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>>For the most part, DoD has responsibility for operations within restricted air space.
When you step outside of that military operating zone, that belongs to the National Airspace,
and that responsibility is with the FAA.
The National Airspace system was created with a person in the aircraft in mind, so now you
have to think about all those things that the person would do that the unmanned aircraft
also has to do in order to be safe.
Ikhana took off at Edwards, climbed up to twenty thousand feet, and then we exited to
the west.
>>ETS nine thirty eight maintain fifteen hundred feet per minute or greater through flight
level two one zero for traffic.
>>In order to achieve that ultimate goal of permitting unmanned aircraft to seamlessly
operate in the NAS, we took this step, so this is a proving out of some sensors that can
basically overcome what's missing from an unmanned aircraft, and that's a human in the
cockpit with their eyes looking outside and detecting or seeing other aircraft and avoiding
them.
>>Twenty-six zero-eight...opposite direction descending unmanned aerial vehicle traffic.
Flight heading two seven zero.
>>NASA eight seventy traffic eleven o'clock, six miles, westbound, indicates eight thousand
seven hundred, unverified, type unknown, intermittent transponder.
>>NASA eight seven zero traffic detected.
>>Some of these concepts that are easy for a person to accomplish are very hard from a
technological perspective.
So we wanted to prove out that we could detect and avoid other aircraft.
>>November four six niner mike bravo, traffic four moving to three o'clock one mile, level
at niner thousand, and unmanned aerial vehicle.
He'll be turning to the north in about two minutes across your nose turning northbound
at niner thousand.
>>Roger looking for traffic niner northbound...
...traffic in sight...
>>...roger thanks.
>>NASA eight seventy traffic twelve o'clock, three miles eastbound, type and altitude unknown primary
radar target only.
>>With our sensors onboard and also our display and the algorithms that are behind all of
that, gives the pilot an equivalent level of capability to the human eye.
>>For this mission, the detect and avoid technology was awesome, it gave me a bigger picture of
what's out there.
Heavy reliance on air traffic control keeping me separated from other aircraft, but having
that big picture, we were able to see airliners, we were able to see general aviation aircraft,
and just being aware what's out there, I think we were better equipped to do this mission
than any of the manned airplanes that are out there in the National Airspace.
>>The technology in the past wasn't there.
There wasn't a commerce reason for unmanned aircraft, but it's there now.
>>We can do long endurance, which is about twenty to twenty-four hours of flight time, which
if you were sitting in the aircraft, you would not be able to do.
This demonstration opens up opportunities for other unmanned airplanes to do new missions.
Pipeline patrol, wildfire studies, ice level studies, stuff like that that's pretty mundane,
this plane is well suited for long-endurance high-altitude.
>>You may have heard that Amazon and some other companies would like to use unmanned aircraft
to deliver packages.
File and fly operations in the NAS would benefit them greatly.
I think that someday there will be unmanned cargo aircraft, probably starting with the
oceanic missions, flying unmanned cargo across the Pacific and the Atlantic.
That commerce application seems to come in mind as probably an end goal for unmanned
aircraft.