Kittyhawk’s Dynamic Airspace™ Announcement – and What it Means for Drone Operators

Kittyhawk has just announced a new solution – and while the company has been innovating pretty constantly to improve functionality over the last few years, their latest product looks like a game changer.  With Dynamicc Airspace™, Kittyhawk is taking “situational awareness” to a new level, allowing customers to monitor and manage drone operations with a new level of granularity for their business.  It’s one more sign of maturity for the drone industry – and for Kittyhawk.  As the tools to manage drone operations get better, they’re offering more of the tools that major enterprise needs to manage their risks and enjoy the benefits of wide scale drone operations.

The following is a post by Jon Hegranes, Kittyhawk’s Founder and CEO.

Airspace used to be ​the​ airspace. Your map was ​my​ map. The sectional was ​everyone’s sectional. But today’s airspace is more nuanced, more granular, and more unique to the recurring tasks that drones are taking on in the enterprise.

As the operating system for enterprise drone programs, Kittyhawk’s job is to connect all the different data points and activities into a single system of record — trusted, encrypted, intuitive, and actionable. With the launch of Kittyhawk Dynamic Airspace™​, we’re bringing a new level of compliance to drone operations while also giving our customers more control over THEIR airspace — and by definition — their workflows, their reports, and their risk tolerance.

While going through the LAANC approval process with the FAA last year, we started building our own airspace product with direct FAA data sources and UAS Facility Map content. But we didn’t just want to give you airspace — our goal is to give you YOUR airspace. Kittyhawk Dynamic Airspace enables your team to look at your airspace, see your authorizations, your locations, your annotations, and the points of interest relevant to your company.

We have combined our patent-pending airspace technology with Kittyhawk engineering and design to create an elegant and simplified airspace experience with colors, advisories, warnings, weather, and alerts that reduce noise and give a clear operational picture of your airspace. This is a foundational element that ​combined with our API​ will enable us to do things like send actionable compliance alerts — not if your people simply fly in controlled airspace, but if they fly in controlled airspace without proper authorization or operate outside of that authorization.

Once you put Dynamic Airspace into action across your drone program, each map layer will immediately add valuable situational awareness to your operation and for your team. Each map layer is a segment of your compliance whether you’re looking at controlled airspace or one of your LAANC authorizations. In addition to all of the critical airspace layers that you need for planning and flying safely in the national airspace (from special use airspace to UAS facility maps), you’ll find a whole host of new layers coming to YOUR maps.

Straight out of the gate we’re introducing LAANC-as-a-Layer™ ​and you’ll be able to see current and upcoming authorizations on your map anywhere you’re accessing Kittyhawk including Android, iOS, and the new Kittyhawk web dashboard. Coming soon, we’ll be introducing a whole host of layers including COAs, waivers, missions, flights, and UTM data.

We’re not stopping there, and we’re already working on helping customers define areas of operation with details around buildings, facilities, and critical infrastructure to give their operation a new way to view their airspace when planning, flying, streaming, and reporting.

If you’re a Kittyhawk customer, talk to your Customer Success Representative about using Dynamic Airspace today. If you’re not yet a Kittyhawk customer, we’d love to talk to you about your drone program and how we can help you launch right, grow smart, and scale.