# News Source Record

**L-Ne / Open-source news extract** — Original media coverage of unmanned aerial systems.

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Collection date | 3 December 2010 |
| Platform | Quiet Systems |
| Data label | Open-source news record // LRRK collection product |
| Handling | Public-source material. Image rights require separate verification before publication. |
| Scale | Local |
| Language | English |
| Terms matched | unmanned aerial; unmanned aircraft; Predator; Global Hawks |

## Bibliographic

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Outlet | Grand Forks Herald (Grand Forks, North Dakota) |
| Title | Another UAV firm comes to GF |
| Dateline | Grand Forks, North Dakota |
| First publisher | yes |
| Original URL | https://www.newspapers.com/image/1133170457/?terms=unmanned+aerial |
| Archive URL | — |
| Dedup key | 2010-12-03|grand-forks-herald|simlat-uav-training-office |
| Source grade | A1 |

## Pictures

- page: 2010-12-03-grand-forks-herald-simlat-uav-firm-page.jpg — https://drive.google.com/file/d/13nPL6Ci2k-63NxwV3Nvf2MmY9kfizyM7/view
- clips folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1On-WlTNnfFzvc6yhd46XSlX3I6Kuih_-


## Record

**Verified extract — [Fact — A1]** Tu-Uyen Tran, Herald staff writer, reported on page 9 under an "UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS" heading that Simlat, a fledgling Israeli company specializing in training unmanned aircraft operators, was opening an office in Grand Forks. The paper said the firm had just 15 employees in one office. Grand Forks already hosted Predator aircraft owned by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and was soon expected to receive National Guard Predators and Air Force Global Hawks. Defense giants such as Northrop Grumman and L-3 Communications had joined local firms such as Bold Method. Al Palmer, who heads UND's unmanned aircraft system research center, said Grand Forks was "firing on all cylinders" with the Air Force, the National Guard, UND, and North Dakota State University nearby. According to Peshin, Simlat works sometimes as a subcontractor and sometimes as the main contractor; started in 2004, it had customers in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and India. Most employees were programmers or former pilots and operators from Israel, whose military pioneered the use of unmanned aircraft. The company would be hiring five in Grand Forks initially, mostly in sales and customer service; Peshin hoped to start hiring programmers within five years.

**Kinematic object.** Predator / Global Hawk (CBP, Guard, Air Force presence at Grand Forks); Simlat UAS operator-training systems.

**Coverage frame.** industry / military

## Source integrity

- Why original: Grand Forks Herald staff byline (Tu-Uyen Tran) on an Israeli UAS-training firm opening locally, quoting UND's UAS research-center head.
- Wire reprint status: Not a wire reprint.
- OCR / clip caveats: Verified from Newspapers.com full-page scan OCR. First name of the Simlat source is given as Peshin in the readable columns; a nearby line that may be Yuval Helge was too broken to lock. No drone photograph on this inside page.

## LRRK relevance

Watch / Passport. A Watch desk would have logged a foreign UAS-training vendor standing up next to CBP Predators and a university UAS center.

*LRRK — security assurance for systems that sense, move, and act.*

L-Ne