State ATM Corporation becomes provider of drone management line services in Russia

MOSCOW. Nov 2 (Interfax) - The State Air Traffic Management Corporation of the Russian Federation (State ATM Corporation, a federal state unitary enterprise which reports to the Federal Agency for Air Transport (Rosaviatsiya)) has been appointed the state provider of drone management and control line services under a Russian government decree.

The document, dated October 31 and signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, was published on the official website of legal information.

Rosaviatsiya head Dmitry Yadrov, who was then deputy head of the agency, earlier said the State ATM Corporation has been selected as the sole operator of drone management and control line services in Russia. "It will be made the sole provider. There will probably be a fee for using this line and frequency carriers. And requests that will be made and accepted from drone users will go through the state corporation," Yadrov said. "It's a large enterprise, there are 28,000 employees there. They are responsible for all of [our] air space. And it was the position of the Defense Ministry, the Federal Security Service and the Federal Protection Service that it is better to put the State ATM Corporation in charge of it, [since] we trust them and we understand that this enterprise is stable, it is working," he said.

The State ATM Corporation is a provider of air navigation services to manned aircraft in Russia. The enterprise reports to Rosaviatsiya.

In 2018, Igor Moiseyenko, who was then head of the State ATM Corporation, suggested creating a joint venture with a private investor that would provide services to the drone industry. The state corporation as a national provider of air navigation services has "both intellectual and financial capabilities" for this, Moiseyenko said. In the meantime, there are also private specialized organizations in Russia "which have the full technical capabilities to organize a unified drone observation process," he said.