Sen. John Hoeven announces $100 million UAS investment in Grand Forks

GRAND FORKS — Over $100 million in federal funding will be going toward Grand Forks’ UAS and aerospace tech network, including $4 million to bring an Albuquerque-based innovation hub to the region to help develop local programming for startup companies.

The HIVE will partner with Q Station, which primarily works with space and aerospace technology companies in New Mexico, and the funding will be used to help Q Station expand its operations into the area and help support new and emerging UAS companies.

“Q Station will help us accelerate our growth in attracting these entrepreneur companies that want to make things happen,” U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, a Republican, said at an event at the HIVE on Monday, Feb. 16.

Q Station is also a partnership intermediary of the Air Force Research Lab.

Thomas Swoyer, president of GrandSky, the sister company to the HIVE’s management company GFHive Management, said he’s excited to begin working with Q Station.

“It’s such a gift to be able to work with a partner that has such good capability and experience in exactly the areas that we need to deliver some of that capability at the HIVE,” he said.

Q Station will be helping to develop programming and support the HIVE’s accelerator programs, Swoyer said, which will allow GFHive Development to focus on bringing in more members to the hub and building more partnerships with other companies.

He added Q Station has recently started expanding into the UAS market, and this partnership would also allow the HIVE to help Q Station as it expands into that industry.

Randy Trask, CEO of Q Station, was also present at Hoeven’s presentation about the investment on Monday and expressed his excitement for the upcoming partnership.

“The momentum and the energy is contagious, and we’re really excited to get behind this mission that you created,” he said.

Some of the programming Trask said Q Station plans to implement includes events that can connect early-stage companies with investors and resources, business consulting, UAS challenges for not only local companies but also companies nationally and internationally and STEM education and outreach in public schools and at UND.

He also hopes Q Station will be able to help bridge the UAS sector and the space sector, highlighting the overlap those two industries are already seeing in technological challenges and solutions.

Along with announcing the HIVE’s partnership with Q Station, Hoeven also announced several other aspects of the Grand Forks Tech Ecosystem that will be benefiting from federal funding. That ecosystem includes the University of North Dakota, the UAS Northern Plains Test Site, GrandSky, Project ULTRA and several missions through the Grand Forks Air Force Base.

Half of the total $100 million will go toward supporting the Space Development Agency’s low-Earth orbit satellite mission in Grand Forks. That funding will connect satellites at the Air Force base to ground receivers to increase the flow of information from space.

UAS and counter-UAS research and development in North Dakota will receive $33 million, with local companies and entities like Ideal Aerosmith, UND, Space Dynamics Laboratory and more eligible to receive that funding.

Technology Applications Group, a Grand Forks company manufacturing corrosion-resistant magnesium coatings for parts used in things like drones, will receive $10 million out of a total $20 million meant to support the development of similar protective coatings for equipment and vehicles for the Department of War. That grant is in addition to $6 million that Hoeven secured for TAG last year to help build a new production line for the company.

“We’re going to put an addition on this building that we’re in now … so that we are truly sustaining for the military, so they know that there’s going to be a place where they get the absolute best coating,” said Bill Elmquist, president of TAG.

Other funding that would benefit the local UAS market includes $18.5 million for research and development of hypersonic technology and $37.5 million for other defense research and operations in the Red River Valley.

Some of the funding will also benefit UND’s programs for aerospace research and studies. Mark Askelson, associate vice president of research-national security at UND, said that funding includes $3 million will go to the university’s Vets2Wings Program, which helps veterans receive flight training and transition to the airline workforce; $1 million for helicopter training; and $2 million for food safety resilience for the military.

“It’s an amazing thing, as part of my career, to have an opportunity to be a part of what’s growing here,” he said.