Vantis: Behind the Scenes

Beyond the Buzz (episode 9) - Vantis: Behind The Scenes 

March 20, 2025 

Erin Roesler (0:00-3:58): Hello and welcome to another episode of Beyond The Buzz, here at the mission network operations center, which is the heart of Vantis, we call it our air traffic control room, call it our mission control whatever you want to call it but we're going to be taking a behind the scenes look today at the mission network Operation Center that supports Vantis. Before we get behind the scenes and take a look with all the activities happening here today, a little bit about Vantis. Vantis started as the state of North Dakota's UAS shared infrastructure initiative about six years ago we recognized as a Northern Plains UAS test site that if North Dakota wanted to continue to lead in UAS integration, we had to solve the lack of shared infrastructure. It started as a concept called the Statewide Network and very quickly in, we realized it was so much more than just infrastructure alone, it was demand generation, it was education it was standards, it was regulatory approvals and that really set off a spark for an entire program that we now call Vantis. At its core Vantis is still an infrastructure initiative bringing commanding control radio communications and surveillance to support in Beyond visual line-of-site operations for UAS so getting into those complex and advanced mission sets that really enable the entire industry to move forward onto the next venture in this space. So, supporting all that infrastructure is the mission network Operation Center, somewhere within the system we need to make sure that we monitor, manage, and keep the network up and running because as we know Network management isn't a static thing. We can't just build it and be done, right? It’s an everchanging Dynamic environment to make sure that we have the latest and greatest enhancements, latest and greatest security requirements and are updating and adjusting to new changes in software throughout the system and we do that here at the mission network Operation Center and what that enables us to provide to our UAS operators and Pilots is a safe scalable system that supports their operations so they can fly in the NAS (National Airspace System) just the way any other traditional aircraft would be flying. So, let's come in and take a look behind the scenes here at the MNOC (Mission Network Operations Center).  

Other than just offices we have a few different things here at the mission network operations center, and we're actually going to be able to show you some pretty cool stuff here today. So, as I mentioned, software and network management isn't static, it's a dynamic everchanging environment and so we have to make sure that we're updating and keeping the software and the network up to date as well. So, just what happens this week we are going through sat testing which is a system acceptance testing meaning we're rolling out a new software version that's going to enhance the system bring it to the next version just like you would update your cell phone you get the notifications that your cell phone software has to get updated when you plug it in that night and so you say okay and you download the software and next thing you know when you wake up in the morning your phone is magically updated. Well, it takes a little bit more work here, but that's exactly what the team is doing. So, we're going to step into the operations room and take a look behind the scenes to bug the engineers a little bit and ask them a little bit about the system acceptance testing.  

So, right here is our operations room and right now, like I said, we are going through that Software System Acceptance Testing, but if I can bug you guys for a couple seconds, I want to talk about what first is that and why it is important.  

Brian Centers(3:58-5:17): Sure, so hi everybody, Brian Centers from Thales, so SAT or SET as we call it is an important event because it marks the official validation and then subsequent acceptance of whatever it is we're testing. So when we first did an event this back in 2021 we had a kickoff set a very large sat that accepted the system as a whole, but ever since then we've had subsequent SATs for things like in this case upgraded software or in other cases a new site was added to the VANTIS network and so it's just it's part of the normal VV process of having Quality Control in place having your proper engineering controls in place to make sure that yes we have not only done what we said but we're testing it for our sake, as well as the user’s sake, to know that yep, this is behaving as we expect when we press this button we expect to see this behavior, when we run this data analysis script, we expect to see results come out as you know within tolerance and so that's just a standard part of engineering and you know we're incorporating that into VANTIS.  

Erin Roesler(5:17-5:28): Perfect, so with this particular software update, what kind of bells and whistles are we rolling off this time or maybe not so many cool bells and whistles as much as it's the technical stuff, but that's okay too. 

Brian Centers(5:28-6:39): Yeah, so sure, so it's a good question.So, this software update we're calling the 24.4 software update. The previous version running was 24.2 and previous to that was 23.4, but every time we update, we include a few things. So first of all, there are standard bug fixes things are discovered sometimes where you know we discover, oh there's a problem here and we're going to analyze that and roll it into a future software update and so we have a few bug fixes that are part of this update but then from an enhancement standpoint there's several enhancements that are more tangible and visual to the user. Probably the largest group of enhancements for 24.4 is in the flight C box. So, we’ve added a whole bunch of enhancements. Essentially, we solicited feedback from the flight Ops Team, from the users of the system, and said Hey what's not working for you guys, what else do you guys need to have to make this a better system, and so we incorporated that during what we call the offseason. So, during the non-flying season and we're testing that now. 

Erin Roesler(6:39-7:03): Perfect and I don't know a lot of topics of have been in security, in particular cyber security, and when you're talking about managing and operating a network like this, the way the state of North Dakota is doing, these software updates are critical to stay ahead of a lot of those cyber security concerns. So, anything special in this particular update or why it's important to just update the systems in general.  

Brian Centers(7:03-8:00): Yeah, that's a really good question. So, in this particular update there's no I would say special or you kot hot fix cyber security vulnerability that sneed to be addressed, but we're doing exactly what you said which is we are updating our software, we are trying to stay in lock step with our cloud service provider which is Microsoft Azure. So, a good example of that is in this particular update we migrated one of our databases that is azure hosted and it's a fairly large change and we don't really want to do that during the flying season because it could be potentially disruptive so we waited until the offseason, did migration and now we're up to date with what azure recommends and from azure’s standpoint they're always looking at their vulnerabilities, their cyber requirements and we just want to make sure that we're in lock stuff with them so that's part of what we're here. 

Erin Roesler(8:00-8:16): Perfect well I'll let these guys get back to work but I'm going to steal Steffan real quick here because he’s got my key fob so we can see other cool stuff as we walk over into the integration lab. Super secure here no one has a key fob.  

Steffan(8:16-8:18): They're always thrown around.  

Erin Roesler(8:20-14:19): Okay so this week it's not just about the system acceptance testing we also have some other cool stuff happening at the MNOC. So, as we step into the integration lab, this year we are expanding the system to a new site on the Eastern side of State in Grand Forks, North Dakota. That means we are installing new infrastructure in fact that means we're installing a new radar. So, here in this box is the latest in the site expansion. So this is a radar that we are going to be installing in Grand Forks, ND a little bit south. This is going to enable us to go from our current 3,000 square miles of BVLOS service volumes to 5,000 square miles of service volumes which means we're going to be adding a whole bunch of services and opportunities for UAS operators, Public Safety entities, Etc in the Grand Forks region to do what's already been happening out west in their Williston Watford City service volumes. So, this is an exciting enhancement as well that we going to show you today so not only the system acceptance testing but we're also like I said giving you a sneak peek at well at least just the giant box that will be our next Radar Site.  

So with that we'll head back over into the conference room we'll talk a little bit more before we kind of wrap up today but it is a little bit of a unique week here at VANTIS. This isn’t the norm, we typically are you know working on getting this place up and operational but this time around we're doing a little bit of busy work. So we’ll hang out in here as they're working behind me here but Vantis always set out to be this next generation of Aviation infrastructure and we think we're doing just that. Enabling you know BVLOS operations for UASbut infrastructure is infrastructure and unless you have people using it it's really the use cases and the operators and the operations that make what we're doing so important. So whether it's supporting Public Safety like the Grand Forks fire department who has a drone as a first responder vision that they want to start enabling their fire department to be responding to those 911 calls and getting out on scene before anyone else and knowledge that is happening across the country but the complexity we have here in North Dakota is we have wide open uncontrolled airspace which means we have to protect not only from the controlled and the y known users but all the traditional aircraft users that aren't broadcasting absb, that don't have a transponder, and that's fine we want to ensure that they have equal access to the airspace as these new entrance come into the airspace as well. It's a big challenge to solve but we think it's very important because we're also simultaneously enabling a whole bunch of public and Commercial operations missions. We talk about you know ROI has been a topic of interest lately and what we enable within the software, within the systems definitely is you know some direct ROI but for us being a state network it is those indirect ROI’s, it is the enhancements by having more Public Safety equipping like I said, fire departments, police, other law enforcement, or you know Department of Emergency Services to do their missions by leveraging this really powerful tool in the toolbox that is drones. Other ROI’s mean we're adding services to our rural communities the state of North Dakota is open, vast, wide open skies, blue skies for miles. You look at McKenzie County in the western side of the state it's the largest county in the state of North Dakota it's actually the size of Delaware. That county is serviced by two ambulances and on top of that they're volunteer ambulances, but if you look at a use case where you're not just enabling those in  Public Safety but now you're connecting those communities. You're bringing services to those communities that would otherwise be hard and difficult to bring to the residents and the citizens that live there, enabling people to stay in their farmsteads and to stay in their homesteads and that's really important for the state of North Dakota because that's what makes North Dakota, North Dakota. So, it's the rule of connectivity on-top of Public Safety. Now the other aspect I would bring up is you know someday I would love to get some of my online packages closer to the two-day time mark. For those that live here we know it's closer to five days or maybe even longer to get some of those packages and I'll be honest, hey I would love to have same day delivery but I will settle for two day if I can get it. We all know that that UAS is a huge opportunity to connect communities and add that package delivery in that way and we think VANTIS will have a huge part of that here in North Dakota because again, we have wide open vast airspace that's largely uncontrolled and so challenging or tackling that challenge of bringing and integrating uas into the NAS in that safe securable scalable manner is a difficult challenge. ADSB is not required anywhere below 10,000 ft in the entire State of North Dakota. It's a great technology that we can leverage in our urban areas but it doesn't work for rural America and so VANTIS really is sought to build shared use infrastructure that works in those environments which is why the state owned Radars, which is why you know adding in software enhancements and expansions, it's why we do what we do every day.