Thales has been awarded a contract by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) to design and build the country’s national unmanned aircraft system traffic management (UTM) platform. The system will provide a digital framework to plan, authorize, monitor and coordinate drone flights across Singapore’s dense urban airspace.
The platform is intended to manage end-to-end drone operations, from registration and flight plan submission to real-time tracking, conflict detection and alerting. It will support both visual line-of-sight (VLOS) and beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) missions, a prerequisite for large-scale professional uses such as logistics, infrastructure inspection and public services in a constrained airspace.
The new UTM will be based on Thales’s TopSky – Astra UTM solution, designed to cover all UTM workflows and interface with existing air traffic management systems. Its role is to ensure safe coexistence between manned aviation and rapidly growing drone activity around hubs such as Changi Airport.
This contract marks a new step in Singapore’s strategy to position itself as an advanced hub for urban drone operations, moving from pilot projects to commercial-scale deployment under a centralized, automated traffic management framework. Financial terms, deployment schedule and detailed operational targets have not been disclosed at this stage.