The European Defence Agency and the European Commission co-organised a workshop on Research and Development on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, on Friday 9 February, in the Royal Military Academy (Brussels).
The workshop was the fifth and latest in a series of five workshops run by the European Commission (DG Enterprise and DG MOVE) to discuss a variety of issues related to UAS and to establish the need for a strategy on UAS in Europe. The workshop attracted 230 delegates.
The conference was opened with statements by the Chief Executive of the EDA, Mr Peltomaki, of the European Commission’s Department for enterprises, and Mr Baldwin, of the European Commission’s department for Transport (DG MOVE). They supported the current and future research aspects for UAS.
The workshop addressed the current UAS applications, ongoing research activities whether funded by the Commission, ESA, EDA or national agencies, and technology gaps. The discussion made clear that technology and regulation need to go hand in hand, and that the fragmented nature of the research efforts needs to be addressed.
The day ended with a roundtable chaired by Mr Calleja, the Director-General of the European Commission Enterprise department (DG ENTR). Industry, ESA, EDA, SESAR/JU and European Commission representatives agreed that more needs to be done, and preferably in a coordinated way, if Europe wants to develop civil and military UAS capacity.
The work at the 5th workshop took due account of the conclusions and recommendations of the earlier four EC UAS Panel workshops. Based on the conclusions of this workshop, and the previous ones, the European Commission, EUROCONTROL, EASA, ECAC, European Defence Agency (EDA), European Space Policy Institute (ESPI), FRONTEX, UVS International, UK Border Surveillance, industry experts, potential users and other interested stakeholders will work together on preparing for the safe use of UAS in non-segregated European airspace.
Source: EDA, UVS International