Warwick Police Drone Stuck on T.F. Green Zero-Foot Grids

Robert Rahm, Part 107 drone pilot Robert Rahm  |  October 6, 2026
Docked quadcopter on a police rooftop pad at dusk, with a commercial airport runway and tower on the horizon.
Warwick's Flock Alpha is meant to live on the police headquarters roof. Airspace grids beside T.F. Green still read 0 feet.

Warwick's docked police drone has the waiver. The zero-foot grids do not care.

By Robert Rahm October 6, 2026

Warwick, Rhode Island, approved a three-year, $150,000 contract with Flock Safety in March for a drone-as-first-responder aircraft. The program was supposed to be flying within about two months. On October 5, Police Chief Col. Michael G. Lima told the Providence Journal the aircraft is still waiting on Federal Aviation Administration airspace approvals, and that a response to recent submissions could take another 30 to 60 days. "That's the plan," he said, of a launch inside the next two months.

The missing piece is not the visual-line-of-sight waiver. Warwick already has that. Lima described it as the first waiver the department applied for and received: relief from the requirement to keep the aircraft in sight, "using instruments and the software and other things at our disposal." What is still open is permission to fly in the controlled airspace around Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport, the busiest airport in the state.

That split is the whole story for a Part 107 certificate holder.

A 0 on the map is a ceiling, not a mood

UAS Facility Maps, the FAA's grid layer for Part 107 authorizations, show the maximum altitudes around airports where the agency may authorize operations without additional safety analysis. Consult them before you file. A square marked 400 feet can often clear through LAANC at or below that number. A square marked 0 feet cannot. Any flight there needs further review and coordination inside the FAA. The same is true if you want to fly above whatever number is printed on the square.

Lima walked the Providence Journal through the map. Much of Rhode Island has no grids at all. Warwick does, and so does North Kingstown, home to Quonset Point Air National Guard Base. Around T.F. Green, grids read 0 feet, including neighborhoods next to the airport. Providence's own docked program, which launched in early June, sits about six miles north of Green, outside the airport surface ring, where the same map mostly reads 400 feet. Geography did that work. Warwick does not get the same gift.

In March, WPRI reported that the drone had received special permission to operate near T.F. Green, and Lima said then that the FAA was confident the operation would not interfere with traffic around the runway. Seven months later, DroneXL reported, the airspace submissions are still on an FAA desk. Treat the March item and the October item as different documents. A conversation about interference is not the authorization you put in the logbook.

The zoom is a workaround

The department's interim picture is the camera, not the track. The Alpha can hold in airspace that is already approved and zoom into a scene that sits in a square it cannot enter. Lima's line to the Journal was plain: "I mean, it's not perfect, but you can still see pretty clearly that area." He also said he hopes to "come to some common ground on where we can be."

That is an honest operational limit. It is not a template. A zoom from the legal side of a grid line does not authorize the aircraft to cross it. If the call is inside the 0-foot square, the aircraft stays out until the further coordination comes back. Manual aircraft the department already flies for investigations stay in the fleet. The docked aircraft, Lima said, is "strictly a reactionary tool."

Two local constraints sit beside the federal one. A city ordinance bars license-plate-reading cameras that are not fixed in place, and Lima asked Flock to turn that feature off on the Alpha so the aircraft would comply. The dock itself is not finished: structural engineers are still looking at the headquarters roof, and power and Ethernet to that roof were expected to take a couple of days once the assessment clears. The $150,000 clock, the Journal reported, starts when the program launches, not when the council voted.

What a certificate holder should do with this

If you are the remote pilot in command, the visual observer, or the contractor installing the dock, write the airspace split into the scope before you quote a response time.

  1. Pull the UAS Facility Map for the launch roof and for the calls you are expected to reach. Mark every 0-foot square. Those calls are coordination, not LAANC.
  2. Keep the 107.31 waiver and the 107.41 airspace authorization in separate folders. One does not satisfy the other. A BVLOS or VLOS waiver does not paint a grid.
  3. Do not sell citywide response over a Class C or D surface area until the further-coordination letters match the squares. Quote the approved grids. Name the rest as contingent.
  4. If the contract pays on launch, the launch is the authorization plus a roof that can hold the dock. Warwick is still assembling both.
  5. Log the zoom workaround as a procedure with a hard boundary. The aircraft does not enter a 0-foot square because the lens can see it.

Providence got a cleaner map. Warwick got the runway. The certificate does not care which city wrote the check.

FAQ

Does a Part 107 waiver let Warwick fly the zero-foot grids? No. The waiver Warwick has received is from the visual-line-of-sight rule. Airspace around T.F. Green is a separate authorization. A 0-foot grid means the FAA has not pre-analyzed any altitude there for automatic approval.

What does 0 feet mean on a UAS Facility Map? The FAA says the maps show maximum altitudes where it may authorize Part 107 operations without additional safety analysis. Zero is that maximum. Any flight needs further coordination.

Can the drone still help if it cannot enter the square? Lima said the aircraft can hold in approved airspace and zoom. He also said the view is not perfect. That is a camera procedure, not an airspace approval.

When does the $150,000 contract start? The Providence Journal reported a three-year, $150,000 Flock Safety contract that starts when the program launches. As of October 5, launch was still pending FAA responses Lima estimated at 30 to 60 days, plus roof work at headquarters.

Sources

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