The Emergency Drone Pathway

A strategic route to routine BVLOS operations that save more lives, sooner

Introduction

As global instability increases and public services face sustained pressure to deliver more with constrained resources, governments are increasingly turning to technologies that can deliver clear, scalable public value. Within the drone sector, emergency services stand apart, combining the highest public trust with the strongest societal benefit and the clearest route to accelerating Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations more broadly.

This importance is being recognised internationally. In 2025, emergency service drone use was explicitly highlighted as a national priority within the US President’s executive action on drone policy, underlining the role of emergency operations in accelerating safe and trusted drone adoption across the sector.

Against this backdrop, the UK faced a clear challenge. How could emergency drones be enabled to operate reactively in life‑critical situations, while maintaining appropriate regulatory oversight? And how could the Government accelerate a fragmented emergency drone ecosystem towards routine BVLOS operations that save more lives, sooner

The Challenge

Despite strong momentum towards the Government’s ambition of routine BVLOS by 2027, progress across emergency services was constrained by three systemic barriers:

Fragmented delivery: Police, fire, ambulance, search and rescue and other public bodies were independently developing similar drone capabilities, duplicating effort and slowing progress.
Regulatory uncertainty: Emergency services lacked a clear, practical framework to enable reactive, life-critical drone operations while ensuring proportionate aviation oversight.
Uneven maturity: Different services faced different operational, technical and organisational constraints, making consistent national progress difficult.

Without intervention, these challenges risked continued siloed investment, slower regulatory evolution, and delayed delivery of life-saving capability.

The solution

Ajuno led the delivery of a DfT‑enabled Emergency BVLOS Pathway Project, working in close partnership with the Thunderbird trustees, the CAA, DfT and a cross‑agency community of emergency service leaders.

Rather than producing a theoretical policy exercise, the project focused on practical alignment and decision‑ready outcomes through:

Structured engagement with emergency services, regulators, industry and academia to capture real operational needs and constraints.
Identification of five priority emergency BVLOS applications that address the majority of life‑critical use cases across services.
Direct support to the CAA, working collaboratively to refine and strengthen the draft Non‑Military State Aircraft Policy so it could be implemented in practice.
Development of a clear 12 to 18 month pathway roadmap, aligned to DfT and CAA objectives, setting out the minimum coordinated actions required to unlock routine emergency BVLOS.

The work provided the Government and the regulator with a trusted forum to test policy thinking, while giving emergency services a clear and credible route forward.

“This was a really useful piece of work.”

James de Beauvoir-Tupper, Civil Aviation Authority Future Safety & Innovation Policy Manager

The impact

The project delivered clarity and alignment where there had previously been fragmentation:

Shared priorities established: Five emergency BVLOS use cases were agreed to address the majority of operational needs, giving services, regulators and the Government a common focus.
Duplication reduced: High overlap across services highlighted clear opportunities for collaboration, reducing repeated effort and improving value for public investment.
A credible route to scale defined: A phased, cross-government pathway aligned leadership, policy and delivery actions to accelerate routine emergency BVLOS adoption.

Together, these outcomes provide a practical foundation for enabling emergency drones to operate safely, routinely and at scale.

By focusing on emergency services first, the UK has a unique opportunity to accelerate BVLOS more broadly. Emergency operations combine high public trust with clear societal benefit, allowing regulatory innovation to be proven in the most demanding environments. This work demonstrates how aligned leadership, proportionate regulation and focused delivery can unlock life-saving capability sooner, while acting as a catalyst for the wider UK drone ecosystem.