<story><title>Drone carrying drugs crashes near US-Mexico border</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-30931367</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>This has been discussed before and is a favorite of some of the robotics communities. This particular drone seemed to be a bit overloaded (2.7kg?) and I&amp;#x27;m guessing the person who launched it hadn&amp;#x27;t made the connection between flight time and weight. But still it seems a pretty straight forward way to get drugs from point A to point B.&lt;p&gt;That said, 2.7kg of crystal meth might be worth $270,000 [1]. So the cost of the drone is insignificant to the &amp;#x27;value&amp;#x27; of the meth it was carrying. Sending 1kg chunks over on $10,000 drones would still net a decent profit. And $10,000 is a pretty nice drone.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meth/faqs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pbs.org&amp;#x2F;wgbh&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;frontline&amp;#x2F;meth&amp;#x2F;faqs&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>WestCoastJustin</author><text>VICE claims this was a &amp;quot;DJI Spreading Wings s900&amp;quot; drone [1]. There is a nice little demo video on youtube [2], but it is hard not to mentally replace &amp;quot;camera gear&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;6.5 pounds of meth&amp;quot;, when watching it after reading the news story. Looks like it is about $3,800 USD rigged up [3]. The specs say it can only fly for 18 minutes [4], so they had to have been pretty close by! As battery tech, software auto pilots, and availability improves, this is likely going to become a much larger issue.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.vice.com/article/drone-carrying-three-kilos-of-meth-crashes-in-tijuana&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.vice.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;drone-carrying-three-kilos-of-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aC9Z7-Qxwk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=8aC9Z7-Qxwk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popphoto.com/gear/2014/08/new-gear-dji-spreading-wings-s900-drone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.popphoto.com&amp;#x2F;gear&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;new-gear-dji-spreading-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[4] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dji.com/product/spreading-wings-s900/spec&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.dji.com&amp;#x2F;product&amp;#x2F;spreading-wings-s900&amp;#x2F;spec&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Drone carrying drugs crashes near US-Mexico border</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-30931367</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>This has been discussed before and is a favorite of some of the robotics communities. This particular drone seemed to be a bit overloaded (2.7kg?) and I&amp;#x27;m guessing the person who launched it hadn&amp;#x27;t made the connection between flight time and weight. But still it seems a pretty straight forward way to get drugs from point A to point B.&lt;p&gt;That said, 2.7kg of crystal meth might be worth $270,000 [1]. So the cost of the drone is insignificant to the &amp;#x27;value&amp;#x27; of the meth it was carrying. Sending 1kg chunks over on $10,000 drones would still net a decent profit. And $10,000 is a pretty nice drone.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meth/faqs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pbs.org&amp;#x2F;wgbh&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;frontline&amp;#x2F;meth&amp;#x2F;faqs&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kenrikm</author><text>You can quite easily build a drone capable of flying for many miles with a 2.7kg Payload for 2-3K. Indeed $10,000 would buy you a very, very nice setup. If they wanted to go the plane route a Mugin will do 15kg and still be under 10k [1]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fpvmodel.com/super-huge-mugin-4450mm-uav-h-t-tail-plane-platform_g628.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fpvmodel.com&amp;#x2F;super-huge-mugin-4450mm-uav-h-t-tail...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>