India issues drone traffic management policy for UAS

The centre has issued a traffic management policy framework for the National Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) or drones. The framework will allow public and private service providers to manage drone traffic in India.

The drone traffic management policy takes account of the scenarios, including flying multiple drones near manned aircraft at lower levels of airspace where drones are allowed to fly.

According to the UAS traffic management policy framework, the evolution of unmanned aircraft, opening new reforms, has increased in India.

The safety of the aircraft in the Indian airspace is required to enable a combination of standards, procedures, technology and real-time data exchange.

According to the policy, the current Air Traffic Management (ATM) has not been designed to handle traffic from unmanned aircraft. Integrating it with Indian airspace through conventional means may require being equipped with bulky and expensive hardware.

The policy defines the architecture and mechanism for UTM airspace, including traffic management in lower airspaces up to 1,000 feet above ground level.

As per the policy, the UTS system will achieve the targets of stakeholders to seamlessly communicate with each other, assisting each other and providing situational awareness of low-level airspace to the stakeholders.

The Director of the Drone Federation of India, Smit Shah, said that the drone policy would allow third-party services to deploy automatic, algorithm-driven software for managing drone traffic in India.

The goal is to conduct an outcome-based, time-bound UTM as the key policy framework that would allow the country to engage in Public-private partnership (PPP) for developing safety and separation standards for drones to allow drone operations in the country.

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