UAS insertion into commercial airspace: Europe and US standards perspective

Abstract

The use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) by the military has greatly increased over the last decade. This experience has led to the development of Concept of Operations (CONOPS) and technology in line with defense and security missions. It is evident that UASs are becoming the military's choice for dull, dirty and dangerous missions. Prompted by the military's experience, civil agencies have identified a large variety of missions that potentially could be performed by UASs with clear benefits. UAS are already in production and use today. However, they are limited in their use within civil airspace due to the lack of mature sense-and-avoid technology and undefined methods for proving safety. These key requirements will not only enable military, civil, and eventually commercial objectives, they will have a direct impact in initial and operating costs. Therefore, to unlock the potential of UASs, it is required to develop affordable UAS solutions that can be safely and transparently integrated into non- segregated airspace. It is important to realize that unmanned civil aviation is a revolution, not an evolution, as CONOPS and the necessary technology for flight in non-segregated airspace are not mature, and standards (MASPS or MOPS) do not exist. Therefore, UAS integration into non-segregated airspace will require the simultaneous development of CONOPS, technology and standards, and the involvement of all UAS stakeholders, that is, end users, industry, regulators, Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs), etc. from all over the world. Two groups are leading the development of standards for safe and transparent UAS integration into non-segregated airspace: EUROCAE WG-73 in Europe; and RTCA SC-203 in the US. WG-73 will propose its developed standards to EASA and the European National Aviation Authorities (NAAs), whereas SC-203 will propose its developed standards to the FAA. Therefore, if WG-73 and SC-203 are not aligned, there is a risk that different standards are developed on either side of the Atlantic. Consequently, UAS solutions will not be interoperable, and standards will be costlier and take longer to develop. This is not in the interest of any of the UAS stakeholders and especially the end users. This paper will compare the activities of WG-73 and SC-203. The focus will be on Sense-And-Avoid (SAA) activities for Beyond Visual Line-Of-Sight (BVLOS) operations and will expand on the ATM environment, markets/CONOPS, and UAS safety objectives.