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Comment by discostrings | Hacker News Reader

The real issue is scale--it costs a lot of money to put a helicopter in the air, and that's a good thing because it ensures restraint in use.

Maybe Americans won't notice that aspect and assent to this sort of thing because it's "just like what's already going on". But if so, they'll be missing that due to the economics, it'll be a totally different ball game.

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True, automating surveillance has always been about efficiency in terms of $ spent on enforcement vs value at risk. While LA keeps at least 2 and maybe 3 helicopters pretty much in the air all the time, they can't actually be everywhere all the time. But a couple of dozen drones could in fact provide continuous surveillance of parts of the city (as could ARGUS [1]). I know that at least one police force made the argument that the city could approve either the drone or more officers. I'll have to go track down some of the debates to see if anyone has made your point about scale on the record.

[1] A contact suggested that the ARGUS demos were done at an altitude to not appear creepy since if you fly that thing at 10,000' its picking out daisies in your hard that are missing petals.

For now drones cost more than helicopters. On NPR the other day they mentioned the drones used for border security are 18 million each. Maybe that will change with time, and maybe it won't. The only reason to use a drone vs a helicopter over American soil at the moment is the stealth factor of a much smaller bird in the air.

I don't know the numbers, so this is just a guess, but I imagine the total cost of ownership gives a single drone a huge advantage and a fleet of them even a bigger one. For each helicopter you have two expensive pilots, maintenance costs, and crazy insurance, plus a lot of high octane fuel.

For each drone you have one expensive pilot, and maintenance costs also. Plus you have to factor in that the range is extremely limited, the speed is 1/15th of a chopper. Taking those factors into account the chopper is cheap, considering what you can do with it compared to a drone. The cheap toy drones that can stay up for 20min max, are like 90K. Pretty limited use cases, although they do open up new capabilities . Comparing them to a heli and saying they will save cost is not the right argument. It's like saying the city should replace their garbage trucks with bikes and trailers, cause you'll save so much money on maintenance.

WTF?

These are the drones they're talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predator

Not these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadcopter

I assure you know one is talking about predators.

>On NPR the other day they mentioned the drones used for border security are 18 million each.

The thing is, drone doesn't necessarily mean a full size unmanned aircraft with extended loiter times. A surveilance drone could be something massively cheaper and more targeted.

The RQ-11B Raven has a unit cost of around $35k, and honestly, even it's over-specced for a lot of what LEAs would want drones for.

http://www.army-technology.com/projects/rq11-raven/

You can build something fairly similar with obviously reduced capability for under $1K. The most expensive component that law enforcement would be after would be thermal imaging, even adding that capability would be far cheaper than running a helicopter.

If all we care about is cameras on the border then cameras on large poles would seem to be the most cost effective route. Why bother with something that moves, has fuel and operator costs?

Thanks for pointing that out. The current cost of high-end surveillance drones is higher than helicopters, yes. I do wonder if that $18 million is only for the drone, or for its associated infrastructure on the ground as well, though.

My point was more theoretical than based on current costs. To me, it seems prices will almost certainly drop fairly quickly. There are many fewer constraints in building a vehicle that doesn't have to hold a human. As the technology is produced in greater numbers, and as the technology is refined, I imagine the cost will plummet. And as the process becomes more automated, it will require less personnel as well. I imagine there will also be "light drones" that cost much less, if there aren't already.

If there's a counterargument for the price dropping, I'd love to engage with it, but I'm having trouble coming up with it myself.

I'd love to see some real numbers. My suspicion is that the amount of surveillance per dollar spent already heavily favors the drone and will only get better, but I could be wrong. In a situation in support of an ongoing event, I imagine the helicopter is currently a lot more useful.

Good quality optics aren't getting any smaller as far as I can tell. So a good surveillance drone is always going to have to be a certain size to carry that payload. I can see them getting cheaper than helicopters but not cheap.

Smaller drones with worse optics should be cheaply producible. With large numbers of such drones, lower altitude surveillance with greater redundancy of coverage would become affordable. The computational costs associated with patching together the key-hole views provided by a swarm of fungible drones could be offloaded to ground-based computational resources.

In my opinion, the result will be a net shift towards favoring many small cheap drones coupled with fancy off-board image processing. Though, one or two large expensive drones capturing monolithic images with great onboard optics should remain the better option for some situations.

I think you're absolutely right that the price is going to keep dropping, and that's the scariest part to me.

Wait till criminals start using weaponized drones. Then life's going to get really interesting.

I think unmanned aircraft will always be more expensive than their manned counterparts of similar size. The base flying platform will be a similar cost, with or without the ability to carry a person. And there must be additional computer, radio, and sensor equipment in addition to the base airframe.

It's a different story for smaller systems, of course. Anything under 100 lbs will certainly (eventually) cost less than a manned aircraft.

Why do the "smaller systems" only get a brief mention at the end of your comment? There are relatively few uses for an unmanned but full size aircraft. The advantage to using a drone is that it can often do the same task previously done by a large, manned aircraft but at a fraction of the cost and complexity due to its reduced size

Imagine being able to send out ten drones to scour a mountain for lost climbers, and on the same day that they got lost (rather than waiting until tomorrow to make sure they really are lost and it really is worth spending thousands launching a single helicopter)

Mostly because I'm more familiar with the larger versions. Physics really hurts the capabilities of the small platforms. There's just not enough energy in current batteries to carry useful sensors and fly long enough. Not trying to say they aren't useful, just that their applications are limited due to limited flight times.

That's not a great rational to not use drones.

You're throwing away tons of money maintaining helicopters that you don't need most of the time because it's too hard to regulate the use of drones?

That's like forcing police officers to only use 18th century muskets so they don't shoot too much

> That's like forcing police officers to only use 18th century muskets so they don't shoot too much

I think you could actually sell me on that.

Well, in the US tasers proliferated, and so has taser use....

the weapon's "cost of use" is much smaller than a firearm so it gets used much more casually as a compliance tool rather than as a last ditch tool to keep officers safe.

well, it is far safer and easier to taser someone rather than tackle, club, or otherwise physically subdue them.

Safer for the officer, definitely.

Curiously though, not for the person being tased.

I take it you've never received a knife stick blow to the head?

This is like saying "I take it you've never been shot", like knife stick or gun is the only other option. xD

Do you really think they would have subdued the (already held down by 5 officers) kid asking John Kerry uncomfortable questions with a knife stick if they didn't have tasers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bVa6jn4rpE

Pretty sure they would have just handcuffed him and walked him out of the auditorium, untazed and concussion free.

I'd love to see some numbers, but my hunch is that they taser a lot more people now than they would have physically subdued, just because it is lower risk to the officer. Before they might try to handcuff the perp first, but now if there is any indication at all in their opinion, they can just taser.

I would imagine the helicopter costs less than the drone.

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