Southern Arizona sheriff’s office partners with Draganfly on drones for border security

PHOENIX — Draganfly Innovation Inc. is building the first-of-its-kind drone to support the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) with border security.

The sheriff’s office already has drones, but their flight time is limited to about 30 minutes.

CCSO Captain Tim Williams said he first heard about Draganfly at a national sheriff’s event and expressed CCSO’s need for a long-range drone that can also carry a heavy payload.

“We know that there’s activity miles and miles away that we would like to get eyes on and we have attempted to do it with our current devices, and we run out of battery,” Williams told KTAR News 92.3 FM.

How is Draganfly Inc. building the drones for border security?

Draganfly is the oldest commercial drone company in the world. CEO and co-founder Cameron Chell said the technology doesn’t exist so they’re developing it.

They’ve designed a hybrid drone for Cochise County, “which works off of two combustion engines with a battery management system that also generates power for the batteries,” Chell said.

These new border security drones are nine-feet across and can fly for up to seven hours. Draganfly also builds heavy lift drones that can carry more than 200 lbs. However, Chell noted adding a heavy payload begins to reduce the flight time. The company is working to combine the technologies.

Williams said the Draganfly drones will allow them to patrol more miles of the border and deliver humanitarian aid during search and rescues.

“With a hundred-pound payload, these things could bring medical supplies, water. There’s an unknown limit to what this thing could do,” Williams said.

Sheriff’s deputies can pilot the drones in manual mode, semi-autonomous mode — where an operator pilots the drone from their headquarters — or fully autonomous mode.

Chell said their drones are so sophisticated they can even gather health information.

“Right from the drone we can calculate heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen level, temperature of the body. So, we can even detect infectious diseases coming in,” Chell said.

The first Draganfly border drones will be tested by the Cochise County Sheriff’s deputies beginning in November. Chell called Cochise County the nation’s leader when it comes to border security.

“This is solely building something that doesn’t exist right now and Draganfly was a company that stepped up,” Williams said.

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