What if every square km of Earth was monitored by a drone? I mean one drone per square km, maybe per 2-3 square km. Is it technologically feasible? This would be more for rural/suburban areas as cities would be covered already by regular cameras.

is it technologically feasible to have fixed-wing drones with solar panels and cameras on them monitoring wide areas all the time? yes. doubt it's even that expensive.

>>106174641
Yes it is. But expensive. Yet.

>>106174587 (OP)
Don't give them ideas you fuck

that's what starlink is for

>>106174675
I'm thinking, on the bright side of this panopticon, you could have low latency internet anywhere. But the surveillance could be on another level. Identify anyone anywhere on Earth just by their cellphone signal.

>>106174587 (OP)
It would take about 500 million drones.
If each drone costs $200 (cheap) then the cost would be about $100 billion.
However, this is only for a single set of drones. They need maintenance and need to be replaced eventually, so it's too expensive.
Also, how would they stay charged at all times?

>>106174699
That's including oceans though. If we just stick with land area it's less. The drones would cost more though for proper surveillance. And I was thinking each square km monitored by a pair of drones that rotate shifts between charging at a local charging port which is more infrastructure to be built out. But with all the wildfires I'm not sure the government would even want to do this because drones are quite a fire risk and those batteries are very hard to put out. So it would probably need an advance in battery tech. Or solar panels like the other poster said.