The Chinook State grows its flying power

The Washington State Patrol has increased its drone fleet to 111 drones, possibly becoming the largest drone fleet owned by a state or local government in the US. It says it uses them for crash investigations and fatality scenes, but—in line with the policies it developed with the ACLU—not for surveillance purposes. The multitude of drones, all made by DJI, significantly reduce the time it takes to clear the road after an accident, and the Patrol said it expects to expand their applications to wildfire monitoring and more.

DJI has a recently published patent application for coordinating actions between UAVs to track targets while identifying obstacles. This technology is likely to be important for the Washington State Patrol, which manages its fleet of drones for traffic monitoring.