Unmanned aviation traffic forecast.

The pace at which new technologies are assimilated into society is driven by trends in the regulatory, budgetary, and societal environments in addition to the pace of technology development itself. This study merges trends in these areas to develop an integrated forecast of the levels to which unmanned aviation can be expected to emerge in the military, air cargo, business, general aviation, and airline aviation segments over the coming 40 years. One out of every 80 aircraft on an instrument flight rules (IFR) flight plan over the US are anticipated in this forecast to be unmanned by 2025 and two out of nine (18 of every 80) by 2050. Portions of this study were originally researched in 2005 in support of the Federal Aviation Administrations (FAA's) Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) for planning the Next Generation (NextGen) air traffic system and later presented at the 23rd Bristol UAV Systems Conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]