[GiraffeNecktie]

1. I believe that was addressed in the video. These are very short range devices that can be recharged by solar energy or by sitting on power lines.

2. See the video.

3. You might be able to deny access to buildings with mosquito nets but you're not going to stop close range surveillance, painting targets and other uses. Mosquito nets themselves would be relatively trivial to dismantle with a swarm of these (you'd only need to land one with explosives on the net).

[zeteo]

1. The short range is a killer. You already need to know where the bad guys are, within an area of a few blocks. And solar panels with such small form factor are a joke in comparison with the energy demands of powered flight. (Sure, there are solar powered drones, but they need huge wings, perfect weather, and are little more than powered gliders.)

2. I didn't see any good counter-arguments there. Care to detail.

3. Explosions will alert the building's occupants, and you just sacrificed a complex, expensive device for a $0.50 mosquito net.

[pekk]

Mosquito net: $5 Swarm of high-tech minidrones plus explosives: $??

A Faraday cage would nullify most of the advantages of the tech and can also be made relatively cheaply.

[hnriot]

but those problems were just talked about, not solved. This is the US government we're talking about, so I bet they will never get far, and by the time they have something operational, you'll be able to but something 10x better on Amazon.

[gnosis]

"This is the US government we're talking about, so I bet they will never get far"

Oh? You mean the US government that was the first to create nuclear weapons and land men on the moon?

[nathan_long]

The US government also envisioned and funded the development of computer networking (though the actual work was done by companies), so it's ironic for someone to imply the government can't innovate on an internet forum.

I say this as someone who's basically libertarian.