UAS TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT The Key to the Future of Drones

In 2012, Congress passed the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, which established a deadline for the agency: achieve full integration of drones into the airspace by 2015. As the calendar rolls over into 2021, this begs an obvious question: “Are we there yet?”

- Patrick Sherman

Even someone who has never touched a controller and thinks that Part 107 is a household cleaning product can tell you that the answer is “No!” Their evidence? No Amazon delivery drones have yet graced their front porch. Likewise, there have been no routine operations beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) for linear infrastructure inspection, no fully autonomous flights for perimeter security around sensitive facilities, and so on.

These types of missions are the hallmarks of full integration, but none has been achieved except by a waiver to Part 107 under tightly controlled circumstances. However, we cannot waive our way to making uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) full participants in the national airspace system (NAS). That will require three things: rules, technology, and a plan. The good news is that we’ve got the plan.

Actually, it’s the second draft of a plan—so we’ve still got a ways to go, but even a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single footstep.

UTM CONOPS 2.0

Let’s begin by defining a few terms, starting with UTM. It’s an acronym for UAS Traffic Management, the system which must be put in place to permit the full integration of drones in the NAS. Briefly—because the balance of this article will be spent describing it in more detail—UTM is air traffic control (ATC) for drones.

What about “ConOps”? That’s a contraction for “Concept of Operations,” a term widely used in aviation, engineering and the military, but less familiar to people who are not deeply embedded any of those fields. Just like it sounds, a ConOps is a document that describes the functioning of a system from the perspective of its end user. It’s a disciplined approach to transforming an idea into a real-world product or service, by identifying all of the individual components and how they will interact with each other.