Centre for Military Airworthiness and Certification moots airworthiness certification for UAVs in India

UAVs in India may require military airworthiness certification from defence ministry

The Centre for Military Airworthiness and Certification (CEMILAC) has recommended that in future, all unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) should be cleared for their airworthiness. The recommendation is under consideration by the defence ministry.

All the 41 countries that presently operate UAVs are debating UAV certification issues. In India, design, manufacture, operation, maintenance, safety and liability of UAVs are presently not assessed by any independent regulatory authority.

Potential failures need to be anticipated, deviations in design and manufacture assessed, operational demands simulated and evaluated, and designs certified.

For manned military aircraft, these functions are performed by the CEMILAC, while airworthiness of civilian aircraft is governed by the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA).

If CEMILAC's insistence on airworthiness certification for UAVs is accepted, norms and procedures would have to be laid down. In addition, certification protocols and procedures must be worked out, so that they can be applied for the unmanned craft. "The crucial question is, what constitutes airworthiness for an UAV?" an official asked.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation's (DRDO's) Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE), which designed and developed India's two UAVs - the surface / ship-launched, high subsonic, reusable aerial target system Lakshya, and the intelligence-gathering Nishant - has in-house audits for critical design and flight.

The ADE is also developing Lakshya II and a number of new UAVs, including the medium altitude long endurance (MALE) UAV Rustam. If CEMILAC's recommendations are accepted, these new UAVs will have to be certified before they can fly.

An official said that though the usual questions over passenger/crew safety are not an issue, questions over the materials used, structural safety and systems to be installed on board might crop up.

"If an UAV is to have systems like an anti-collision device, crash recorder and black box (a flight data recorder, which logs information such as speed and altitude) installed, its weight and cost could go up drastically, making it unviable," an official said.

But an effective counter-issue is the collateral damage an UAV can cause if it spins out of control and crashes on human settlements. UAVs may be designed primarily for military use, but 90 per cent of Indian airspace is civilian, and restricting UAVs to military airspace could be impractical.

Besides, they have civilian applications; they could be used for urban surveillance and during natural disasters. It is with this in mind that Israel recently certified its Heron MALE UAV - also used by the Indian defence forces - to fly in civilian airspace.