The low-altitude economy is shifting from "isolated pilot projects" to "large-scale operations." The true bottleneck is not a lack of aircraft, but disconnected data and unclear responsibilities.
The "Requirements for Data Interfaces Between the Comprehensive Management Platform for Civil Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and the Systems of Civil Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Air Navigation Service Providers" (MH/T 4066—2026), released on October 13, 2026, and implemented on November 1, 2026, marks the first time an industry standard has strictly defined the data interaction "wiring diagram" between the national Unmanned Aircraft System Operational Management (UOM) platform and local Unmanned Aircraft System Service Supplier (USS) systems.
This is not an ordinary technical document, but a critical infrastructure contract for the low-altitude airspace to transition from "being managed" to "being utilized."
I. Five Interface Categories and One Data Mainline
The standard categorizes the interfaces between the UOM and USS into five types, forming a clear hierarchical logic:
First, the "personnel and aircraft verification" category. Three interfaces—real-name registration, operator qualifications, and operational permits—enable the USS to verify in real time the validity of the UAV registration status, operator licenses and theoretical qualification certificates, and operational qualification certificates. It also allows the retrieval of registration details using the UAS code and UPIC_MSN code. This solves a long-standing problem for local service centers: compliance verification before flight approval no longer relies on offline materials or manual comparison, but can be closed-looped with a single API call.
Second, the "operation management" category. This is the most extensive (accounting for about 40% of the text) and most valuable part of the standard. It covers navigable airspace queries, applications and approvals for temporary restricted airspace requirements, applications for four types of flight activities (general, emergency, long-term, and on-site), long-term flight activity filing, application withdrawal, approval status queries, takeoff confirmation, and landing reports, up to the acquisition of network-based operational identification information and the reporting of broadcast-based operational identification information. A total of 15 business types are numbered and solidified within a unified message framework. The complete lifecycle of a single flight, from "intending to fly" to "landing," is entirely incorporated into a standardized channel.
Third, the "heartbeat detection" interface. The USS must send a heartbeat to the UOM at a frequency of no less than once per minute, enabling the platform to monitor the online status of air navigation service systems at all levels in real time, providing "proof of vitality" for operational supervision and emergency response.
II. Technical Foundation: National Cryptography, Unified Messages, and Spatiotemporal Reference
Three engineering-level designs in the standard deserve close attention. First, the security system fully embraces national cryptography standards: communications uniformly adopt HTTPS, RESTful APIs, and JSON messages; identity credentials are issued by the UOM to the USS in the form of unit IDs and key IDs; the message body is encrypted and transmitted using SM4 (CBC mode); the signing process uses SM3 hashing combined with SM4 signing, with complete encryption and decryption examples provided in Appendix A. For sensitive data involving citizen identities and enterprise licenses, this effectively sets the cryptographic compliance baseline for USS systems.
Second, the "protocol convergence" brought by the unified message format. The operation management interfaces share a message skeleton containing the unit ID, signature, timestamp, interface version, and 15 type codes. Adding new businesses only requires extending enumerations rather than building from scratch. This design leaves room for standard evolution and significantly reduces the integration costs for parallel multi-business access by the USS.
Third, the mandatory unification of spatiotemporal references: with the exception of a few specific interfaces, all latitude and longitude fields must use the WGS-84 coordinate system and be transmitted in decimal degrees; operational identification information must comply with the requirements of GB 46750. A "common language" for airspace data is the prerequisite for future multi-USS collaboration, conflict detection, and alerting.
III. Business Closed-Loop: Integrating Flight Activities into the Data Pipeline
Connecting the aforementioned elements, the standard outlines a complete regulatory business chain:
On the airspace side, the USS queries navigable airspace, applies for temporary restricted airspace, tracks approvals, and modifies or cancels them as needed;
On the activity side, applications for the four types of flight activities are submitted differentially (the request frequency for emergency interfaces is relaxed to once every five seconds, reflecting a pragmatic consideration for timeliness), and after approval, takeoff confirmations and landing reports are completed one by one;
On the identification side, the USS acquires network-based operational identification information and reports broadcast-based operational identification data at a frequency of no less than once per second.
At this point, the three core regulatory questions—"who is flying, where they are flying, and how they are flying"—all have standardized data outlets.
IV. Industry Impact: The "Admission Test" for USS and the Watershed for Low-Altitude Infrastructure
Looking at the drafting units—the Information Center of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the Second Research Institute of CAAC, along with provincial low-altitude flight service institutions in Anhui, Shenzhen, Hainan, Jiangsu, Sichuan, and Chengdu—it is evident that the standard was refined "from the bottom up" based on extensive local practices, naturally aligning with implementation scenarios. For the industry, its impact is at least threefold:
First, it sets technical admission thresholds for the USS. National cryptography transformation, interface adaptation, and heartbeat keep-alive will become mandatory requirements for air navigation service providers, accelerating the elimination of participants lacking engineering capabilities;
Second, it establishes the collaboration paradigm between the UOM and USS—the national-level platform manages "certificates" and "accounts," while local systems manage "operational services," enabling bidirectional data flow rather than unidirectional aggregation;
Third, it paves the way for cross-regional flights. Only when provincial USSs speak the same "interface dialect" will data relay for cross-provincial UAV operations become possible.
It should be noted that the standard will be implemented on November 1, 2026, leaving a very short adaptation window for existing systems. It is recommended that local USSs and air navigation service providers systematically review the gaps against the 15 types of operation management interfaces item by item, prioritize the transformation of encrypted signature links and message skeletons, and then proceed with step-by-step integration in the order of "query first, apply second, and identify third."
Conclusion
Only when every UAV, every operator, and every takeoff and landing in low-altitude flight can leave verifiable data traces in the standard interfaces will the low-altitude economy truly possess the trust infrastructure necessary for large-scale operations.