Unfortunately, that would be possibly the easiest "official" document to create fradulent copies of, in known history.

.pdf isn't entirely a "secure" format(and commonly a source of compromise) as it's trivially edited on the remote end so easy to produce "unauthorised" identifications.

Paper isn't a good medium, either, being commonly too fragile for daily carry. For proof of concept, fold a peice of paper and place in your pocket/wallet and see how long it lasts. In less than a year it'll look nothing like when you started. And the inks in most home printers are water soluable. They also likely lack the UV inks and watermarked papers, and embossing machines/stamp plates required to exhibit "security features" that are commonly prequisites of such documents.

Blank cards are cheap - especially if buying them by the thousands, even if they contain RFID hardware to be able to contain information that can both confirm the printed data, and be used by the legitimate card holder only as a form of identifaction(ie: PCKS-11/X5.09 embedded into extra "pages" - only our hardware should look for it). We should sensibly also provide RFID resistant shielding with this to prevent it being read remotely and unauthorised. If we're going to do this, we should do it properly. The printing equipment and some inks are not as cheap - but it's easily possible to upgrade some of the lesser cheap home equipment to the same specifications at well under 1/3 the cost. Ideally, if we can conform to IACO document 9303 within the effort, when we become recognised as a nation this same thing can also act as a passport.

As the "R" in AIRC stands for "research" I assume they have R&D facilities. There should already be various access controls in place, which if they follow standard R&D facility procedures likely already conforms to multiple requirements and if they can spare a few square meter(thinking three dimensionally, this shouldn't be overly encumbersome) then it can mitiagate the short term requirement to build dedicated structures reducing the cost further. In a worst case senario involving building structures then it should be possible to have these delivered to the citizen for about the same per-head cost (I think we can do it for a lot less) than most common prices I've seen.

.pdf card is okay, if you can ignore how easy it is to edit a .pdf, and the fact anyone anywhere will just make them say whatever they want and they will then hold absolutely no value as a form of identification. And if you can ignore the moisture in the air degrading the water soluable inks from your home printer, and the card regularly falling to peices, and the fact anyone you show it to will just laugh at you.

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If there was any intent to "protect IP" then you'd be signing in with something secure. Your input digitally signed, to prove it's yours.

Have you seen a 15 year old UK paper drivers' license.

I might have.

Now try printing one with false details you can produce when stopped randomly by a police officer and pass a cursory physical examination. Then imagine how much easier it would be if you had a .pdf and the printing techniques and inks used in the construction.