RPAS in Australian Skies conference 2025

Introduction

I’d like to thank Andrew, Greg and Michelle for inviting me back to what is becoming an increasingly significant conference in the Australian aviation landscape.

Having been watching for a while and attending for the last four years, it’s been incredible to watch how your industry has increased in scope, sophistication and importance to the Australian economy.

You know something has become a major force in aviation when the number of acronyms and initialisms reaches encyclopaedic proportions, and I think you can tick that box.

I am confident many of you can now construct a sentence which uses a minimum of olde English words to connect a string of remotely piloted aircraft system-based acronyms. And coming up with the acronym AAUS was genius. Particularly when there was already an RAAus.

As I mentioned last year, there are now more remote pilot licence holders (or for those who love an acronym - RePLs) than there are traditional crewed aircraft pilots and this gap continues to grow.

As of 1 May 2025, there were 38,874 licensed drone operators – up from just over 35,000 on June 30 last year – compared to 30,845 conventional crewed pilots.

But even more important than the number of operators are the new and innovative uses for increasingly sophisticated drones.

From helping archaeologists unlock the secrets of the past, to enhancing safety in underground mines, detecting sharks, delivering medicine and remotely inspecting crops for pests and soil degradation, today’s drones are going where no RPAS has gone before.

Drones are now a key part of the toolkit available to police and emergency services as they strive to keep us safe and respond to natural disasters, including Cyclone Alfred.

And we are trying to keep up without compromising safety.

The use of drones to monitor fire-prone areas during dry lightning storms, detect strikes and deal with hot spots before they become a raging fire front has the potential to save lives and billions of dollars in property damage.

A 2023 study of the sectors that benefit from drones found the emergency services sector was projected to unlock the greatest potential benefits with a net productivity increase of 10 per cent.

This translated to a $460 million net boost to the national economy and savings of $1 to $8 billion if used in early fire detection.

CASA is committed to keeping Australia at the forefront of emerging technologies.

But safely and efficiently integrating these operations into Australia’s airspace and regulatory framework remains one of our biggest challenges.

Transparency and service delivery

All businesses need to plan and we’re keen to help individuals and organisations understand response times and other performance indicators for our key regulatory services.

We know that application wait times are a significant issue, and we’re working hard to be transparent about how we are going and to improve our service delivery performance.

If you haven’t seen it yet, please check out the detailed information about our response times for an expanding list of services and see how they compare with historical trends.

How we are tracking is really impacted by the ever-growing aviation community. We’ve seen a 46 per cent increase in authorisation holders over the past 5 years, from 3,674 at the end of fiscal 2019 to 5,355 on 30 June 2024.

Strategies to streamline application processes in the drone industry include dedicated streams for complex and simpler applications as well as a streamlined application process for BVLOS operations. And we know AI might be part of the solution.

While digitisation plays a role in these efforts, our broader objective is to minimise the need for applications where possible.

Complementing our moves to improve service delivery is a new charter outlining the standard of service stakeholders and clients can expect when you interact with us.

The revised RPAS and AAM roadmap

We know we need to move toward more flexible rules based on outcomes to cope with the wave of emerging technologies heading our way.

We also know the value of early consultation and having industry input as we develop policies and proposals.

To ensure you get a sense of where we’re headed, we’re committed to more regularly providing updates on our priorities and the work we have underway.

That’s why we updated our Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems and Advanced Air Mobility Strategic Regulatory Roadmap late last year.

We’re holding regular webinars to support the roadmap and our latest – run last month – saw some 445 people attend. It’s available on our website if you missed it.

AAM Type Certification roadmap

From a planning perspective, we know that piloted AAMs could be operational in Australia from 2027 to 2029. And we know the 2032 Olympics will be a target.

At this stage, we have one Australian passenger-carrying AAM currently undergoing certification and one overseas manufacturer that has formally applied through its national aviation authority to have its aircraft certified by CASA.

As part of our commitment to keeping Australia at the leading edge and recognising the importance of a consistent approach, we worked with colleagues from Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States on a landmark international roadmap for the unified and streamlined certification of Advanced Air Mobility aircraft across borders.

The roadmap aims to ensure safety, foster collaboration, promote technological innovation and streamline the certification and validation process for new aircraft types across international boundaries.

We knew that there are differences in aircraft certification standards emerging across the world – the roadmap acknowledges these differences and provides a framework to converge and harmonise them.

For operators, the roadmap aims to reduce the certification burden once the AAM aircraft has received a type certificate and allow them faster entry to multiple countries through harmonised airworthiness standards and focused validation activities.

By working together, we can ensure that the introduction of AAM aircraft is both safe and efficient, paving the way for the future of urban mobility.

I am very proud of the role that Australia has played in driving this initiative, which is not only a world-first but will also help make urban and advanced air mobility a reality.

RPAS work underway

We have a lot of policy and regulatory work in the pipeline focusing on RPAS operations in Australia as we look to accommodate and support emerging drone operations and keep up with industry progress and demand.

We know we need to think of drones differently to the way we’ve traditionally viewed crewed aviation.

While we will continue to adhere to the formal regulatory change process, we can be creative with our use of other regulatory levers.

We could, for example, assess a safety case and issue exemptions to allow an operation to proceed on a trial basis. As it becomes proven and increases in frequency, we could change the manual of standards to allow more widespread use ahead of a regulatory change.

Essentially, we are trying something, stopping and thinking about what happened and deciding if and how we might proceed.

The raft of policies and proposals we’re considering when it comes to drones include a 6-month trial of an alternate definition of visual line of sight.

The amended VLOS definition would incorporate concepts of extended visual line of sight, allowing the use of observers to maintain VLOS in lieu of the remote pilot.

We are working through the implementation of the trial and look forward to providing details of how to register soon.

We’re also improving rules and providing better guidance material for operations conducted over and near people.

You can presently fly over and near people who agree to the practice – for example, actors taking part in filming – if you’re conducting low energy operations unlikely to cause serious injury, or you’ve done a specific operations risk assessment.

Our proposal looks at 3 new scenarios: sheltering under structures, parachute operations and micro-RPA.

Another initiative looks at permitting RePL holders to conduct operations above 400ft near structures and within 120 metres horizontally of a structure.

An example of businesses who would benefit from this are open cut mine operators or people involved in rescue operations near a cliff face.

You’ve told us you find the requirements for BVLOS complicated, so we’re looking at additional guidance and simplifying complex operational requirements.

This includes consideration of a trial that will allow proven BVLOS operators to work across Australia and self-assess an operational area under certain conditions.

To test whether self-assessment will work, we’re looking at factors such as general requirements, defining specific roles, operator maturity, knowledge and competence as well as how this would achieve and maintain an acceptable level of safety.

We’re also working towards opening consultation on proposed amendments to permit RePLs covering the medium RPA category, rather than specific models.

his will reduce the burden on operators because your licence would cover multiple drones in the 25kg to 150kg category.

The proposal also seeks to address the issue for ReOC holders by removing the requirement to specify the medium RPA model on the certificate and instead specify the medium RPA category.

Agriculture is an area where people have told us the rules can be improved and we’re working to optimise safety without placing an onerous burden on people using drones.

We’ve already introduced a specific aviation theory exam for BVLOS which streamlines the requirements for people working on farms and we’re now looking at ways to further simplify the regulatory requirements on agricultural drone operations.

Increasing demand for commercial operations using large RPA means we’re investigating allowing greater flexibility and we hope to say more about this in the future.

Strategic initiatives

We understand the value of drones over the high seas in areas such as marine research, oil rigs, fishing and Antarctic operations.

This is why we’ve been working at an international level to get people to rethink the application of the Chicago Convention on the operation of drones beyond a country’s 12 nautical mile territorial limit.

Currently, drones cannot operate beyond that limit unless they meet a number of airworthiness and other requirements originally designed for crewed aircraft.

We’ve been working within the International Civil Aviation Organization to promote change – it is a difficult problem but we’re working with international partners to try and find a solution within a complex international context.

While this work progresses, we want to be pragmatic about how we handle applications for operations over the high seas, while ensuring those operations are conducted safely and lawfully.

We believe that where operations can be conducted safely within Australia, they should be able to be conducted over the high seas on the same basis. We are working with like-minded partners to advance this kind of approach.

CASA is heavily engaged and contributes significantly to the JARUS Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA) working groups and plenaries.

We continue to review and validate elements of version 2.5 to ensure it is fit for purpose for the Australian context and can be implemented in an open, transparent and efficient way.

We’re still working through the details but are tracking towards an implementation date at the end of 2025.

I know that were shortcomings in the implementation of SORA 2.0 that led to regulatory services delays and we’re working to ensure we implement SORA 2.5 in a way that avoids repeating those issues.

And we’re committed to getting some of the complexity out of SORA for lower-risk operations.

Our goal is to not require that low risk operators be SORA experts – but rather, build the elements of SORA into the application process and operating profile, reducing the requirements and burden on operators.

We are also very close to releasing a discussion paper on research and development of RPAS that outlines proposed definitions of R&D and invites industry feedback on issues they are experiencing in this area.

Supporting emergency services

I’ve already mentioned the economic benefits of using drones for emergency services but the most important aspect is the lives they save and the people they help.

I know I’m preaching to the converted, but they really can improve situational awareness, facilitate search and rescue, help with disaster response efforts, assess damage and provide medical assistance.

Western Australian police have been at the forefront of working with us on expanded operations and now have powers to fly BVLOS indoors and close to people.

After significant training, this allowed WA police to use drones inside buildings in dangerous situations such as an armed siege, reducing risk for officers.

We’re looking at expanding this to other agencies.

We’ve seen great examples of how, with our support, drones have been used to help people during Cyclone Alfred in Queensland and the recent devastating floods in NSW.

People interviewed by the media described the relief they felt after seeing a drone and knowing they’d been located.

Drones have been used to drop hay to farmers, deliver urgent supplies to isolated cancer patients and to light the way for a rescue mission operating in the dark.

One way we facilitate operations by emergency services during catastrophic events is by issuing exceptional circumstances exemptions to allow drones to conduct safety-of-life relief efforts.

Our support of the emergency response to Tropical Cyclone Alfred saw us effectively issue an exemption for low level BVLOS operations over a weekend.

Other initiatives such as the proposed ability for mature BVLOS operators to work across Australia are also expected to help.

CASA also continues to work with law enforcement and fire and emergency services on the development of a 'bespoke' BVLOS approval to respond to emergencies. We anticipate release in the third quarter of this year.

We will always assist these organisations as a high priority – when we know that we’re dealing with urgent operations.

Recreational drone flyers and Know Your Drone

Our Know Your Drone campaign continues to be a major resource for recreational users through our website, newsletters and popular quiz.

We continue to work with retailers to get the message out to recreational drone users that they need to know – and fly within – the rules.

We’ve also been conducting regional campaigns where we perceive there to be a problem that needs to be addressed. One that we’ve just kicked off is in Sydney in the approach and departure paths of the airport and the busy shared airspace in the coastal corridor. The decision to do something in this area has been informed by recent analysis and data from the national drone detection system.

These targeted campaigns have cut-through as demonstrated by statistics from last year’s Gold Coast campaign. It had 2.8 million video views from the region and more than 27,000 click throughs to our Know Your Drone website.

Out-of-home advertising and prefabricated drone safety signage installed in high-risk locations also offered an immediate way to alert operators who may be unaware of local airspace rules or restrictions.

The campaign resulted in a 36% decrease in drone detections in these high-risk areas.

Conclusion

The RPAS sector is a fast moving, expanding and increasingly complex challenge for regulators.

We remain committed to ensuring we keep at the forefront of developments while remaining flexible in our approach and reducing the burden on operators.

We are all exploring new territory with RPAS and AAM and there is promise of significant rewards if we work together.

Thank you.