Venligst tjek din email for at verificere din konto
ANRA’s recently announced win in Finland to deliver U-space services for VTT Technical Research Centre, along with other recent UTM contract announcements, suggests we are moving closer to real-world UTM operations. Do you agree?
It’s heading in the right direction with things happening in North America and the Texas key sites along with activities in other parts of the country. There’s a new administration and this slows things down – but this happens every time an administration changes. The USA is now on the right trajectory. In Europe, the U-space regulation has been in place since 2023 but we haven’t had any systems certified for operation yet, though we know various certification initiatives are under way. In fact, we are going to be the first U-space service provider (USSP) to be certified in Europe by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). I believe that we are getting traction and will see things moving towards operationalisation in 2025.
The logjam seems to be around certification. The devil is in the detail, understanding stakeholder responsibilities and making sure that nothing is missed between the various parties.
Yes, and there’s no single answer. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has a fairly good handle on it and their approach and model hasn’t changed in years; they said what they were going to do and they’re sticking to that model, so there’s no ambiguity there. In Europe, there’s a little bit of ambiguity different between different member states, some wanting a heavy Common Information Service (CIS) and others a lighter one. It’s based on business decisions more than anything else.
Do regulators have the resources: the knowledge base and competence for U-space?
In most of the cases we deal with, the regulators aren’t staffed appropriately from a U-space point of view and are struggling with airspace risk assessments. But there are exceptions where regulators are on top of it, they know exactly what they’re doing. Many of them are engaging EUROCONTROL and other consultants to help them. So, we are still seeing that spectrum of maturity levels across Europe and nothing is going to happen suddenly, but you will see pockets of activity coming up and then starting to expand.
What can we expect from Finland?
It’s one of those interesting cases where a country decided that it didn’t want to wait until all the certification criteria were in place, it wanted to develop a U-space system to be rolled out in a real-world environment to see what’s happening – and use that to inform regulatory frameworks and any updates and specifics of the country that are needed. It is neither a demonstration nor a trial, it’s operations.
Who decides the charging element?
It’s VTT in this case. But I believe the programme is more about evaluating the core U-space services and how they plan to roll that out. It’s early days, because we’re just kicking it off now, so over the next few weeks and months, I think there’ll be more clarity on any commercial implications and billing and so on.
The drone industry in Europe is struggling because many operators are still constrained by the regulatory system and can’t do the really big-revenue, long-range services which they’ve planned.
Yes. Many people did a disservice to the industry by inflating the business plan and presenting to investors forecasts of USD10 billion potential revenue. This was unrealistic and has impacts on the overall industry, in terms of perception. But reality is setting in. The market is seeing what’s happening and everyone realises it’s a marathon, not a sprint. People are looking at different models – for example, we have commercial contracts and we know how to monetise things, looking at the end enterprise use-case.
Would a company like ANRA ever see itself as a CIS provider?
I doubt it – we will license our CIS technology for someone else to be a CIS provider. We are technology providers and we are getting certified as such. Initially we might be the USSP in some markets, but in the long-term we see people licensing our technology to enable multiple USSPs.
Where do you see the next growth areas in the market?
I think we will see different pockets in Europe emerging and then things happening in the Middle Eastern market. Then we’ll see more maturity in the North American and European markets.