Unmanned Systems Technology 024 | Wingcopter 178 l 5G focus l UUVs insight l CES report l Stromkind KAT l Intelligent Energy fuel cell l Earthsense TerraSentia l Connectors focus l Advanced Engineering report

20 In conversation | Ian Williams-Wynn a permanent Notice To Airmen (a notice filed with an aviation authority to alert pilots of potential hazards along a flight route or at a location that could affect the safety of the flight) and will provide 5G services for all the UAVs operating in it. The information the UAVs transmit over 5G will be received by the UTM and rebroadcast over ADS-B. “That is what the future of UAVs in unsegregated airspace will need to be,” Williams-Wynn says. The next step for the NBEC is to have its safety case accepted by the CAA so that operators can work within it to develop their technology and services without having to submit individual safety cases beforehand. “The CAA is incredibly helpful,” he says. “It is sending a team to work out how to support us.” Blue Bear conducted its first successful flights at the NBEC in December 2018, at Cranfield Airport and supported by Cranfield University. Taking a staged risk- managed approach, the first flight saw one of the company’s Blackstart fixed- wing UAVs fly at up to 3 km from the operator under Extended Visual Line Of Sight rules. “That was really about getting a first flight down the corridor operating at the Cranfield end, to make sure Cranfield’s digital tower could track the aircraft, and to look at the operating locations on the airfield,” he says. “What you will see over the coming months is a series of flights safely extending the range of operations. We are going to go out to 6 km, then 9 km and then the full 17 km, testing the sensors and operating procedures along the way.” Although Blue Bear has funded the NBEC on its own so far, it is looking for between £5 million and £10 million (about $6.5-13 million) of investment from the UK government to bring it up to its full potential. While he still sees much to achieve at Blue Bear he is an inveterate career planner. By the age of 26 he had already set out his goals up to the age of 45 – and achieved them – and he anticipates that his next move will be into a government position, from which he can drive the development of the UK’s unmanned systems industry as a whole. “We have so much potential in the UK, and UAVs are only one part of a multi- modal future ecosystem,” he says. February/March 2019 | Unmanned Systems Technology Now 47 and MD of Blue Bear Research Systems, as well as operations director at simulation house Cassima, Ian Williams-Wynn began his education at Sawtry Village College in Cambridgeshire, UK, where his favourite subjects were mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. Upon leaving school at 16, he joined the British Army’s Royal Engineers. He earned a BSc equivalent in mammalian physiology from technical college while in the Army, a Masters equivalent in remote sensing and imagery analysis, and studied mobile robotics at Swinburne University of Technology. Ian spent a total of 17 years in the regular and reserve forces. He joined the Royal Engineers in 1987 but then transferred to the infantry to pursue a commission. He then volunteered for the special forces just prior to the first Gulf War. After a knee injury he moved to a less physically demanding role in military intelligence, specialising initially in physical security and then as an image analyst before taking up increasingly senior management roles in industry. Ian Williams-Wynn Blue Bear’s unmanned vehicle control software can run on single laptops or multi-screen systems, so the limit to the number of vehicles that can be managed at once is set by screen size and operator workload (Courtesy of Blue Bear Systems Research)