By: Phil Kenul, AG Standards Ambassador
This fall, the unmanned aviation community touched down in Zurich for the InterUSS Workshop followed by the Global UTM Association’s Harmonized Skies 2025 event, and later the JARUS SORA Safety & Risk Management (SRM) meetings in Lisbon. One message shined through all three gatherings: the future of digital aviation will rise or fall on the strength of interoperability, open-source alignment and globally harmonized standards.
These concepts form the foundational architecture of tomorrow’s autonomous airspace that will make large-scale automation credible, safe and economically viable. Across hallway conversations, technical breakouts and policy sessions, the sense of urgency was palpable. With eyes now fixed on the FAA’s upcoming Part 108/Part 146 rule for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations, along with the consensus standards expected to support it, this year’s meetings offered the clearest snapshot yet of where the ecosystem stands, where the gaps remain and what’s coming next.
Urgency, Convergence And a Bit of Productive Tension
The atmosphere in Zurich was markedly different from previous years. Discussions now centered on real deployment timelines and the recognition that large-scale autonomy is no longer in the future, but rather a fast-arriving regulatory and systems-integration challenge.
For the first time, the community appeared aligned around the central point that UAS traffic management (UTM) is not a technology problem. It’s a systems problem. The technology is already here and continues to evolve. What matters now is how the ecosystem of technologies fit together:
- How services talk to each other.
- How algorithms are validated.
- How risks are modeled.
- How regulators achieve confidence in automated decision-making.
Nearly every session circled the same themes around architecture, data models, conformance verification, digital identity and conspicuity, software assurance, interoperability and the need for clear and synchronized regulatory frameworks. With all the challenges ahead, the industry is maturing. And with that maturity comes an unavoidable realization that scalability will come from common interfaces, shared data protocols and agreed-upon safety methods, rather than from isolated one-off waivers and exemptions.
Harmonized Skies 2025: Interoperability as Foundational
Harmonized Skies is, at its core, an architecture conference focused on the digital airspace that allows U-space/UTM ecosystems to function safely and effectively. The discussions had one theme: interoperability must form the foundation of digital airspace.
Much like the early days of any emerging technology where incompatible protocols caused fragmentation until standards prevailed, U-space seems to be at a similar inflection point. Whether the topic was conformance monitoring, strategic deconfliction, dynamic airspace reconfiguration or Remote ID trust frameworks, participants noted that safety and scale will only come from harmonized interfaces and shared protocols…all based on standards.
InterUSS and Open Technical Governance
One of the most important developments showcased in Zurich came from the InterUSS Project, a Linux Foundation initiative that is increasingly acting as the technical backbone for interoperable U-space services. Where standards bodies define the “what,” InterUSS increasingly builds the “how.”
The InterUSS workshop in Zurich highlighted automated testing and the reference implementations and procedures that allow regulators and industry to algorithmically verify that service providers are interpreting standards consistently and meeting regulatory requirements.
During a panel moderated by Jarrett Larrow of Wing, participants observed that standards and open-source protocols should not be viewed as opposing frameworks. Standards define the architecture and open-source automated testing can validate implementations and reveal the gaps.
Open implementations become a form of “living documentation,” demonstrating how provisions are meant to function in practice. Increasingly, open-source validation tools may become the evidence regulators rely on to approve systems in real time.
InterUSS has become a rare and powerful collaboration zone where regulators, standards bodies and engineers work side-by-side in a shared technical environment. As the industry advances toward automation, this will become increasingly indispensable.
The Swiss U-space Launch: Pragmatism in Action
The Swiss U-space program was one of the most widely discussed reference points of the week, not because it promises perfection, but because it is actually happening now.
After years of structured planning, iterative risk assessments and unusually close regulator–industry collaboration, Switzerland is now approaching a phased U-space deployment that will culminate in 2026. FOCA’s (Federal Office of Civil Aviation) philosophy of open testing, transparent documentation and continuous learning cycles, could turn the country into a model for the rest of Europe.
The lesson from Zurich is simply that while a launch of U-space is not easy, it can be successfully done through incremental deployment, constant refinement and industry-regulatory partnerships. Because of this, Switzerland now holds outsized influence. Other ANSPs (Air Navigation Service Providers) and European countries are monitoring these technical developments and effective regulatory practices.
Inside the JARUS SORA SRM Sessions: A Push Toward Scalable Safety Assurance
If Zurich was about interoperability, Lisbon was about risk. The JARUS SORA SRM (Joint Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Systems Specific Operations Risk Assessment Safety and Risk Management) meetings showcased a community attempting to solve one of the hardest problems in aviation today: how to scale operations using a common safety risk protocol.
The discussions around Means of Compliance (MoCs) reflected SORA’s evolution, the industry need for standards to provide clearer, more quantitative and testable pathways to meet Operational Safety Objectives (OSOs). Industry and regulators recognize that we cannot scale BVLOS or any operation if every scenario requires a handcrafted safety assessment.
SORA 2.5 discussions focused heavily on consistency and ensuring that regional variations do not undermine global applicability. But the issue looming was the need for alignment between SORA and the FAA’s forthcoming Part 108 BVLOS framework. No one wants two global safety models that operate in parallel but fail to interoperate. The SRM sessions highlighted that the demand for BVLOS approvals is accelerating faster than regulatory processes designed decades ago to support crewed aviation.
One of the most closely watched developments was the “DronesQuad” High Performance Safety Criteria effort, a collaboration among EASA (European Union Aviation Safety Agency), ANAC (National Civil Aviation Agency (of Brazil)), Transport Canada and the FAA. Their ambitious objective is to create a safety case framework so robust that multiple authorities can accept it with minimal local modification. If realized, such reciprocity could unlock cross-border approvals, a long-awaited industry milestone.
But there is a catch. The approach only works if it rests on harmonized standards, common test methods and aligned regulatory expectations. The burden, then, falls on industry to meet a super-set of requirements that satisfy the needs of all participating authorities. This may be a challenge for the industry.
Several take-aways emerged across both cities, each a clear directive for industry and regulators worldwide:
- Harmonization is no longer optional—it’s an economic necessity: Fragmented frameworks are already driving cost, slowing approvals and discouraging cross-border operations. Alignment between SORA, Part 108, and national U-space rules is a foundational infrastructure for a global BVLOS economy.
- Open-source validation will reshape regulatory oversight: Automated testing, shared reference implementations and transparent algorithms will give regulators faster, more reliable visibility into system behavior. Policymakers who embrace open-source governance models will accelerate, not hinder, deployment of U-space.
- Digital airspace requires cooperation between industry and regulators: U-space is not a static system. It must evolve alongside traffic densities, new sensor modalities, and emerging risk insights as this industry continues to mature.
Zurich and Lisbon unambiguously outlined a future where autonomous aviation will be defined by the cohesion of the systems around emerging aviation. Standards, open source and harmonized risk frameworks will form the backbone of this new digital airspace. And the winners will be those who collaborate, align and connect.