After four years of development, EMRTC is now offering Drone Assessment and Response Tactics (DART) courses designed to train emergency personnel to respond to Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) threats. The first course was piloted in 2019. Currently three DART courses are available to provide emergency personnel with the knowledge and necessary skills to detect, identify, track, assess, respond, and report UAS activity.
Front View of Drone IED
The residential course, conducted in Playas, NM, is a 24-hour course that has offerings scheduled throughout 2022. Participants are presented with information on the current UAS criminal and terrorist threat, analog and electronic UAS detection techniques, and threat response tactics. Participants will view performance-based field demonstrations and take part in exercises where they are presented with varying UAS types, their capabilities, and simulated UAS threats involving Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). Participants will apply course content as they implement detection techniques, track and identify these UAS, assess threats, and implement response techniques.
Drone with Pipe Bomb
An awareness-level mobile course is also available; this 8-hour course is delivered in the jurisdiction of requesting agencies. A third course, a customized awareness-level course for requesting agencies, is delivered in the requesting agency’s jurisdiction and is 1.5 hours long.
DART course instructors have extensive backgrounds in UAS operations in civilian, law enforcement, and military environments. Lead instructor Tyler Sautter has delivered UAS training across six continents. In 2008 he fielded the first military UAS system in the state of Colorado and immediately deployed with that system to Baghdad, Iraq. Upon returning, he attended and graduated from the U.S. Army’s Instructor Pilot school and went to work as a lead Standardization Pilot, which required him to deploy to Iraq as a civilian contractor. Sautter has also worked as a Senior Training Instructor at the U.S. Army’s UAS National Training Center in Ft. Huachuca, AZ, and has since written training programs for commercial UAS manufacturers and managed a team of UAS instructor pilots.
