Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) - the unstoppable future of aviation and its impact on ATSEP

Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) - the unstoppable future of aviation and its impact on ATSEP

Carlos Viegas IFATSEA - SESAR SJU Liason

As all who read last year’s instalment in this ATSEP magazine will remember, it was promised that a second instalment would bring into focus the introduction

to the subject of RPAS then made. The time spanning these two articles has been well spent; at the time for example when we spoke of the need to have mandatory detect and avoid systems and software on all small RPAS and very especially the line of sight variety, the response at the time was: “too heavy, too expensive…not possible!”. Today all are unanimous; yes, it is absolutely necessary and unavoidable. This can be used to gage the extreme speed at which the RPAS are being understood and their unstoppable potential is being made clear. But…as always the aeronautical community and its institutions need to have a cool collective head and look further down the time line to be able to regulate adequately, this is no easy task because the regulator for the first time is put at the door of an as yet unseen scenario:  ...the regulator from now on needs to be proactive in the case of RPAS but also in all other highly automated ATM systems. Tradition dictated that regulation would come into force in a scenario of well-known variables which were not foreseen to change in the near future… ...that was until we all started to think of new highly automated ATM systems deployment. Then we realized that today change in ATM is possible and demanded at a breakneck speed, so the regulator needs to adapt its regulated strategy too and deployment needs to give the regulator feedback on issues found in change management so that regulation may be reviewed, this is an endless

cycle from now on. Another issue of concern…and this might be odd coming from an engineer, who is above all a concerned human being, we cannot let ourselves be driven by our capability to produce new and cheap solutions…with no time to test them thoroughly and certainly no time to evaluate what are the consequences of a huge paradigm shift: integrating an ever increasing number of RPAS in non-segregated airspace. The economic appeal is easy to see but the initial investment to guarantee safety and security to all RPAS in their access to non-segregated airspace is not trivial as is the method in which this takes place.

As yet no clear answers come up on how the communications, telemetry and payload of RPAS that take off from platforms not situated at airports are controlled or logged. Recent documents state that the operator of the RPAS is responsible…. Well yes, we know that! it would always be so. Probably the most important question would be: does he care? Plug and Fly springs to mind as a solution to the communications and telemetry part but the payload issue is clearly very different and more complex. Small RPAS cannot be seen isolated from the universe in which they fly, the dimensions of these, while small, interacts with huge and passenger carrying airliners and as such represent a huge potential to disrupt safe and secure passenger carrier operations. This is of course only true if proper regulatory measures are not put in place before they take to the skies in droves. The Impact on ATSEP roles and responsibilities:

This depends hugely on how and what technologies are used to integrate the digital communication network that will serve all the air systems. If these are integrated with other highly automated ATM systems in a future SMC, then the ATSEP have their work cut out for sure. The monitoring and control of this network as well as its systems health management is critical to maintain the RPAS operating safely and predictably. This is true only for the small systems

foreseen to fly below approach level because above that the RPAS will have to take off and land in airports due to their dimension and this means that they will use the same systems that the manned aircraft use. In both case it is however very important to retain the fact that the criticality of the ground systems that the ATSEP monitor and control is of a very much higher level than is true today.