Abstract
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) plans to establish a sole risk-based set of regulations for drones to grant access to European airspace, thus opening a multibillion-euro market. One part of this new regulation set is the so-called “open” category, imposing only a minimum set of regulations. The EASA’s approach presents a strong converse to traditional and prescriptive airworthiness regulations. For decades, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) have been state-of-the-art assets in military forces. Aiming at the fulfilment of complex missions in extreme environments, in different theatres of operation, and with different partners, military UAS need to be reliable, safe, and interoperable. Therefore, NATO established internationally accepted airworthiness standards. However, these standards might be too severe to be adhered to by small, commercial, off-the-shelf UAS in the up-to-25 kg category, preventing the military from benefiting from the now fast-growing civil drone market. Based on a sound literature review, the paper presents the EASA’s upcoming regulations for civil UAS and discusses if they are applicable to military UAS. Possible opportunities, challenges, and limitations of applying the approach for the military are shown.
Highlights
Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), or just “drones”have emerged from being a purely military asset to being a sophisticated tool for professional civil applications and model aircraft enthusiasts
UA MTOM ≥ 0.25 kg: Remote pilot competence must be demonstrated via an online training and online test in a format to be defined by European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), provided by an entity, recognized by the competent authority (UAS.OPEN.020(3)(b))
Remote pilot competence must be demonstrated via an online training and online test in a format to be defined by EASA, provided by an entity, recognized by the competent authority (UAS.OPEN.040(2))
Summary
Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), or just “drones”. One can say that the higher the risk of UAS operation, the more the competent aviation authority must be involved [6,7,8,9] This new regulatory approach is a significant step within European aviation regulations. While within the military community, airworthiness standards for UAS comparable to the Certified Category of EASA are quite common, the military community struggled and still struggles with the harmonization of UAS comparable to the “open” category which do not fulfill traditional airworthiness requirements but are already in use across military nations To overcome this issue in Europe, the European Defence Agency (EDA) has been ordered to create a harmonized set of regulations similar to the upcoming civil regulations [17]. The possible opportunities for aligning civil and military regulations for UAS are shown
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