Live from the UAS Summit & Expo

Beyond the Buzz (special episode 16) - UAS Summit 

October 15, 2025 

Erin Roesler: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Beyond the Buzz hosted here at the Northern Plains UAS Test Site. This week, we are live from the UAS Summit and Expo in Grand Forks, North Dakota. 

Today is kickoff day, and it’s starting off pretty fun, but we figured we’d do things a little differently today. We have a series of speakers who are going to be stopping by the booth just to say hi and answer a few questions, focusing on what’s the buzz at the summit this week. 

First up, I’m joined here by Scott Meyer. I’ll let him introduce himself. He’s got a couple of different hats that he wears here in North Dakota, and I’m really excited to engage with him and ask him a few questions about what’s on his mind at the UAS Summit this week. 

Scott Meyer: Good morning, Erin. Yep, so I’m Scott Meyer, director of engagement at Grand Sky, but I also serve in the North Dakota Senate, where I serve in appropriations. 

With North Dakota and the UAS Test Site, it’s become one of those big ways we can diversify our economy from energy and agriculture. Watching this UAS industry and autonomy grow has been really exciting. When I look at it through my Senate hat, that’s the part that gets me really excited to go to the Capitol and keep working on this initiative. 

Erin Roesler: Perfect. So, we just kicked off a little bit of an interesting situation this year with not having maybe as much government presence as we have in the past. That said, though, it’s not absent. We’re still having that conversation thus far, and we’re only an hour into the expo. 

What would you say has been the biggest buzz that we’re hearing around the floor? 

Scott Meyer: Really? Yeah, you’re right. There are still a lot of folks walking around, and you’re still seeing military folks in uniform here, which I thought might be a big cutback. 

Obviously, the keynote speakers are going to make an impact, but I think there’s still so much value in being here and in the connections you can make. That’s why there’s still that buzz around here. There isn’t a negative feel in here at all. I still like, “Yeah, let’s keep talking to people and find these companies that want to come to North Dakota, but also help with our national defense.” 

Erin Roesler: Great. You talked about the federal legislators and things, but you yourself being in the state legislature, why is UAS such a strategic priority for North Dakota? 

Scott Meyer: Well, yeah. Again, we’ve been putting a big investment into the UAS ecosystem here, building out the Vantis network and trying to recruit these companies. We really do need to diversify our economy and have this workforce initiative. 

I’ve seen about a half dozen lawmakers already walking through, and it was actually kind of shocking when I turned the corner and saw some senators from out west. My big push is to try to get them here to see what’s going on. It’s not just a quadcopter flying around. There’s so much more to this industry and what it comes with. 

You see companies here from California or Florida, and they just love being here and being part of this. So when they’re buzzed up to be here and excited to be here, I want to showcase that to my colleagues in Bismarck. 

Erin Roesler: What’s been their reaction thus far for those who have been here before or are new to it? 

Scott Meyer: They’re just blown away. They have no idea. And again, it’s part of it. If I put my Grand Sky hat on as director of engagement, I want to get you out on site and let you see some of these companies, like our partners at the test site, Northrop Grumman, and General Atomics. 

Then you start talking about the TRMC and counter-UAS, because a lot of folks understand that one too, right? They remember in New Jersey when the drones were up in the sky at night, and we talked about this in a panel yesterday. They understand that, and they know it’s a problem and what we have to do. 

Yes, it’s going to take an investment as a state, and really we want to have these companies set up shop here. The regulations, the speed to work with you guys, and the low population centers — everything about it — it’s just a great place to come and fly. 

Erin Roesler: You mentioned the panel yesterday, but it was actually more than a panel. It was a whole training exercise on counter-UAS and understanding a threat that hasn’t been done at the summit before, for all the years that I’ve been here. That’s brand new, so I really like that. 

Can you talk a little bit about that? What’s going to come out of it? What should people watch for if they weren’t part of that exercise? 

Scott Meyer: Yeah, so it was P3 Consulting, Inventable, and Grand Sky partnered up with this “Defending the Homeland” situational simulation. We tried to break it out into four groups. We had a DoD group, a university group, a government group — more or less policymakers — and then we had an infrastructure group, i.e. energy and then the test site with the towers and comms. 

It was a simulation with different injections, and we walked through it all. I was blown away by the conversations that came from it because maybe you thought one way, but then another company was completely 180 degrees from you. Some people maybe thought it was someone else’s job — like emergency management, who’s in charge of that? And it’s strange because maybe not everybody was singing from the same sheet of music, but that was enlightening, and there was a lot of great feedback. 

I hope we can continue it next year and get a lot more people. There were a lot of folks who signed up for that. I was actually kind of shocked. 

Erin Roesler: Yes, like you said, it was a good group of people, from local legislators to the adjutant general to the base commander. Fabulous attendance to engage with a very educated perspective on how that situation would unfold. 

And it’s not done, though, because the outcome of that, as I said yesterday, is going to be a white paper that gets put out there that I think others can read and respond to. 

I don’t know how many in my sector on the energy side would say there’s really not a playbook yet for a counter-UAS attack. However, we were able to look at procedures and policies that critical infrastructure and the energy sector already have in place and say, “Look, it’s not that different. We just need to think about it through a couple different lenses.” 

Scott Meyer: 100%, right. They’ve got this playbook in place, but it’s not necessarily for this. Then it becomes, how do we maybe not scare the public too much if we get too far over our skis? 

It wasn’t just energy grids. We’re talking cell phone towers and all these people, and now they’re thinking about it in a different way. What happens is, what’s their first priority? Well, in a simulated attack on a grid, it was employee safety first. Are our employees safe? Then how do we do our assessment? Do we need security? 

It was just one of those situations where you can kind of go down these rabbit holes. But it’s important that we have these conversations. You can’t just bury your head in the sand and hope that with this white paper we’ll find some policy we can take on as a state — maybe as a federal policy — because we had staff from our code there, and maybe they can walk away and say, “We missed this, and it’s right in front of us.” I hope that’s what comes out of this. 

Erin Roesler: I kind of pre-empted that as my main takeaway. That’s the most exciting thing at the conference thus far. How about you? What was your best conversation, most exciting takeaway? 

Scott Meyer: Obviously, it was kind of cool to see some of the Air Force Battle Lab stuff, the announcement with Senator Hovind, and then the UAV with their counter-UAS coming through. 

The counter-drone world, even since I’ve been with Grand Sky in the last year and a half, and with the Ukraine war, has shifted even more from large drones to countering small UAS to cargo delivery. This industry is changing so fast. They have to be much more nimble, especially on the policy side. 

So I think the biggest thing for me so far, in this short amount of the summit, would be the announcements by Senator Hovind. 

Erin Roesler: Perfect. Excellent. Awesome. Well, thanks for your time. We’ll get to our next guest, but I really appreciate you being here. Anything else you want to close with? 

Scott Meyer: Next time we’ll have more here. 

Erin Roesler: Awesome. Thanks. 

Thank you. 

Okay, well, next up I am joined by Johnny Ryan, who is the managing director at The Hive, the tech accelerator here in Grand Forks dedicated to UAS. 

I’ve said before that I think The Hive is one of the best things that happened to this town because it really put all the UAS companies, small to large, in one physical space and gave them an opportunity to collaborate, discuss, learn from each other, and grow better together. 

First, please introduce yourself, because you did a better job than I did. 

Johnny Ryan: Yeah, I’m Johnny Ryan, the managing director at The Hive. We’ve been around for just over two years now since we were able to sign leases, but we basically went all in on UAS — America-first, mission-related. We’ve stuck to that mission since day one. 

We’ve got the right partners like Vantis, Grand Sky, and MTSI, just to name a few. We have over 35 companies that have some full-time commitment in The Hive monthly, whether that’s their permanent office, where they started, or their North Dakota flagship headquarters for a larger company that might have 2,000-plus employees. 

So we cater to all sides of the industry, but we’re really North Dakota mission first. We try to enable companies to work together, and a lot of these companies will compete. We have companies in the same micro-vertical, but they’ll compete Monday through Thursday and then, Friday, if you want to put it that way, they’re overlapping on things they need to collaborate on: shared contracts, RFQs, RFPs, whatever they go after. 

We’re also trying to find the right companies from other states that need to be enabled to move faster, because this industry is moving so fast that you can’t do business at the speed of email. Being in person at The Hive is the value add, I think. 

Erin Roesler: So, it’s day one of the summit. Thus far, what’s been the buzz that you’ve been hearing? 

Johnny Ryan: I mean, obviously, counter-UAS is at the front of everybody’s conversations. There’s still a lot of learning to be done there about what’s possible quickly without making things worse or putting yourself in a liability situation. 

But I think North Dakota is transitioning into a place where we can cover the most tested, advanced aircraft, but we can also cover very experimental, early-stage, rapid-prototype work for all types of applications, whether it’s DARPA or commercial delivery. We can handle it all with the test site and the talent that can quickly iterate some product or widget they need. 

Erin Roesler: Well, Scott was just talking about the counter-UAS exercise we had yesterday. There were two main things that always come up with counter-UAS: is it the fact that we don’t see more counter-UAS technology in place, or is it the technology or the authorities that come with it? 

Johnny Ryan: Yeah, and it was interesting. It was kind of hand in hand: we need the authorities there so that it creates market demand for the technologies to advance. But we did see some pretty cool technologies there. As Scotty mentioned, there was the air environment announcement yesterday about how they’re getting into some pattern-type space. 

DroneShield was one of the big sponsors of the exercise and brought in their technology, which was really fascinating. Of all the different vendors in counter-UAS, because of the expansive UAS and counter-UAS testing events that have happened in North Dakota, I would say it’s our best-kept secret. 

We can’t do headlines on that stuff because it is still a lot of times classified or at least controlled information. But we’ve seen the exercises that take place at Camp Grafton, and luckily, under state leadership, they’re all in and helping us test this not only for critical infrastructure, but also for military purposes. 

At The Hive, you see that too with some of the technologies that are coming through those doors. I think it’s a scrappier version all the way up to the most expected way of testing and iterating. If you’re used to building something over four years and testing that way with your digital twin, we can accommodate that. 

If it’s like, “Oh, this thing popped up last night with 3D printers,” where’s some farmland or some trailer that you could cut CNC and make a prototype? I think we cover all of that in a really exciting way, where this is actually going right to market, right to test, right into people’s hands quickly, get feedback, and we don’t stop. 

When people show up to North Dakota and they see how committed we are and what we actually have here, I think they’re blown away, to the point where they’re immediately thinking they may need to move their whole company here to test whatever. That’s not us planting the idea in their head. They’re just seeing that we have all these partners and asking how we could possibly have done it without them. 

Or maybe they’re at a stage where they don’t realize they’re going to need 20 things, and they’re in a silo in a different city, which is great for developing a UAS autonomous system, but you kind of need to rely on some other partners to learn from their mistakes, have them guide you, and keep turning you if you go off track. I think we can accommodate all types of those companies, from idea stage to the largest companies in the world that show up to Grand Forks with a moment’s notice or no notice at all. 

Erin Roesler: I’m obviously very familiar with the state’s commitment to UAS, not just as a good thing, but their investment in it as well. So between the test site, Vantis — I can say, “I’m from the government. I’m here to help” — and the state of North Dakota running the Vantis program, which is the state’s infrastructure investment in UAS to support surveillance and beyond visual line of sight. 

That’s a good point, because they’re putting their money where their mouth is. You think, okay, we’ve heard this before in other states. There’s some investment behind it, whether it’s private sector or public sector. But the fact that the state has made an investment, and they’re financially tied and connected to this effort, means they’re not going anywhere. They’re going to see this investment through. 

The layers we have here for our political representation are so much faster to get the right answer. It might not always be a yes, but it will at least be discussed quickly and get into the hands of those who need it. 

I think counter-UAS is not going to be company A versus company B. It’s going to be a layered approach: here’s a tile that covers something coming toward you that’s encroaching. There might be multiple systems that catch that and flag it. Once it’s past that point, something needs to interact with it. Maybe something needs to jam it or whatever the response is. 

It’s tiles of all different types of companies that build as many different use cases as possible and catch as many scenarios as possible. And really, information is the biggest thing: who is flying that drone? How do you know that drone from a police drone visually? You would have no idea. 

People go, “Well, promote ID,” and we all know in the industry the gaps that technology has. We wish it was better and could identify friend or foe, but we’ve got a long way to go if we’re actually going to counter it. 

But on the state investment side, what’s interesting to me is that it ebbs and flows. It’s not like the state is always super eager to keep continuing investments, but they’re not completely backing away. I think that really shows this different dynamic in North Dakota that is overlooked. 

It really does show, “Hey, look, we recognize there’s longevity in diversifying our economy,” as Scott mentioned. That’s really important, and you saw that from The Hive side too, because The Hive wasn’t just a private investment. We had an idea and an opportunity for an EDA match grant from the city, and the Economic Development Administration put in $1.2 million to match. 

It seems like a lot of money, but when you look at the matches for other states and similar projects, we’re talking $60 million or $70 million, and maybe a project flops. Almost immediately they came through and said, “Wow, you actually did what you said you were going to do in the proposal, and you have people in here. You said you were going to get the right partners, and they’re here.” 

I think for that, it’s a very small investment for the byproducts that come from it. This thing’s moving so fast that we can’t stop it now. It’s rolling down the hill in a good way. 

If there are companies willing to show up here and make the commitment, we can tell they’re serious. I think North Dakota gives 10 times the energy back that’s invested. That’s just how we’re built. 

Erin Roesler: So, for those of us who are passionate, we have a pretty big appetite for always wanting to do more and go beyond. If you had one ask from either the regulator, the FAA, or industry, what would that ask be? 

Johnny Ryan: Wow. One ask? Magic wand to just make all the regulations go away? 

Yeah. I mean, I think regulations are good in this industry because it forces people to really think about the point of all this and not make something too crazy or wild. I wouldn’t want to make some widget that enables chaos. 

Being a little bit cautious on that is good. I don’t have a regulation ask necessarily; that’s Scott’s department. But I think there are more ways for companies used to going after Air Force-related contracts to move faster if their technology is what it says it is and we can get it in front of the right people quickly. 

There’s private investment in a totally different way in North Dakota. Personally, you can do a demo and potentially a farmer might cut a check. Maybe you’re not looking for some giant investment, but that’s much faster than waiting on some phase change and getting stuck. 

If it covers private industry, it will cover everything else. And I think that’s a faster route to get your product to where it needs to be, to the next level, the next stage. 

I think there’s always an opportunity for any company. Two companies last night said they see these big companies and wonder whether there’s still room for the smaller ones. I’m looking at them like, “You’re not in the small category at all,” but yes, absolutely there is. 

Even for counter-UAS, the systems need to be tested by perfected drones and scrappy drones that might crash. It needs to be all kinds of chaos. That’s a whole different thing, and you need to have that even to test your counter-drone system. 

So it’s everything. It’s not just some system that’s going to shoot down a drone. It’s what could come at this invisible shield. And I think that opens it up for anybody, really. 

Erin Roesler: So we’ve got a lot of stuff. Sorry, I didn’t answer your question. 

Johnny Ryan: No, you’re fine. It’s good. 

And we do have the best hockey team in the world. 

So it’s going to be a good weekend of that too. We have a lot of cool tech, exhibitors, and companies happening. What’s the one thing you’re looking forward to most this week? 

Johnny Ryan: Hockey, I’d say the event tonight. The Hive is always a good time. People come here and they have different flight schedules, or they got delayed, or they’re setting up something, or they’re giving a talk. I think that’s a time for them to kind of just breathe and have no expectation. 

I think that two-hour or three-hour window, if you’re smart about it, could let you meet every connection you needed in North Dakota, from politicians to creators to R&D to someone who knows UAS patent law probably better than anyone, and they’re all in that room. You just have to find them. So I’m looking forward to that. 

Erin Roesler: Perfect. So, the networking. 

Yeah. Awesome. Well, speaking of networking, thank you for being here. I think we’re out of time. I don’t see my third guest today. 

Once again, thank you for joining us on Beyond the Buzz. My name is Erin Roesler with the test site here in North Dakota, the best-kept secret, but we’re trying to get the word out there. Thank you to Johnny and Scott for joining me today. 

If you haven’t been to the UAS Summit and Expo here in Grand Forks, North Dakota, you should come check it out. It’s still pretty buzzing, and obviously it’s been one of the longest-running UAS conferences that exists. We’re happy to host you next year. 

Reach out to our team, and we’ll be glad to get you connected on how you can follow all the updates for next year if you’re unable to make it this year. Otherwise, thank you once again for joining us on Beyond the Buzz.