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18 O ne of the greatest challenges with integrating UAVs into a national airspace lies in bringing equipment, maintenance and operational practices up to manned aviation’s standards for reliability and safety, while also knowing where to adjust them to allow for the unique capabilities of unmanned aircraft. Anthony Pucciarella, founder and CEO of AlarisPro, has extensive experience of both worlds. His fascination with flight began with watching air shows by the US Navy’s Blue Angels display team in his early childhood. “They flew Navy F4 Phantoms, which were the cream of the crop back then for jet aircraft,” he says. “From that and similar experiences, I spent my younger years being captivated by the details of how Navy aircraft were assembled and operated. “So I went through school studying to be an aeronautical engineer, which I continued at Ohio State University as part of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, and after graduating I was commissioned as an officer.” Pucciarella subsequently went through flight school to become a US Navy pilot. After multiple tours of duty, including as an operational test pilot, he retired from the Navy and resumed his career in aerospace engineering. All this has led to him founding and leading AlarisPro, the first comprehensive UAS fleet maintenance and management software tool, through which he and his company are seeking to bridge the gap between the established world of manned aircraft safety and the comparative ‘Wild West’ of UAS manufacturing. Navy aircraft integration Pucciarella has a detail-oriented fascination with aircraft, which has fostered a broader interest in the concept of airworthiness. His particular focus here is the idea that each metaphorical nut and bolt has a minimum required level at which it can be considered safe enough for an air vehicle to be flown thousands of metres into the sky. After retiring from the US Navy, he began work as a defence contractor, providing direct consultation on the Navy’s Triton UAS programme. He soon became its airspace integration certification lead, spearheading the development of the programme’s safety case to prove the system could safely Advanced warning Anthony Pucciarella first cut his teeth on UAS airworthiness for the US Navy’s Triton programme (Courtesy of Northrop Grumman; all others courtesy of AlarisPro) December/January 2021 | Unmanned Systems Technology AlarisPro’s CEO tells Rory Jackson how its predictive maintenance software brings manned aviation safety standards to the UAV industry