Review of UTM concepts: consistency of studies on unmanned aircraft systems

Unmanned aircraft systems can still be described as a new area of aviation, although they have been around for decades. Due to the boom of the last decade, research and development in the field of unmanned aviation has been exploding and is constantly accelerating. In addition to individual unmanned aircraft systems, the so-called eVTOLs (electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing) have begun to emerge as a precursor to future unmanned aircraft carrying passengers. Due to the popularity and marketing interest of unmanned aircraft systems, a number of studies are being produced that contain defined approaches on how to use unmanned aircraft systems, introduce their operation, and replace them with other current practices. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the uniformity of existing studies, which should result in a correct approach as an extended intersection of the studies in question. This is achieved by analysing each study and comparing them based on defined areas ranging from the size of the area of operation to the organisation of airspace operations to the types of unmanned aircraft system (UAS). The comparison revealed that although most of the studies pretend to be highly detailed, they marginally address the defined areas of interest. Therefore, they are deficient in terms of the scope, detail, and complexity of the issues covered, making them unsuitable for consideration as indicative of value. However, they do not contradict each other. For future developmental trajectories in the field of UAS traffic management, it is sufficient to follow the studies of the main actors in the industry.