UAS platforms

This category covers the uncrewed aircraft themselves: tactical and military platforms, loitering munitions, and the fixed-wing and multirotor airframes sold for industrial work. Autonomy software, ground control stations and payloads have their own guides, and the company that flies the aircraft as a service has another. A buyer here is comparing datasheets that are not comparable, so the first job is to force them onto the same axes.

Normalise the performance claims

Endurance is quoted at a payload, a mass, an altitude, a temperature and a wind, and suppliers choose flattering values for all five. Ask for endurance at your payload mass, at your field elevation, at the temperature range you work in, with the reserve you plan to keep. Ask for the wind limit for launch, for cruise and for recovery, and ask which of the three is the binding one. Ask what the datalink range assumption is, at what antenna height, and what happens when the link drops: the lost-link behaviour is a specification, and it should be in writing. Ask what the mean time between failures is from fielded use, and ask how many airframes are actually flying.

The regulation that follows the airframe

Civil operation of small uncrewed aircraft runs under Part 107, which covers registration, airman certification and operation, including eligibility to fly over people, with exceptions for air carrier operations and for operations under an exemption or under Part 91 where elected.³ Remote identification adds design and production obligations on the producer, together with the declaration of compliance process by which a producer attests to the FAA that the requirements have been met.² Ask for the declaration of compliance, ask whether the aircraft is a standard remote identification aircraft, and ask what the plan is if a declaration is rescinded. On the defence side, unmanned aerial vehicles specially designed to incorporate a defense article are enumerated on the munitions list, as are aircraft carrying defense articles for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare or command and control.¹ The same airframe can be a commercial product in one configuration and a controlled article in another, so ask about the configuration you are buying.

Supply chain and sustainment

Ask where the airframe, the flight controller, the radios, the motors and the batteries are made, and where the ground software sends data. Public and defence buyers work under sourcing restrictions that disqualify aircraft regardless of performance, so establish eligibility before evaluation, not after. Ask what a spare arm, motor or battery costs and what the lead time is now. Ask how firmware is updated, whether an update can be declined, and what an update has broken in the past. Federal award data is public and shows what a supplier has been contracted to deliver and at what scale, which is a useful check on a young company's claims.⁴

Questions that sort suppliers

Ask for a flight log from a fielded unit, not a demonstration. Ask for the lost-link and geofence behaviour in writing. Ask what the total fleet flight hours are on this model. Ask what training and spares are included in the first year, priced separately.