The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has awarded a grant from the Airspace Modernisation Support Fund (ASF) to a consortium led by ANRA Technologies UK Ltd, with partners Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service (LFRS), Manna Drone Delivery, and Wing. The project will deliver the UK’s first operational demonstration of multi-UTM service provider support for overlapping Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone operations in shared airspace, directly supporting the UK’s Airspace Modernisation Strategy.
The ASF, which builds on the earlier Future Airspace Strategy Facilitation Fund, supports projects that advance the objectives of CAP 1711 by accelerating airspace modernisation in ways that benefit multiple stakeholders and enable future industry-wide deployment.
The consortium’s project uses operational lessons learned from the ongoing US UAS Traffic Management (UTM) Implementation and brings them to Lancashire, UK, where the team will conduct live trials through a multi-phase approach. The work will validate interoperability, governance frameworks, and cooperative operating principles for safely managing commercial and emergency service drone operations in shared airspace.
The project will deliver a UK-specific concept of operations and governance framework, enabling multiple drone operators and UTM providers to safely share airspace. Working with the CAA, the team will validate cooperative operating principles to support both commercial and emergency drone services. The project will also assess differences between US implementation and UK regulations, providing recommendations for adoption that align with the evolving UK CAA framework.
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