Thales Spain has been designated as the person in charge of the development of a drone with a military and civil orientation that must be capable of carrying out search and rescue missions in the mountains, support for ground forces, intelligence missions and, this is where the interesting part of the project comes , which is also capable of performing traffic surveillance work.
Undoubtedly a bet that, personally I think, was taking too long to arrive since, as you well know, keeping a drone in flight is much cheaper than doing this work with a helicopter, according to the first estimates, every hour of Flying with a drone is about 100 times cheaper than flying with a helicopter, but if we go further, not only is this saving considerable, but acquiring one of these drones is also much cheaper than a helicopter. If we transfer this to more specific data we find that for what it literally costs to have the DGT helicopter flying there could be a hundred of these drones guarding different points.
Pegasus could have the hours counted with the last project assigned to Thales Spain
Now, do not think that Thales Spain is going to develop a commercial drone, far from it, we are talking about a prototype with autonomy of about 8 hours that must be able to take off and land anywhere, reach 4.000 meters in height reaching a speed 100 km / h maximum. In addition to this, among its own characteristics we find that it must have a radius of action of 80 kilometers, a contained weight to be able to carry different sensors, public address in real time and possibility of incorporating speed cameras.
Before pulling our hair, tell you that the issue of speed cameras is still an issue that needs to be developed since it is necessary to create a small, light radar, homologate it and even legislate the viability of the possible complaints that are generated. At the moment, a long time still has to pass until this radar is developed, although, knowing the DGT, it is sure that now they are looking for funds for its rapid development.