Hillsborough County Fire Rescue starts flying whole blood to trauma scenes by drone in October. County commissioners approved the program on September 2, and Fire Rescue demonstrated it for reporters on Monday, September 28. Two Archer First Response Systems (ArcherFRS) drones, one at Station 9 in Sabal Park and one at Station 37 in Riverview, cover 70 square miles (181 square km) of unincorporated Hillsborough County.
When DroneXL last reported on the program, on August 18, it was still waiting on that vote. Tampa General Hospital, the program’s hospital partner, said in its August 3 announcement that Fire Rescue would operate the drones. The county’s September 24 release says Fire Rescue has contracted ArcherFRS to pilot them.
ArcherFRS Pilots in Sarasota Fly Hillsborough’s Blood Drones
Fire Rescue holds the FAA’s Beyond Visual Line of Sight Certificate of Waiver for both aircraft. The people at the controls work for ArcherFRS, which the county contracted for piloting, monitoring and maintenance, and which flies the drones from its Sarasota flight operations center, according to Tampa Bay 28.
The county’s release lets either a 911 operator or a paramedic at the scene order a unit of whole blood. The drones fly largely on their own, with pilots watching around the clock and ready to change course, WFLA reported. ArcherFRS founder and CEO Gordon Folkes told Tampa Bay 28 that each drone waits at its station in a climate-controlled container, already loaded with blood. Over the scene it hovers at about 197 feet (60 meters), and “we lower the deployable payload to the ground on a tether line,” he said.
The paramedic option targets a problem ArcherFRS has hit before. Its first deployment, with Tampa General in Manatee County, launched in May 2024 and went more than seven months without a 911 dispatcher using it, Government Technology reported that December. The one launch attempted in that stretch failed its pre-flight checks in bad weather.
Hillsborough’s Release Gives Three Delivery Times for One Drone
Hillsborough County’s September 24 release sets the expected average delivery at just under three minutes. It also promises blood on scene in three and a half minutes or less. A flight to the far edge of the coverage area, the same release says, takes five minutes…