alt Hacker NewsIt won’t fly further than a headline, never a practical one. The biggest issue remains (after solving the other two) in drones now is endurance, and unless a breakthrough battery technology changes that, all these cool concepts will never materialize.
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I think that endurance is an intrinsic limitation of drones, but I take the opposite conclusion as you. Instead of it meaning drones will never catch on, it'll mean that military missions and consequently the size and structure of the state will adjust their form to suit what drones are good at, rather than drones not catching on. In other words, we'll get drones, but we'll lose nation-states, rather than keeping nation-states but having them fail to adopt drones.
Drones' ability to absolutely dominate the battlefield inside of ~200km is just too powerful. You'll end up with small regional powers that are basically impregnable to invasion, but also can't project power because the range of drones is too short. City-states, basically. And because the defining characteristic of a state is its monopoly on physical force, the structure of the state will adapt to the dominant military technology of the time.
ok this wont win any green points but an RTG generator core will heat a gang of nitanol bands and drive an electric dynamo, it will also be reasonably small enought to fit in a bird sized form factor, and will be thermally hot like a biological.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radioisotope_thermoelectr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
This is the size and sort of drones a unit would use for scouting the local area. The range isn't great, but it is suitable for that and less conspicuous than the gas-powered drones used 15 or so years ago and the buzzing quadcopters of today.
Did you fly further than the headline?
> The O1 drone weighs 1 pound and can fly up to 10 kilometers, which is a little more than 6 miles, for over an hour, according to a company fact sheet.
These are winged drones. Gliding takes no energy. Maybe you're confusing drones with quadcopters?
I think battery life is a key limiter for this technology but how much time does it need? Something so small that can fly for fifteen minutes to collect intelligence et. al. might be sufficient. For example: a situation in which it is not safe to enter and detection would make it even less safe, ergo using something so tiny for only a few minutes could give valuable feedback to the user.
Power line perch recharging is the solution.