By Cliff Montgomery – May 7th, 2012
The Pentagon is working to expand its use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), commonly called drones, inU.S. airspace. And according to its 25-year UAS development roadmap, the Defense Department (DoD) isplanning to make that a long-term activity.
“The number of UAS in the DoD inventory is growing rapidly,” states the Pentagon’s Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap, FY2011-2036.
“The increase in numbers, as well as the expanding roles of UAS, has created a strong demand for access tonational and international airspace and has quickly exceeded the current airspace available for militaryoperations,” continued the report.
“The [desired] end state is routine NAS access comparable to manned aircraft for all DoD UAS,”declares theDoD Roadmap.
“DoD’s immediate focus is gaining near-term mission-critical access while simultaneously working toward far-term routine NAS [National Airspace System] access,” emphasizes the Pentagon document.
“Current UAS are built to different specifications for different purposes – therefore, showing individually thateach system is safe for flight in the NAS can be complicated, time consuming, and costly,” points out theRoadmap.
“Routine access cannot happen until DoD and FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] agree to an acceptablelevel of safety for UAS, and the appropriate standards are developed to meet that threshold,” states the report.
But thanks to the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act and the FAA’s authorization, Congress haspushed through an “accelerated” allowance of UAS into American airspace.
