The "Cop'sEye" Has Arrived...

[Old Grafton]

....in early-stage form. In Larry Niven's future science-fiction universe something along the lines of these things is common in urban areas; now, for better or for worse, we have a prototype.

http://mashable.com/2014/03/09/flying-t ... feedburner

[Precision]

wonder how easy it is to hit with my ccw piece?

[Malthorn]

wonder how easy it is to hit with my ccw piece?

Screw that. How easy is it to hack with my smart phone?

[Aesop]

I suspect that it will transpire that it's spendy to acquire, requires a good bit of operator skill, easily downed with something as hard to acquire as fishing line, doesn't do very well when people move indoors, is thwarted by something as simple as an opened umbrella, and as precise in a fluid crowd as a shotgun blast, thus about as likely to see actual deployment as the Metro Jetpack Patrol.

Criminals helpfully standing motionless in a large open space and staring at it mesmerized isn't very probable.

Also to be noted is the likelihood of someone either blanket-jamming the freqs, and of the certainty, should it ever be deployed IRL, of better-prepared criminals who send a counter-drone over it with something as hard to find as a 6' square of fishing net.

[PawPaw]

If it's anything like the robot that our SWAT team has, it will stay broke-down about half the time.

[Denis]

So it begins...

http://www.businessinsider.com/raging-h ... one-2014-6

(This thread, it lives!)

[Highspeed]

Drones beware the radio ham...

Back when video downlinks were added to our beloved police helicopters a mate of mine who was a radio ham and incredibly talented with electronics ( not exactly unusual in that community ) identified the frequency they were using, how the data was encoded and modified an obsolete first generation satellite TV receiver to intercept it and display it on the TV in his shack...
What a guy like him could do to a drone doesn't bear thinking about...