Cargo drones are now to be tested in rural Alaska! Right now, less than Vaporware, but a contract has been signed, the FAA is on board and money has changed hands.... Sabrewing Aircraft Signs Historic Agreement with St. Paul’s Aleut Community - Alaska Business Magazine or Welcome! | The Official Sabrewing Aircraft Website fun fotos they have working scale models now flying to prove flight software.
This will be interesting to see how it turns out. The obvious problem is weather because if the drones cannot hold up to higher winds and/or inclement weather then it certainly limits their usefulness.
I can see software hackers already finding away to hijack these planes and have them re-routed. In concept it probably would be pretty easy to hack these things. Or take over the drone and have it crash somewhere to cause havoc.
Depends on how they are controlled... If they are given a GPS Location and have only autonomous local Control, there would be nothing to hack... No Control Link to try and hack... Also if they were to have a Control Link, that was NOT connected to the Internet, but kept Isolated, again, No Way in. except to hijack the Control Link itself, which likely would be encrypted with Exclusive “End to End” One Use Encryption... So, No “Man in the Middle” attack would be possible once the link was established... I would assume that a Control Link Failure would trigger a Return to Base Routine... Right Off...
Obviously you have never seen a James Bond Movie . LOL I'm going to stay with my thought, DR Evil, with his death ray takes out the controls of the Drone.... Ya my way seems much cooler...