Pie in the sky: North Carolina wants to be first in unmanned flight, but it's already falling behind in this air-space race.

• Author: Bradford, Ben

It looks like a robot egg, deep grooves running down two sides of an otherwise smooth rubber sphere. Suddenly, the white pod opens, revealing what resembles a spinning film reel. The disk, 8 feet in diameter with propellers in the holes, ascends from its shell and veers toward downtown. The video blinks out, then cuts to a map. The saucer hovers over Greensboro. Zoom out. Others hang over nearby Guilford County cities and towns. The map shifts to the coast, where a marker blinks red over Virginia Beach, Va. Three saucers float over the city, and more are heading toward it. "You've got their pods staggered throughout the state, sitting on police stations, sitting on fire stations," says Kyle Snyder from behind the podium. "I'm not telling you it's coming next week, next month, next year, but it's coming soon."

This isn't War of the Worlds. It is a promotional film for Olaeris Inc., which wants to build an emergency-response network in North Carolina using aircraft that have no pilots onboard. They use a combination of GPS and sense-and-avoid technology, similar to what Google Inc. employs on its driverless cars. During, say, a fire, the aircraft would fly to the blaze, streaming video to show what to expect and what equipment will be needed. Olaeris is based in Fort Worth, Texas, but Snyder wants to lure its owner to North Carolina. "He wants to come here," Snyder tells about 35 attendees of Duke Energy Corp.'s Aviation Safety Summit, where vendors hawk high-tech radars, in-flight displays and even airplane food at the utility's hangar at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. "[Fie] wants to build it, put 200, 250 jobs into the state, manufacture it here, make North Carolina the world headquarters." He's not the only one, Snyder adds. "Companies are looking at North Carolina saying, 'Let's get here, let's figure it out here. Because you've got the workforce, you've got the talent, you've got the structures in place in the state. You've got the people that can make this happen. You're the first in flight. You're the future of flight.'" (In July, Olaeris CEO Ted Lindsley sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker, giving the state until Sept. 25 to commit $6 million to the company or face the possibility of it moving elsewhere, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.)

Snyder, 40, doesn't work for Olaeris. He's paid about $126,500 a year to lead NextGen Air Transportation program, a part of N.C. State University charged with bringing unmanned aircraft--drones--to North Carolina skies. Though the industry considers "drone" a pejorative--tied too closely to the missile-packing Predators used in military operations--the term refers to any motorized vehicle that flies without a pilot onboard. That $40 remote-control helicopter your kid plays with? A drone--as is the Israeli military's $35 million, bus-size reconnaissance aircraft, the Heron. Commercially, drones have as many potential uses as iPhones have apps. The film industry has used them for cheaper, more-agile aerial cinematography. Environmental groups surveyed the Dan River with them after the Duke Energy coal-ash spill near Eden. Last November, Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos floated the concept of fulfilling online orders by drone. The Federal Aviation Administration projects 10,000 will be flying...