Bringing clay sat shooting to the proletariat!

It's an Imperial Probe.

I wonder if Indiana Jones has his blaster handy?

CSI Miami no doubt then......I can almost imagine Horatio taking his shades off when he sees it the first time..

How long before we see reports of someone killed or injured by a malfunctioning one of these falling from a great height?

to the battle of Hoth.

will it go to the takeaway and pick up a 4 pack on the way back?

Petrol engine, so not exactly stealth mode... And it falls out of the air after an hour when the fuel runs out?

Surely they would be better off with a great big long pole, some gaffer tape and an HD video camera? Or is that too cheap and stealthy for the cops?

Or running out of fuel and falling from a great height.

Or maybe even just falling from six feet up and bouncing.

Dalek =/= looking like something out of Star Wars.

Next thing you know, Princess Leia'll be coming out of the TARDIS.

Brings to mind the hovering security cameras in Half Life 2. The combine are already among us!

...before the secret military A.I. chip is activated and it goes on a rampage....

You know that the Iraqi "stay deployed for another 100 years" plan has been subtitled "from leading to partnering to overwatch".

I kid you not.

but imagine the fun if you could fit a dalek casing around it...

All it takes is a little bit of C4 and a few ball bearings and you have a suicide vest from the sky. Either that or strap on a MAC-10 MACHINE PISTOL. Looks like one of those flying death machines mchines. Quick, lets call Conners. Lets call it Terminator Jr.

It's from 'They Live' - starring Rowdy Roddy Piper.

Okay, I'm ashamed I know that too.

not very useful for a stake out. Plus, if commercial toy ducted fans are anything to judge, freakin' LOUD.

There's gonna be some interesting problems when these tangle with power lines or deal with pidgeon ingestion:P

'Next thing you know, Princess Leia'll be coming out of the TARDIS.'

In the chain mail bikini? Say she'll be wearing that outfit!

Please tell me it is. I want one.

I've been to where they test the thing, it can't fly if it's too windy. There have been crashes. Nothing out there but abandoned uranium mines and the Bibo Bar (great hamburgers & steaks). A crash in a large city ought to be exciting. About like the sheriff's helicopter somebody shot down here a few years ago.

... make its own way to the local service station and fill itself up when it "gets hungry"?

If not, then having personnel refuel a fleet (flock? Gaggle/Skein/Murder?) of these things every hour of air time is going to get costly in time, effort and wages.

I bet they want it purely for the "intimidation" value - nothing says "we're serious about using technology to catch dangerous drivers" more than having several thousand dollars worth of airborne spy hovering above the road - too bad that the departmental budget would be pretty-much cleaned out.

Whatever they invest in these things, they would get a lot more coverage if that money were spent on far less showy and less complicated devices - like cameras on poles.

FFS, a traditional ground-based Dalek body equipped with a camera would suffice if they really wanted it to "be mobile and look high-tech".

soon to be followed by a high-energy capacitor dart, as an effective countermeasure. think Taser for robots, shooting longer range and high-precision, with a charged self-contained projectile. pumps enough juice into your flying surveillance drone to transform it into a nice paperweight. can probably get an upgrade to handle land-based sniperbots, too. perhaps we can get a high capacitance from the new metamaterials...

otherwise, i suppose a particle beam would work too.

yeah, so i'm stealing it all from Shadowrun, but they seem to have gotten a few things very right.

"Whatever they invest in these things, they would get a lot more coverage if that money were spent on far less showy and less complicated devices - like cameras on poles."

Jon, in America, we'd call those pole camera's 'targets' and you could probably count their service life in hours if not minutes...

Doesn't mean that the flying fan thingies aren't going to shot at too, it's just upping the skill level required to knock one down - moving targets vs fixed would be a little more challenging.

On another point, I second the motion for Princess Leia in a chain-mail Bikini...

The Paris icon because I think she'd look pretty good in one too.

Guys, read the article.

It says the intended use: "...urban tactical operations...".

Not as a loitering surveillance platform. Getting some eyes in the sky on a hostage situation that can get a bit closer than a full-blown chopper, or view from angles the helo couldn't get too because of space or hostile threat. It's going to be operating in areas already cleared of "innocent bystanders".

It can reach considerably greater heights than a camera gaffa'ed to a stick.

It's not autonomous, either. It needs an operator.

> So, does it make its own way to the local service station and fill itself up when it

> "gets hungry"?

I'm betting that that Dutch Robo-Gas-Pump already has this thing in its database. They don't need us any more.

It's more like V.I.N.CENT out of The Black Hole

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V.I.N.CENT), or, given the state of it, Old Bob (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_BOB)

(And Whatddaya mean you've never seen The Black Hole?! Call yerselves geeks?!)

Definately not a Dalek! And someone put some clothes on her for goodness sake!

No Peter, some of us call ourselves IT professionals.

I merely *work* as an "IT Professional" - in REAL life, I'm a geek!