Located in the middle of the Delmarva Peninsula that straddles the states of Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia, Salisbury Ocean City Wicomico County Airport (SBY) is striving to expand its recently established Autonomous Innovation Center (AIC) in a bid to become a leading U.S. hub for uncrewed air systems (UAS) technology and operations. While cargo-carrying drones are the initial focus of the initiative, in theory, the approach could eventually apply to autonomous passenger-carrying eVTOL aircraft.

The Wicomico County government, which owns the airport, believes it has several advantages in its favor. Firstly, the airport has constructed a 7,800-square- foot hangar specifically to house UAS design, manufacturing, and operations companies. A launch and recovery pad for uncrewed air vehicles (UAVs) sits alongside.

SBY already boasts a dedicated airspace corridor for UAS traffic, which leads into a large—as yet mainly undeveloped—area of land set aside for the construction of an Airport Industrial Park, explained Chris Davidson, SBY’s assistant airport manager and business development manager.

With its own air traffic control tower, Davidson told FutureFlight, the airport has the ability to establish distinct areas in which specific operating rules apply to each type of UAV. SBY has an FAA waiver for drone operations in its Class D airspace above and around the airport, from ground level to an altitude of 1,000 feet.

The airport already has two anchor tenants, both experts in areas of UAS knowledge and experience that are strategically important in attracting other UAS-related businesses to the AIC. One of these is Sentinel Robotic Solutions (SRS), long experienced in UAS operations and training and managing UAS test facilities for the U.S. government and others. SRS is handling SBY’s AIC marketing and is in discussions with several potential tenants.

SRS also has its own UAS center and dedicated UAS runway, near the NASA rocket-launching facility on Wallops Island on the Delmarva Peninsula’s Atlantic coast southeast of SBY. A drone operations corridor between SBY and the SRS runway on Wallops Island should be feasible.

SBY’s other AIC anchor tenant is Kilroy Aviation, an aviation engineering and certification firm that holds FAA Designated Engineering Authority to provide design, modification, certification, airworthiness, and safety advisory services for crewed and uncrewed aircraft and rotorcraft. The company’s principals are former senior FAA and Boeing certification officers. According to Kilroy Aviation partner Mike Borfitz, the new AIC makes the airport the only UAS zone in the U.S. to offer full type certification, engineering, and regulatory support for UAVs.

According to Davidson and Borfitz, SBY offers three further advantages for UAS operations. One is that at the behest of regional carrier Piedmont Airlines, which is based at SBY, the airport has obtained FAA approval to extend the length of its main runway from 6,400 to 7,800 feet. The extension should be completed in 2024 and apart from allowing single-aisle airliners to operate at SBY, it will permit the airport to handle the largest fixed-wing UAS aircraft.

The two other advantages for UAS companies come from SBY’s location deep in the three-state Delmarva Peninsula, according to Davidson. First is that the 180-mile long peninsula is largely separated from the U.S. mainland by the Chesapeake Bay to the west and south, and by the estuary of the Delaware River to the north. To the east, the entire length of the peninsula is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean. That means the peninsula is surrounded by large areas with no population, rendering its airspace ideal for UAS operations from a public-safety viewpoint.

Because the Delmarva Peninsula relies largely on three bridges for road connections to the mainland, life on the peninsula could be disrupted if any of the bridges closed. The reliance on those bridges also makes for considerable truck-traffic pressure on them, particularly on the Bay Bridge linking Delmarva to the greater Washington D.C./Baltimore area.

Today FedEx operates two to three 25-minute cargo flights each day from Baltimore/Washington International Airport to SBY, using Cessna Caravan fixed-wing aircraft. Borfitz and Davidson envisage those piloted aircraft being replaced one day by regional airliner-size or even larger aircraft operating autonomously piloted cargo shuttle services to and from SBY, removing some of the truck congestion on the Bay Bridge.

Beyond that, Davidson thinks SBY’s airport business park and Delmarva’s sparse population and agricultural focus could make SBY ideal as a hub for cargo drones, carrying small payloads to and from companies in the business park and delivering seeds and fertilizer to isolated farmsteads in Wicomico County.

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