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BEAVERCREEK TWP., GREENE COUNTY — Ross McNutt is a busy man. McNutt manages three companies, and he is working to give what was the Wright Aero Club — now called the “Mac Air Aero Club LLC” — a new beginning at the Greene County-Lewis A. Jackson Regional Airport, which is managed by one of his companies, Mac Air.
The Aero Club, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, was closed because it was losing money.
Another of McNutt’s companies, Persistent Surveillance Systems, builds air- and ground-based camera systems that have helped police departments in the U.S. and Mexico solve 34 murders, investigations that McNutt says have led to 75 confessions to crimes. “We’ve actually witnessed people kill multiple times,” McNutt said.
The camera systems do more than help police solve crimes, though. They have assisted NASCAR officials with spectator traffic flow. They gave those responding to floods in Iowa crucial information from above. They helped with security in 2008 when then-presidential candidate John McCain introduced Sarah Palin, his vice presidential pick, to crowds at the Ervin J. Nutter Center in Fairborn.
Mounted on airplanes flying at about 10,000 feet, Persistent Surveillance camera systems offer a sensitivity 10 times greater than that of IMAX cameras (8.84 million pixels), said McNutt, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. While the cameras can’t discern an individual’s facial features, they can follow suspects and their vehicles — but only when directed by police, he said.
From above, the cameras can monitor from 2.5 square miles up to 25 square miles for less than the cost of operating a police helicopter, McNutt says.
“We only look where reported crimes are,” he said.
When Larrell Walters, head of the University of Dayton’s Institute for the Development and Commercialization of Advanced Sensor Technology (IDCAST), hosted Rebecca Blank, then U.S. acting deputy commerce secretary, in a January visit to Dayton’s Tech Town business park, he had McNutt demonstrate his technology for Blank.
Blank came away saying, “There’s no better place than Tech Town in Dayton.”
Walters said Persistent Surveillance Systems is “exactly the kind of company” IDCAST was meant to nurture, and he credited McNutt, 47, with understanding that high-technology firms need to do more than get the basic science right. They need to have the right product.
“He has a great combination of technology and practicality,” Walters said of McNutt.
Walters remembered when Persistent Surveillance started four years ago with three employees. Today, McNutt has about 35 employees. Walters credits McNutt with “leaving no stone unturned.”
“I see Ross as a great entrepreneur,” Walters said. “He’s the kind of person Ohio needs more of.”
A licensed pilot, McNutt said he ran a pizza restaurant in Alabama simply to learn the ropes of business management. But he also worked at the Pentagon on reducing the time it took to modify and field new weapons systems. Taking a product or weapon from idea stage to a $45 million Air Force program was rewarding, he said.
Today, his company is in talks with “a number” of police departments to provide full-time surveillance service. “It’s a question of customers making decisions and putting us on contract.”
His three companies — Persistent Surveillance, Mac Air and a rapid prototype development company — brought in $3 million in total revenue last year. This year, he hopes to reach $10 million.
Based today in the Russ Engineering Center business park, he’s content in the Dayton area, which he calls “affordable.”
“I’ve put together a good team of folks in the local area who do what they do,” McNutt said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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