Winds of Change

Air safety is the most pressing concern for the US regulators. But they are realising that the cost of procrastination in the decision to permit widespread use of UAVs in the civilian domain will be higher than the risks associated with their employment.

The imagination of military planners and strategists has been fired by the potential of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for military purposes since 1916 when the first automatically controlled flight of an aircraft was demonstrated. However, it was only in the late 1950s that some serious experimentation with drones for reconnaissance was undertaken in the US. Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, the founder of Lockheed’s Skunk Works and designer of the SR-71 and U-2 aircraft’s prediction 67 years ago that the future of military aviation would belong to UAVs, has indeed come true. This has been clearly demonstrated in the ongoing operations by the US and NATO forces in the ongoing military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan where UAVs have been undertaking intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and combat support roles with unprecedented levels of capability. Besides, UAVs are being assigned newer roles such as electronic attack, strike, suppression of enemy air defences, communications relay, combat search and rescue, etc.

The expression 'unmanned aerial vehicle' has now generally been replaced in the US by ‘unmanned aircraft system’ (UAS) as the operational deployment of the vehicle is supported by a complex network of facilities. However, the term UAV continues to be widely used. Miniaturisation and other innovations in technology are driving the development of military UAVs towards smaller airframes. These are the small UAS (SUAS) weighing just a few hundred grams and also referred to as mini and micro air vehicles (MAV). In the early days, the UAVs were called “Drones” as these were like simple radio controlled models. Despite the sophistication of the new generation machines, this expression is used even today.

In the US, the pioneer in the field of UAVs, the primary thrust so far in capability development has been oriented towards its military application. However, the scientific community has always been conscious of the potential of such platforms for civilian use as the enabling technologies developed for military UAVs are easily adaptable for civilian applications despite inherent and significantly different philosophical, financial and operational paradigms of the two regimes. The possible uses for UAVs in civilian life are endless. Areas in which UAVs would be effective and useful could include activities related to homeland security, coastal patrol, disaster management, monitoring of urban traffic inspection of power lines as also oil and gas pipelines, land management, management of forests, fighting forest fires, damage assessment, wildlife management, etc. UAVs employed in such roles would be of the larger variety with high endurance. So far, the focus on SUAVs or MAVs for civilian application has been low. There is enormous scope however for expansion of the envelope for civilian applications especially for the smaller variety. But the major impediment in the development of a market for UAVs in the civilian segment has been issues related to civil certification and the formulation of procedures for safe, seamless and easy integration of civilian UAVs in the scheme of airspace management at the national level.

In the US which is way ahead of other nations in the domain of UAVs, currently, there is no system of civil certification of these platforms. UAVs are permitted to operate only within designated zones of airspace that are off limits to civilian aircraft and these are known as “restricted areas”. Even for operating in such airspace, each flight is required to be authorised through a process that is both infinitely complex and time consuming. Missions requiring speedy reaction are therefore automatically ruled out. What is needed is replication of the system of flight clearances in vogue for manned aircraft operating in national air space. The main reservation on the part of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been centred on technical issues that they insist must be addressed first. The capability of UAVs to detect possible conflict in traffic and take evasive action to avoid a midair collision is somewhat rudimentary and falls short of the stipulated standards of safety. Besides, solutions to the problem of control of the vehicle and the course of action in the event of breakdown of communication link are yet to be found.