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Google Pays for Drones To Bust African Rhino Poachers

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Re: Google Pays for Drones To Bust African Rhino Poachers

#11

Post by fraserharris »

malbs wrote: post #5

I watched a doco a while back about a bloke named Damien Mander, who was ex-SAS and served in Afghanistan/Iraq, and was now living in South Africa training wardens to protect the elephants and rhinos. He said that the one tool he wished he had access to was predator UAVs like the ones they had in Afghanistan, because the amount of ground it could cover in one flight was huge compared to troops on-foot (or even in gro…

Hitting a small moving UAV (30+ km/hr) at any reasonable altitude (500 - 1,000 ft) would be a very challenging shot. Doing it at night...

Re: Google Pays for Drones To Bust African Rhino Poachers

#12

Post by dfc »

fraserharris wrote: post #11
malbs wrote: post #5

I watched a doco a while back about a bloke named Damien Mander, who was ex-SAS and served in Afghanistan/Iraq, and was now living in South Africa training wardens to protect the elephants and rhinos. He said that the one tool he wished he had access to was predator UAVs like the ones they had in Afghanistan, because the amount of ground it could cover in one flight was huge compared to troops on-foot (or even in gro…

Hitting a small moving UAV (30+ km/hr) at any reasonable altitude (500 - 1,000 ft) would be a very challenging shot. Doing it at night...

The issue with louder low flying drones is not the risk of being shot down the problem is alerting the target. But in a anti-poacher situation this may be less of an issue than in a armed conflict.

Re: Google Pays for Drones To Bust African Rhino Poachers

#13

Post by graue »

eurleif wrote: post #10
ghshephard wrote: post #4

Well, that's one off the list: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/news/... Listed in the category "2012—2022" " Drones will protect endangered species. "

Not really a prediction, is it? That article is dated December 10th. This one is dated December 7th.

And the WWF's release[1] is dated December 4th.

[1] http://worldwildlife.org/stories/google-helps-wwf-stop-wildl...

Re: Google Pays for Drones To Bust African Rhino Poachers

#14

Post by guelo »

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.

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.

Re: Google Pays for Drones To Bust African Rhino Poachers

#15

Post by CamperBob2 »

eigenvector wrote: post #8
cstavish wrote: post #7

This is a cool initiative, but when happens after the poachers are "exposed"?

They may be hunted down and shot. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10992502

It would probably violate multiple international treaties, but I know I'd be willing to pay $50 or so per shot, if the drone had an onboard weapon that could be aimed over IP. That would do some good in the world, and would be pretty exciting as well.

For safety, targeting could be supervised, and approval to fire issued or withheld, by the company selling the camera time. It's something that should probably be licensed by the host country, for the sake of legitimacy.

Re: Google Pays for Drones To Bust African Rhino Poachers

#16

Post by tedunangst »

eigenvector wrote: post #8
cstavish wrote: post #7

This is a cool initiative, but when happens after the poachers are "exposed"?

They may be hunted down and shot. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10992502

That's the nice thing about private security firms. They're not technically law enforcement, so there's no need for a trial.

Re: Google Pays for Drones To Bust African Rhino Poachers

#17

Post by jonknee »

guelo wrote: post #14

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 thre…

Much of the cost of a Predator is because it's a weapon. That's not to say there is an abundance of excellent drones for civilian purchase, but I don't think they would need to be terribly expensive.

Re: Google Pays for Drones To Bust African Rhino Poachers

#18

Post by jerf »

dfc wrote: post #12
fraserharris wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hitting a small moving UAV (30+ km/hr) at any reasonable altitude (500 - 1,000 ft) would be a very challenging shot. Doing it at night...

The issue with louder low flying drones is not the risk of being shot down the problem is alerting the target. But in a anti-poacher situation this may be less of an issue than in a armed conflict.

In a way, the most effective use of this money would be to alert the target well in advance, in fact, before they even go hunting is best. Spend the bulk of the money on advertising the use of these drones, produce a couple of "hits" for the technology (even if the hits are, shall we say, lightly staged), and you will probably get better results that simply pouring all the money into actual drones.

You can't skip that step or the deception will be found out, but you sure could magnify your investment.

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