UAS Air traffic insertion

 

UAS Air Traffic Insertion has been a priority of the European Defence Agency since its establishment, when it was introduced in the Agency’s first work programme for 2005. By March 2007 the three major European stakeholders – European UAS companies under the ASD; the European Commission and the EDA – had identified, within the Air4All project, a common objective “to open the European Airspace and have the required technology demonstrations in order to produce Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems that can routinely fly across national borders”.

 

Based on the findings of the study EDA’s Air Traffic Insertion policy for UAS outlines the achievement of seamless integration of civil as well as military UAS into the non-segregated European Airspace as the common target by 2015. This common civil-military European initiative received strong support from various stakeholders around Europe. In the past few years, EDA started actively preparing, together with the pMS, the needed business cases to support the decision in what areas investments should be made and focused on.

Recently, the main developments were focused on mid-air collision avoidance and command and control technologies:

  • Separation & Collision Avoidance – Technology Demonstration and Standardisation;
  • Secure and Sustainable Communications for Command and Control.
"Solutions for more effective capabilities are within reach. For example, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles can monitor movement on the ground in deployed military operations or civilian missions abroad. The same UAVs, equipped with the same sensors, can be used to spot illegal immigrants at Europe's external borders." Catherine Ashton, Head of EDA, February 2010