UAS Summit held at UND

  • Published
  • By 2d Lt Anastasia Wasem
  • 319th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
GRAND FORKS AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. --  With Grand Forks Air Force Base's much anticipated transition from an air refueling mission to unmanned aircraft systems, a summit was held on the University of North Dakota campus Dec. 4 in order to unite all people involved in this historical event. 

As Grand Forks AFB begins to make its transition, so does the community of Grand Forks and the University of North Dakota. William Watson, Interim Center Director of UND, explained the university's proposal in order to keep up with the changes occurring on the base. The university has proposed a UND Center for UAS Research, Education and Training. 

"UND must aggressively act now to establish the state of North Dakota as the 'center of gravity' for national and international UAS research, operations and training," Mr. Watson said to an audience of military members and community leaders. 

"This is a time to be proactive and a little provocative," said Col. John Michel, 319th Air Refueling Wing commander. He stated the importance of the community in providing hope for the future of Grand Forks AFB. His vision is to create a federal government UAS center partnership with UND that would provide testing, research and education. 

The funding sources for this endeavor will hopefully come from the Department of Defense as a joint UAS center with Creech AFB in Nevada and state funds, Watson explained. "In the long run this program will help ensure good paying jobs for the people of North Dakota," he said. 

Grand Forks AFB and UND are in the process of looking at the details of this project. In order for UND to continue its high quality research, it needs a permanent physical location. The desired location is a vacant air refueling squadron building on base. A physical location allows people to see a concrete center for research and training, said Watson. 

As he talked about the future of Grand Forks AFB and the surrounding community Colonel Michel said, "We're not looking five years into the future, we are looking five decades into the future in order to build and define a center for excellence."