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- By Chez Oxendine
- Economic Development
Swiss engineers will soon test drones in simulated storms inside a converted Tulsa airplane hangar, as an Oklahoma tribe makes a $500 million push into the booming aerospace market.
The Osage Nation opened the Skyway36 Droneport and Technology Innovation Center in May, housing Swiss drone company WindShape as its first tenant. The 19,000-square-foot facility, converted from a former airplane hangar with a $2 million Economic Development Administration grant, includes outdoor and indoor testing grounds, 8 specialized labs, a 3,000-foot runway and helipad.
The flexibility could allow developers to quickly resolve problems in their drone designs, rework them and test again. Osage LLC Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Wright said the facility is “fairly unique in that way,” and could attract national and international attention.
“We feel that it's going to bring a lot of interest in high-tech manufacturing, and in turn we think that's going to bring a lot of interested parties to the area,” Wright told Tribal Business News. “Then you're going to see opportunities for our people as a result.”
Market conditions support the expansion: The aerospace market stood at roughly $373.61 billion in 2024, according to a report published by analysis firm Precedence Research. With a compound annual growth rate of 7.8%, Precedence predicts the market could double in size by 2034, landing at approximately $792 billion.
Other tribes are also capitalizing on the drone boom. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation received a $2 million Oregon grant to train drone pilots, while tribes nationwide use the aircraft for agricultural data collection, forest and watershed mapping, and search and rescue operations. The commercial drone market could reach $12.2 billion by 2030, according to Commercial UAV News.
The drone facility, developed with Oklahoma City-based Droneport Network, is part of the broader Skyway36 project that includes a 40-acre industrial park in downtown Tulsa with 80,000 square feet of office and manufacturing space. The combination positions the tribe to capitalize on efforts to bring aerospace manufacturing back to the United States, according to Osage LLC CEO Russell Goff.
“This would be a facility that would attract everyone from tinkerers and engineers to Fortune 500 companies to test out new materials from new supply chains, and of course the military wants to be able to source from inside the U.S.,” Goff said. “We see ourselves as being part of an overall economy for drone flight, drone testing and commercial drone operations.”
The facility connects to Skyway Range, a 1,200-square-mile flight corridor for unrestricted drone testing that already has radar systems and a 114-nautical-mile corridor between the nation's headquarters and Oklahoma State University testing facilities, Goff said.
Federal aviation rules could determine the project's success. The Federal Aviation Administration is still crafting regulations for Beyond Visual Line of Sight operations — drone flights that leave the operator's view. President Donald Trump has pushed the agency to speed up those rules to strengthen the U.S. drone industry.
“I think the next 36 months will be critical to see what the FAA does with their rulemaking,” Goff said. “A lot of it is still up in the air. But we do believe that the demand is there on the consumer side to solve these problems, and so we think they're going to get solved.”
The projects could attract high-tech companies and create jobs for tribal members. The Osage Nation plans to invest up to $500 million over the next decade in additional buildouts on Tulsa's north side, expanding the industrial park, Wright said.
Wright estimates the tribe is halfway through its “master plan” to make Tulsa a premier tech and manufacturing hub.
"It's the space that we want to be able to provide to anybody, whether they're a small startup or maybe they're a larger player already in the aerospace industry that wants to be exactly where that world-class testing facility is," Wright said. "These are high-tech manufacturing jobs. These are people running 3D printers and automated manufacturing machines. This is going to have a pretty huge impact, especially on the north side of Tulsa."
Osage LLC leads the Skyway projects with support from the City of Tulsa, Tulsa Innovation Labs and the Indian Nations Council of Governments. The work is part of the Tulsa Regional Air Mobility (TRAM) Corridor, which received $39 million in federal funding under former President Joe Biden's Build Back Better initiative.
Besides the Osage Nation flight corridor and drone hangar, the projects include a research and development center, a workforce development program and facility, and a wastewater treatment facility that will help make roughly 2,200 acres of industrial space in Tulsa's Port of Inola available for use.
According to Wright, TRAM could attract aerospace business from across the country, ranging from private investors to the Department of Defense. Goff said the Skyway Range acreage is positioned at the center of the TRAM corridor, positioning the tribe for a potential windfall during the subsequent development.
"We think this is a medium-term opportunity in the aerospace industry and a look at what it could be," Goff said. "Being at the center of this industry that's about to explode could be huge for us."
