Digital Airworthiness Certification: Opportunities for Unmanned Aircraft Systems

One of the challenges for integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into national and international airspace systems is the requirement for the UAS to be certified as airworthy for its configuration, use, and environment. Traditionally aircraft certification has largely been a labor-intensive exercise that involved the showing of compliance to airworthiness requirements through analysis, simulation, and test with results documented in reports. The finding of compliance by the appropriate regulatory agencies involves thoroughly reading the reports and arriving at a conclusion as to whether the reports are sufficient or if more data are required. For UAS, this process is particularly challenging due to the novel aspects of their design and operation. Fortunately, recent developments in digital transformation of the aerospace industry and in development of industry consensus standards for UAS have opened opportunities for UAS to use a digital airworthiness certification approach. This approach has three stages - a future without paper, a future without artifacts, and a future without exhaustive physical testing. The opportunities and challenges associated with each future are discussed in the context of unmanned aircraft systems.