The aviation research program is an important part of the German government's aviation strategy. With the support of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) as the project management organization, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy is funding basic research and application-related research for the development of innovative technologies.
To ensure that the growing markets for UAS applications and advanced air mobility solutions can be taken into account even more strongly and, above all, more precisely in the future, UAV DACH has been intensively involved in discussions on the strategic orientation of the federal aviation strategy in general and the aviation research program in particular in recent weeks. Under the leadership of Torsten Fiolka, responsible for Research & Education on the UAV DACH Board, ideas, suggestions and specific proposals were collected from the members of the Unmanned Aviation Association and incorporated into the planning and preparations of the Ministry and DLR.
At a final workshop, the stakeholders involved from the various sub-sectors of manned and unmanned aviation now discussed the specific design of a future aviation research strategy in order to take all essential areas of the aviation industry into account. Torsten Fiolka and Oliver Lichtenstein, Deputy Chairman of the UAV DACH Board, attended the meeting at the German Aerospace Center in Bonn to represent the interests of the UAS/AAM industry in general and UAV DACH members in particular.
They actively contributed to the discussions on important future topics for the industry, such as issues of airspace integration, fleet control (one-to-many, swarms of drones), automated flight planning and execution or the development of specific materials and production technologies. In addition, efforts were made to ensure that UAS and eVTOLs are given sufficient consideration in the aviation research strategy as independent modes of transport and pillars of a climate-friendly transformation of aviation as well as drivers of the digitalization of air traffic.