Washington’s drone industry is booming

They’re still not legal to fly in public airspace, but the drone industry is booming in Washington.

Insitu is a subsidiary of Boeing that focuses solely on unmanned aerial systems. They’re breaking ground Wednesday on a massive new manufacturing plant in Bingen, Washington, a town in Klickitas County.

The facility will be 120,000 square feet when completed next year, more than double their current space in Stevenson. It will house about 180 employees working on two production lines.

“We have many government contracts, we also are looking forward in the near future to having commercial contracts,” says Insitu CEO Steve Morrow. “We have many international customers as well.

Insitu’s ScanEagle is a smaller, 50-pound drone system used for surveillance and information gathering. The new Integrator system is a bit larger to hold bigger cameras and radar equipment.

The governor’s office is currently waiting to find out if the Federal Aviation Administration will designate an area in Washington as a federal test site for drones, but Morrow says that won’t have too much impact on Insitu’s future.

“Insitu was born here in the Gorge, and we’re committed to staying here whether or not there’s a test site in Washington state,” says Morrow.

The company currently has its own private test site in Eastern Oregon where its drones can fly without entering public air space.

By 2015, the FAA has been ordered to find a way to incorporate the flying robots with the rest of air traffic, but it may happen as early as next year.