The Challenge

Flarebright is a Westcott-based engineering company building safety-critical technology for uncrewed aircraft. Among its technologies is Extera, a fully independent flight termination system that lets operators fly in confined, high-risk or complex environments with confidence that if something goes wrong, the aircraft can be brought down safely. Extera runs on its own communications link with a range of up to 100km that is entirely separate from the drone’s primary flight controller, so a single point of failure elsewhere on the aircraft can’t take the failsafe down with it.

Should a drone lose connection or deviate from its intended path, Extera stays functional to execute the safety command regardless.

That independence is only useful if it can be proven. Under the UK’s risk-based approach to drone regulation, a safety system has to be demonstrated with evidence, not asserted – and for a young company, finding somewhere accessible to generate that evidence, to a standard a regulator will recognise, is one of the hardest steps between a working prototype and a certified product.

What we did

Flarebright’s footprint at Westcott Venture Park put them alongside the Satellite Applications Catapult’s Drone Test and Development Centre (DTDC) early on, and in May 2025 that proximity became a working relationship: Flarebright used the DTDC – one of the CAA’s Recognised Test Sites – to move Extera from development into rigorous, real-world validation. The Catapult’s role went beyond providing airspace; its technical guidance and controlled environment helped streamline a full sequence of bench, ground and live flight tests.

Testing at the DTDC produced successful termination signal validation across the trial programme, and comprehensive electrical checks confirmed the relay functioned correctly during live flight. For Flarebright, working within an assessed site rather than starting from a blank field materially shortened the path from prototype to something a regulator could sign off.

Outcome

The data generated at the DTDC has since underpinned formal compliance: Extera meets the EASA MOC-2511 and MOC-2512 standards, and has achieved DO-178C DAL-B software certification – evidence built for direct use in a regulatory submission, rather than a safety case resting on assertion.

That evidence is now being extended into a live operational setting. Flarebright leads a UKRI Future Flight Challenge-funded project applying Extera to underground gas pipeline monitoring, working with National Gas Transmission, operator RPAS Heroes, and the Satellite Applications Catapult, which provides the space-enabled connectivity and geospatial intelligence the operation depends on. The project is testing whether BVLOS drone flights can supplement or replace elements of helicopter-based pipeline inspection, and shares its test and simulation data directly with the CAA – feeding the same evidence base the industry is short of at national scale.

Long-term impact

Whether the pipeline approach proves commercially viable at scale is still to be established through the project itself. What it already demonstrates is a live, working instance of the evidence-generation the wider drone sector lacks: real operational data, gathered under real conditions, shared directly with the regulator rather than confined to a single company’s own file. For Flarebright, the DTDC relationship has moved them from a validated component to a certified system now being tested in a genuine infrastructure application – the kind of trajectory the UK’s wider drone economy needs many more companies to be able to follow.