I got a shot around 11 pm and took it.
He dropped, I was surprised at how quick.
I took a follow up shot on his head and neck area.
He was still and quiet after that…
Another cop approached the one I just shot.
As he went to kneel, I took a shot at him…
This grisly text is an excerpt from a handwritten note by fugitive Eric Frein, the most-wanted man in America.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation
The 31-year-old man is a self-trained survivalist, sniper, and war reenactor. He’s accused of killing Pennsylvania State Trooper Byron Dickson and wounding another officer.
He has eluded capture by hiding in the dense woods of the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.
He’s been called the modern-day Rambo, and for good reason. The mountain man is recreating the plot of the 1982 Sylvester Stallone film First Blood.
But when that story was written, John Rambo didn’t have to deal with drones.
Helicopters used to be the preferred eye in the sky for manhunts, but the machines are loud and easy for a fugitive to detect, as well as incredibly expensive to operate. The Robinson Helicopter Company’s Raven II/Clipper, for example, costs $224.88 per hour of operation.
A simple, unmanned drone, meanwhile, can do a job comparable to a helicopter but cost little as $15 per hour to operate.
It should be no surprise, then, that authorities have deployed drones to search for Eric Frein.
They’re quiet, they’re nimble, and above all, they’re cheap. In fact, Pennsylvania police are using one of the cheapest-to-operate drones on the market.
The Cheapest Drones
An unmanned vehicle from Drone Aviation Corp. (OTC: DRNE) has been called in to assist in the manhunt.
News reports this week announced DAC’s so-called “Blimp in a Box” (BiB) has been deployed over the Poconos to survey the area where Frein is believed to be hidden.
The vehicle once again makes us question what exactly makes an unmanned aircraft a “drone.”
It’s a $180,000 surveillance platform sent skyward by a huge helium balloon that can fly between 500 and 1,000 feet high for several days at a time. It’s tethered to the ground and significantly smaller than a blimp.
It’s equipped with gimbal-mounted cameras and includes heat vision for nighttime operation.
It’s essentially a floating security camera station, and it’s not typically what one thinks of when imagining drones.
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Talk of drones usually conjures up one of two images: the multi-rotor, copter-style drone, or the military-style fixed wing drone. Other designs typically aren’t considered.
But zeppelins, gliders, kites, and parachutes can all loosely be classified as “drones,” and their flight mechanisms can often be more sustainable than other drones because they don’t consume fuel.
DAC also makes helicopter-style drones, so its main idea isn’t to create drones that consume less fuel. It has a different specialty — all its solutions are firmly tethered to the ground… literally.
The company’s EATP drones are tied to the ground on a thousand-foot lead. Its Blimp in a Box drone solution is tethered to the ground, too. The company even has surveillance systems built onto long, telescoping masts that can be as high as ten stories off the ground.
Its drones aren’t free-flying aircraft but are instead attached to the ground to meet the FAA’s somewhat nebulous regulations for unmanned aircraft.
The Point
If DAC’s solutions help locate America’s most-wanted man, this company will take a serious jump in prestige, and the $0.35 stock could rise significantly.
But even if Frein continues to elude the authorities, DAC is in a great position.
Its solutions fit within the still-developing drone regulations and can easily be adjusted to comply with the updates expected in 2015.
As a new entrant in the field, the company has already received a handful of high-profile contracts, including with the United States Department of Defense in the Armed Forces.
Since it’s young, it is still working at a loss, and its cash flow only crept into positive territory for the first time in the beginning of 2014. Furthermore, its debt ratio is a very high 79%.
Consumers don’t have many options for investing in drone companies, so this fact alone makes DAC one that needs to be watched — even if its balance sheet isn’t in the most attractive position.
Good Investing,
Tim Conneally
For the last seven years, Tim Conneally has covered the world of mobile and wireless technology, enterprise software, network hardware, and next generation consumer technology. Tim has previously written for long-running software news outlet Betanews and for financial media powerhouse Forbes.
