NASA Working Group Targets Autonomous Multi-Aircraft UAS Operations

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A NASA-sponsored working group is pushing forward efforts to make autonomous, multi-drone fleet operations a routine part of the national airspace, and it's looking for new members to help. The Routine Autonomous Multi-Aircraft Operations (RAM-AO) Working Group, formerly the m:N Working Group, meets March 3–5 at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Aptima, Inc., under a NASA award, leads the effort, applying its expertise in human-autonomy teaming to facilitate the sessions.

Why it matters

UAS applications — from cargo delivery and urban air taxis to disaster response and firefighting — increasingly demand that operators manage not just one drone, but many simultaneously. Scaling those operations safely into the national airspace requires solving a core challenge: how many aircraft can one human operator manage without hitting cognitive overload?

The details

The March meeting will develop white papers across five active subgroups: Interventions & Exceptions, sUAS Regulatory Gaps, Scalable Remote Crew Design, m:N Validation and Verification, and System of Systems Design. The U.S. Army's Aviation and Missile Center also contributed perspectives on AI/ML integration, advocating a peer-to-peer human-agent operating model under the philosophy of 'AI to do things right, so humans can do the right things.'

• The Routine Autonomous Multi-Aircraft Operations (RAM-AO) Working Group, formerly the m:N Working Group, meets March 3–5, 2026 at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
• The group held a meeting at NASA's Langley facility in July 2025.

What’s next

The March 3-5, 2026 meeting at NASA Ames Research Center will develop white papers across five active subgroups to further the efforts towards autonomous, multi-drone fleet operations.