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By Sebastian Babiarz, GUTMA Co-president, Amanda Boekholt, GUTMA Treasurer, Koen De Vos, GUTMA Secretary-General.,Emmie Derbäck, InterUSS Platform Outreach Committee
The federated UTM system works well to keep beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations safe. The US Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) North Texas UTM Key Site Operational Evaluation and the industry-developed US UTM Implementation can now point to ongoing commercial and public safety operations reflecting that the strategic coordination works well to mitigate UA-to-UA (Uncrewed Aircraft) collision risk on the basis of ASTM standard F3548-21. That is the result of months of hard work of the participating companies in the Operational Evaluation – and for sure there still is a lot of work to do. Yet, the contours of the future drone ecosystem have become clear. We now have a validated foundation for safe, automated and scalable systems to support BVLOS operations. This is not a demonstration or a trial – these are daily operations in the North Texas skies with US UTM Implementation participants also joining from New York, North Carolina, and Utah.
This article explores key takeaways from the GUTMA Harmonized Skies 2024 conference held in Fort Worth, Texas and the operations spanning Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas (DFW). It examines the roles industry and regulatory authorities will play in building the drone ecosystem globally, and what these insights mean for future efforts toward a more connected, autonomous digital aviation in a global airspace.
Seeing is believing, and what a remarkable sight it was. The backbone of a federated UTM has been demonstrated to work well in a global first. A federated UTM requires UTM Service Suppliers (USSs) to strategically coordinate to mitigate UA-to-UA collision risk – and avoid overlapping flight paths in advance. Strategic coordination, together with aggregate conformance monitoring – a systematic process for ensuring drone operations adhere to their planned intent – is a powerful safety instrument in these initial operations that last just a few minutes.
The other leg of a federated UTM is data exchange between USSs. Here the US UTM Implementation leverages the ASTM F3548-21 Standard Specification for UTM UAS Service Supplier Interoperability and aims to establish data-sharing agreements between strategic coordination service providers and supporting operators.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has created a regulatory environment throughout the national airspace system to kick off operational evaluations. The North Texas Key Site is one of the first industrial consortia to seize on this regulatory opportunity and develop a “community-based, cooperative ecosystem that is separate from, but complementary to, the FAA’s Air Traffic Management (ATM) system”. The ecosystem has the responsibility to demonstrate its technical capabilities and the underlying governance structures between USSs previously qualified as “third-party service providers”), drone operators and Supplemental Data Service Providers (SDSPs) such as fused data on traffic information or weather data.
In addition to airspace restrictions and altitude limits, existing regulatory frameworks, such as FAA Part 107 and Part 135 rules governing small UAS operations and air carrier requirements, apply to ensure operational consistency and safety. These rules form the backbone of compliance for operators at the site. In addition, the FAA has established explicit performance objectives for all UAS activities at the site. These objectives focus on mitigating risks associated with BVLOS operations in shared airspace – and each stakeholder must contribute to the safety objectives.
USSs are expected to use the strategic coordination ASTM standard, officially the “Standard Specification for UAS Traffic Management (UTM) USS Interoperability – ASTM F3548-21”. This standard entails exchange of information and conformance monitoring to accomplish strategic deconfliction to mitigate the risk of UA-UA collision.
The cooperative system in the North Texas Key Site Operational Evaluation is based on the InterUSS Platform DSS, which employs OAuth Token Service for authentication and authorization to keep data exchanges secure and compliant with regulatory requirements. The final quality assurance is the obligation to satisfy the FAA Near-Term Approval Process (NTAP) requirements.
Drone operators may be certified under either Part 135 or Part 107, and they must be able to demonstrate compliance with the BVLOS exemption requirements and to utilize UTM service to manage UA-UA collision risks. Evidently, operators must be able to connect, transmit and receive data on UA operational intent and position data.