What the checklist covers
The DHS C-UAS purchasing tool and Project ULTRA both point to the same operating reality: protected sites need a coordinated airspace picture before they need another vendor demo. This checklist helps teams separate what they can buy, what they are authorized to do, and how cooperative drone traffic stays out of the alarm queue.
- Mission trigger: venue, campus, critical infrastructure, designated event, or temporary federal security posture.
- Authority boundary: detection, tracking, identification, and mitigation mapped separately before procurement.
- Remote ID plan: how cooperative aircraft are received, correlated, logged, and deconflicted.
- RF and line-of-sight survey: terrain, building shielding, co-channel interference, and sensor overlap.
- Federal handoff: who can mitigate, who commands the event, and how local data reaches federal authority under time pressure.
- Authorized operator access: how DFR, media, inspection, and venue-support drones prove they belong near the site.
- Evidence retention: detection tracks, Remote ID logs, C2 telemetry, incident timeline, and post-event review package.