Google Pays for Drones To Bust African Rhino Poachers
The USAF's and CIA's use of drones in the Middle East has sparked the imagination across all kinds of projects such as this one. But the reality is that military-style drones that can stay aloft for days are extremely expensive to purchase and to operate. The well-known Predator drone, for example, costs $4 million per airplane, and it requires a classified global satellite network, an uplink station manned with three operators, and a deployment crew with a forward operating station. It is only cheap when compared to the absurdly high cost of manned fighter jets and spy planes.<p>Comparing them to what is available for civilian use is a joke. Normally what you see are shaky line-of-sight quad-copters that can stay up for 20 minutes.