Air Traffic Control For Drones? Air Force Tests Out New System
The Air Force achieved a milestone in May by testing out a new tool for controlling high volumes of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) in military airspace. The new system is part of a larger government, military, and industry effort to develop Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) systems as the number of small drones for public and private use explodes.
In the near future, the skies may be crowded with small drones delivering packages, inspecting infrastructure, responding to 9-1-1 calls, ferrying passengers, and other tasks at a scale that current air traffic control systems just can’t handle.
“We are expecting millions of drones and their operations in a day, which is a magnitude order different than what happens with current aviation where there are 50,000 aircraft, and [only] about 6,000 at peak in the sky,” Dr. Parimal Kopardekar, director of NASA Aeronautics Research Institute, said in a 2021 NASA video about UTM.
“The question is, how do we manage these millions of drones without burdening the current air traffic control system?” he said.