Local news item that our city council has decided for use of the police (and other departments) to purchase a drone for $22,500. What??? I am not into drones, but the high end ones I have seen in stores or mall kiosks were a few thousand at the most for the high end ones.
Am I out of touch and that is the price for a drone nowadays? I thought about emailing my city council representative and ask him if that price includes the salary of the operator.
I am not surprised by the price. Surveillance drones used by police are not the same as the ones you can buy in a store. These are specially designed for durability and use in rough weather, with high reliability and for longer periods of time. They likely have better batteries than the ones you can buy, and they have high definition cameras and other electronics specifically designed for police work. In other words, these are professional drones, not amateur drones for people like you and me.
This is a drone:
They cost many millions each.
The word “drone” covers a LOT of ground. Without more info on what specifically the OP’s police are buying we can’t say much more.
I’m on city council and my fire & police departments have an EXTREMELY successful drone operation. We are called out from all around to use it.
I think our drones generally cost between $4k and $8k each.
We do have some that have heat mapping, which is really useful for finding people in the woods (we have used it a couple times to find dementia patients who have wandered away) and also looking for hot spots after fireworks.
Our best one has a feature where you can lock on a target and keep up with it, such as a moving vehicle. I saw it in action, it’s wild. I wouldn’t be surprised if that one cost $22k.
There’s a ton of technology in drones. Just to get good images you need the lens and data technology.
We also just spent $150k on a special drone van. I got to tour it last month, it’s super cool.
You should definitely contact your council member and ask them what the high cost is for. They should know, and should be happy to tell you how and why it benefits the community.
I’d bet if the OP went to their city’s website and looked through the minutes from the various council meetings, they could probably get the make/model of the drone and see what it’s features are, as well as a ballpark idea for what it might cost a PD to get.
Also worth considering that part of that price tag might include training.
I don’t think it makes sense to compare a police drone to something you’d get at a mall kiosk. Here’s the first and second result when I searched for ‘police drone cost’. The $22.5k you’re seeing seems perfectly in line with that.
It’s also a case of the market charging what it can / must. The R&D that goes into prosumer & government (military, law enforcement, etc.) drones can’t easily be subsidized across consumer drones sales at Walmart. Infrared or other specialized imaging, longer loiter times, various attachments, etc. all cost money to develop and test, especially when there aren’t many buyers for them.
Eventually some of those things will trickle down (like how FLIR cameras can now be had for like $150) and/or can be DIYed (like the jury-rigged attack drones in Ukraine), but when you’re a corporate entity trying to win government contracts, you gotta make up your investments in R&D and contract negotiation somehow. That’s doubly the case if your buyers are wary of Chinese technologies (DJI being the world’s largest drone producer) and you’re forced to reinvent/reimplement some of those technologies using domestic components.
A police drone might be like 3-4x as good as a consumer drone, but cost like 30x more just because they have so much more specialized tech on them that is expensive to develop. The actual big military ones are in a whole separate league, usually orders of magnitude larger, using their own specialized airframes, able to fly for hours/days instead of minutes, capable of carrying missiles and various sensor packages, etc. They’re closer to fighter jets than the flying camera toys a regular person has.
Considering the cost of helicopters, a big deal a few years ago for the police, that drone is cheap as they come. Buy 2.
A DJI Matrice can be in that price range.
What might the police want that’s not in a consumer drone?
Is there any special equipment required for non-line of sight operation?
It’d need either some bouncy radio or cell or satellite connection, along with the relevant permits from the FAA and FCC I guess.
It requires a waiver from the normal line-of-sight rules, but law enforcement drone flying operates under a waiver of sorts in the first place. You can use VR goggles, which effectively makes it out of LOS - doing this under civilian Part 107 rules requires an extra crew member acting as a Visual Observer.
IMHO, despite the FAA regs, a lot of drone flying is actually done out of LOS. Civilian drones are small enough that they are pretty hard to track visually once you send them up a few hundred feet. I see a lot of people relying on the drone’s camera despite the rules.
Some of the DJI consumer drones will go about 10k/6.2 miles; of course my GMRS (walkie-talkie) radios supposedly transmit that far, too. 
There are plenty of videos on YT of people flying their drones around buildings in a city; when the drone is on the far side of a building it’s out of direct line of sight. Now the operator should have a Visual Observer but I’d bet in most of the videos they don’t have one.
IOW, what they can do ≠ flying legally, just like you can get your car over 100mph
…or what @Llama_Llogophile ninjaed me with.
Let me add that background / sky conditions matter. Fly it low a couple of hundred yards away & it’s totally gone, invisible amid the trees in the distance; however, take it up (vertical) a bit & it’s easy to spot against the blue sky. Same if it’s between you & the rising/setting sun because you lose it in that bright ball in the sky. Turn around & fly with the sun to your back & you can see it much further away.
Yep.
About six years ago I was heavily involved in an analysis project for the MQ-9. Visited many bases in NM and performed measurements on them. An amazing aircraft.
Of course, they don’t call it a “drone.” They refer to these things as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).
As you say, the conditions matter. When I teach drone flying I have students take it up to the maximum height (400’) and they frequently lose sight despite knowing it’s directly overhead. A typical consumer drone isn’t much bigger than a bird and 400 feet is deceptively far away.
The rules do actually provide some leeway. If you read AC 107-2A it says momentary loss of line-of-sight is all right. The drone can pass behind a tree or structure while you’re flying it somewhere, for example. And of course, the pilot is going to periodically look down at their controls and screen. The AC deliberately gives no maximum time for this sort of thing, and I teach students that the operative word is indeed “momentary”.
I read someplace that the Air Force isn’t really buying manned fighter jets any longer but instead relies on UAVs and other drones. No idea if that’s correct, but presumably the UAVs are cheaper by multiple orders of magnitude.
Not only are UAV’s cheaper, but they can perform certain “high-risk” missions without the obvious concern of pilot safety.
The buy manned aircraft, or at least want to. But each manned aircraft is expected to be accompanies by a few “wingmen” UASs*. The pilot driving the airplane is expected to provide direction to the drones as well as prosecuting the mission themselves.
*“UAS” is the current term of art in the US military-industrial complex: “Unmanned Aerial Systems”, which is the airframe plus sensors, controls, AI, payload/warload, pretty much everything on the wing.
Great anwer by @gnoitall just above.
Beyond that I see some confusion in your question, between talking about “buying” which is about the future, and “relying on” which is about present / near past.
USAF is totally buying current production manned fighters (F-35) now every year. As is USN & USMC. And they full intend (budget permitting) to develop a new generation or two of manned fighters.
At the same time USAF does own a bunch of (non-fighter) UAVs, some of which are used for limited precision ground attack. And intends, as @gnoitall’s cites indicate, to develop and buy more and smarter fighter-equivalent UAVs. So AI-piloted, not just remotely flown by a human with a data link.
UAVs are not going to be cheaper by “multiple orders of magnitude” if “multiple” means 4 or 6 or … Maybe by 1 or almost 2 orders to buy. And by 1-3 orders to staff and operate.
One of the ideas is that most of a UAV fleet could be built and stored in a can, never to be flown until needed for a war. So with a lifecycle more like a missile or other munition than the lifecycle of an airplane. The UAVs in the can would have a cradle-to-grave cost far below that of an airplane that’s used a lot for pilot proficiency if nothing else.
Which brings up another persistent USAF goal: insofar as possible, replacing pilots actually flying their front line fighters by the pilots flying simulators and/or cheaper surrogate airplanes instead. As costly as an F-35 is to buy, it costs a lot more to fly and maintain. Cutting out (much of) the back half of that expense tail is a Holy Grail and has been since I was doing this 40 (!) years ago.
I’ve always though a simple stealth adaption is to add LED’s undeneath the craft to add enough light to match the sky background from below. This way when it’s aspeck in the sky it isn’t even a dark speck, so much harder to see. Add a little light cell on top and the intensity of the light can be adjusted to match sky conditions. I vaguely recall reading that some military aircraft and drones do this. Of course, being less visible from the side view is a bit more challenging.