management scenarios, and documentation, has been built up along with all of our infrastructure. That has grown to a point where we can now take it to market and say, “Yes, we can deliver this for you.” 

The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense has recognized that this is a place where the regulatory experience you bring and the physical infrastructure we bring combine into a partnership that allows them to fly. They were skeptical at first, as most people are, but once they come out and see it, once they see what we can really do, it’s just a floodgate opening of work moving in our general direction. 

Project Ultra is an example of that. It is a five-year IDIQ contract with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense through Grand Forks County, another very important partner in this entire scheme. The county raised its hand and said, “We have been making investments in the UAS industry. We want to continue to support it. If we can be a vehicle to prove that this process can work this way, we’ll do it.” That’s been fantastic. 

The relationship has allowed us to bring Ultra to the table. We just conducted flights in April, and we’re about to conduct some flights in July: a 416-mile round-trip beyond visual line of sight, moving from Class D to Class E airspace, carrying payloads, deconflicted with Air Force operations. No airspace had to be sanitized, no military range. It was a full national airspace exercise. We did it a bunch, and in July we’re going to fly a bunch more. We’re going to prove we can take off with a payload, land with a payload, change the payload, and come back over and over again. 

So we know it’s technically viable. We will prove it’s technically sustainable in July, and then as we move through the rest of the year, we’ll start making it economically sustainable. So, true cargo logistics flights in an economically and technically sustainable way beyond visual line of sight in the national airspace. 

Trevor Woods: That’s great to hear. This isn’t a small unmanned aircraft either. This is a Class 3 aircraft, and if I recall correctly, it’s about a 50-mile direct one-way trip to the destination. You said 400 miles in one flight? 

Tom Sawyer: Yes. There was still gas in the tank, but we had to come down because a thunderstorm was starting to move into the area. It was a 400-mile endurance flight to prove that the aircraft could go that far. The actual official logistics flight is 50 miles one way, land, and then come back 50 miles regardless of winds, regardless of anything. Deliver a payload, pick up a new payload, and bring it back. Do that 10 times. 

Trevor Woods: Ten seems arbitrary, but it’s like, prove it. Keep doing it. And what’s the vision behind this kind of operation? 

Tom Sawyer: The vision is that the Department of Defense has logistics needs, and they are looking at how drones can satisfy those needs. How do we avoid putting people in harm’s way if we can avoid it? How do we bring ammunition, food, and medical supplies to the warfighter in theater? They are trying to understand how these drones can operate efficiently. 

The Navy wants to be able to resupply between ships while they’re underway at sea. They want to do shore to ship, and we want to do ship to shore. The Grand Forks Air Force Base, Cavalier Space Force Station logistics run we’re doing is demonstrating a very specific distance military resupply capability. 

From there, I see this going toward missile field logistics. How do we replace very expensive helicopters and trucks with drones that can probably handle 70% of that resupply requirement? This also becomes rural last-mile support. I don’t think we’re going to be able to do it with a quadcopter. Even though that might be cheaper and more efficient, we’re going to need larger aircraft that can survive in multiple weather conditions and have the range to do this. Ultimately, I see this becoming a commercially viable capability, especially in rural environments. 

Trevor Woods: I’m glad you brought that up, because although our client is the Department of Defense and military resupply, if we do this right, we are using industry to get there. This is an opportunity for industry to continue to mature and develop their platforms, which could ultimately lead to civil commercial opportunities of similar operations in the national airspace. 

This is where I think our partnership is going forward. You and I have already started this conversation: how are we going to do this? Cargo delivery commercially generally requires a Part 135 certificate. 

I have a company in another life that has a Part 135 certificate, but it’s not for drones; it’s for crewed aircraft. How are we going to be able to introduce that? There is no really good extensive viable opportunity without certification of the aircraft. We’re seeing that in the market, but certification may not be the easiest thing to undertake right now. So is there an interim step, much like eVTOL aircraft, where there’s an interim step where you still need a Part 135 certificate, but there’s a way to manage and maintain your aircraft and put some hours on it to demonstrate viability of the market? That’s where I see this happening, and that’s where I see our partnership really moving forward. 

Trevor Woods: Perfect. We’ve covered a lot of topics, and we have a few people listening in on our podcast or webcast today. I’ll open it up to the audience if anybody has questions for Tom, Grand Sky, the partnership, or general questions about UAS. Now’s the time to send them in. 

We’ve tackled a lot here, and I think there’s still a lot to solve. We’re at a point of speed-walking, and I think that’s absolutely correct. On panels, we’ve talked about not trying to kill the vision behind this, but sometimes we have to be very pragmatic and realistic about the challenges we’re facing. eVTOL is a good example, and so is advanced air mobility. These are all things that will come in time, but we’re really trying to focus on the core technical problems, get them matured, built out, and developed. 

I think that’s something unique here in the Grand Forks region and North Dakota: because of the last 10-plus years, we’ve been able to develop the ecosystem, infrastructure, partnerships, legal framework, and the pedigree and credibility behind the regulatory and safety pieces. You achieved a milestone last year with Vantis and the NTAP approval. 

Tom Sawyer: That’s correct. 

Trevor Woods: That is going to be a really significant value-add going forward because the notion of “file and fly” can only happen in an NTAP-type environment. 

For those who aren’t familiar, NTAP means Near-Term Approval Process. That approval process essentially allowed the FAA to accept the level of safety of the infrastructure that is Vantis. So as we have aircraft capable of using that infrastructure to fly beyond visual line of sight, that gives us something to point to and say, “If you’re going to bring an aircraft onto the system, here’s the requirements you need to meet.” We do not have to go back to the regulatory drawing board to get that infrastructure approved. It’s really good. 

Let me see here. I think we might have one question. 

How is eVTOL different from VTOL? 

Tom Sawyer: Great question. VTOL means vertical takeoff and landing. That could be any vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, whether gas-powered, hydrogen-powered, or otherwise. eVTOL specifically means electric vertical takeoff and landing, so electric fan engines or electric motors. It’s specific to an electric propulsion system. 

Trevor Woods: A lot more technical challenges remain with that, especially in having enough electrical infrastructure to provide that capability. It might make sense in niche urban markets right now, but in a place like North Dakota, we need to characterize this further to see how it applies in this environment. 

Tom Sawyer: I have a lot of opinions about it. I believe our grid is nowhere near ready to support the volume of advanced air mobility vehicles that are 100% electric. Batteries weigh the same whether they’re full or not, and that’s an interesting engineering challenge. In North Dakota, we do not have a generation problem. We have the power here. What we don’t have is the distribution network to support rapid charging of batteries and the substations required to do that. That’s going to be an investment. There are a lot of cities that don’t have that capacity in their downtown urban areas as well, and I think that’s going to be a huge infrastructure opportunity going forward. 

Trevor Woods: I agree. Last question looks like: what happens after the five-year Project Ultra IDIQ contract? 

Tom Sawyer: There are option years baked into it, so they can continue to exercise those. Our goal is to deliver on the scopes of work and all the task orders in such a way that the government decides they want to issue a brand-new contract to us. I’m hopeful there will be another contract on the back end of that. If not, we’ll do whatever we’re doing at that point. It’s an opportunity to excel. 

Trevor Woods: Selfishly, I hope there’s further opportunity as well. We’re going to close this up. Tom, any final comments or thoughts before we wrap up? 

Tom Sawyer: My final thoughts are thank you. Thank you to you and Victor off the screen for setting this up and inviting me. Thank you to the entire Northern Plains test site team. It’s a great group of people to work with. I found alumni of the Northern Plains test site are in different places across the country working for different companies, and your team always brings a level of professionalism that we appreciate. So thank you for helping make that happen. 

Trevor Woods: So thanks, Tom, very much. I really appreciate you joining us and sharing your insights with us today. We really value this partnership and your team as well. I know your team has grown recently too and is playing a pivotal role in this ecosystem. We look forward to continuing this collaboration ahead. 

I’d like to thank everyone who joined us today for Beyond the Buzz, and all those who are going to listen to this in the future. Welcome, and thank you for listening. I’m Trevor Woods, executive director for the Northern Plains UAS Test Site. Tom Sawyer, president of Grand Sky. We appreciate your support and can’t wait to keep the conversation going. Thank you