Drones: a challenge for air navigation

Every day we hear some news related to unmanned aerial vehicles, what we know as drones. They are not only doing surveillance work or providing leisure activities, but they are also on the military front line, as we are seeing in Ukraine and Syria, where there has recently been a drone attack that has claimed almost 100 victims. "Technological changes are transforming the armed forces and the way we wage war," said Colonel José Pardo de Santallana, research coordinator and senior analyst at the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies, during the opening of the seminar "Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): a technological, legal and military revolution". "Drones are going to change the military, they are cheap and effective," he added.

"UAVs are a tractor effect for industry and companies, and they are interesting from a legal point of view; it is a multi-faceted and cross-cutting issue," acknowledged Abel Veiga, Dean of the Faculty of Law (Comillas ICADE), which organised the meeting through the Centre for Innovation in Law (CID-ICADE) and the General Secretariat for Defence Policy of the Ministry of Defence. In this regard, Alberto Priego, Director of the Master's Degree in International Relations: Economics, Politics and Law (Comillas ICADE), in addition to highlighting the importance of the participation in the seminar of prestigious jurists, academics and people who work with drones, the Air Force, the Military Emergency Unit and other sectors related to Defence, stressed the lack of regulation and the work of the EU to regulate airspace, which today "also represents a challenge for air navigation".

Miguel Martínez, Lecturer of Commercial Law at Comillas ICADE, spoke about this, highlighting that "the explosion in the use of drones in cities will mean that we will live in ecosystems with different aircraft, manned and unmanned, which is why Europe is working on the creation of U-Space and regulations that will address important issues such as airworthiness, civil liability and insurance for drone operators".

The experts gathered at Comillas reviewed the historical use of drones, their operation and the future. "The emergence of swarms of coordinated drones without human intervention will have to have a legal framework. Moreover, as was made clear by the interventions of the military representatives, "the generalisation of their use means that Western armed forces will have to develop systems that can eliminate the threat posed by drones because they may lose their air superiority".