Utah officially opened its doors to the unmanned aerial systems (UAS) industry on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018 at Deseret UAS Headquarters’ in Tooele. Deseret UAS headquarters is located at the Xperience Center in Tooele City. This state-of-the-art facility boasts UAS flight simulations, real-time test flight viewing, and collaborative meeting spaces.
Deseret UAS is a non-profit corporation created jointly by Tooele and Box Elder Counties, in close partnership with Ogden City. As the premier organization in Utah dedicated to UAS, Deseret UAS provides unparalleled access to several large flight test ranges with miles of wide-open land and air.
“Utah leads the country on a number of key economic indicators due to our ability to leverage technological innovations and invest in our critical infrastructure. We move bridges into place overnight, have invested billions of dollars to rebuild our international airport, and recently created an inland port that will cement Utah’s standing as the crossroads of the West,” said Congressman Chris Stewart. “Rural counties like Tooele have directly benefited from those investments, as evidenced by the creation of Deseret UAS.”
Centrally located near Utah’s Wasatch Front and 30 minutes away from an international airport, Deseret UAS’ headquarters and test ranges offer the best of both worlds- dozens of miles of wide open, protected air space for flying, as well as the amenities of the more urbanized areas.
“The UAS industry is developing crucial technologies that can make the world in which we live better, safer and more efficient. Deseret UAS is at the forefront of making these technologies a reality,” said Tooele County commissioner and Deseret UAS board chair Shawn Milne.
Deseret UAS has hired nationally renown UAS expert, Dr. Tulinda Larsen to lead the organization as its Executive 
Director. Dr. Larsen has literally written the book on UAS, authoring a series entitled, “Six-Word Lessons for a Trustworthy Drone Business.”
She is the Founder and CEO of Skylark Services, an economic consulting company that researches commercial manned aviation and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Dr. Larsen is a Principal at NEXA Capital Partners and provides corporate and strategic financial advisory services to the aerospace, transportation, logistics and homeland security sectors. She is an economist and Adjunct Professor of Global Aviation Economics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. She holds a doctorate in management from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree and bachelor’s degree in Economics from The George Washington University.
Deseret UAS has also hired Marshall Wright as the organization’s Government and Industry Relations Director. Mr. Wright has decades of experience in the industry and helped to establish the UAS industry in Utah. He is formerly the head of Business Development at the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. He holds a master’s degree in Applied Physics from Adelphi University and a bachelor’s degree in Physics from The City College of New York.
Board of Directors
“We have assembled a team of national experts who will help us advance the UAS industry and take advantage of its innovations here in Utah,” said Milne. “We look forward to leveraging their skillset and professional direction to facilitate strong economic development and prosperity here at home.”
“The biggest untapped resource in the U.S. and the world is our airspace,” said Tulinda Larsen, executive director of the newly formed Deseret Unmanned Aerial Systems. “And that’s where Deseret UAS is stepping up.”
“Deseret UAS is the culmination of three years of hard work on behalf of Tooele and Box Elder counties aimed at creating jobs,” Milne said. “Right now, 75 percent of our residents are commuting to the Salt Lake Valley for work and we recognized years ago that we want to reverse that trend.”
To that end, Deseret UAS pursued fiscal help from the Utah Legislature and secured $1.2 million in funding in the last session that is helping get the effort off the ground. Larsen said the group will be headquartered at a space called the Xperience Center in Tooele that has a nearby area for small-scale test flying, but is also working to secure larger test flight ranges. A dearth of testing facilities, which must secure a Federal Aviation Administration signoff to be used by drone developers, is one of the key hindrances that her group is addressing, Larsen said.
“In 2013, the FAA established seven test sites … the closest of which is in Nevada,” Larsen said. “But they’re mostly being used for regulatory work, and commercial operators can’t use the sites for testing.”
Larsen said her group has already established a conduit for drone companies to make use of a Northrop Grumman (formerly Orbital ATK) site in Box Elder County, has an FAA-approved urban testing area in Ogden and is working with the Tooele Army Depot to make use of a site there that could open up a 25-square-mile test range.
Sources: Press Release; Deseret News