[Atrus6]

Would you care to elaborate how you'll be able to power a drone for an extended amount of time? I was doing some minor research (I was curious about the pirate bays 'server drone' idea), and the best that I could personally come up with was flight times of about an hour. That doesn't seem all that useful to maintain a constant server, or traffic cam, presence.

[andrewflnr]

For the traffic cam application, where people aren't trying to shoot it down, it would be pretty simple to switch it out regularly with one from a nearby charging station. You might even be able to use a balloon to take off a lot of the weight, so you can just use the rotors for altitude adjustment. You'd be slower, but would probably last a lot longer.

[sammyo]

I wonder if anyone is looking at a hydrogen balloon/drone hybrid. Small so it's not a Hindenburg bomb, lots of failsafe, but the power/lift ratios might give it a significant mission duration.

[arjunnarayan]

The same way they do satellite coverage at non-geostationary orbits: You have a group of drones that swap in and out. Depending on how far/how long it takes to refuel and get a drone back into the air, you could provide continuous coverage of a single area with as little as 2-3 drones.