Tombstone officials are in preliminary talks to make the old Tombstone High School the home of a federal consortium for the Federal Aviation Administration. The consortium would be for testing and studying unmanned aircrafts.

Congress is appointing a committee to select six sites for these test facilities.

“They are not armed systems, they’re very quiet spies of the sky,” said former mayor Jack Henderson. “They need a home and they need a test facility.”

According to City Clerk and City Manager George Barnes, they are in the very beginning stages and Tombstone has not even put in a proposal yet.

According to Barnes all they are looking for is office space and they will not be building any of the drones in Tombstone.

“If, and this is a long if, if the program and if the city is chosen as one of the sites, I know there will be six around the country,” Barnes said. “They will likely be looking for office space, obviously with the (high school) building there is an option for office space and that’s the extent of it at this point.”

Henderson said at the March 20 City Council meeting that he would start the process to try and get Tombstone selected, which involves meeting the point person on the project.

“That person will be reporting to a committee that is looking hard at working on moving to Tombstone,” Henderson said.

The city has been scrambling to find a buyer for the old high school since the sale fell through with William Smith of JW Transformations who had trouble putting together funds for the purchase.  He said he had hoped to build a high-end hotel to host conferences and weddings.