Our end-goal is a Welsh medical drone delivery network (MDDN) that increases NHS operational flexibility and improves connectivity for all health and social care providers across Wales. To accelerate development of the UK drone sector toward this goal, our project team, Snowdonia Aerospace LLP, Volant Autonomy Ltd, SLiNK-TECH Ltd, and Skyports Deliveries Ltd, seeks to (i) make tangible advancements in regulatory policy concepts for use of drones in UK airspace in coordination with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), and (ii) start the scaling up of existing commercial delivery use cases with the Welsh Blood Service and Welsh Ambulance Service. There are three key elements to Project "Dragon's Heart": * We will integrate autonomous flight guidance software on a novel ground-based surveillance radar and medical delivery drone that together delivers an Airborne Collision Avoidance System for small Uncrewed aircraft (ACAS sXu) capability. Testing will be conducted in the Special Use Airspace at the Snowdonia Aerospace Centre and will represent the first-ever UK flight trial of a fully autonomous, safety-assured, point-to-point detect-and-avoid (DAA) system. * We will also implement prototype autonomous vertiport infrastructure at the Welsh Blood Service headquarters, Talbot Green, and northern stock-holding unit, Wrexham, to enable demonstration flights that will showcase the potential for commercial exploitation, allow NHS staff to gain familiarity with the ground infrastructure and concept of operations, and form the basis for public engagement events. * Finally, we will support engagement activities with Welsh Government, NHS leadership and Local Authorities, facilitate collaboration with a parallel Economic and Social Research Council-funded University of Birmingham project, and ensure a coherent approach to governance, planning and public acceptability to make Wales "drone-ready". Successful conclusion of this project will enable a prototype service to be established with confidence as an immediate follow-on programme in 2026\.

AgiLe Integrated Airspace System II (ALIAS II) is an ambitious project that brings together five highly capable and innovative companies including operators, technology providers and an Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) to demonstrate an integrated airspace system for the future. This system will incorporate drones, air taxis and manned aircraft operating in unison to deliver economic and societal benefit for the UK. Through use cases like medical delivery, emergency response and search and rescue there is massive potential for Advanced Air Mobility (drones and air taxis) to deliver social good. This can be through economic growth, better connectivity, reduced emission and better service provision. However, these benefits have not yet been realised because for AAM to operate at scale these new aircraft must be safely integrated into the existing airspace system with freedom to operate. That can only be achieved though Integrated Traffic Management, where all aircraft share the airspace, instead of segregation, where they are separated into inefficient fixed boxes of airspace. The first ALIAS project demonstrated in June 2024 a functional ITM system involving multiple uncrewed platforms and a crewed platform sharing the same airspace with civil approvals. ALIAS II will take the core of this system, add extensions and deploy at the Snowdonia Aerospace Centre building through simulation to two phases of flight trials. The primary outcome will be to inform nascent regulations that are necessary for ITM to be deployed at scale commercially.

Rolls-Royce has assembled a world-class consortium of UK industry and academia to develop the next generation of microprocessors for use in aerospace and other harsh environments. The next generation of aircraft, designed to meet net-zero targets, will require more complex, intelligent, autonomous, and connected systems, and at the heart of those software-enabled systems is the need for a cyber-secure, high-integrity processor. Microprocessor design and manufacture is complex, and typically commercial off-the-shelf automotive and general-purpose microprocessors are repurposed for aerospace. That approach has issues of obsolescence, complexity and design trade-offs that have long-term cost implications. Recent experience in the automotive industry has also demonstrated how the supply chain for off-the-shelf components can be significantly and adversely affected by global events such as COVID. Project SCHEME (Safety-Critical Harsh Environment Micro-processing Evolution) will develop a new generation of UK-native, safety critical and cyber-secure microprocessors. Developing a bespoke processor reduces design and through-life costs, ensures security of supply and provides protection from the global issues that face the semiconductor industry. The project will initially develop a control processor suitable for high-integrity control and monitoring. A manufacturing and support solution will be developed that provides better obsolescence protection than is available from off-the-shelf devices. It will also provide an associated electronics, security and software tooling infrastructure to enable the UK to strengthen its position in high-integrity avionics design and manufacturing. This project will build UK national resilience in this area and make the processor available not only to aerospace, but in other areas where systems operate in harsh environments. SCHEME will engage with the wider community to identify and pursue exploitation opportunities, including supporting potential adopters with microprocessor trials. The project will put the UK in a position to design and build the low-carbon, intelligent systems that will be critical to society in the future. The project is partly funded by the UK government agencies, BEIS, ATI, and Innovate UK. Rolls-Royce is joined by TT Electronics, Volant Autonomy, Rapita Systems, Adacore, The Manufacturing Technology Centre, Queen's University Belfast, University of Bristol, University of Sheffield, and University of York.

AgiLe Integrated Airspace System (ALIAS) is an innovative and ambitious project that brings together eight highly motivated technology companies to demonstrate a scalable and cohesive airspace system for the future. This system will incorporate drones, air taxis and manned aircraft operating in unison to deliver economic and societal benefit for the UK. During the initial phases the partners will integrate their individual technologies, incrementally building a regional airspace system including ground and flight testing of the sub-systems. The project culminates in the deployment of the ALIAS system to the Channel Islands; a perfect test environment for a regional airspace system that can be replicated across the UK. This deployment will include drones performing maritime and public health missions, a helicopter acting in the role of an air taxi alongside scheduled manned operations from the local airports. The public benefit of ALIAS will be economic, social and environmental. The economic benefit is primarily through enabling drone and AAM operations with all of the associated jobs, growth and returns. The social benefits are primarily due to the flexible, regionalised approach to UTM which can form the backbone of an integrated transport network giving rural and remote areas of the UK full access to the nation's resources. The environmental benefits come from reduced emissions and ground infrastructure associated with future aircraft platforms coupled with the ability of the agile airspace system to minimise noise disturbance to the public.

AgiLe Integrated Airspace System (ALIAS) is an innovative and ambitious project that brings together eight highly motivated technology companies to demonstrate a scalable and cohesive airspace system for the future. This system will incorporate drones, air taxis and manned aircraft operating in unison to deliver economic and societal benefit for the UK. During the initial phases the partners will integrate their individual technologies, incrementally building a regional airspace system including ground and flight testing of the sub-systems. The project culminates in the deployment of the ALIAS system to the Channel Islands; a perfect test environment for a regional airspace system that can be replicated across the UK. This deployment will include drones performing maritime and public health missions, a helicopter acting in the role of an air taxi alongside scheduled manned operations from the local airports. The public benefit of ALIAS will be economic, social and environmental. The economic benefit is primarily through enabling drone and AAM operations with all of the associated jobs, growth and returns. The social benefits are primarily due to the flexible, regionalised approach to UTM which can form the backbone of an integrated transport network giving rural and remote areas of the UK full access to the nation's resources. The environmental benefits come from reduced emissions and ground infrastructure associated with future aircraft platforms coupled with the ability of the agile airspace system to minimise noise disturbance to the public.

As unmanned and autonomous systems evolve at pace, uncertainty remains around how to integrate autonomous systems in shared airspace in a safe manner. This proposal, entitled Safe Flight, develops and integrates safe novel autonomous technologies with crew functions and responsibilities, in a framework that demonstrates how risk and uncertainty can be evaluated to provide routes towards certification. A UK-based consortium of experts in aircraft manufacturing (GKN Aerospace), risk-based planning and avoidance (3UG Autonomous Systems), UAS operations (Callen-Lenz) and autonomous systems research (University of Bath) has been assembled to tackle the integration challenges of developing a system of systems for safe and certifiable unmanned and autonomous airspace operations.

This project will combine risk analytic methods with high-fidelity physics-realistic simulations to rigorously assess the first- and third-party risk associated with Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and Urban Air Mobility (UAM). The project-level outputs from phase 2 will be an online risk analytics tool and a realistic physics-based simulation environment for testing autonomous systems. These two technologies are enablers for the expansion of the UAS and UAM sectors.