ULTRA - Unmanned Aerial Systems in European Airspace
Overview
Background & policy context:
To unlock the true potential of the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) market, stakeholders need to break a series of entangled challenges. Today, in the absence of UAS regulations, the development of solutions is risky and expensive for industry, and essentially aimed at military applications. As a result, the UAS market is small and its impact on European industry is limited. Also, there is no improvement in UAS social acceptance, including a lack of political willingness to develop regulations. While this vicious circle is what is preventing the development of a civil UAS market alongside the existing military UAS market, it is also a great opportunity for Europe to take leadership and to secure an advantageous position in what is predicted by many UAS market studies to be a large and sustainable market with spin-offs into manned aviation, space and other high-tech markets.
Objectives:
The overall objective of ULTRA is to develop a civil UAS Master Plan that will break this vicious circle in order to:
- Unlock the true potential of the UAS market by addressing civil applications that are not systematically addressed today and
- Ensure that European industry plays a leading role at an international level in the development of UAS solutions.
Methodology:
The civil UAS Master Plan will build upon all relevant prior work (including the recommendations of the EU UAS Panel), and will leverage existing regulations and infrastructures in order to enable deployment of specific civil UAS applications within the next 5 years. The Master Plan will also highlight regulations and infrastructures that need to be developed in order to completely unlock the civil UAS market within the next 10-15 years, and will articulate the impact of a civil UAS market on European industry and quality of life.
To achieve this objective, ULTRA will employ the following high level approach:
- ULTRA includes world-recognized experts covering all UAS stakeholders, i.e. manufacturers, regulators, ANSPs, customers and research labs. Manufacturers will enable solutions, regulators and ANSPs will ensure that solutions are safe, customers will validate that solutions satisfy their needs and finally research labs will ensure promotion of innovative concepts. ULTRA will also seek the active involvement of EASA, EUROCONTROL and the NAAs (i.e. the regulators) in the document review process and in workshops.
- There is a strong emphasis on a coordinated, step-by-step and pragmatic approach to civil UAS insertion in order to deploy specific civil UAS
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