Registration of UAVs becomes mandatory in Russia

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) between 250 grams and 30 kilograms of weight are subject to mandatory registration in Russia starting July 5, 2017, according to the adjustments made to the country’s Air Code.

ZashchitaInfoTrans, an affiliate of the Russian Transport Ministry, will be registering drones. The federal state unitary enterprise has developed a drone identification technology.

Sberbank Deputy CEO Stanislav Kuznetsov said in June that his bank and the Federal Air Transport Agency had held the first negotiations to regulate the use of drones by banks for cash delivery purposes.

Aeroflot said, for its part, it would be using drones to examine aircraft in the course of technical maintenance.

The development of aerial and other unmanned systems was discussed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in 2017. The market is expected to top $200 billion by 2035, and Russia may have a 20% slice of it. At least 100,000 drones may simultaneously be airborne in Russia 20 years from now.