Res Communis

UAVs in Civil Airspace?

by P.J. Blount with the blog faculty

From Aviation Week:

Debate Soars Over UAVs in Civil Airspace

Aug 18, 2009

Bill Sweetman/London

The U.K. Defense Ministry recently announced that it was no longer planning to keep its General Atomics-Aeronautical Systems Inc. MQ-9A Reaper force as a permanent part of the Royal Air Force. Economy was cited as a reason but there is also an overriding operational concern: The RAF does not know whether the Reaper can operate in U.K. airspace.

The U.S. Air Force is moving forward with plans to divest its smaller MQ-1L Predators and switch to an all-Reaper force, large enough to sustain 50 continuous 24-hr. orbits over a war theater. These plans, however, hinge on being able to operate Reapers routinely in airspace where they do not fly today, with a second major training center being established at Holloman AFB, N.M., to complement the current base at Creech AFB, Nev. . . .

. . . The problem in all cases is that it is easier to fly unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a war zone than in civilian airspace. One senior USAF officer was queried at a conference about the potential for operating UAVs in national–i.e., civilian–airspace. “Anyone here from the Federal Aviation Administration?” he asked. “No? Good.” He then proceeded to air the military’s frustration with the civilian authorities that own the airspace.

“We talk in decades when we talk about when and what the FAA will allow us to do,” he said. In the war zone, Predators and Reapers operate in 3D airspace blocks defined by Global Positioning System signals, from which other aircraft are excluded, and their ground control stations are networked into the military air traffic system. But in the U.S., “there are lots of bug-smashers (small private aircraft) with no identification friend-or-foe and no [warning] equipment.” . . . [Full Story]