The State Duma regulates the application of numbers on drones
Owners of unmanned aerial vehicles weighing more than 250 g must apply “registration marks” on them. This is stated in the government bill adopted by the State Duma in the first reading. The absence of this norm in the Air Code of the Russian Federation, explained in the White House, does not allow determining how these signs should look on drones. Since 2019, there has been a mandatory registration of drones with the Federal Air Transport Agency with the receipt of the corresponding numbers. But these numbers, the expert explained, are applied to the bodies of drones arbitrarily, which often does not allow identifying the owner in case of drone incidents.
The government bill introduces amendments to Art. 34 of the Air Code of the Russian Federation. It says that registration marks should be applied only to “state aircraft”. The new edition suggests that such signs should also be present on “experimental aircraft” and drones with a takeoff weight of 250 g to 30 kg, “imported into the Russian Federation or manufactured in the Russian Federation.”
“The adoption of the project will serve as an obstacle to illegal actions and will enable the development of the market for legal unmanned vessels,” assured the deputies of the Deputy Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation Dmitry Zverev.
The mandatory registration procedure for unmanned aerial vehicles weighing over 250 g entered into force in Russia in 2019. Drone owners must obtain a license plate from the Federal Air Transport Agency and put it on the device, otherwise flights are threatened with a fine of up to 2.5 thousand rubles. However, according to the explanatory note to the bill, the lack of mentioning registration marks in the Air Code of the Russian Federation gives rise to a legal conflict. In particular, without this, it is impossible to adopt regulations defining how these signs should look and be applied to drones. This circumstance, explained in the State Duma a member of the parliamentary committee for transport and construction, Vladimir Sinyagovsky, “negatively affects the level of flight safety.” Pavel Fedyaev, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Transport and Construction, recalled that in order to register a drone, one must send an application to the Federal Air Transport Agency website or the portal of state services and receive a number in response. “But further on, no identification marks are applied to the aircraft. We believe that this legislative gap must be eliminated, ”said Mr. Fedyaev.
According to M.Video-Eldorado, in the first half of 2020, 95 thousand drones were sold in Russia for 1.3 billion rubles. (For comparison, in the US in 2020, drones were sold for $ 1.25 billion, according to Statista). The Federal Air Transport Agency previously expected that about 500 thousand drones are subject to registration in the Russian Federation.
Eduard Baghdasaryan, General Director of Aerokon, says that there is still no clear procedure for engraving numbers on drones. “They fly as best they can, write the number where they want and how they want. If the product is destroyed, there is a risk of death of the license plate. But its meaning is to identify the owner of the drone in the event of a disaster or incident, ”the expert explained. “After the adoption of the bill, it will be possible to establish the owner of the drone if any harm is caused during its crash,” Mr. Sinyagovsky promised.
Note that in February 2020, the government of the Russian Federation allowed the flights of quadrocopters weighing up to 30 kg within line of sight at altitudes of no more than 150 m without the approval of air traffic controllers. Previously, permission for such flights had to be requested from the Unified Air Traffic Management System.
Alexander Voronov
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