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Oky, so I've actually had a really hard time finding out what type of drones they're using. What I did get is this report - with some pictures and stats: http://www.iapf.org/images/documents/niassa.pdf Perhaps someone else can identify it, but from it's specs, it looks like it can probably fly reasonably high... if it can manage 6-8 hours at 400km range, it looks like it kind of slots in somewhat below http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScanEagle in terms of performance (and cost). From that guess, I'm thinking that this sucker is flying well over a mile high, which makes most gun approaches (unless they brought in a whole anti-aircraft platform...) pretty unfeasible. In any case, the cost of shooting down one of these would be pretty high - you would almost certainly need a weapon with guidance somehow (ie, a missile, which is going to really cut into your profit margins), extreme luck and patience, or lug around anti-aircraft platforms... which might not actually be out of the picture. One of the things this article doesn't really tap into is how the nature of the poachers themselves are changing. The poachers themselves are becoming more militarized (as are the wardens now), partly due to the hilarious amounts of money poaching generates - it apparently, they represent a significant revenue stream for various African Paramilitary groups. http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/rhino-horn-crisis-and-the-d... In any case, like most illict trades, constraining the supply rarely makes the problem go away - you gotta shutdown the demand somehow. |