Search and Rescue and the Spread of UAVs Through Civilian Uses
2nd August 2010
When people talk about surveillance UAVs, they are typically thinking about border patrol, but here, the park services are thinking about fire patrols — an immensely expensive task from aircraft now, because of the vast areas to be surveyed in real time — but worth it because the faster the fire is spotted, the better the chance of containing it before it spreads. LIkewise, search and rescue for lost and injured back country hikers. That one is somewhat ahead of existing technology, for what the park services would ideally like, because flying in the steep valleys and canyons is difficult and hazardous now, but UAV technology is not sufficiently up to speed to take over those tasks. But it will happen soon, as smaller UAVs that are more like large birds can be deployed in difficult, deep, or narrow spaces. Likewise, as the sensor technology gets better, cheaper, and more available, it will be easier to find a single lost hiker using not just things like infrared signatures, but sensor arrays that are … well, if they exist, they are still only available to the military.
Point being that UAVs are going to spread rapidly and widely across a huge array of tasks and functions currently carried out by manned aircraft. It will happen because UAVs will be so much cheaper, efficient, and in many functional aspects superior to using people in airplanes. The impetus will rapidly turn from being military, as it still is now, to civilian. Everybody, everywhere in the world will shift that direction.