In the early 2000’s, it became evident air travel congestion was increasing to a level not manageable solely by legislation or incremental upgrades to existing technology alone. A more radical approach was required to address the mounting challenges of ensuring safe air travel within the National Airspace System (NAS). In 2007 the Federal Aviation Administration began implementing a comprehensive plan developed in response to Congressional tasking, known as NextGen, to modernize U.S. Airspace (What is NextGen?, 2018).
The NextGen modernization effort is a multifaceted approach that leverages new technologies and procedures to meet the FAA’s goal of “increasing safety, efficiency, capacity, predictability, and resiliency of American aviation” (What is NextGen?, 2018). A secondary goal of the initiative is to mitigate the negative effects of air travel on the environment (What is NextGen?, 2018). The technologies enabling NextGen include Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), Data Communications (Data Comm), Decision Support Systems (DSS), NAS Voice System (NVS), Performance Based Navigation (PBN), System Wide Information Management (SWIM), and Weather (New Technology, 2018).
An initial implementation of all component systems is expected to be complete by 2025 (Where We Are Headed, 2017). When the FAA’s NextGen model was envisioned, though, unmanned aircraft were not yet a significant consideration as part of the NAS. The exponential growth of the unmanned aviation sector in the last decade, specifically in small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), has generated concern for impact to manned aviation. As of May, 2017, 772,000 sUAS operators registered with the FAA (FAA Aerospace Forecasts, 2018). Unmanned aircraft far outnumber manned aircraft registered with the FAA and are expected to continue to proliferate significantly for the foreseeable future. This inherently, requires the FAA to address new challenges associated with expanding sUAS operations within the NAS.
Unmanned aviation’s growth has seemingly outpaced the ability to regulate the sector initially. Federal, state, and local legislation has been established paving the way for safer operation of UAS in airspace shared with manned aircraft, but integration has not been fully considered and and coordinated by the FAA. The ‘see-and-avoid’ requirement as stated in the Code of Federal Regulations 14, Part 91.113 establishes the need for such a capability (Melnyk, Schrage, Volovoi, & Jimenez, 2014). Efforts have been made to establish minimum operational performance standards for detect-and-avoid (DAA) systems of larger UAS (Thipphavong, 2016). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the FAA, and industry leaders set initial DAA performance standards with NASA’s Ikhana UAS, a General Atomics Aeronautical System Inc. MQ-9 Predator B (Thipphavong, 2016). This is a significant first step toward integrating airspace. In order to fully integrate the NAS, similar considerations must be made for sUAS.
From a human factors perspective, operators of both manned and unmanned systems gain advantages from current technological advances. The most obvious being heightened situational awareness. Systems like ADS-B inform pilots of potential threats to safe flight. A potential drawback, though, could be information overload as skies become more populated. For sUAS operators, established sense and avoid performance standards introduce predictability. Broadening the unmanned aircraft’s ability to react predictably autonomously to traffic is an effective way to mitigate human factors issues that may contribute to risks to safety of flight.
Overall, there is considerable work to be done in further developing the capabilities of unmanned systems to safely navigate airspace without posing a threat to manned aircraft as the NAS becomes integrated.
References
FAA Aerospace Forecasts: Fiscal Years 2018-2038. (2018, March 15). Retrieved from https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation/aerospace_forecasts/
Melnyk, R., Schrage, D., Volovoi, V., & Jimenez, H. (2014). Sense and avoid requirements for unmanned aircraft systems using a target level of safety approach.Risk Analysis, 34(10), 1894-1906. doi:10.1111/risa.12200
Modernization of U.S. Airspace. (2018, May 29). Retrieved from https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/
New Technology. (2018, May 08). Retrieved from https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/how_nextgen_works/new_technology/
Thipphavong, D. (2016). FAA reaches NextGen, unmanned air milestones. Aerospace America, 54(11), 28.
What is NextGen? (2018, May 07). Retrieved from https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/what_is_nextgen/
Where We Are Headed. (2017, November 21). Retrieved from https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/where_were_headed/
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