Karnataka - Bangalore

Unmanned aerial vehicles may need airworthiness certificate

BANGALORE: The Centre for Military Airworthiness and Certification (CEMILAC) has recommended that all future unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) should be cleared for their airworthiness.

Sources told The Hindu that the recommendations, made via a report by a specially-formed team from the centre, had been submitted to the Defence Ministry. “It is under consideration,” they said.

Almost all the 41 countries operating UAVs are debating UAV certification issues.

In India, design, manufacture, operation, maintenance, safety and liability of UAVs are not assessed by any independent regulatory authority.

Neither are potential failures anticipated, deviations in design and manufacture assessed, operational demands simulated and evaluated or designs certified. Such tasks with regard to manned military aircraft are performed by the CEMILAC. (The airworthiness of civil aircraft is governed by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.)

If CEMILAC’s insistence on airworthiness certification for UAVs is accepted, norms/procedures would have to be first laid down.

However, questions will first have to be answered on how much of certification — vis-À-vis conventional, piloted aircraft — is required and the procedures to be applied for these unmanned craft.

“The crucial question is what constitutes airworthiness for an UAV,” an official said.

The Defence Research and Development Laboratory, Aeronautical Development Establishment, which designed and developed India’s two most prominent UAVs — the surface/ship-launched high subsonic reusable aerial target system Lakshya and the intelligence-gathering Nishant — have their in-house audits for critical design and flight.

The ADE is also developing Lakshya II and a number of new UAVs, including the Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAV Rustam. If CEMILAC’s recommendations are accepted, these new UAVs will have to be first certified before they can take to the skies.

An official said that though the usual questions over passenger/crew safety might not be an issue, questions over the materials used, structural safety and systems to be installed on board might crop up.

“If an UAV is to have systems like an anti-collision device, crash recorder and black box (flight data recorder, which logs information such as speed and altitude) installed on it, the weight and cost could go up drastically, making it unviable,” the official said.

Another issue is the collateral damage an UAV can cause if it spins out of control and crashes on human settlements.

Though designed primarily for military use, UAVs — given that well over 90 per cent of Indian airspace is civilian — may perforce have to fly over civilian airspace. Therefore, restricting the UAVs to military airspace could be impractical.

Also, allowing them to fly only in a secure environment will bring down their utility value, especially as they could be an asset during natural disasters. It is with this in mind that the Israelis recently certified their Heron MALE UAV — also used by the Indian Defence forces — for flying in civilian airspace.

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