That Drone Thing

There’s been a fair amount of chat over the last month with drones criss-crossing America, and actually watching Americans….not Arab guys or pirates. Naturally, this has got some Americans upset. So, I sat and pondered over this mess.

By 2025, most every city of 100k residents or more….will have at least one drone. Cities like Houston or Nashville will likely have five or six. If you are a farmer around 2025….it’s likely that at least once a month….some drone will observe you…..plowing a field, baling hay, chasing up cows, or visiting your liaison gal Wanda at her trailer. If you live in an urban area….it’s likely that once or twice a day that you will be observed. I imagine you will feel some pressure on your back…..always being watched. But to be honest, if you were doing honest and ethical things to start with….why worry?

So then you start to think about the cost factor. Your Sheriff Larry will be leasing out services to some drone company for sixty hours a month of surveillance. It’ll run in the $140k range a year for this lease. The downlink will include tons of video, but then what? Will Sheriff Larry or Deputy Hoss even know how to view the video or what it means? I kinda doubt that.

Along the way, the leasing company will then offer night-time vision instruments, for an extra $200 per hour, which naturally….they will be willing to pay for this. The county will eventually ask stupid questions about why they are suddenly paying $180k a year and how that relates to arrest. Sheriff Larry will be hard-pressed to answer that question.

So then comes this nifty contraption that the leasing company will offer with a grenade launcher and shotgun mounted onto the drone. Figure an extra $40k a year for that toy. Who presses the button on that? Well….it might be interesting to know. I’m sure Sheriff Larry would like to be the only one pressing that button. At this point, folks start to question how quick Sheriff Larry is on the trigger and accidentally killing two or three folks a year with his new air assault vehicle. Lawsuits will be common and the assault vehicle option will be curtailed after three or four years.

Then we come to the most fascinating part of this deal….the news media. Channel thirty-one will come out with their own drone by 2025. The news folks will fly some drone on a continual 24-hour a day situation. They will see just about everything….everywhere. It’ll be like Doppler radar. Got a tornado reported….some drone will be dispatched and personally video it from a mile away. Folks will be all glued to the TV as they watch live tornado coverage from four states away. You can imagine a whole afternoon spent watching storm after storm, from Dallas to Memphis, and on up to Iowa.

Eventually, some private detective will offer drone services where you can observe your wife all day…..and if she is driving off to some trailer on the other side of the river to visit her high-school boyfriend from twenty years ago. You’ll pay $2k to get this video and feel all happy when the tape is delivered to you. If you ask me….the drone business will change America. I won’t say for the positive or negative.