> I think you're conflating 2 separate people's statements. I've never had any focus on smaller sized payloads.

I know you weren't the prior commentor. This is a long discussion. I expect you're reading the prior comments in the same direct thread. When I've specifically addressed an item, in the thread, or even in the same comment, to have that ignored is... frustrating.

> You could fairly easily find a drone with a 10 lbs payload. 40 pounds though isn't a realistic operational payload for those drones, which is why it says "max payload".

I didn't pull that number out of my ass. It was actually a conservative number, based on what I saw some models as capable of (but could not find good pricing info for). For example, the VulcaUAV Airlist model advertises a payload capacity of 25kg (~55lbs).[1]

> That's true, my point is that setting up a nationwide drone licensing and tracking system to track hobby drones isn't necessary when what you're really worried about is protecting high value targets from drones that are approaching the size of small helicopters.

Not just hobby drones, all drones. I expect there to to be a lot of commercial drone usage in the future. If they are all licensed, then the costs are limited to applying towards the small hobby usage, but overall U.S. drone usage, which I expect to be substantial compared to hobby use.

I've explained this multiple times.

> You haven't provided any evidence either, just a random assumption that such a system will cost $50k-$200k per site.

I've explained what type of hardware I expect the system to require, including multiple cameras per station. I've given a guesstimate as to the number of installations required. I've guessed at a per-station cost, and thus a total system cost.

Your counter of "it's off by a few orders of magnitude" is in my opinion not sufficiently explained by personnel and countermeasures, since a few order of magnitude is at a minimum 100x off (and then if I assume you used a meaning of "few" that includes 2 as the minimum). I do not believe training existing personnel that are already stationed around every location (police!) you would want these and providing additional devices and training constitutes hundreds of billions of dollars.

> I've provided at least much explanation and evidence as you have.

No, you haven't provided any idea of what you think it would actually cost to have personnel on site and have them trained and outfitted. If you had, I might have been able to point out that we already have officials that serve a very similar purpose that could be used, the police, and that I don't think training and outfitting would be nearly as costly. I think $100 billion would be an fairly extreme upper bound of this system, but that's not a few orders of magnitude, it's one, and surmountable over time with a tiered rollout IMO, if it's event that high. For example, the FAA alone out of all the DOT agencies has a $16 billion annual budget.[2] In 2018 the U.S. spent over $90 billion on transportation in the federal budget.[3]

In the end, I doubt we're going to convince each other of anything at this point, and I've lost the desire to continue. We should just agree to disagree. :/

Feel free to address any of the points I've made here though. I'll read the response and consider the points, I just don't think I'll respond.

1: http://vulcanuav.com/aircraft/

2: https://www.transportation.gov/mission/budget/fy-2019-budget...

3: https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_budget_detail_f...