Senators together with experts will this month prepare and send to Rosaviatsia a package of proposals on wider use of drones in civilian spheres, the first deputy head of the Federation Council Committee on Budget and Financial Markets, Sergei Ryabukhin, said.

“Together with the expert community, we have to formulate and spacket all the proposals. To Rosaviatsia I want to send them in June, before the end of the spring session of Parliament. And even then, if they receive support in Rosaviatsia, they can be sent to the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Industry and Trade,” Ryabukhin told Interfax yesterday.

“The prospects and possibilities of civil unmanned aviation are limitless, the range of its application is very large,” the senator said.

Ryabukhin heads a subgroup in the Federation Council on the development of civil aviation.

On the eve of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, he took part in a discussion on this topic on the platform of the St. Petersburg government.

“There is a group of enthusiasts, developers of electronic platform in the Russian Federation, they have made very significant progress in the project of creating a safe airspace in the urban environment of St. Petersburg and other settlements, which allows the full realization of the possibilities of unmanned aviation. We are talking not only about mail communication, but also about monitoring the operation of electrical networks, gas, oil and water pipelines – everything related to engineering infrastructure,” he said.

In addition, drones help to solve problems of ecology and environmental protection, forest protection, can be used in tourism during sightseeing tours, in cadastring.

Copters are also used to track the dispersal of bird flocks at airports. An unmanned minicopter can take an injured person out of a dangerous zone, Ryabukhin said.

According to the senator, such technologies, first of all, give huge savings in spending the country’s consolidated budget, and secondly, allow solving security issues. Oil and energy companies are already applying such technologies in their work, he noted.

For the development of civil unmanned aviation it is necessary to solve a number of problems, in particular, to make a safe and reliable radar system in the territories where it is planned to use such equipment.

“For example, if we talk about St. Petersburg, it is a very large territory, and there should be at least a couple dozen localization stations,” the senator noted.

In addition, it is necessary to create service centers to maintain these aircraft, to establish coordination of the unmanned aviation system with air traffic control.

Ryabukhin suggested that all these tasks may require amendments to the Air Code or aircraft operation rules.

In his opinion, Russia has everything it needs to produce drones.

“Of course, we have absolutely everything for this – both electric, piston and fuel engines. As for the propeller or blade, we have composite production, material science has always been very strong. I think both metal alloys and composite materials can be used here. We have all these competences,” Ryabukhin believes.