From 1 January 2026, the UK drone regulatory framework enters a new phase. While the underlying legal structure remains based on the Air Navigation Order 2016 and UK UAS Regulations, several operational changes are being introduced. Understanding the distinction between legislation, Civil Aviation Authority guidance, and industry practice is now essential.

This article provides a practical legal overview of the key changes affecting recreational and commercial drone operators flying within the Open Category in the United Kingdom.

Law and Guidance Are Not the Same Thing

One of the most common misunderstandings among drone operators is the assumption that everything in the Drone Code or CAA guidance is itself law.

The legal framework consists primarily of legislation, including the Air Navigation Order 2016 and UK UAS Regulations. These are the provisions under which enforcement action and prosecutions may occur.

The CAA also publishes guidance, including CAP 722, Acceptable Means of Compliance and the Drone Code. These materials are highly important, but they are generally guidance rather than legislation. Compliance with them will usually be persuasive evidence of safe and responsible operation.

A useful way to think about compliance is:

• Green: operating within CAA guidance and published best practice.
• Amber: operating within the law but outside guidance.
• Red: operating outside the legal framework.

Flying outside guidance may sometimes remain lawful, but operators must be ready to justify their decisions if challenged by the police, the CAA or a court.

Registration Requirements

Most drones with a camera and weighing more than 100 grams require registration under the Drone and Model Aircraft Registration and Education Scheme.

Operators will generally need both an Operator ID and a Flyer ID.

The Operator ID identifies the person responsible for the aircraft and must be displayed on the drone. The Flyer ID confirms that the pilot has passed the required competency test and remains valid for five years.

Importantly, it is the operator who is registered rather than the drone itself.

Universal Rules for All Drone Flights

Maximum Altitude

The maximum operating height remains 120 metres, or 400 feet, above the closest point of the earth’s surface. This matters particularly when flying near cliffs, hills, mountains or other changing terrain.

Visual Line of Sight

Visual Line of Sight remains a central requirement of UK drone regulation.

The pilot must be able to see the aircraft sufficiently to avoid collisions in the air and manage risks on the ground. Seeing only a small dot or relying solely on navigation lights is unlikely to be defensible if an incident occurs.

First Person View Flying

Where FPV goggles are used, a competent observer or spotter is generally required. The spotter should remain beside the pilot and maintain awareness of air and ground hazards while the pilot is focused on the video feed.

Airspace Restrictions

Many drone prosecutions arise from breaches of airspace restrictions rather than from technical flying errors.

Airspace should be checked before every flight using a reliable and current source of aeronautical information. The information should be refreshed immediately before launch.

Key restriction types include:

• Flight Restriction Zones: permanent restricted areas around airports, prisons and protected sites.
• Temporary Restrictions: restrictions created for events, security operations and public safety purposes.
• NOTAMs: aviation notices which may affect drone operations.

Operators should use modern airspace mapping tools and should not assume that yesterday’s airspace position remains correct today.

A1, A2 and A3 Operational Categories

A1: Flying Over People

The A1 category provides the greatest flexibility. Certain drones under 250 grams may be flown over uninvolved persons, although flight over crowds remains prohibited.

This category generally includes legacy drones under 250g, UK0 and UK1 aircraft, C0 aircraft and C1 aircraft subject to transitional provisions.

A2: Flying Close to People

A2 operations allow flight near uninvolved persons but generally prohibit flight directly over them. Operators normally require an A2 Certificate of Competency.

Certain UK2 and C2 aircraft may operate with reduced separation distances where the applicable requirements are met.

A3: Flying Far from People

A3 operations are intended for open areas away from uninvolved persons and built-up environments.

Operators must generally maintain 50 metres from uninvolved persons and 150 metres from residential, commercial, industrial and recreational areas.

Article 16 Authorisations

Members of recognised model aircraft and drone associations may benefit from Article 16 Authorisations. These permissions can provide greater operational flexibility, including reduced separation distances and access to some locations that would otherwise be more restricted under the Open Category framework.

Ground Hazards and Article 241

Even where all technical drone requirements are satisfied, operators remain subject to wider safety duties.

Article 241 of the Air Navigation Order provides that a person must not recklessly or negligently cause or permit an aircraft to endanger any person or property.

Ground hazards may include members of the public, vehicles, buildings, infrastructure, wildlife and protected environmental sites.

Particular care should be taken when operating near Sites of Special Scientific Interest and other environmentally protected areas.

Remote ID Arrives in 2026

One of the most significant developments is the introduction of Remote ID.

Remote ID creates an electronic identification system allowing drone operations to be identified through information transmitted by the aircraft.

Implementation is being phased in. New UK1, UK2 and UK3 drones released from 2026 will require Remote ID functionality. Existing aircraft will transition over a longer implementation period extending towards 2028.

Operators should monitor CAA updates closely as implementation progresses.

Night Flying Requirements

Night flying remains permissible within the Open Category.

From 2026, operators will generally require a green flashing light attached to the aircraft.

The purpose of the light is to assist people on the ground in recognising the aircraft as a drone. It should not be treated as a substitute for maintaining Visual Line of Sight.

Insurance and Operational Responsibility

Recreational operators are generally not legally required to carry insurance, although doing so is strongly recommended.

Commercial operators typically require specialist aviation insurance compliant with applicable regulatory requirements.

Pilots should also ensure they are fit to fly, avoid operating under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and remain alert to low-flying manned aircraft at all times.

Conclusion

The 2026 changes represent an evolution rather than a revolution in UK drone regulation.

The key principles remain unchanged: understand the law, check airspace before every flight, maintain Visual Line of Sight, operate safely and proportionately, and keep abreast of developments concerning Remote ID and future airspace integration.

For most operators, compliance remains straightforward. Those who understand the distinction between legislation and guidance, conduct appropriate pre-flight planning and adopt a risk-based approach should continue to fly safely and lawfully throughout 2026 and beyond.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Specific advice should be sought in relation to individual circumstances.

Richard Ryan is a practising barrister, Arbitrator , drone lawyer, and regulatory specialist with more than 20 years’ experience in litigation, arbitration, aviation, defence, technology, construction, and commercial law. He advises drone operators, aerospace companies, government bodies, and technology businesses on complex regulatory, operational, and compliance issues relating to unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), counter-UAS technologies, urban air mobility, and emerging aviation regulation.

Richard is currently undertaking PhD research at Cranfield University examining the future regulatory framework for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations, Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM), and the integration of drones into shared airspace. He regularly writes on developments in drone law, aviation regulation, privacy, safety, and the future of autonomous flight.

The views expressed in this article are for general information purposes only and do not constitute legal advice.

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White Paper

Beyond 2019

A New Counter Uncrewed Systems and Air Threat Resilience Strategy for the United Kingdom, After Ukraine and Iran

By Mr Richard Ryan, Barrister, Blakiston’s Chambers · June 2026

The United Kingdom’s published national counter drone policy; the UK Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Strategy, presented to Parliament as Command Paper 187 on 21 October 2019^[1]; is materially out of date as a strategic document. It remains the only published national strategy in the field for the whole of government, yet it is now approximately six years and seven months old, and roughly three and a half years beyond its own planning horizon.

The strategy was sound for its time. It identified the highest harm illegal uses of small drones; terrorism, smuggling into prisons, disruption of critical national infrastructure; and prescribed layered intervention, industry standards, responder powers and public education.^[2] But it was expressly confined to malicious and illegal use of small aerial drones, in a domestic policing and protective security frame. That frame has been overtaken by operational reality in Ukraine and the Iranian theatre: massed one way attack drones, combined drone and missile salvos, container and special forces launch, dense electronic warfare, fibre optic command links and AI assisted guidance now define the threat.

Subsequent UK documents do not update the 2019 strategy; they work around it. The Defence Drone Strategy (2024),^[3] the Strategic Defence Review 2025,^[4] NPSA’s site specific guidance,^[5] and the Ministry of Defence’s 2026 pursuit of new defeat powers at military sites^[6] together form a patchwork of sectoral adaptations laid over an unrevised core. This paper argues that the 2019 strategy should be retired as a standalone statement and replaced by an integrated Counter Uncrewed Systems and Air Threat Resilience Strategy, supported by a consolidated legal code for detection, disruption and defeat, and by an annual ministerial statement to Parliament.

1.  The threat has become a strategic mass system

The central lesson of 2024–2026 is not that drones have become more common but that they have become a strategic mass system — a consumable class of munition and sensor used for saturation, decoying, attrition of intelligence assets, target acquisition and the deliberate erosion of a defender’s cost exchange ratio. On the night of 2 June 2026, Ukraine’s air force reported that Russia had launched 656 drones and 73 missiles in a single overnight barrage, of which 602 drones and 40 missiles were downed or suppressed.^[7][8] Single salvos now routinely exceed several hundred drones.

Critical infrastructure has been directly affected. In February 2025 a Russian Geran-2 (Shahed type) drone struck the New Safe Confinement over Chornobyl’s reactor four;^[9] by December 2025 the International Atomic Energy Agency assessed that the structure had lost its primary safety functions, including confinement.^[10] In May 2026 a drone strike caused a fire at an electrical generator on the perimeter of the United Arab Emirates’ Barakah nuclear plant; a civilian reactor site; leaving one unit running on emergency diesel generators.^[11][12]

The homeland and deployed force dimension is now concrete for the United Kingdom. In early March 2026 a Shahed type drone struck a runway at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus; a British Sovereign Base Area; causing limited damage,^[13] and the UK flew defensive sorties and, where requested, acted in the collective self defence of regional allies.^[14] Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web (June 2025) had already shown that 117 first person view drones launched from concealed truck borne containers could strike strategic bomber bases far from any front line, damaging more than 40 aircraft, with some guidance reportedly AI assisted.^[15]

A necessary qualification

Not every battlefield lesson maps to the British mainland. The most credible open analysis holds that long range Shahed type strikes on Great Britain would face high attrition because of geography and warning time, while shorter range drones launched from containers or by hostile special forces remain a credible risk to high value assets at home. The policy implication is to discriminate between vectors; not to import foreign assumptions wholesale, and not to dismiss the threat. A refreshed strategy should say so candidly.

2.  Why the 2019 strategy can no longer stand alone

The clearest institutional signal came in February 2026, when the Ministry of Defence reported 266 drone incidents near UK military sites during 2025 (up from 126 in 2024) and sought fresh statutory powers through the Armed Forces Bill; extending beyond aerial drones to land and maritime systems; to allow Defence personnel to defeat drones at their own sites without waiting for police intervention.^[6] When the armed forces must legislate around a framework built for policing to protect their own bases, that framework has expired.

3.  The legal framework: developed, but fragmented

Domestic powers have expanded since 2019 but remain complex. The Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Act 2021 created bespoke constabulary powers to ground, stop, search, inspect and seize unmanned aircraft, and amended section 93 of the Police Act 1997 to facilitate authorisations for certain counter drone measures.^[17][18] In the civil regime, the Civil Aviation Authority’s Direct Remote ID requirements came into force on 1 January 2026 for UK1, UK2, UK3, UK5 and UK6 class drones, with extension to most drones carrying a camera from 1 January 2028.^[19]

Yet lawful defeat is markedly harder than detection. Operational use of a jammer is generally an offence under section 68 of the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006, and Ofcom has no power to authorise operational use; only narrow trial and research licences in shielded conditions.^[20] Government is separately examining the enforcement framework around jammers.^[21] Kinetic or electronic interference may amount to unlawful property or wireless interference absent proper authorisation; the Act’s own explanatory notes acknowledge as much. Techniques that take over a drone by software may engage the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, and sensing engages the Data Protection Act 2018, the UK GDPR and the Human Rights Act 1998, which requires the state both to protect life from foreseeable threats and to keep its sensing and defeat measures necessary and proportionate. A lawful defeat chain is a designed legal artefact, not an improvisation.

Overseas action sits within international law. The Government’s March 2026 legal position on Iranian regional attacks invoked the collective self defence of allies under Article 51 of the UN Charter, subject to necessity and proportionality and Security Council notification.^[14] Once in armed conflict, drones attract no special category: they are governed by the ordinary rules of distinction, proportionality and precaution applicable to all weapons.^[22]

4.  Recommendations

The Government should replace the 2019 strategy with a new instrument covering the whole of government. Five propositions should anchor it:

1. Integrate, do not append. A single Counter Uncrewed Systems and Air Threat Resilience Strategy spanning the Home Office, MoD, Cabinet Office resilience, CAA, Ofcom, NPSA, the intelligence community, prisons and CNI operators, aligned to NATO’s integrated air and missile defence framework.^[16]
2. Consolidate the law. A statutory code (or, at minimum, statutory guidance) defining who may detect, disrupt and defeat uncrewed systems, where, against which threat category, under what authorisation, with what recording and what review after an incident — differentiating urban areas, prisons, airports, defence sites and overseas operations.
3. Adopt a layered baseline that is alert to cost. Use NPSA’s site specific, threat informed model as the national spine,^[23] plugging into a wider air and missile defence architecture for higher end threats, and prioritising defeat options that are low in collateral, deep in magazine and economically rational. A missile fired at every cheap drone is not a strategy; it is a budgetary confession.
4. Treat industry and export control as readiness. Link procurement, export licensing, sanctions intelligence and sovereign industrial strategy, with secure by design and open architecture requirements across C-UAS procurement. A state that cannot source the components of its own counter drone systems is not strategically autonomous.
5. Compliance and oversight by design. Require a written legal basis, data minimisation, retention limits and human oversight for every C-UAS deployment by a public authority; subject identification by AI to documented necessity and a review of error rates; and provide Parliament an annual ministerial statement on C-UAS powers, deployments, tests, safety incidents, rights compliance and lessons learned, with NPSA and the ICO involved where domestic surveillance is concerned.

5.  Conclusion

None of this discards the 2019 strategy’s best inheritance; its insistence on layered intervention over an optimism founded on gadgets, an instinct NPSA’s later guidance has only reinforced.^[5] The task is not to repudiate 2019 but to lift its sound protective security spine into an architecture wide enough for the threat that now exists: a spectrum of low cost, autonomous and electronically contested uncrewed systems, ranging from nuisance to war. The 2019 strategy answered the question of its decade. It is time to ask the question of this one.

The post appeared first on Blakistons.

The newsletters keep landing in my inbox with their countdowns. The latest one fixes on 2 August; the date the AI Office acquires real teeth over general-purpose AI models. I read these updates the way a coastal town reads tide tables: not because every wave matters to me, but because I need to know which ones will reach the door. So let me work through what this particular tide actually touches, from the perspective of someone who spends their days arguing about machines that fly.

The autonomy problem nobody wants to define

Start with the thing that makes drones legally interesting in the first place: autonomy is a spectrum, and the law hates spectrums.

A consumer quadcopter holding position in a breeze is running control loops that would have been called “artificial intelligence” in a 1980s research paper. A military loitering munition selecting between candidate targets is doing something most people would unhesitatingly call AI, and find alarming. Between those two poles sits an enormous, messy middle; obstacle avoidance, automated return-to-home, “follow me” tracking, swarm coordination, automated target recognition that merely flags rather than decides. Where on that spectrum does a drone become an “AI system” in the meaning of Article 3?

This matters enormously and almost nobody asks it cleanly. The Act’s definition turns on a system that infers, from inputs, how to generate outputs that influence environments. Plenty of drone autonomy stacks meet that bar comfortably. Plenty of others; deterministic flight controllers executing fixed logic; arguably don’t. I have sat across the table from engineers who insist their navigation system is “just maths,” and they’re not entirely wrong, but “just maths” is also a fair description of every neural network ever trained. The line is not where intuition puts it.

Why the military carve-out is a trap, not a shield

Here is where I watch clients relax too early.

The AI Act contains an exclusion for systems used exclusively for military, defence or national security purposes. Counter-drone work, in particular, loves to shelter under this. The reasoning goes: we detect and defeat hostile UAS, this is inherently a security function, therefore the Act doesn’t reach us. Lovely. Except “exclusively” is doing ruthless work in that sentence, and the dual-use reality of this entire sector makes the exclusion far narrower than people want it to be.

The same RF-detection and optical-tracking stack that protects an airbase gets sold, with a different sticker, to protect a stadium, a prison, a private estate. The moment that system has a civilian commercial life; the moment it is placed on the EU market for protecting critical infrastructure rather than fighting a war; the exclusion frays. And critical infrastructure protection is precisely the kind of use the high-risk classification regime is built to capture. A counter-UAS platform that automatically classifies an incursion and cues a response near an airport is not obviously outside the high-risk net just because its cousin wears camouflage.

The targeted consultation on the high-risk classification guidelines, open until late June, is therefore not abstract bureaucracy to me. Those guidelines are where the boundary between “this is a security tool, leave it alone” and “this is a high-risk system, document everything” will actually get drawn through worked examples. Anyone in this sector who isn’t reading those drafts is choosing to be surprised later.

Article 50 and the drone you can’t see

Now the part that genuinely changes behaviour on the ground.

Article 50’s transparency obligations don’t care about risk tiers. They bite on situations; and one of those situations is biometric categorisation, another is emotion recognition, and another is content that interacts with or affects people. Picture the increasingly common deployment: a drone with a camera doing crowd monitoring, perimeter patrol, or event security. The instant that payload starts categorising people by biometric attributes, the deployer owes the exposed individuals notice. You cannot quietly run biometric categorisation from 120 metres up and treat the altitude as a privacy shield. The obligation attaches to what the system does, not to how far away the lens sits.

I find this is the provision that catches operators off guard, because it cuts against the entire instinct of aerial surveillance, which is to be unobtrusive. The law is, in effect, telling a category of drone operator that unobtrusiveness is now sometimes unlawful. That is a genuinely interesting collision between the technology’s reason for existing and the regulation’s reason for existing, and it is going to generate litigation.

The sandbox that slipped a year

There was a small piece of news in the recent updates that I suspect most readers skimmed: the establishment deadline for regulatory sandboxes has been pushed from August 2026 to August 2027.

For most industries that’s a footnote. For drones it’s meaningful, because the sandbox model is arguably better suited to unmanned aviation than to almost any other AI domain. We already have a mature culture of supervised, geographically-bounded testing; segregated airspace, specific operational risk assessments, temporary danger areas. A regulatory sandbox is conceptually just that culture extended from airworthiness into algorithmic compliance. The delay means the one mechanism that could let a counter-UAS startup test automated-response logic on real incursions, under supervision, with some shelter from fines, won’t materialise on the original timetable. The companies most in need of a structured way to prove their systems are safe will spend another year improvising compliance instead. Whether that protects the public or merely protects incumbents is the kind of question I find genuinely unresolved.

What I’m telling clients

The honest summary I give, stripped of comfort, runs roughly like this. The August date isn’t your date; it’s aimed at the makers of large general-purpose models, and most drone autonomy doesn’t live there. But the regime those powers belong to is the same regime whose high-risk rules and Article 50 duties absolutely will reach you, and the classification guidelines being drafted right now are where your fate gets decided. Don’t wait for enforcement to tell you which side of the line you’re on. The structured dialogue the AI Office favours means the first contact is likely to be a request for documentation, not a fine; which means the clients who survive comfortably are simply the ones who wrote the documentation before anyone asked.

Drones made autonomy visible; something you can point at in the sky. That visibility is exactly why this sector will be among the first places the AI Act’s abstractions get tested against physical reality. I’d rather my clients be the test case that wins than the cautionary one. The tide tables are right there in my inbox. The only real choice is whether to read them.

This is not legal advice; if you’re making compliance decisions about a specific system, get advice tailored to it.

About the author
Richard Ryan is a Direct Access Barrister at Blakiston’s Chambers, and a chartered arbitrator and accredited mediator, specialising in drone and counter-drone law. He advises operators, manufacturers, UTM providers, insurers and public bodies across the full UAS spectrum — regulatory permissions and BVLOS approvals, C-UAS deployment at airports, prisons and critical infrastructure, data and privacy, liability and high-value disputes. Instruct him directly or through solicitors.

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By Richard Ryan, barrister and drone lawyer

Constructive outcome, practical lessons. A technical proximity breach was confirmed, a more serious allegation was dismissed, and there are clear takeaways that raise standards on evidence, cooperation and public safety.

This post is for general information only and is not legal advice.

The post A Constructive Outcome for Safer Skies: What the Client’s Case Means for UK Drone Pilots appeared first on Blakistons.

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1.There is reference to the commanders flying experience in hours, which included the last 90 days and the last 28 days. Are your records up-to-date?

2. The operators Operating Safety Case (OSC) contained several statements that were shown to be untrue. What does your OSC state?

3. In this case the CAA did not meet the operator or inspect the UA before the accident flight. Why not invite the CAA to inspect your platform so that you have it on record?

4. The CAA were not present at the test flight. Why not invite the CAA to attend the test flight?

5. The UA sustained damage to its landing gear as a consequence of loss of power on a test flight the day before the accident. Under the regulations, the OSC and the exemption provided by the CAA, this was supposed to have been reported, but was not. If in doubt, report?

6. Observing on the day in question, were two members of the CAA’s UAS unit, who were involved in assessing the operator’s application for exemption.

7. At the CAA UAS unit the section lead was a signatory on the exemption and he joined the CAA in May 2018. There have been numerous questions on resources that pertain to the CAA UAS unit. This is further endorsed by report which states “the CAA stated that the level of resources available meant it was not possible for the UA sector team to follow up every exemption.”

8. The CAA asked the Australian Civil Aviation Authority for further information, which does not appear to have been provided. However, the AAIB did ask CASA, and some information was provided. Does this mean that regulators will only correspond in the event of a serious incident? This is certainly going to become much more relevant for those drone operators that are operating in EU jurisdictions and how the EU intends to harmonise information in the future in order to allow drone operators to fly in different jurisdictions when qualified in another. It will be interesting to see how the UK intends to accept drone operators from the EU based upon UK regulations as these regulations may diverged in the future;

9. If you have a number of transmitters as part of your OSC that relate to redundancy, don’t leave them in the workshop!

10. The AAIB will appoint experts to examine certain aspects of the UA. In this case, experts were used to examine the circuit boards for compliance and specialist video forensic examiners using photogrammetry (interestingly from video, the expert was able to determine the UA’s heading, ground speed and altitude);

11. The AAIB compared this UA’s manufacture to EASA’s Special Conditions that relate to gliders with electric propulsion units and associated high-voltage batteries. In the event that there is an absence of regulation, comparisons will be made to other similar regulatory standards;

12. When writing mitigation measures for single points of failure, be mindful that if there is a failure in radio link communication that the UA will continue flying using its last known command. Interestingly, in this case there was no consideration on the effect of a kill switch not operating and that the hazard of a “flyaway” was not considered;

13. As a drone operator, do not state that your system has a return to home function when no GPS is fitted to the UA!

14. From an operator’s perspective, the operator in this case appears to make the admission that there was insufficient time and resources to adequately test and stabilise their equipment in unfamiliar surroundings. Additionally they stated that the team were all relatively inexperienced with aviation systems, procedures, required documentation and the need to formally understand and adhere to these processes. These are significant statements that underline the culture of an organisation in its approach to safe use of equipment and its emphasis on providing necessary training. Do your teams understand the legal obligations that relate to your operational authorisation and/or OSC?

15. As of August 2020, there are over 106,000 registered UA operators in the UK and over 45,000 operators flying model aircraft. That is a significant number of operators that require relevant training and understanding of their legal obligations;

16. According to the drones reunited website, the CAA state that most flyaways occur due to battery loss, poor signal, or a technology failure and some of this is also down to pilot error. It is essential that these aspects are covered in your risk assessment;

17. There are a number of amendments with respect to safety recommendations to CAP 722, which are:

1. 1. detailed evaluation of any unmanned aircraft systems that use on-board systems to mitigate risks with risk severity classifications of “major, hazardous or catastrophic.”
   2. guidance on the planning, completion and documenting of radiofrequency surveys to reduce the risk of radio-frequency interference or signal loss when operating unmanned aircraft systems;
   3. unmanned aircraft system operators that use unmanned aircraft which rely on a radiolinks to operate safety systems are to provide radiofrequency survey reports to the CAA for review;
   4. guidance on how to define an unmanned aircraft systems operational and safety areas, using up-to-date maps, accurate trajectory analysis and human automated safety system reaction times to ensure a safe operation;
   5. the CAA are to provide examples of unmanned aircraft system safety systems;
   6. the report recommends that the CAA introduce requirements to define a minimum standard for safety systems to be installed in unmanned aircraft systems operating under an operational authorisation to ensure adequate mitigation in the event of a malfunction;
   7. data recording systems which are capable of demonstrating compliance with the authorisations conditions, safe operation and the logging of any failures which may affect the safe operation of the unmanned aircraft system are to be required;
   8. minimum requirements for the monitoring of high-voltage stored energy devices to ensure safety of operations are recommended;
   9. operators of unmanned aircraft systems should have an effective safety management system in place prior to issuing an operational authorisation;
   10. expect an inspection from the CAA when seeking an operational authorisation for an unmanned aircraft system that the CAA have not previously had experience with;
   11. expect the CAA to adopt appropriate design, production, maintenance and reliability standards for all unmanned aircraft systems with aircraft capable of imparting over 80 J of energy, the same recommendation is made to EASA. It will be interesting to see how this develops within the new CE marking regime that is to apply in the future;

This is a really useful case study for drone operators to consider. It certainly is a timely reminder to make sure that your operational safety cases and/or OSC’s are up-to-date and that all the staff that are involved in your operation are cognisant of their legal obligations with respect to the regulations, the OSC and the exemption provided by the Civil Aviation Authority. If you have any questions about this or any other legal issues, please email info@blakistons.com

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Policy has become law in many jurisdictions, but policy needs to be developed further to keep pace with demand because safety is paramount. This paper investigates and highlights legal aspects that a regulator and UTM stakeholders have to consider in developing good drone law. It is essential that a properly considered legal framework is developed for many reasons including, but not limited to, increased positive public perception, proliferation of innovation of use cases for Unmanned Aerial Systems, improved environmental impact and improved safety.

This paper describes the fundamentals that a well designed and considered legal framework for a UTM system should address, in order to provide much needed certainty that can guide all stakeholders to a regulatory path that leads to safe maximized utility of drones in shared airspace.

Click here to read the full article.

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