Sweden is taking the lead in efforts to ensure that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can fly in regular EU airspace. “Currently Sweden could not block a route to fly a UAV from Sweden to Germany for example unless the UAV were to fly above a certain altitude and have special permits,” said Tomas Eriksson, the chairman of a five-country MIDCAS ‘sense and avoid’ technology Ministry of Defence group. “In the future, the idea is to be able to operate UAVs with other aircraft across the EU without the need for special permits,” he added.

The five countries - Sweden, Spain, France, Germany and Italy – are together spending around €50 million in a four-year project (2008-2012) to produce a ‘sense and avoid’ technology demonstrator for UAVs. Using the system, UAVs will be able to detect other aircraft and manoeuvre to avoid them.

The group is developing a prototype technology and this will be used in dialogue with regulatory bodies, such as EUROCONTROL, the European Aviation and Space Agency as well as military aviation authorities across the EU to define a standard for a ‘sense and avoid’ technology. “The aim is to have a demonstration flight of UAVs in 2013, with the UAVs flying alongside civilian aircraft in regular EU airspace,” said Eriksson. Within two years, ie by 2015, the hope is that the technology can be produced on a larger scale, initially for use by governments.

Thirteen companies, led by Saab, are working together on the project. The others are: Alenia Aeronautica S.p.A, Diehl BGT Defence GmbH & Co. KG, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. in der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, EADS Deutschland GmbH, ESG Elektroniksystem- und Logistik-GmbH, Galileo Avionica S.p.A, Indra Sistemas S.A, Italian Aerospace Research Centre CIRAS.c.p.A, Sagem (Safran Group), Selex Communications S.p.A, Selex Sistemi Integrati S.p.A and Thales Systèmes Aéroportés S.A.

The ‘sense and avoid’ technology is the most important issue to be resolved, but others include certification for operators that fly UAVs; standardisation for data links between UAVs and other UAVs and between UAVs and other aircraft and air traffic management (ie whether flight controllers should handle UAVs in the same way as they handle manned aircraft or in a different way).

Gérard Mardiné, the programme manager for the insertion of UAVs in non-segregated airspace at Sagem (Safran Group), predicts that large UAVs “capable of flying from ten to twenty hours and with a wingspan of at least eight to ten metres” will be ready to fly by around 2015. By comparison, a flight of 20 hours in a manned aircraft requires three crew. He says that possible applications of UAVs include border surveillance (eg checking for illegal immigrants) and pipeline surveillance (making sure that there are no leaks and that the pipelines are not being attacked). Although the commercial application of UAVs is a longer term prospect as they would not be produced on a larger scale, Mardiné sees fisheries surveillance, whereby boats would be able to see where large shoals of fish are located, as one possibility. “Small UAVs of around 1-3 kgs in weight could also be used in the future for night surveillance for police operations,” he added.

SHARING AIRSPACE

More broadly, the EU is trying to achieve civil-military coordination via Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) programme. The aim of SESAR is to develop a new generation of air traffic management systems capable of accommodating the expected increased civil demand while ensuring safety and cost-efficiency of air transport over the next 30 years. An official from the UK’s National Air Traffic Services body, which provides air traffic control services at fifteen of the UK’s biggest airports ⁽¹⁾ and air traffic services ⁽²⁾ for aircraft flying through UK airspace, explained that airspace has become a “scarcer resource”. “In the past there was enough airspace for different users (eg civil or military) to have airspace allocated to them exclusively for their use for a given period of time. But things can’t be managed like that any more,” he said.

EUROCONTROL points out that that EU countries need to have sufficient airspace for military purposes (eg military exercises) and for civil purposes as “modern aircraft and weapons require larger volumes of training airspace in order to fully exploit their capabilities and civil air traffic is expected to increase in the coming years”. A source familiar with the dossier said that, in the future, the military might set up travelling hermetically sealed ‘floating balloons’ of space in which military manoeuvres, such as air-to-air refuelling, could be carried out. If so, they would need to clear a ‘moving space’ of some 20 to 30 miles for the military aircraft to fly in.

An October 2009 EUROCONTROL document on the civil-military dimension of SESAR states that “the overall military-related cost due to SESAR implementation has been estimated up to €7 billion in the definition phase”. The source indicated that this cost was mainly for software so that communications between aircraft and flight controllers could be optimised. A military cost-benefit analysis phase of the programme will start at the end of November.

⁽¹⁾ www.nats.co.uk/text/103/airports.html
⁽²⁾ www.nats.co.uk/text/77/en_route_services.html