Originally posted by eagl
How long until someone shoots one of those suckers down? It'll be interesting if they try to turn that into a terrorist offense. IMHO it shouldn't be any worse than (for example) taking a bat to an unoccupied cop car... Yea it's anti-social, but punishment really needs to fit the crime and taking out a surveilance drone isn't really much different than knocking a red light camera off of a stoplight. Except a bit more expensive...
But you just know that if/when it happens, they'll try to make a huge deal out of it or try to tie it to national security.
Eagle,
I really hope you were drunk when you posted that. You should have some idea about what would be wrong about shooting at an aircraft, manned or not, especially in an urban area. The laws, Federal and local, that would violate would carry some severe penalties and significant danger to others. Perhaps if someone decided to fire on your aircraft because they don't like the noise or the sight of another aircraft over their heads you might feel differently.
There was a nice spin to the story here about the capabilities of the drone. Frankly it has less capability than the usual manned helicopter has other than possibly loiter time. It won't be able to fly from scene to scene as fast as a helicopter can now and certainly can't have the flexibility if it needs the support vehicles in sight. I'd really think that the helicopter is a far more valuable tool than a drone. If there is a problem in flight they will most definitely have more difficulty in picking a spot to land than a helicopter as well.
Frankly it looks like a way to save some money over a helicopter patrol and I don't think it's cost savings out weighs the lack of capability it has vs a manned copter.
