Ch 60. Commercial Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)

Overview

In recent years, the number of potential commercial applications for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) has significantly increased. The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is still the largest operator of UAS in the world with over six hundred thousand flight hours in 2011. The DoD has a requirement to operate UAS to meet operational military tasking, but also missions that relate to homeland defense, border and port surveillance, and disaster support.

In parallel, UAS have been raising a growing interest in the commercial sector in regard to accomplishing a variety of public‐ and private‐use missions. Table 60.1 provides a list of non‐military example applications broken down into four categories (i) homeland security, (ii) other civil government (i.e. public‐use), (iii) scientific applications, (iv) and commercial applications (i.e. private‐use). These examples are by no means exhaustive, with new ideas being continually proposed. Often, mission types are classified as either surveillance/monitoring or transportation (e.g. package delivery). In the area of surveillance/monitoring, UAS have shown great potential for the inspection of bridges, pump stations and culverts, power transmission lines, and traffic monitoring. In the area of environmental monitoring, UAS can be used to enhance our ability to analyze and understand the effects of climate change, respond to natural or biological hazards, study rates and consequences of landscape change, conduct wildlife inventories, and support land management missions. Transportation missions also span a broad set of emerging uses including, for example, delivering medical supplies.

The popular terms “drone” and “UAV” are often used as synonyms for UAS. However, there is an important distinction. UAS includes more than just the air vehicle: a ground component (e.g. remote pilot) and at least one RF link that connects to the air vehicle. “Drone” and “UAV” refer only to the air vehicle.