European Union

The EU calls this Direct Remote Identification (DRI) — “the local broadcast of information about an unmanned aircraft in operation… so that this information can be obtained without physical access to the unmanned aircraft” (Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947, Article 2(13)). DRIFT is a retrofit accessory, not a factory-built class-marked aircraft, so the controlling technical text is Part 6 of the Annex to Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/945, “Requirements for a direct remote identification add-on” — its own product category, legally distinct from the C0–C6 class-marking Parts 1–5/16/17.

Applicability

  • Part 6 applies to a standalone DRI add-on placed on the market as its own product, independent of any specific airframe or class (Article 2(1)(b)).
  • Fitting a Part 6 add-on to an airframe does not confer any C0–C6 class marking on that airframe — the add-on’s compliance and the airframe’s class status are independent questions.
  • Class marks (C1–C3) carry their own, built-in DRI requirement (Parts 2–4) with a different, larger field list (it adds emergency status) — not the add-on path DRIFT implements.

Timeline

Date Event
2019 Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/945 and Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947 adopted
— Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/1058 amends Part 6: adds the time-stamp requirement and the verification-code wording — texts based on the original, un-amended 2019 OJ version are out of date
2023-12-31 / 2024-01-01 Legacy-UAS mitigation/transition windows for non-class-marked “open”-category flying end (Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947, Articles 20 & 22, as last amended by (EU) 2022/425) — both dates have already lapsed, with no further extension in the current consolidated text
2024-08-01 Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2024/2103 publishes the EN 4709-002:2023 reference, with a stated restriction (see Transports below)

Required messages & fields

Per the current, amended Part 6 text:

Requirement ASTM message Field Notes
UAS operator registration number Operator ID OperatorId See Identity & registration fields below — a 16-character structured registration number; DRIFT always validates its structure, and additionally validates the real checksum if the user also has and provides the separately-issued verification code
Add-on’s own unique serial number, ANSI/CTA-2063-A-2019 Basic ID IDType = Serial Number, UASID  
Time stamp Location/Vector TimeStamp Added by the 2020/1058 amendment — missing from the original 2019 text
Geographical position of the UA Location/Vector Latitude, Longitude  
Height above the surface or take-off point Location/Vector Height, HeightType = Over takeoff  
Route/course (from true north) Location/Vector Direction Track/course-over-ground, not aircraft heading/yaw
Ground speed Location/Vector SpeedHorizontal  
Geographical position of the remote pilot, or if unavailable, the take-off point System OperatorLatitude, OperatorLongitude, OperatorAltitudeGeo, OperatorLocationType Same conditional fallback structure as the US rule — take-off point is always an acceptable value

(Regulation (EU) 2019/945, Annex Part 6, point 3)

Transports

Part 6 is transport-agnostic: it requires only “an open and documented transmission protocol… received directly by existing mobile devices within the broadcasting range” — no Bluetooth/Wi-Fi/PHY is named in the regulation text itself.

The harmonised standard is EN 4709-002:2023, referenced (with a restriction) by Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2024/2103: the decision states the standard does not adequately cover the “received by existing mobile devices” requirement on its own, so following it alone does not give a full presumption of conformity on that specific point — additional interoperability evidence is expected.

There is no EU network-RID alternative for add-ons: network Remote ID is defined only as an optional feature for class-marked aircraft (Parts 2–4), and Part 6 does not mention it at all. Direct/local broadcast is the only mechanism available to a Part 6 product.

No numeric rate/latency/range figures appear in the regulation text — Part 6 only requires broadcasting “in real time during the whole duration of the flight.” Those numbers live inside EN 4709-002:2023, which is paywalled; DRIFT’s schedule (Location ~4 Hz, statics 1–2 Hz) is understood to clear the ASTM F3411 baseline the standard is built on, but the EN’s own numeric table has not been independently verified against primary text.

Identity & registration fields

You provide Goes on the wire as Format Where to get it
UAS operator registration number Operator ID message, OperatorId 16 characters: 3-letter ISO 3166 alpha-3 country code + 12 random alphanumerics + 1 checksum character Issued at UAS operator registration (Article 14, Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947)
Add-on serial number Basic ID message, UASID ANSI/CTA-2063-A-2019 Assigned by the add-on’s manufacturer

The registration number, in detail

EASA’s own technical specification for this scheme — Easy Access Rules for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, AMC1/GM1 to Article 14(6) and AMC1 Article 14(8) of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947 — defines the exact structure:

  • The registration number is 16 characters: a 3-letter country code, 12 random lowercase alphanumerics, and a trailing checksum character.
  • The registration system separately generates 3 “secret digits” — this is the “verification code”/”additional number” Part 6 refers to.
  • The checksum embedded in the 16-character number is computed (Luhn mod-36) over the 12 random characters plus the 3 secret digits — so the checksum can’t be validated by anyone who only sees the visible 16-character number. That’s the entire point of the scheme: it stops someone from photographing your drone’s registration sticker and reusing/forging it.
  • At registration, EASA’s scheme envisions you receiving a “full registration string”: the 16-character number + - + the 3 secret digits — 20 characters total, matching ODID_ID_SIZE in the vendored ODID library exactly. EASA’s own worked example: FIN87astrdge12k8-xyz.
  • AMC1 Article 14(8) envisions displaying only the 16-character number on the drone’s physical sticker, with the full 20-character string (including the secret digits) uploaded into the Remote ID device.

AMC/GM material is EASA’s “Acceptable Means of Compliance” guidance, not a hard mandate on national registration systems — it describes an acceptable way to satisfy Part 6’s consistency-check requirement, and member states can implement the requirement differently. In practice, at least one member state’s registration process (Austria) issues operators only the 16-character registration number, with no separate secret-digits code at all — real-world, first-hand evidence, though anecdotal and not independently verified across other member states. This tracks with the secret-digits scheme reading as “considered in EASA’s guidance but not uniformly implemented nationally.”

Given that, DRIFT validates the registration number in two layers, depending on what the user actually has:

  1. Structural validation (always run): exactly 16 characters, first 3 characters matching a known EU member state’s ISO 3166 alpha-3 code, remaining 13 characters alphanumeric. This is the only thing verifiable when a user has just the registration number, which real-world evidence suggests is common.
  2. Checksum validation (opportunistic): if the user also has and provides the 3-character verification code, DRIFT additionally runs the real Luhn mod-36 checksum defined in EASA AMC1 Article 14(6) point (c) (computed over the registration number’s 12 random characters plus the verification code) and flags a mismatch. If the verification code isn’t provided, this layer is skipped rather than treated as an error — structural validation alone is sufficient to proceed.

Either way, only the 16-character registration number is ever broadcast — the verification code, when supplied, is used purely for the local consistency check and never goes on the wire. Whitespace and dashes are stripped from both inputs before either layer runs, so a registration number or verification code pasted with EASA’s hyphen formatting or any other spacing still validates correctly.

Not required

  • Emergency status — required for built-in DRI on class-marked C1–C3 aircraft, but absent from the Part 6 add-on field list entirely. This is the inverse of the naive assumption that add-ons mirror built-in systems.
  • EU category/class fields (CategoryEU/ClassEU) — these apply only to factory-built, class-marked aircraft (C0–C6), not to a Part 6 add-on, which carries no class label at all.
  • Network Remote ID — not defined or available for the add-on product category.

Sources

Last verified 2026-09-11.