As a manufacturer and supplier of R/C aircraft to LE, as well as "other" govt agencies, I feel I should dispel a few myths and misconceptions about these aircraft.
These aircraft can be as small as a hummingbird, and as large as your typical GA full size aircraft. I can only talk about the medium sized birds, between 5 and 50 Lbs AUW, as that's our area of expertise and use.
We supply Helicopter type aircraft, both single rotor and multirotor, with anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 hours of flight time, utilizing Battery power, Turbine Power, and Gas power. These aircraft can be flown at night as well.
We have supplied LE, at both the state and local level, USAF, USA, and USN (strangely no Marine use...Yet
), EPA, DOT of a number of States, and of course individual Civilians used to do AP (Aerial Photography).
Some of these aircraft are flown Manually, some have full GPS Waypoint Navigation, most are flown LOS (line of sight), but those with the GPS Waypoint CAN be flown further away, including out of range of the radio used to fly the aircraft.
Todays radio systems are designed to be interference proof, though you MAY be able to view any video being downlinked if you can find the right channel and freq being used, whether 900 mhz, 1.3 ghz, 2.4 ghz, or 5.8 ghz.
Now, How are these being used?.....
My LE Customers are using these aircraft for accident site reconstruction pictures, which is required by Law when there has been a fatal accident. Imagine if you will, an accident on a major highway, which of course ties up traffic for HOURS.... When you finally get up to the accident site, there's a bunch of people standing around, seemingly doing nothing. Why aren't they cleaning up the site, clearing the road, getting traffic moving? Because they are waiting on the unit involved with the investigation to get their pics and description of what happened. In a lot of these cases, overhead pics are the most telling, so they may be waiting on a vehicle such as a ladder truck to get high enough to get these overhead pics. Of course it's not as simple as just putting the ladder up, the truck has to be rigged first, then the ladder goes up, then someone climbs up there for a pic or 2.
Good, except now they need a pic from the other side of the accident. Stow the ladder, rig the truck to move, move the truck, rerig it for ladder ops, put the ladder up, etc, etc, etc....Point is, it's quite a lengthy process for a few pics....Typically taking 2-4 hours.
A better idea is one of our aircraft, getting the SAME job done in 30 minutes.
Imagine also a Meth lab operation, either in a home or in an outdoor area, about to be taken down, but the SWAT Commander wants some overhead intel of the fenced in backyard or the surrounding areas for possible threats or avenues of escape. Call in the Full size, noisy, and expensive to operate helicopter, OR Throw one of my birds in the air thats quieter, cheaper, and if it get shot at or shot down, no one gets hurt.
BTW, both of the above scenarios HAVE taken place (the accident investigations and Meth Lab takedowns). So far no one has shot at one of my birds, that I'm aware of.
Could they be abused by LE? Of course. Just as some in LE abuse their power and authority. And just like in those cases, any abuse of UAS's will have to settled by the court system. The officers that I have trained and worked with are VERY conscious of the potential to invade someone's privacy and seemed very careful of where and when they would be operating these birds. Consider that they WANT the ability to use these aircraft for lawful purposes and would NOT want a case be brought up concerning privacy issues that may ground them.
The benefit of these aircraft do outweigh there potential for abuse, UAS's (Unmanned Aircraft System's) have been used for SAR, locating lost children and bad guys hiding in a bushy area with the use of FLIR, I personally helped in the search for Stacy Peterson using one of my aircraft (didn't find her unfortunately
), and have searched for signs of Bigfoot!!
Those that are concerned about privacy of their backyard, have you looked at google maps lately? Obviously it's not realtime, but go see what Google shows inside your Privacy fence...
Just my .02 on the matter, from my unique perspective.
