Drones want to be shown to dispatchers

As Kommersant learned, the Federal Air Transport Agency proposed to oblige the owners of aerial drones to install transponders to determine their geolocation and force them to stop. Equipping them with all light and medium drones available today in the Russian Federation will cost at least 1.5 billion rubles. The installation of such devices on drones in Europe will become mandatory from 2024, and in the United States from September. There, the initiative was criticized because of the rise in the cost of drones for private users, after which exception zones were provided for amateurs.

“Kommersant” became aware of a proposal to the Federal Air Transport Agency on the mandatory equipping of all unmanned aircraft with on-board equipment that allows remote identification of drones, obtaining data on their planned and actual routes, and also forcibly stopping flights in the absence of permission to use the airspace of the Russian Federation. On April 6, a letter with such an initiative was sent to the department by the manufacturer of trackers M-Industries. “The measure will ensure the safety of flights of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAS), including in a single airspace with manned aircraft, accelerate the development of the UAV services market and stimulate the launch of Russian technologies for communication, surveillance and control of UAVs,” the letter says.

In 2019, the Ministry of Transport prepared a draft order on the mandatory equipping of drones from 0.15 to 30 kg with an ADS-B 1090 OUT transmitter. The project was frozen at the discussion stage. The Ministry of Transport, the Federal Air Transport Agency and the Air Traffic Control Commission did not comment on the situation.

Automatic Dependent Surveillance (ADS-B/ADS-B) is a method of aircraft surveillance when transponders on them automatically provide air traffic controllers with information about their coordinates, parameters and route of movement. From them, for example, the Flightradar24 service receives data. In the Russian Federation, from 2020, all aircraft flying at an altitude of 8100 m or more, with the exception of state aviation aircraft, must be equipped with ADS-B transponders. But experts doubt the advisability of using ADS-B on drones, since their large number can interfere with aircraft. In addition, the cost of ADS-B stations is relatively high. Therefore, other systems are usually considered as an alternative: in particular, Remote ID, Flarm, VDL-4.

Another simplest option is to use SIM cards, says Denis Fedutinov, editor-in-chief of Unmanned Aviation magazine. In this case, the position of the drone can be determined from the data of the built-in GPS receiver, and then transmitted to the ground via cellular communications.

M-Industries offers trackers with Remote ID functionality. This is a system for transmitting data about a drone in flight, which operates on the basis of household non-aviation communication standards – Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, LTE, explains Mikhail Lipatov, CEO of the company. At the same time, Wi-Fi signals can be received at a distance of up to 2 km. In ATM, the information is processed by a specialized UTM system.

As clarified to Kommersant in the Federal Air Transport Agency, which registers drones from 0.15 to 30 kg, in total, more than 76 thousand drones are listed in the database as of March 31. The cost of development, according to Mikhail Lipatov, will cost 15 thousand rubles. Aeroscript Research Center estimates the development and production of a tracker on average in the range of 20 to 30 thousand rubles. That is, equipping all the drones available today in the Russian Federation will cost their owners from 1.5 to 2.2 billion rubles, which is cheaper than ADS-B.

In 2022, the Navigator company, which produces ADS-B serial aircraft transponders, “in order to prevent possible conflicts between manned aircraft and drones, developed a device for integrating UAVs into a single airspace” – a small-sized ADS-Bee squitter emitter. The advantage of such a device, says Sergey Baburov, general director of Navigator, is its low weight (8 g), as well as “low cost of the product in comparison with foreign competitors.” The cost of their ADS-Bee (2 W) in serial production will be about 89 thousand rubles. A more powerful version, ADS-Bee (20 W), is currently under development and will cost 150-180 thousand rubles.

Dozens of tracker models are now being produced in Russia, and in mass production, the cost of one tracker for the owner of the UAV will not be critical, says Nikita Danilov, CEO of Fly Dron. At the same time, he emphasizes, the use of trackers will require both terrestrial and satellite infrastructure – in certain parts of the country.

To correctly determine the location in areas with geographical natural barriers for signals of global navigation satellite systems, as in the Arctic or in dense urban areas, it is necessary to use “integrated systems” that simultaneously use several satellite systems and a local radio ranging navigation system, and are also equipped with information security, Alexei Raikevich, CEO of GLONASS JSC, told Kommersant.

According to Gleb Babintsev, General Director of the Aeronext Association, first of all, equipment developers need to work on increasing signal reception to 15–20 km “at least”, as well as “assess all issues of electromagnetic compatibility of new equipment with those already used for other purposes.” ADS-V “breaks through” to the radio horizon at an altitude of 10 km to 400 km, Aeroscript clarifies: for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, the range does not exceed 300–400 m. With good LTE coverage, the issue of data transmission range does not arise, but there is a problem with height limit: the signal arrives at a height of up to 200–300 m.

In Europe, drone identification will become mandatory from 2024. In the US, all drones must be equipped with remote identifiers (Remote ID) from September 16, 2023. This drew criticism from manufacturers and users of lightweight drones who did not want to bear the costs of installing transponders. Now the FAA is suggesting that drones without trackers be used in designated approved areas sponsored by community organizations or schools. Before the transition to the mandatory introduction of trackers in the Russian Federation, it is also necessary to create such zones in order to preserve the opportunity to use their personal right to use the airspace, for example, for aircraft modellers, amateurs, as well as for teaching children and adults to fly, emphasizes Andrey Patrakov, founder of the RunAvia service. Yuri Nekrasov, deputy head of the division of the FTK group, adds that an exception can be made where there are no industrial and critical infrastructure facilities.

Aigul Abdullina