“If you had Guardian playing a siren tone tuned to match the speaker’s frequency and a police car playing the siren tone next to it, Guardian would be three times louder,” he said.
Seattle-based BRINC makes drones that are currently used in more than 900 U.S. cities, including Laredo, Texas, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, as part of the growing “drones as first responders” (DFR) system.
Typically, Cities pay a few hundred thousand dollars per year per drone, with contracts reaching millions with more drones and more capabilities. One year ago, Newport Beach, California, announced a five-year, $2.17 million contract with BRINC for seven drones. (According to Forbes, BRINC is valued at around $480 million last year.)
An existing customer, the Redmond Police Department in Washington state, told Ars that this new model was a “completely new and different airframe.”
“This is a huge step in innovation and capabilities for DFR,” police spokesperson Jill Green emailed.
Still, a long-time drone observer and analyst, Faine Greenwood, wasn’t all that excited about this news.
“Even if these claims are true (which I doubt at this point), the speed and battery life are an incremental improvement over other comparable drone platforms,” Greenwood told Ars via email. “This is not a game-changing situation, and I don’t think it will really change the calculus of police who are on the fence about drones.”
