DND says no approval needed for drones in domestic air
Canada’s air force has determined that, unlike its counterparts in the United States and Europe, it does not need approval from civil aviation agencies to fly drones in domestic airspace and it will operate those unmanned planes as it sees fit, according to newly released Department of National Defence documents.
But the air force acknowledges that flying the drones in domestic airspace shared by civilian jetliners and other aircraft will be challenging. The issue of whether to allow unmanned aerial vehicles — or UAVs — to operate in domestic airspace is currently being hotly debated in Europe.
In June, Germany’s defence officials were accused of wasting more than $1 billion after they purchased long-range UAVs, only to be told by the European Aviation Safety Agency that the aircraft would not be allowed to fly in Europe.
The aircraft did not have a proper collision-avoidance system, the safety agency determined.
The debate was further fuelled by the leak last month of two videos to German news outlets.
One showed a German military UAV almost colliding with a passenger jet over Kabul, Afghanistan; the other showed German military personnel fleeing from an out-of-control Heron UAV, also in Afghanistan. The Heron later slammed into a military transport plane sitting on the runway.
The Heron is the same type of drone the Canadian military leased for its Afghanistan operations.
Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) planners examining the proposed purchase of UAVs predicted back in 2011 that flying drones in commercial airspace would become an issue, but noted they didn’t have to worry.
The RCAF doesn’t need approval from Transport Canada or Nav Canada to fly the aircraft domestically, according to the documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen through the access-toinformation law.
The RCAF pointed out that the Canadian situation is different from Europe and the U.S., where civilian agencies set the rules.
The air force concluded that it saw no significant risks to routine operation of UAVs in Canada.
But the briefing note added “in the domestic environment in both high-use and uncongested airspace regions the employment of military unmanned aircraft will provide greater challenges.”
The Conservative government wants to purchase a fleet of up to 18 medium-altitude UAVs for the RCAF.
No specific costs have been released but the project’s price tag is estimated to be over $1.5 billion. The solution to operating in civilian airspace will be based on air traffic management and collision and avoidance systems, the RCAF determined. “An autonomous ‘sense and avoid’ capability will be pursued to permit ever increasing access to Canadian Airspace,” the briefing added.