L-Ne · Historical Source Library

News Source Record

# News Source Record

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

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Collection date | 26 December 2013 |
| Platform | Quiet Systems |
| Data label | Open-source news record // LRRK collection product |
| Handling | Public-source material. Image rights require separate verification before publication. |
| Scale | National |
| Language | English |
| Terms matched | drones; drone; unmanned; UAVs; unmanned aerial vehicles; Predator; Global Hawk; octocopters |

## Bibliographic

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Outlet | The Guardian |
| Title | US states await key drones decision – and the billions that could follow |
| Dateline | Oklahoma |
| First publisher | yes |
| Original URL | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/26/us-states-await-key-drones-decision-billions |
| Archive URL | — |
| Dedup key | 2013-12-26|the-guardian|oklahoma-faa-test-site-bid-raptr |
| Source grade | A1 |

## Record

**Verified extract — [Fact — A1]** The Guardian reported from Oklahoma as 24 states awaited the FAA’s end-of-month pick of six official drone test sites. On a runway, handler Curtis Sprague flew the Raptr — 73-inch rotors, military-grade autopilot (up to 500 corrections/second), 10-mile autonomous surveillance, real-time video and thermal — then disconnected the remote and let it land itself. Tactical Electronics was distributing Raptr; RAPS tests for DHS at Fort Sill used a “Freedom City” of shipping containers. Oklahoma’s commerce department estimated a test-site win at 2,000 jobs, $200m/year, $20m tax. OSU Stillwater hosted what it called the country’s first postgraduate drone programme; students had built ~25 prototypes including Talos (16-foot wingspan, DHS commission, quiet enough for Mexican-border surveillance). James Grimsley (Design Intelligence / Unmanned Systems Alliance of Oklahoma) was developing solar Eturnas. ACLU-OK’s Ryan Kiesel said drones are quieter and can loiter, unlike a Cessna. Arlington, Texas, police had flown over a “Garden of Eden” co-op looking for drugs and staked out a shooting-suspect apartment. Small drones (<55 lb) could begin commercial operations as early as 2015; larger crop/cargo types around 2020.

**Kinematic object.** Raptr mini-helicopter; OSU Talos; Hexacopter (Frontier); Eturnas solar UAV; Arlington police UAVs; proposed FAA test ranges

**Coverage frame.** industry / regulatory

## Source integrity

- Why this is treated as an original
- Wire reprint status: Guardian original reported from Oklahoma with named sources. Not a wire.
- What was excluded

- URL date 2013/dec/26.
- Excluded later “Most viewed” chrome.

## LRRK relevance

Lab / Watch / Passport. State-level test-site politics and a named quiet-border UAV (Talos).

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

L-Ne