Deutschland gründet mit anderen Europäern Drohnen-Community

Wie in der vergangenen Woche schon angekündigt, haben Deutschland und sechs andere europäische Länder eine Nutzergemeinschaft für mittelgroße Drohnen der MALE-Klasse (Medium Altitude Long Endurance) gegründet. Neben Deutschland unterzeichneten bei einem Treffen unter Ägide der Europäischen Verteidigungsagentur Frankreich, Italien, Spanien, Polen, Griechenland und  Niederlande eine entsprechende Absichtserklärung (ich muss gestehen: mit dem Ländercode EL kann ich nichts anfangen – das ist weder Estland (EE) noch England (UK)…).  Außerdem legten die Vertreter der an der EDA beteiligten Länder den Grundstein für weitere europäische Zusammenarbeit bei Drohnen und ihrer Integration in den europäischen Luftraum.

Aus der EDA-Mitteilung:

Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS)
RPAS have proven their value in the military sphere in recent operations demonstrating their operational capacities, particularly for surveillance and information gathering. Defence Ministers endorsed a roadmap on RPAS which aims at laying the foundations for a European solution in the 2020-2025 timeframe. The roadmap includes four actions:
RPAS Certification. In the context of the Military Airworthiness Forum, the Agency is exploring together with national authorities and the European Aviation Safety Agency how to streamline the certification process for military RPAS on the European level.
Signature of a Joint Investment Programme on RPAS for Air Traffic Insertion. The programme will focus on technological priorities such as sense and avoid, taxi, automatic take-off and landing, air traffic management interfaces, safe automated monitoring and decision architecture. These demonstration projects will be complementary to the activities of the European Commission in support of RPAS in order to seek synergies. Eight Member States (AT, BE, CZ, DE, ES, FR, IT, UK) signed the programme during the Steering Board.
Future European RPAS MALE Programme. Defence Ministers today endorsed the Common Staff Target for Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) RPAS as the basis for those Member States which intend to participate in any future project to develop a Common Staff Requirement; in this context Ministers tasked EDA to prepare the launch of a Category B project.
Establishment of a MALE RPAS community. The objective of this community is to exchange information as well as to identify and facilitate cooperation among Member States which currently operate or plan to operate RPAS. At the Steering Board meeting on 19 November 2013 seven Member States (FR, DE, EL, ES, IT, NL, and PL) signed a Letter of Intent to join the Community.

Nachtrag: Ein paar mehr Details dazu: Seven EU states create military drone ‚club‘

(Foto: Heron-Drohne der Bundeswehr in Masar-i-Scharif in Afghanistan – Sebastian Wilke/Bundeswehr via Flickr unter CC-BY-ND-Lizenz)