"Free Sky - From UAV to UAS: the third generation flight for territorial emergencies"

Fair and Shows  12:06 am - Monday Conference: "Free Sky - From UAV to UAS: the third generation flight for territorial emergencies"

Rome, Italy - Sciacchitano: "The Italian industry is leader in the domain, but a special regulation is needed" (WAPA) - "All that flies need to respect rules", with these words ENAC vice president Salvatore Sciacchitano opened his speech at the conference, immediately stressing on the necessity of having a special regulation for the use of these aircraft in the present context. And about the effort to find this regulation system as soon as possible, together with Alenia Aeronautica's business development product policy director Luciano Berardi, announces the important ENAC (Italian Authority for Civil Aviation) "Permit-to-fly" target for the SKY-Y, the second non piloted platform (UAS - Unmanned Aerial System), after the SKY-X, specifically developed as techniques and technologies' demonstrator for MALE (Medium Altitude Long Endurance) vehicles that will have to complete territorial surveillance missions.  During the congress, within the "Sat Expo 2009" fair in Rome, also participated honourable Marco Airaghi, ministry of defense councillor for aerospace activities, Carmine Cifaldi from ENAC's aerospace products management and Andrea Sergiusti Lazzareschi from Selex Galileo (Finmeccanica group).  So far does not yet exist an ultimate definition of this technological system, but anyway a UAV can be defined as an aircraft with no crew on board piloted by a ground control station (GCS) and/or an on board system so to make it autonomous.  In a wider sense they exist since more than 50 years, but they've become famous just in these late times, unluckily because of wars like in the Balkans, in Afghanistan and in Iraq.  Born from the necessity to cover the types of missions that military "Use to identify as 'D3' (Dirty, Dull, Dangerous) like missions in contaminated areas, surveillance and recognition and other dangerous operations for the pilots' safety", engineer Sciacchitano stated. On the other hand, the use of these planes for civil purposes has become of great interest for the high reliability and low cost of these aircraft.  In the next years the world non-piloted air systems' market will touch, by 2015, $8.3 billion. A huge business in which the Italian aeronautical industry with "Alenia Aeronautica" and "Galileo Avionica" is in the front line both for platforms and for on board sensors. The non piloted and remote controlled airplanes' domain (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, UAV) is one of the most dynamic of the present aeronautical industry and so will be for the next years.  In 2015 the UAV sector will be an important "cake", worth more than $54 billion, divided in two main slices: the production machines (more than $27 billion) and the research and development that is globally worth more than $21 billion, about 39% of the entire domain. Finally there is a smaller slice representing operational and maintenance activities of about $5 billion, 9% of the total. The main role in this market will be played by USA and Israel that are the real catalyst of this sector.  These systems are now a crucial element of intelligence, surveillance and recognition activities, and are extending towards other kinds of operational activities, that will accelerate in the future thanks to the UCAVs (Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle), among which we remind the "nEURon" project.  Regarding civil UAVs the main question today that is someway slowing their development is not the technology, but the regulation. Today, according to ENAC's vice director, there are two targets "A short term one to find a regulation system to use the UAVs, and another long term one to find an integration between manned and unmanned within the air traffic control system". (Avionews)