If you’ve been to London in Britain (there are plenty of others) lately, you can feel secure in the knowledge that you were in one of the most surveilled cities outside of Asia (and Moscow). The British city, as of 2021, had around 700,000 cameras and the number might be as high as a solid million. That’s still nothing on Chinese cities but the Brits might have a way around that — flying cameras.
The country’s Civil Aviation Authority has announced several trial projects that will introduce drones to the skies above London and other cities in Britain. Planned to be limited in number at first, the series of six projects could well change the face of the country if everything goes as planned.
Watch the skies over Britain
It’s not all about keeping a beady eye on the British population, though that certainly seems to be one avenue under exploration. In addition to giving the National Police Air Service options when it comes to “uncrewed aircraft use in policing” (which could mean anything, really), it’ll also see Amazon flying packages around. It’s good to see that Jeff’s company hasn’t given up on that particular ambition. Perhaps it’ll work better in a country with far fewer guns.
In addition to giving the cops eyes in the skies and spinning up Amazon Prime Air in Britain, the CAA’s trials will see two offshore inspection tests, one expressly for wind turbines and the other testing BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) in the North Sea. Project SATE (Sustainable Aviation Test Environment) and Project Lifeline, which will test drone usage in emergency situations, are the other two projects that have been given the green light by Britain’s CAA.
No matter what the project, the aim is the same — feasibility testing into using unmanned craft out of line of sight within the country. It’s quite a jump for the country, which has stringent rules on how drones can be operated within its borders. South Africa’s own CAA tends to follow the UK’s lead when it comes to rules and regulations so we’d expect some of these findings to eventually lead either to feasibility testing or regulations changes here at home.