Strategy Analytics: Commercial UAS Market Has USD 15.1 Billion Potential

The growth in demand for UAS platforms providing commercial services encompasses agriculture, delivery services, media, first responder, media/entertainment and other industries, with agriculture, commercial security and first responder sectors potentially accounting for close to 49 percent of demand for commercial UAS platforms by 2027. Globally, the market for commercial UAS platforms and associated services will be driven by the European, Asia-Pacific and North America regions and could together account for over 83 percent of global demand by 2027.

“To achieve mass adoption of commercial UAS platforms across government and enterprises and achieve this $15 billion potential will be almost singularly contingent upon the establishment of favorable regulatory frameworks,” noted Asif Anwar, Director of the ADS service. “Existing regulations that currently underpin the use of UAS platforms will need to evolve and expand, especially as drone usage enables applications that require sharing of civilian airspace as well as the ground infrastructure currently used exclusively by manned aircraft.”

The associated demand for mission sensor payloads is predicted to witness faster growth than the UAS market itself as platforms are increasingly equipped with the ability to swap multiple sensors on a plug and play basis.

As capabilities expand, so will the extent to which UAS platforms move towards operation in civilian airspace. Integration of commercial UAS operations into civilian airspace will need to address several technical challenges which will include the man-machine interface (MMI), Communications and Control Minimum Operating Performance Standards (C2 MOPS) and Sense-and-avoid (SAA) or detect-and-avoid (DAA) systems.

This will dictate additional demand for dedicated sensors and associated technologies including satellite datalinks to allow beyond a line of sight flight, sense and avoid systems underpinned by radar, LiDAR and EO-IR technologies and machine learning/artificial intelligence based processing.

Commercial UAS Market Outlook 2017-2027 presents the outlook for global commercial UAS platforms in terms of overall expenditure, as well as detailing expected shipments and associated demand for the mission sensor payloads. Further segmentation of the market in terms of platform, application and sensor types is also presented. The underlying numerical data is available in the Global Commercial UAS Market and Technology Forecast: 2017 – 2027 data model.

This report also looks at the regulatory environment that will be crucial in enabling the market for commercial UAS platforms and discusses the technologies that will be required to enable integration and operation of these platforms in civilian airspace.―CT Bureau