ELC + ABS

More than 240,000 civilians have faced siege tactics in Syria's civil war, and 4.5 million are considered hard-to-reach. Conventional airdrops are impossible because large aircraft are vulnerable to ground fire. The Syria Airlift Project is a grassroots effort to develop an alternative paradigm: swarming airlift, using large numbers of small UAVs to deliver low-mass/high-value goods like medical supplies. Our vision is to employ Syrian refugees in Turkey to assemble and operate these aircraft, in an uplifting, nonviolent effort to care for the countrymen they've left behind. In this presentation I will discuss our work thus far, how we are using open-source 3DR hardware and software for our unique missions requirements, and how we are bringing the principles of crowdsourcing to humanitarian airlift. I will also discuss the many challenges of preparing to operate in a conflict zone.