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from the they-always-want-to-be-watching-you dept.
Patrolling the skies these days is hard. There's so many options to choose from: traditional helicopters, new wide-angle surveillance planes, and even the more cutting-edge drones.
Each of these options has its drawbacks. Beyond the initial purchase price, well-tested helicopters typically cost at least hundreds of dollars per hour to send up. One-off surveillance planes are also not cheap, coming in at around $ 1,000 per hour. Drones, while very cheap, are problematic. Law enforcement needs a blanket Certificates of Authorization (COA) from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and possibly a specific Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) each time a drone is used above 400 feet.
Enter a small Florida company now attempting to make snooping from the air both cheap and administratively easy. The Drone Aviation Holding Corporation (DAHC) recently announced that it had sold its second-ever "Blimp in a Box" ( http://www.droneaviationcorp.com/bib.html ) for local law enforcement purposes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 06 2014, @03:43PM
> Rumor has it that there is a bounty on its destruction being offered by the drug cartels;
> must not be high enough for anyone to bother, since the thing is still flying.
Or they've subverted the guys operating the blimp so that only the competition gets caught.
Seems like there would be very little to stop a quad-copter loaded with C4 from landing on top of the blimp and blowing a big hole in it.