Drone-delivered lab samples over the Firth of Clyde: NATS Services begins validating groundbreaking CONOPS for airspace operations

According to Cancer Research UK, one in two people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetimes. There are huge leaps being made in fighting this disease, new treatments available, new drugs being developed and research that is moving forward our understanding of the disease. As part of Project CAELUS, drones are now being made a part of this process, aiming to improve outcomes for patients by reducing delivery times for critical healthcare materials from several hours to just 30 minutes.

As part of the Future Flight Challenge, NATS Services has made significant progress on how we will integrate delivery drones and advanced air mobility vehicles into mixed airspace by creating, testing, improving, and re-testing a new Concept of Operations (CONOPS) for a visionary standard for uncrewed flights.

Validating this CONOPS through simulation and live trials enables early risk mitigation, improved collaboration, enhanced quality, cost savings, and greater adaptability in the development process. It considers not just airspace integration, but also the broader aspects of the overall medical delivery service, including the location of landing pads, interactions with NHS staff, a delivery management system, and the medical payloads themselves.

Through creation of this CONOPS, we have been engaging with the CAA and responding to feedback in a number of ways. We have also worked hard to find alignment with other research findings so that the evidence we are providing is complemented by what others are learning too.

The most recent Project CAELUS flight trials have been a success in establishing that safely managed medical drone flights between NHS Scotland sites could be done using temporary airspace reservations, or TRAs, within a known traffic environment such as a transponder mandatory zone (TMZ). That’s another step towards realising a truly integrated airspace in the UK.

We have also successfully integrated the first live drone telemetry from an uncrewed traffic management service provider into NATS’ Master Control Room (MCR) prototype, showing how uncrewed traffic can be safely incorporated into existing air traffic systems without disruption. It provides key insights and marks another step toward enabling real-time flight monitoring and authorisation for new airspace users.

As airspace experts, our work is an exercise in physics: matter, motion and energy. We naturally focus on trajectories and numbers but in this case, it is impossible to not feel humanly connected to the benefits these changes would bring.  These new ways of flying will change patient’s lives for the better. It’s a privilege to be part of the collaborative achievements of Project CAELUS.