Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Drones)
Along with many other search and rescue teams, Essex SAR uses Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. These UAVs (sometimes called “drones”) have great potential for helping us to search or provide a view into areas that might otherwise be inaccessible on health and safety or other grounds, such as railway lines, marshy areas, growing crops, or watercourses. They can also be used to search more open areas far more rapidly than foot or K9 searchers. They have the capability to “live stream” video feed to our control vehicle, to provide a situational overview.
The drones are used in both number of training exercises and “live” searches, and have proved very useful. We now have two drones with both daylight and thermal imaging capabilities, and three operational pilots, with others in training.
