Application platform: Drone / UAV (small unmanned aircraft systems, ≤25 kg) Last verified: 8 August 2026
Scope boundaries
Six documents apply to drone pack qualification. Each was written for a different object: the battery itself, the installed electrical system, or the aircraft. Where their scopes meet, several DVP rows fall through.
ASTM F3005 governs the battery and excludes the installed system. ASTM F2910 governs the aircraft and refers battery requirements back to F3005. UL 3030 governs the electrical system, but only below 25 kg and at or below 100 Vdc. ISO 24352 governs the energy-storage system for small unmanned aircraft, and is largely absent from U.S. qualification practice. UN 38.3 governs transport and nothing else.
The result is that for thermal-runaway propagation, operational vibration, pack crush, EMC, and IP rating, no single document supplies both a test method and an acceptance criterion. The gaps sit at the seams between one standard's exclusion clause and the next one's scope statement. Issue 6 separated F3005 battery evidence from platform and installed-system claims as distinct qualification lanes. This map traces those lanes at clause level.
Governing standards
| Standard | Edition | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| ASTM F3005-22 | 2022 | Cell and battery-pack design, assembly, production checks, and maintenance for sUAS batteries. Explicitly excludes the installed system (§1.2). |
| ASTM F2910-22 | 2022 | Design and construction of sUAS ≤25 kg. References F3005 for batteries. Retains aircraft-level structural, propulsion, fire-hazard, and monitoring provisions. |
| ANSI/CAN/UL 3030 | Ed. 1, reaffirmed 30 Aug 2024 | Electrical system safety for commercial UAS <25 kg, ≤100 Vdc. Covers battery, charger, load coordination, mechanical and environmental exposure. |
| IEC 62619:2022 | 2022 | Industrial lithium cell/battery safety. Applicable where the use context supports an industrial classification. |
| IEC 62133-2:2017+A1:2021 | 2017, Amd 1 2021 | Portable-application lithium cell/battery safety. Applicable where the use context supports a portable classification. Selection between IEC 62133-2 and IEC 62619 depends on product and use context; see the IEC selection sidebar for the classification decision. |
| ISO 24352:2023 | 2023 | Rechargeable lithium energy-storage systems for small unmanned aircraft <25 kg. Pack protection, abuse, low-pressure, salt-spray, drop, and vibration clauses. |
| ISO 5309:2023 | 2023 | UAS-specific vibration test methods: random, sinusoidal, sine-on-random, and transport vibration. |
| UN 38.3 Rev 8+A1 | Rev. 8, Amendment 1 | Transport classification only. |
Three points before the matrix.
ISO 24352 and ISO 5309 are scoped directly at this application and are rarely reached for. The first covers sUAS battery systems, the second covers UAS vibration methods. Neither is automatically an FAA compliance requirement. Both supply test methods the ASTM/UL stack does not.
The weight limit is not continuous across the stack. F2910 applies to sUAS ≤25 kg. UL 3030 applies to commercial UAS strictly below 25 kg and at ≤100 Vdc. A platform at exactly 25 kg sits inside F2910's scope and outside UL 3030's. Confirm which side of that line the target platform falls on before assuming UL 3030 coverage.
UL 3030's clause-level conditions and acceptance criteria are not publicly accessible. Where UL 3030 is the only candidate to close a row, this map states that the row is blocked pending licensed-text review: a standard may address the parameter, but the conditions cannot be confirmed from public material. That is different from a parameter no standard addresses. The subsea map (Issue 8) drew the same line. It matters for planning, because one condition closes with a purchase order and the other closes with an internal engineering call.
Requirements matrix
Energy density, capacity, power capability, cycle life, calendar life
Nothing in the drone stack sets thresholds for gravimetric or volumetric energy density, rated capacity, charge or discharge C-rates, cycle life, or calendar life. These are program-defined.
F3005-22 §5.2.5 requires every completed pack to undergo at least two full charge-discharge cycles to the manufacturer's stated DOD and demonstrate rated capacity (public reproduction; licensed verification required). That is a production acceptance check. It confirms the pack meets the capacity its own datasheet claims. It does not impose a performance floor.
DVP call: Mission-profile C-rates, cycle-life targets at stated DOD and temperature, and energy-density requirements come from the application specification.
Operating envelope
The row requires an operating temperature range, an altitude or low-pressure limit, and a humidity exposure profile, each with stated conditions and acceptance criteria.
Temperature. UL 3030 includes thermal cycling among its publicly reported evaluation categories. Range, dwell duration, and acceptance criteria require licensed-text review. F3005-22 and F2910-22 do not publicly prescribe pack-level temperature dwell profiles.
Altitude / low pressure. ISO 24352:2023 carries a low-pressure clause in its public clause map. F3005-22 contains no altitude chamber test in the publicly reviewed material. UN 38.3 T.1 is a transport altitude simulation at 11.6 kPa for 6 hours, which characterizes shipping survival at reduced pressure rather than operational performance at altitude.
Humidity. No UAS-specific pack humidity test was identified anywhere in the reviewed stack.
DVP call: Temperature range, altitude ceiling, and humidity exposure are program-defined. ISO 24352 may supply a low-pressure method; pull the licensed text to confirm conditions and acceptance criteria. For humidity, borrow from an adjacent domain (IEC 60068-2-78 or equivalent) and label the borrowing in the DVP.
Mechanical — vibration, shock, crush
The widest gap in the stack sits here.
F3005-22 requires mechanical design features intended to reduce failures: vibration-absorbing material, strain relief (§§6.2–6.4, public reproduction). These are design instructions. They prescribe no vibration spectrum, shock pulse, or crush load, and cannot close a qualification row.
UL 3030 includes vibration, shock, impact, and drop evaluations (UL certification page). Levels and acceptance criteria are not publicly disclosed.
ISO 5309:2023 provides UAS-specific vibration methods — random, sinusoidal, sine-on-random, transport — and calls for representative measured vibration values where available. Its public reproduction makes product performance acceptance dependent on the applicable product specification rather than supplying a universal pass criterion (licensed verification required).
ISO 24352:2023 carries drop and vibration clauses in its public clause map. Conditions not publicly exposed.
UN 38.3 T.3 (vibration): Logarithmic 7–200–7 Hz sweep, 15 min/sweep, 12 sweeps (3 hours total) in each of three perpendicular axes at 20 ± 5°C. Small batteries: 8gn peak. Large batteries: 2gn peak. Acceptance: no leakage, venting, disassembly, rupture, or fire; ≥90% of pre-test OCV unless fully discharged (NRC/Transport Canada assessment, reproducing UN T.3; verify against Rev 8+A1).
UN 38.3 T.4 (shock): Three positive and three negative shocks in each of three axes, 18 total. Pulse limits depend on battery mass. Damage and voltage acceptance criteria as in T.3 (same source).
UN 38.3 T.6 (impact/crush): Cell-level. Not a completed-pack qualification.
F2910-22 requires the aircraft structure to withstand limit, launch, recovery, and normal-landing loads including a 1.5 safety factor. It states no battery-specific retention load or pack impact criterion (public reproduction; licensed verification required).
DVP call: T.3 and T.4 are transport profiles. They characterize what a pack survives in a shipping container, not the vibration environment of a multirotor in flight, where the dominant excitation is rotor-order and the exposure is measured in flight hours rather than three-hour sweeps. ISO 5309 supplies a UAS-specific method but hands the acceptance criterion back to the product specification. No standard in the reviewed stack supplies a UAS pack crush load, a crash-retention test, or an operational vibration acceptance threshold. Define these from the mission profile and the platform structural analysis.
Safety — thermal runaway propagation, abuse tolerance
The row requires, at minimum, a single-cell-initiation propagation test with defined trigger method, SOC, observation period, and acceptance criteria, plus pack-level electrical abuse tests (overcharge, overcurrent, overdischarge, external short circuit) with stated conditions and pass/fail language.
Thermal-runaway propagation. No single-cell initiation, adjacent-cell propagation, containment-duration, or non-propagation acceptance test appears in the publicly accessible F3005-22, F2910-22, or ISO 24352:2023 material reviewed. F2910-22 §5.1.5 states that the design should minimize fire, explosion, or hazardous release during flight, crash, hard landing, or ground handling. That is advisory language with no qualification article behind it — no trigger method, SOC, observation period, or acceptance result (public reproduction).
UL 3030's public summaries do not enumerate a propagation test. UL 3030 references UL 2580 and UL 2271, and the applicability clauses governing which of their tests apply to a UAS configuration are not publicly accessible. Blocked, not absent.
IEC 62619:2022 contains a battery-system propagation test, but it is a generic industrial safety baseline, applicable only where the industrial classification holds. IEC 62133-2 has no equivalent. The classification decision between the two determines whether this route is available; see the IEC selection sidebar.
DVP call: If the propagation row must close before UL 3030's licensed text is reviewed, IEC 62619's propagation test is the available generic route. Label it as borrowed from the industrial safety baseline and confirm the classification is defensible. Editorial: propagation behavior is a property of pack architecture — cell spacing, interstitial material, vent path, busbar mass. Whether a standard requires evidence of containment does not change whether a single-cell event propagates in a fielded pack.
Overcharge, overcurrent, overdischarge, external short circuit. UL 3030 publicly reports evaluation of battery overcharge, short circuit, and unbalanced charging. ISO 24352:2023's clause map includes pack-protection and abuse tests. In both cases the clause-level conditions — SOC, current, duration, temperature, acceptance criteria — require licensed-text review.
F3005-22 §5.1.2 requires cell-supplier compliance with UL 1642. That is a cell-level qualification reference. It is not a completed-pack abuse test and should not be entered as one.
DVP call: UL 3030 and ISO 24352 are the candidate closure routes for pack-level electrical abuse. Pull both licensed texts before populating the rows.
Environmental protection — IP rating
The row requires a pack enclosure rating verified against a stated ingress-protection standard, with conditions appropriate to the operational environment.
No standard in the reviewed stack sets a minimum IP code for a drone battery pack.
ISO 24352:2023 §5.8 reportedly requires the energy-storage system, or the aircraft with the system installed, to meet the manufacturer's claimed IEC 60529 enclosure rating (public reproduction; licensed verification required). That gives a verification route for a declared rating without imposing a floor.
ISO 24352 also carries a salt-spray clause in its public clause map. Conditions not publicly exposed.
DVP call: Declare an IP rating appropriate to the operational environment and verify against ISO 24352 §5.8. The standard validates the claim. The DVP defines it.
EMC
The row requires pack-level and BMS-level conducted and radiated emissions limits plus immunity thresholds, referenced to the electromagnetic environment the pack operates in.
No UAS pack-level or BMS-level EMC threshold was identified in the reviewed public material for F3005-22, F2910-22, or UL 3030. ISO 4358:2023 provides aircraft-level conducted and radiated emissions and immunity testing for civil multicopter UAS, and its scope explicitly excludes subsystem tests, including energy-system qualification. IEC 62619:2022 includes generic industrial EMC provisions where that lane applies.
DVP call: Derive pack and BMS EMC requirements from the aircraft-level environment (ISO 4358 or the platform specification) and flow them down. The drone stack supplies no standalone pack EMC acceptance criterion.
Transport — UN 38.3
Governed. UN 38.3 Rev 8+A1 applies to all lithium battery transport. T.1–T.8 cover altitude simulation, thermal cycling, vibration, shock, external short circuit, impact/crush (cell), overcharge (cell), and forced discharge (cell). T.1–T.5 are pack-level; T.6–T.8 are cell-level.
Transport classification is a prerequisite for shipping the pack. It is not an installed-system or operational qualification, and it should not appear in a DVP as evidence for either.
FAA layer
Part 107 is an operational rule. It carries preflight and condition-for-safe-operation duties, not a battery design or abuse-test matrix. FAA states that most UAS do not hold standard airworthiness certificates.
For type-certificated sUAS, FAA works through 14 CFR §21.17(b) and publishes model-specific airworthiness criteria. The Hummingbird UAS criteria require monitoring and transmission of critical energy-storage parameters and a whole-aircraft durability-and-reliability demonstration. FAA declined to insert specific battery standards into that model's criteria. Those criteria are model-specific and establish no reusable pack test matrix.
DVP call: A Part 107 operation triggers no additional FAA pack-qualification requirement beyond the operator's preflight duties. A type-certificated UAS may acquire project-specific energy-storage requirements through its accepted certification basis, negotiated per program.
Gaps summary
| Parameter | Coverage state | Candidate closure route |
|---|---|---|
| Thermal-runaway propagation | No confirmed UAS-specific test in publicly reviewed material. UL 3030 blocked pending licensed review. | IEC 62619 propagation test (generic industrial baseline; requires classification justification). Not available under IEC 62133-2. |
| Operational vibration acceptance criterion | ISO 5309 supplies UAS-specific method; no universal pass criterion. | Product specification defines acceptance; ISO 5309 provides the method. |
| Pack crush / crash retention | No pack-specific test in F3005 or F2910 public text. | Program-defined from platform structural analysis and mission risk. |
| IP rating minimum | No universal minimum. ISO 24352 verifies declared rating. | Manufacturer declares; ISO 24352 §5.8 validates. |
| Pack/BMS EMC | No pack-level threshold in the drone stack. | Flow down from aircraft-level EMC (ISO 4358 or platform spec). |
| Cycle life, C-rate, energy density | No universal threshold. | Program-defined or customer-defined. |
| Humidity | No UAS-specific pack humidity test found. | Borrow from adjacent domain (IEC 60068-2-78 or equivalent); label as borrowed. |
ASTM Committee F38 on Unmanned Aircraft Systems maintains F3005 and F2910. ISO TC 20/SC 16 maintains ISO 24352 and ISO 5309. No working group activity specifically addressing these gaps was identified in the publicly reviewed material.
Before the DVP review
Several rows above — electrical abuse conditions, thermal cycling parameters, mechanical test levels — probably have clause-level answers inside the licensed texts of UL 3030 and ISO 24352. The public evidence reviewed here identifies the test categories without exposing executable conditions. Pull both licensed editions before populating a DVP from this map.
One closes with a purchase order for the licensed standard. The other closes with a documented internal engineering call. Different lead times, different owners. Sort them before the review, not during it.
- UN 38.3 rupture redefined: Amendment 1 to the Eighth Revised Edition changes the subsection 38.3 definition of rupture, which may affect how existing transport test reports characterize their results against the current acceptance language.
- UAV versus eVTOL safety targets diverge: A 2025/2026 peer-reviewed thermal-runaway assessment found that modeled UAV safety targets could be met under scenarios that did not meet manned eVTOL targets, reinforcing that unmanned and passenger-carrying propagation acceptance criteria cannot be exchanged without attribution.
- FAA type-certificated UAS precedent: The final Hummingbird airworthiness criteria show FAA declining to insert specific battery standards into a UAS certification basis, preferring whole-system durability-and-reliability demonstration instead — a pattern worth tracking as additional type-certification projects publish their criteria.
- ISO 24352 licensed text: The publicly visible clause map for ISO 24352:2023 identifies low-pressure, salt-spray, drop, vibration, and abuse test categories whose conditions are not publicly exposed, making the licensed pull the single highest-value action for closing open DVP rows in this map.