The World’s leader in the Air Traffic Management Sector, Thales, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with AstraUTM, the world’s leading Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) Technology Provider, to explore areas of collaboration in the fast-developing domains of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and UTM services.

The MoU was signed on October 10th, 2022 between Christian Rivierre, VP of Airspace Mobility Solutions at Thales and Asam Khan, CEO of AstraUTM, in the presence of senior executives from both companies at Thales’ headquarters in Paris, France.

The strategic partnership will combine Thales and Astra expertise and extensive experience in Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) through worldwide deployments to offer a premium UTM solution designed to enhance aviation security and safety for Unmanned Aircraft Systems.

As part of the agreement, Thales and AstraUTM will work collaboratively in pursuit of UTM business opportunities in providing cutting-edge UTM capabilities and solutions, delivering drone and pilot registration, flight planning, in-flight monitoring, situational awareness and deconfliction. Furthermore, the partnership, based on Thales mastering of ATM Systems worldwide will lead in some cases to the development and implementation of systems catered to Air Traffic Controllers (ATCO’s) to ensure future ATM/UTM integration.

 With drone ownership and the demand for drone services growing at a rapid rate, Thales and AstraUTM are committed to supporting the aviation industry as it evolves to safely incorporate multiple drone operations, both within and beyond visual line of sight, into controlled airspace.

Asam Khan, CEO of AstraUTM said:

With this agreement, we will strive to leverage Thales deep understanding of manned aviation to develop highly tuned solutions catering to the needs of ATCOs worldwide of integrating drones into their airspace while providing AstraUTM’s unique insight, perspective and expertise of state of the art UTM capabilities as they stand today. With the exponential growth of the Urban Air Mobility just around the corner, our collaboration with Thales will address the key challenges facing this burgeoning and exciting new industry.”

Christian Rivierre, VP of Airspace Mobility Solutions, Thales said:

Building on its global leadership in ATM, Thales has successfully developed and deployed UTM solutions in the US and France. With such a partnership, we intend to combine AstraUTM fast, agile and comprehensive UTM offer to accelerate UAS operations deployments with a specific focus in Middle East and Europe.

About AstraUTM: .AstraUTM is a world leading UTM solutions provider with extensive experience in deploying multiple national deployments. The AstraUTM platform provides the next generation of modular cloud-based, scalable UTM-as-a-Solution, enabling ANSP’s and Enterprise to service the drone services industry. For more information, visit https://astrautm.com

About Thales Group: Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) is a global leader in advanced technologies, investing in digital and “deep tech” innovations – connectivity, big data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and quantum technologies – to build a confident future crucial for the development of our societies. The Group provides its customers – businesses, organizations and governments – in the defense, aeronautics, space, transport, and digital identity and security domains with solutions, services and products that help them fulfil their critical role,consideration for the individual being the driving force behind all decisions. Thales has 81,000 employees in 68 countries. In 2021, the Group generated sales of €16.2 billion.