On 23 June 2011 the European Commission officially announced the creation of the EC UAS Panel at the Paris Air Show. The objective of the EC UAS Panel is to produce a policy document, describing the current global UAS situation and the key challenges facing UAS development and operation in Europe. The policy document should provide concrete recommendations to policy-makers on how obstacles can be removed so as to promote the development of the UAS market in Europe.
The policy document will take civil and military UAS aspects of insertion into non-segregated airspace as well as frequency spectrum requirements into account. It will cover the entire UAS spectrum, from light UAS to HALE, irrespective of weight.
The European Commission, EUROCONTROL, EASA, industry experts, potential users and other interested stakeholders will work together on preparing for the safe use of UAS in non-segregated European airspace.
The title of the upcoming second workshop is: “UAS insertion into airspace and radio frequencies” and it will address all associated issues, including standards, international rules and radio frequency management. This workshop is the second in a series of five run jointly by the European Commission’s DG MOVE and DG ENTERPRISE on the insertion of Unmanned Aerial Systems into European controlled airspace. The overall objective of the series is to gather information on how to remove obstacles to the use of unmanned aircraft systems in Europe.
This second workshop will identify the obstacles to the insertion of UAS into non-segregated airspace and outline the requisite remedial actions. In this context, the provisional programme will cover the following topics in separate consecutive sessions: Assessment of current UAS regulatory developments; National ATM/CNS perspectives & experience; Civil/military aspects; Frequency spectrum; Security; R&D innovative solutions; the industrial perspective.
The “chef de file” (organiser) of the second workshop is Luc Tytgat, EUROCONTROL’s Director Single Sky. This workshop will take place at EUROCONTROL’s headquarters at 96 rue de la Fusée, B-1130 Brussels, Belgium (in the Europa meeting room) from 14.00 to 17.45 on 13 September and from 09.00 to 17.00 on 14 September 2011.
Written contributions for the second can be addressed to the European Commission at ENTR-UAS@ec.europa.eu . These written contributions will be used formulate the workshop Discussion Paper.
Prior registration is mandatory and can be done on-line at http://www.eurocontrol.int/content/2nd-unmanned-aircraft-systems-uas-eu-workshop-insertion-airspace-and-radio-frequencies?event_id=2498)
Additional information can be found at http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/aerospace/uas/index_en.htm
Questions concerning this workshop can be addressed to: entr-uas@ec.europa.com and single.skycontact@eurocontrol.int