EDA released its results on Risks Assessment for military UAS

EDA assessed all aspects of Apave Aeroservices's technical proposal. In line with the Working Paper called “Harmonisation of a minimum set of information to be submitted with the request for permission to operate a foreign UAS on the territory of another EDA member state”, the purpose of EDA's call for tender was to launch a study to investigate a harmonised methodology to perform Air and Ground Risks Assessment for non-certified UAS operating in the specific category of operations.

The study's overall objective is to facilitate non-certified UAS operations in the specific category of operations (called MIL-UAS-SPECIFIC) in foreign pMS (participating Member States) and to support EDA pMS in Risk Assessment methodology (identification, mitigation and tools) when no national methodology exists.

The call for tender expected the tbidders to provide comprehensive proposals addressing the following steps:

• SO1.    To perform an inventory of national Air and Ground Risk Assessment methods and tools and to record EDA participating Member States’ expectations in this domain
• SO2.    To study the UAS Risk Assessment tool/methodology developed from 2014 to 2018 in the UAS ARF WG, called RAT9, the upgrade of this RAT tool by Portugal, called A-RAT10, and any other relevant methodologies, such as SORA, the recommended european civilian methodology.
• SO3.    To study how military specifics like the payload of the UAS (e.g., dangerous goods, weapons) can influence the results of an Air and Ground Risk Assessment and see how consideration of these military specifics needs to be included in the tool/method for Air and Ground Risk Assessment in the MIL-UAS-SPECIFIC operation category.
• SO4.    To perform a gap analysis among existing methodologies and define/combine those that are most suited to specific military needs (for assessment of Air and Ground Risks )
• SO5.    To develop and propose a methodology encompassing the most common and important aspects identified by the pMS for the assessment of Ground and Air risks
• SO6.    To verify that this proposed methodology is as safe as those already in use by the Military. The study should also develop proposals concerning the use of harmonised methodology by the EDA pMS, in line with the identified expectations. Non-exhaustive examples could be standard scenarios/pre-defined risk assessments, or an online tool.
• SO7.    To monitor, maintain and possibly update the development of civil and military Risk Assessment tools and the methodology identified as per SO5 and verified as per SO6

Over the years, Apave Aeroservices and OSAC have designed, tested and implemented state-of-the-art risk assessment methodologies to continuously improve the services they provided to key aviation stakeholders, civil and military authorities as well as defence companies. This has been applied to fixed, rotary wing and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).

Witnessing the growing use of UAS in civil and military operations, In 2025 Apave decided to work on a UAS specific risk assessment methodology called Certidrones®, which was selected by civil and military UAV operators in Europe.

Apave remains fully committed to addressing safety management and exposure to risks in the growing markets of civil and military UAS operations.