Tuesday, October 26, 2021

India notifies new policy to safely managing drone traffic with manned aircraft at lower level airspace

New Delhi: India has put in place a traffic management system for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) as the number of drones being used here for multiple purposes is all set to see a massive increase. This made it mandatory to safely manage the interplay between manned and unmanned aircraft, especially at low level airspace where drones fly, for which the Union aviation ministry has now notified the “national UAS traffic management policy framework.”

“…the number of UAS operating in Indian airspace is poised to increase rapidly. India has started taking steps towards enabling advanced use cases like delivery of goods using unmanned aircraft and is also looking at human transportation using unmanned aircraft. Such use cases may require unmanned aircraft to fly alongside manned aircraft…. requires the creation of a separate, modern, primarily software-based, automated UAS traffic management (UTM) system. Such systems may subsequently be integrated into traditional air traffic management (ATM) systems,” the policy says.

It defines the architecture and mechanism for UTM in very low level (VLL) airspace up to 1,000 feet above ground level. This airspace shall be defined as UTM Airspace. The objective of this policy are to allow identified stakeholders to seamlessly communicate with each other; assist in separating unmanned aircraft from other manned and unmanned aircraft and provide situational awareness of VLL airspace to concerned stakeholders.

Drone Federation of India director Smit Shah said: “Traditional traffic management services provided by air traffic control for manned aircraft cannot be scaled for managing drone traffic which is expected to become at least 100 times higher since the traditional air traffic management is manual and requires human intervention. This policy framework shall allow third-party service providers to deploy highly automated, algorithm-driven software services for managing drone traffic across the country.”

26/10./21 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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