Ministry of Civil Aviation, GoI has been taking numerous steps towards regulating as well as making the drone business one of the promising sector. Aviation World Magazine in its endeavor to highlight pertinent issues of the drone sector publishes content written be industry experts so that readers’ can be updated with all new guidelines.

BY ARUN SASIDHARAN

Drones have proven to be among the most promising technologies from the fourth industrial revolution.Worldwide, commercial drones are finding widespread application in law enforcement, disaster management, photography, film making, agriculture, last mile logistics, healthcare, visual inspections, and mapping.
Evolution of drone regulations in India.

The commercial use of drones in India has been limited by policy paralysis for years. In October 2014, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), decided to put a near-blanket ban on drones operations due to lack of regulatory framework and infrastructure for safe operation. Since then, DGCA has been endeavouring to put in place appropriate procedures and policies to ensure regulated use of drones in country.

As a result, in December 2018 DGCA issuedthe Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) for operating unmanned aircraft in India. Since managing low-level airspace and drone traffic operations manually was a daunting task for government, the drone regulations envisaged automated software based management of drone operation through a Digital Sky Platform.

The Digital Sky Platform is the first-of-its-kind national unmanned traffic management (UTM) platform that implements “no permission, no take-off” (NPNT). NPNT system aims to prevent unauthorized flights and to ensure public safety, any drone without a digital permit to fly will not be able to take-off.

Implementation Woes in Digital Sky
For operating unmanned aircraft, DGCA requires that the operators, pilots, trainers, manufacturers and unmanned traffic management service providers shouldconfirm with stringent set of approvals and compliances.
Digital Sky is the only one mean of obtaining all permits, licenses, and authorisations for drone operations, manufacturing, training and traffic management. The first stage of Digital Sky is yet to be fully implemented and delay in its implementation is becoming a bottleneck for drone industry.

As shown in figure below, Digital Sky has a complex technology architecture having multiple stake holder across industry and interconnected processes. Airports Authority of India (AAI) is the nodal authority responsible for the development, maintenance and technical operation of the DigitalSky Platform on behalf of DGCA.
To illustrate the concept of interconnected procedures, take an example ofan operator who wishto obtain UAS Operator Permit (UAOP) to fly a small category drone. The operator will need pilotswith DGCA license, while the drone training infrastructure in the countryitself is still evolving.

To address non-availability drone training facilities, MoCA designated around 13existing flying schools as Flying Training Organisations (FTO) for unmanned aircraft in mid-2020. The drone pilot trained by these FTOs, needs to apply through Digital Sky for a license, based on which the DGCA willconduct exam and grant RPA License. Currently these functionality is reportedly not available inthe Digital Sky.

DGCA approved drone pilot license, is a mandatory requirement to obtain UAS Operator Permit (UAOP) through Digital Sky.Since the whole processes is not yet established, not a single UAOP has been allotted to any operator.
Every drone of Micro category (>250 gm) and above needs to have Unique Identification Number (UIN) akin to the number plate of car. However, as per Digital Sky portal data in December 2020, only 41 drones in India has been issued UIN. This obviously means that nearly all micro drones and above operating in India are not complaint with DGCA requirements.

Challenges in NPNT Initiative and Opportunities for Indian OEMs
All drone having take-off weight of greater than 250 gram are required to be NPNT complaint. NPNT ensures that a UAS does not take-off without a signed and encrypted digital permission known as the Permission Artefact (PA).
In July 2020, the first Digital Sky enabled NPNT (No Permission No Takeoff) drone flight in India was successfully put to test using Asteria’s A200 micro drone. Though the NPNT functionality is claimed to be validated, there is still a long way to go before itcan be practicallyutilized by the end users.

To illustrate, NPNT requires end-to-end traceability and this can be achieved only by undisputable identification of a drone through its registered flight module (RFM). The RFM is required to be implemented at the Flight Controller Level of the drone. A NPNT compliant RFM should allow for secure storage to store the digital identifiers for a drone.

A Permission Artifact is an electronic document generated by the Digital Sky platform which specifies the permitted parameters for a flight. An RFM should be able to accept a Permission Artifact (PA) and the RFM should allow the drone to be armed only when the PA is validated.

From the explanation above, it is clear that drone manufacturers will have to make firmware and hardware level changes in the flight controller, for compliance with NPNT. Also, the communication between drone and the digital sky will be happening through intermediaries like Ground Control Software, Registered Flight Module Provider and unmanned traffic service providers. This will necessitate a standardized communication interface for the external applications to interact with RFM’s permission artefact.

NPNT initiative to safeguard the skies is considered a bold step. However, it is clear that NPNT bring extremely high level of technological complexities for all stakeholders and seamless integration will be a challenge. NPNT can also result in increased cost of compliance for end user.

Prominent drone manufacturer DJI told that they don’t intend to make their drones NPNT complaint for India.Requirement to tweak drone hardware for compliance was reported to be one of the reason. Presently, DJI has a massive presence in India despite its drones not complying with India’s current drone regulations.

Many leading industry figures are proposing Remote ID system of drone monitoring as an alternative to NPNT. Remote IDsystem only require firmware level changes and can also be used by drone pilotto submit flightplan for approval. In case the operator do not adhere to approved flight plan, legal action can be taken against the operator. European Union has opted for a Remote ID system to ensure safe flying of drone.

In contrast to Remote ID system, NPNT allows an additional layer of protection to ensure that the drone will take-off only with government approvalsand it may also be possible to restrict flight within approved flight envelope.
If India firmly implements the NPNT requirement, it will open an opportunity window for Indian drone manufacturers of micro categories and above without competition from Chinese manufacturers. The scale of this opportunity can be sensed from the recent decision of Reliance Industries to acquire 51% share of the Bengaluru based leading drone manufacturer, Asteria Aerospace.

Draft UAS policy
Realising that the current regulation for civil operation of drones have many missing links like inadequate provisions for penalties and need to establish a structured Unmanned Aircraft Traffic Management System, the Ministry of Civil Aviation releaseddraft of the ‘Unmanned Aircraft System Rules, 2020’ in June this year.
The Draft Rules once approved by Indian Parliament seek to make a clean separation between the drone regulations and the regulations applicable to conventional manned aviation. While Draft UAS Rules maintains most of the clauses in DGCA CAR on unmanned operations, some changes have also been proposed.

For example, while Unique Identification Number (UIN)for Nano category was not mandatory in DGCA CAR, the draft UAS Rule 2020 requires that even drone in Nano categorymust have UIN number. Draft UAS Rules also mandates that Certificate of Manufacture from DGCA is mandatory for import of all drones including Nano category. These provisions will enable bettermonitoring of entire drone operation, and will also ensure that the performance parameters set by regulatory agenciesare not exceeded.

To ensure that there is no enforcement-related ambiguities, the Draft UAS Rules go on to prescribe penal provision that applies to specific contraventions. For example,flying a drone of micro category and above without insurance will be an offence punishable with imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.

Dedicated Drones Directorate
In November 2020, a dedicated directorate for drones was established in DGCA with eight officials, to begin with. The directorate is likely to look into delays to roll out no permission, no takeoff (NPNT) support, manage drone training schools and approve third-party drone certification scheme to fast track drone certification in the country.

Largely, the drone ecosystem was stuck due to three issues: lack of ownership within the government, non-operational Digital Sky platform, and the NPNT guidelines. Creation of the new directorate addresses one of the issue, however the current manpower may not be sufficient in view of the scale of operations envisaged.

Discussion on UTM Policy
Discussion paper on Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) Policy floated in November 2020 envisages that DGCA and AAI will be managing low-level airspace and traffic operations in a highly automated software-based ecosystem. It also describes the key role that the UTM Service Providers (UTMSP) from private and public sectors will have in managing unmanned traffic in the country.

As per the paper, UTMSP will acts as a real-time or near real-time communication bridge between Remote Pilots, DGCA, AAI, DigitalSky Platform and other UTMSPs. Remote Pilots will haveto utilize services from a UTMSP for flight authorization and related services on payment basis.

Policy to set up RPTA & UAS Training
All drone pilots, except those flying Nano and Micro category, are required to attain practical ground training from a DGCA approved flying training organization (FTO). As of now there are only a handful of FTOs who are conducting DGCA approved five days of drone training at a fees ranging from INR 60,000 to 80,000.
It may be noted that the draft UAS Rules 2020 proposesthe micro drone pilot should also be trained from an authorized training organization. Since majority of drones are in micro category, this rule will obviously result in high demand for approved drone training courses.

In order to cater for the expected high demand for drone training, DGCA has now allowed central, state government bodies and private drone manufacturers also to start drone pilot training schools with necessary approvals.

Conclusion

India government is trying to normalize drone operation andwe have seen welcome steps mostly in the form enabling policy frameworks. However,there seems to be multiple challenges in the implementation of Digital Sky which has the potential to halt the growth of this sector.

Digital Sky is an innovative and futuristic concept, but high level IT program management, infrastructureand investment seems to be inevitable to get this platform work seamlessly. Delays in implementation points to deficiencies in some of these areas.The complexities of the NPNT requirement also needs to be addressed in a timely and efficient manner.

Thousands of NPNT non-compliant drones have already made its way to India. It is not clear how law enforcement agencies will identify if the drone flying in their area of responsibility is legal or illegal.Unlike in case of manned aircraft, local law enforcement agencies needs to have larger role to play in enforcing the droneregulations.

UAS Rules will requires manufacturers to follow stringent regulatory guidelines for design, manufacture, traffic management, and maintenance. These requirements willmost probably result inconsolidation of drone industry with a few large players in manufacturing and unmanned traffic management services.

(About the Author: The Author is a retired naval officer from the air technical branch of Indian Navy. He is a Member of the Aeronautical Society of India. He has worked as Senior Analyst for Jane’s Defence Group and as a Consultant for CAPA India.)

(Article Published in Aviation World Jan-Feb 2021 Edition)