Taking a step further towards facilitating seamless operations of drones in the airspace, India on Monday notified the National Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) policy framework. This framework shall allow private and public service providers to manage drone traffic in the country and unlock numerous complex scenarios for drone operations like flying multiple drones in close proximity or flying alongside manned aircraft.
This comes after the Central Government recently liberalised the drone regulations and notified a Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for drone and drone components.
These developments have boosted the morale of the Indian drone industry that now anticipates a mass adoption of drones across sectors like agriculture, mining, infrastructure, geospatial mapping, transportation, emergency response, defence and law enforcement.
“India is ready to witness a scenario where drones will be as prominent as birds in the sky with the adoption of drones picking up at a fast pace. Traditional traffic management services provided by ATCs for manned aircraft cannot be scaled for managing drone traffic which is expected to become at least 100 times higher since the traditional air traffic management is manual and requires human intervention. This policy framework shall allow third-party service providers to deploy highly automated, algorithm-driven software services for managing drone traffic across the country” said Smit Shah, Director, Drone Federation of India who is also a member of the National UTM Committee constituted under the Ministry
of Civil Aviation.
“The vision to conduct an outcome-based, time-bound UTM experiment as the key next step of the policy framework shall allow India to engage in a public-private partnership for developing safety and separation standards for drones and allow drone operations to scale up quickly in the country,” added Shah.
For the unversed, the Drone Federation of India (DFI) is a non-government, not-for-profit, industry-led body that promotes
the drone industry by bringing policy change, creating business opportunities, developing a robust skilling infrastructure, developing standards, and promoting R&D efforts.
