Woburn, MA, Feb. 23, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) are quickly evolving as a transformational technology with uses ranging from urban air taxis and cargo delivery to disaster response, firefighting, and military logistics. But to realize their potential and expected proliferation, multi-aircraft fleets will need to scale operations into the national airspace safely and efficiently.
To that end, the NASA-sponsored Routine Autonomous Multi-Aircraft Operations (RAM-AO) Working Group—formerly known as the m:N Working Group—is working to make unmanned, multi-aircraft operations a standard part of our skies by identifying and addressing technical challenges that currently keep them grounded.
Aptima, Inc., under a NASA award, is applying its expertise in human-autonomy teaming to lead these efforts, having facilitated the Working Group’s biannual meeting at NASA’s Langley Research Center in July, and the upcoming meeting March 3rd to 5th at NASA Ames Research Center, which will address the various challenges to enable multi-aircraft operations.
UASs are unmanned but not unmanaged
A key focus of the Working Group was to determine the ‘ideal’ or minimal number of human operators (m) that can safely and reliably oversee what will be growing numbers of autonomous aircraft (N) without cognitive overload, underload or compromised performance.
“We found through research that the ideal ratio of operators to aircraft is more complex than simply the number of unmanned aircraft to be managed,” said Dr. Samantha Emerson, Senior Scientist in Aptima’s Performance Augmentation Systems Division, and Principal Investigator for the contract under NASA’s Air Traffic Management and Safety (ATMS) Project.
“To determine the true limits to safely scaling autonomous operations in the national airspace you have to consider the aviation ecosystem as a whole, from the density and activity of intervening air traffic to the size of the area the operator is monitoring, and the role the human plays in that overall picture,” added Emerson.
To reach scale in many of these domains will require an operator to control multiple aircraft (1:N) or multiple pilots controlling multiple aircraft (m:N). During flight, for example, an operator may be challenged to hand-off vehicles at different times such as at take-off or landing, or due to mechanical failures or airspace density, all of which can lead to excessive workload that requires offloading of tasks or assets.
Ultimately, the Working Group seeks to identify and address barriers to enable routine, autonomous, multi-aircraft operations.
The focus of the March 3rd to 5th meeting at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA, will be to develop white papers for the following areas identified by the Working Group, as well as hold talks and panels to discuss the various challenges that are being explored in Industry, Academia, and by other working groups to enable multi-aircraft operations.
To find out how to get involved in the following, please use this form:
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• Interventions & Exceptions (I&E): This subgroup is developing modeling and simulation (M&S) methods to validate the safety of m:N operations. By quantifying and understanding how and when human operators might need to intervene, scenario simulations can be run thousands of times to determine how an operation results in safety issues. This will enable fleet operators a way to test the safety of their operations before applying for FAA certification.
• Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS): This subgroup is identifying regulatory gaps in autonomous, multi-aircraft operations, especially related to “Beyond Visual Line of Sight” (BVLOS) flight operation. While regulators are actively pushing forward new policies, rulemaking takes a long time, much longer than the rate at which technology changes. As such, the subgroup is working to provide policy makers with information on the latest technologies, emerging Advanced Air Mobility use cases, and other potential advances that may have exceeded the pace of development on new regulations.
• Scalable Remote Crew Design Considerations: This subgroup is focused on best practices for task allocation, roles, and handoffs among remote crew members in multi-aircraft operations. This includes lessons learned and potential solutions for the design of operator processes and procedures, OEM systems, and third-party service providers.
• m:N Validation and Verification: This subgroup is developing an evaluation framework with metrics for workload, system performance, and safety.
• System of Systems Design: This subgroup is defining baseline considerations for robust management in a fully integrated, non-segregated airspace.
“We’re looking for new members from industry, academia, and other branches of government—both in the U.S. and globally—to contribute to these new subgroups,” Dr. Emerson said. “By pulling together these various stakeholders, we hope to identify ways to reduce barriers that will not only pave the way for UAS operations at scale in the U.S., but also for the world at large.”
Key updates and insights from the 2025 bi-annual meeting include:
— for the full report visit: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20250008934
• Advances in Multi-Aircraft Operations Research: NASA Langley’s UAS and autonomy research laboratories are developing a concept of operations to scale from 1:1 (one operator, one vehicle) to 1:N (one operator, multiple vehicles) and m:N (many operators with varying roles, many vehicles) operations, focusing on risk mitigation.
• Human Performance in m:N: Research has indicated that communication requirements, rather than the sheer number of UAS, were found to be the primary drivers of performance and workload changes in this particular set of operations.
• Standardization Efforts for Autonomy in Aviation: A proposed new standard from ASTM, aims to provide a flexible framework for analyzing and implementing autonomy. The focus is on contextualizing the impact of autonomy on the role of the human versus the agent rather than relying on more rigid “levels” of autonomy.
• Military Perspective and AI/ML Integration: The U.S. Army’s Aviation and Missile Center highlighted challenges in tactical aviation operations, including managing multiple systems in varied conditions with jamming and disruptions. They emphasized the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in human-machine interfaces, operating under the philosophy of “AI to do things right, so humans can do the right things”. The Army’s long-term vision aims for humans and agents to operate as peer-to-peer.
About the NASA RAM-AO Working Group: A central goal of this Working Group is to bring together a broad collective of interested stakeholders from government, industry, and academia to identify and reduce barriers to routine, autonomous, multi-aircraft operations. The barriers addressed by the Working Group range from technical, regulatory, safety assurance, community acceptance, and others. For example, better enabling multiple operators (m) to safely control multiple aircraft (N) simultaneously (i.e., m:N operations). Identified barriers are considered across a variety of multi-aircraft control contexts (e.g., Urban/Advanced Air Mobility, delivery, infrastructure inspection, disaster response and recovery, high-altitude pseudo-satellite operations), forming the basis for future research to confront operational, technical, and regulatory gaps. Ultimately, the Working Group will produce technical insights and operational data needed to inform the evolution of future standards and regulatory frameworks for routine, autonomous, multi-aircraft operations. More information can be found at https://nari.arc.nasa.gov/ttt-ram/multi-vehicle.
About Aptima, Inc.:
Aptima, Inc., is a leader in optimizing human performance through innovative technologies that blend behavioral science, artificial intelligence, and advanced analytics. www.aptima.com.
Joel Greenberg DCPR joel@dcpr.com 202-669-3639
