Focus: GS-II Governance
Why in news?
The Ministry of Civil Aviation notified the draft rules, known as Unmanned Aircraft System Rules, 2020 for importing, manufacturing and owning drones as well as for drone ports, or airports for drones.
Rules and regulations so far
- The Centre mandated that drone owners will have to get their equipment registered with the (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) DGCA and allowed their use within the visual range.
- Ministry’s draft states that no unmanned aircraft shall carry any payload, unless specified by the Director General of DGCA, neither shall a person “drop or project or cause or permit to be dropped or projected from a UAS (unmanned aircraft system) in motion anything,” except when specified.
- DGCA has permitted food startups like Zomato and Swiggy to conduct trials for drones Beyond the Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS).
Drones
- Drone is a simpler term for Unmanned Aircraft (UA).
- There are three subsets of Unmanned Aircraft- Remotely Piloted Aircraft, Autonomous Aircraft and Model Aircraft.
- Remotely Piloted Aircraft consists of remote pilot station(s), the required command and control links and any other components, as specified in the type design.
- DGCA has designed five different categories of drones as: Nano, Micro, Small, Medium, and Large.
Drone Regulation 1.0
- Drone Regulation 1.0 is a set of guidelines issued by Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for commercial use of drones or remotely operated aircraft came into force from 2018.
- Under this regulation, the Digital Sky Platform will enable online registration of pilots, devices, service providers, and NPNT (no permission, no take-off).
- The Digital Sky Platform is a unique unmanned traffic management (UTM) system which is expected to facilitate registration and licensing of drones and operators in addition to giving instant (online) clearances to operators for every flight.
- The airspace has been partitioned into Red Zone (flying not permitted), Yellow Zone (controlled airspace), and Green Zone (automatic permission). The restricted locations are airports, near international border, near coastline, state secretariat complexes strategic locations, military installations.
-Source: The Hindu
