A walk in the woods is good for body and soul, especially in the Spring when bluebells abound. Every walk is memorable in some way, as a couple of encounters reminded the Badger recently. The first encounter involved wildlife. A vixen with two cubs emerged from the undergrowth and sat in the middle of the path to stare at a stationary Badger drinking from his water bottle. They were ~3 metres away, unfazed by human presence, and nonchalantly disappeared back into the undergrowth after about a minute. The second encounter happened ten minutes later as the path bisected an open expanse of scrubland. It was with a police officer landing a drone which had been used in a successful search for someone who’d failed to return from walking their dog in the area. ‘That’s a useful bit of kit’, the Badger quipped to the officer. ‘Yep, but a drone swarm would be better’, the officer responded adding that whereas people knew that individual drones are routine tools for many, swarms embodying AI warrant greater public awareness.
Drones vary in shape, size, function, and sophistication. Everyone has some awareness of them through their appearance in many movies (see here for example) over decades. The capabilities of drones imagined in such movies are today either a reality, or soon to be so. Drones are a growth area. Indeed, the UK Government has envisaged that 900,000 commercial drones could be operating in UK skies by 2030. Drones have long been tools in many commercial sectors (e.g. agriculture, energy supply, and property marketing), in the media/broadcasting, and with hobbyists and the TikTok generation, and so this vision seems possible. Drones are also already key tools in law enforcement where they help in monitoring major incidents, events, suspects, crime scenes, traffic, and in the search for missing persons. Military use of them is common and rapidly expanding for reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, and lethal force, as readily illustrated in the Ukraine and Middle East conflicts. Military drone use continues to expand (e.g. see here ), and swarms of drones embodying AI will eventually transform military operations even more dramatically. It thus seems inevitable that drone swarms will eventually become a regular facet of civilian life too.
Personal security and safety advice for when you are away from your home has long centred on being aware of your environment and listening to and observing the behaviour of those around you. With drone swarms on the horizon, we should now be observing and listening to what’s in the sky too! Of course, someone will eventually produce a drone countermeasure for personal use by anyone in the general public. Now that’s an off-the-wall thought to end with, probably triggered by learning that fly spray and insect repellent are essential when walking through woods in the warm Spring sunshine…
