Sharing Skies – Enabling Safe and Secure Drone Operations

Advanced air mobility (AAM) has the potential to bring enormous economic and societal benefits to the UK. As well as revolutionising how people and cargo move from A to B, AAM also has enormous potential for contributing to the levelling-up agenda by connecting rural communities and regions like never before. 

The challenge is how to speed up the development of, and then implement, the key technologies, procedures, and processes the industry will need to usher in an exciting new generation of drone services. All at a scale that makes economic sense. And all in a way that’s safe, secure and, of course, mitigates the potential for maliciously operated drones to cause harm.

A realistic vision of the near-future of air mobility

While countless column inches have been written about the mass roll-out of drone-delivered pizzas and Amazon packages, the reality is a little less fanciful. No doubt, those fast-food and parcel deliveries will happen, but the first imperative is to modernise air traffic management and open up airspace for drone operators. Once that’s happened, Thales believes that, initially, only a few use-cases will proceed at speed. Namely:

• AAM/UAM – advanced air and urban mobility (AAM/AUM) solutions, in the form of eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft. Once certified, these ‘flying cabs’ will provide a high-end, bespoke taxi service in congested urban areas.
• Surveillance and monitoring – long-duration BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line Of Sight) flights to survey infrastructure and hazardous sites. There’s also a fast-developing use case for high-altitude pseudo-satellites (HAPS) to provide environmental surveillance.
• Blue-light and critical deliveries – where ground infrastructure is challenging due to geography or urban congestion.

It’s hard to argue against the usefulness and utility of the above and research shows the public is becoming more comfortable with the idea of drones providing specific services that benefit society – such as mail deliveries to the Isles of Scilly or conveying urgent medical supplies across congested towns and cities.

Drone dramas

However, it’s worth noting that for all their potential drones have stubbornly shown their ability to cause disruption and nuisance – in particular, when flown too close to critical infrastructure such as airports, ports, and hospitals. Or around stadia or public buildings without authorisation. 

As a result, any investment in technology to support drone services must include investment in developing counter-solutions (Counter-UAS) that prevent or mitigate their misuse, by accident or design.

And as highlighted in an article in The Times last month (paywall) the French Army is testing an anti-drone system, integrated by Thales, at this year’s Rugby world cup to protect stadia from unwanted drones. The plan is to deploy it fully for the Paris Olympics in 2024. 

Establishing a thriving drone economy

At Thales, we think technology is far from the biggest hurdle to creating a thriving drone economy. Thanks to research and development in places like DARTeC (Digital Aviation Research and Technology Centre), uncrewed ariel vehicles (UAVs) – and their enabling infrastructure technologies such as Aveillant’s holographic radar – have come a long way in a short space of time.

The biggest hurdle will be developing a systems-of-systems approach to scale the industry in a sustainable way. And putting in place a regulatory framework that supports the safety case and defines an economic model that encourages infrastructure investment in sensors, uncrewed traffic management (UTM), and communication networks. Allied to that will be addressing societal concerns about safety, noise, and nuisance and from low-flying drones.

Building on successes to date

Air mobility technology and its underlying infrastructure is already well advanced. There have been numerous successful trials and test programmes completed globally, with others currently underway in some of the world’s most congested airspace – for example, Project HADO. Together, these programmes and projects are helping shape the regulatory environment that will, ultimately, enable the integration of UTM and ATM (air traffic management) into a single system that will likely open the flood gates to a host of advanced drone solutions.

That’s why, at Thales, we’re focusing our efforts on developing:

• air traffic management solutions for drones of all sizes and speeds operating in shared airspace air or in shared landing areas
• plug-and-play and off-the-shelf avionics equipment, as well as bespoke solutions for specific needs, to lower the cost and complexity of drone operators entering the market
•  equipment to protect flights with geocaging and anti-jamming solutions that enable safe, secure drone operations
• integrated counter-UAS solutions that protect critical infrastructure from unwanted drones

Enabling the good guys…

Our portfolio of air mobility products is already supporting customers as the world moves towards a drone economy. Here’s how:

• UAS 100 – designed by Thales Flight Avionics, this is the first regulatory-compliant long-range drone from Thales. It provides safe and secure BVLOS surveillance and inspection operations, with limited environmental impact, for civilian and government applications.
• ScaleFlyt – offers remote ID, geofencing, anti-jamming, and a drone operation management platform that enables any organisation to scale up and manage its UAV fleet’s complex VLOS and BVLOS missions in a safety manner. . ScaleFlyt’s drone operations management platform enables any organisation to scale up and manage its UAV fleet’s complex VLOS and BVLOS missions safely and compliantly.
• Onboard drone technology – flight controls for medium-to-large UAVs. Includes GPS/GNSS receivers and inertial navigation, anti-jamming and geotagging, remote ID equipment, computing platforms, guidance and flight trajectory management, detect and avoid systems, and resilient communications.
• TopSky UAS – end-to-end UTM solutions for safe, secure, scalable BVLOS operations. Integrates weather, geographical and authorised surveillance, software, and physical infrastructure such as radars, communications, and backhaul network.
• Cyber security – ensuring digital safety and security for operators, the general public,

and national interests by embedding key technological building blocks into drones, encrypted sensitive data, and secure data storage.

…while taking on the baddies

Building on our experience and expertise in designing and manufacturing anti-drone systems for military organisations, we’re also developing advanced systems to protect against bad drones in the civil world:

•  Counter-UAS – Eagle Shield is Thales’ integrated and scalable nano, micro, mini, and small-drone countermeasures solution to protect and secure civil sites. It uses Gamekeeper’s 3D holographic radar (design and developed by Aveillant in the UK) to detect, track, and classify objects. Data is then intelligently fused through an interface to the UTM/ATM system that enables alerts to be acted on.
• Counter-UAS – PARADE is a modular anti-drone deployable protection capability designed to detect, classify, and defeat hostile micro and mini-UAVs. It integrates scalable, multi-layer systems (sensors and effectors) into a smart command and control system.

Last word

The future of uncrewed aviation and UAM is exciting. But it’s also evolving fast. To succeed, organisations need a deep understanding of the operational challenges and risks involved. Our package of certified technologies is designed to get UAV and UAM operations – from small drones up to large eVTOL aircraft – up to speed and off the ground quickly, compliantly, and cost-effectively.

Find out more information about Thales in the UK’s drone solutions, here. We’ll also be at this year’s Drone X Expo, talking more about our vision for “Sharing Skies” and how we can enable safe and secure drone operations.

This article is based on a conversation with Julia Jiggins, Head of Strategic Marketing – Aviation & Space, Thales in the UK.