Renting time on UAV’s

Interrain — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:52:37 +0000

The recent edition of the Economist’s Technology Quarterly has a good round up of the expanding military use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s). One of the most arresting parts of the report deals with the growing demand for ‘renting time’ on UAV fleets. The impetus for this comes from the intelligence needs of smaller countries, which are not being met by their immediate allies. Of course this market also opens up a whole host of options for private sector intelligence analysts. For example, security analysts at shipping companies could rent time on UAV’s to ‘clear’ the routes for their ships of known maritime security hazards or oil company analyst’s could have UAV’s overfly their vulnerable pipeline routes looking for anomalies. Companies such as Insitu seem to be offering just that.

For now the costs are pretty high at $2,000 an hour, but as with all technology driven innovation this is likely to come down. There is also of course the option of building your own UAV’s an idea boosted by the editor of Wired Magazine, Chris Anderson. His DIY Drone’s blog gives a wealth of information on developing your own UAV. However, renting time and perhaps more crucially, analysis from one of the entrants into this new market will no doubt become of feature of future private intelligence analysis. As timeshare private jet companies struggle in the downturn they may want to diversify into UAV’s — from NetJets to NetUAV’s.

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Renting time on UAV’s