This article gives the unmanned technology, and commercial opportunities, in the UK a regulatory context. The UK does not stand alone and we look at how European and worldwide regulatory initiatives will affect the UK. It explores the regulatory differences based on size and debates ‘is this one industry or two’? Explaining the background and history the article puts the industries present position in context. It then looks at the issues of integrating Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) in to the National Airspace and how these differ depending on UAS capability and parallels with other disruptive technologies are used to explain the difficulties that have been experienced generating accuracy market predictions. Technologies are supported by research and a brief description of current research is included. Most papers and commentators forget security and information assurance issues being debated so an overview is included. With knowledge of where we have come from, our regulatory past and where the industry wants to go; we look at the need for agreed standards and means of compliance. The article concludes by bringing all these aspects together and explains how the different sections of the community can support and learn from each other.