Civil/military UAS regulatory framework approach: analysis, theoretical comparison and study-case

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) represent a great opportunity for the future of aviation, offering new services and performing existing ones in a more affordable and effective manner. UAS were initially employed for military purposes, but in recent years, they become increasingly popular in the civilian sector. To fully exploit the potential of this market, a regulatory framework is needed not only to guarantee that all unmanned system services are provided in a way that ensure safety, sustainability, privacy, and affordability, but it is also a key issue to attract stakeholders’ interest in this emerging technology and encourage economic investments from the industry. This thesis aims to analyze the existing UAS regulatory framework considering both military and civil approach, highlighting similarities and differences. The state of the art of UAS, their evolution and main classifications will first be illustrated. A review of the civil and military regulatory framework will follow, with emphasis on the rules to operate a UAS in the specific category and a detailed description of the SORA process. In addition, this risk assessment will be applied to a real operational scenario, comparing it with the provisions of the applicable military regulations and assessing the effects of these two different approaches (civil and military) on the design and the management of UAS operations. In conclusion, this study will highlight that despite many efforts made in recent years by regulatory authorities, much progress still needs to be made to achieve a final, harmonized, and comprehensive regulation. Actually, civil and military approach are quite different, but the trend is to establish a new common methodology to define UAS rules, not only based on the features of the aircraft employed but also on the type of operations, the operational scenario and the related risk, moving towards a progressive and risk-based approach.