Drafting an Essay
Among all the different technologies in use today, I believe unmanned vehicles have the most promise and beneficiary outcome. Unmanned vehicles are defined as aerial or ground vehicle able to sustain a flight path or guided ground path without the need of onboard crew, human pilot, or driver. Since the first recorded use of an unmanned vehicle for war fighting in 1849 by the Austrians, the technology has proven to be useful in many area such as; wildlife monitoring, agriculture mapping, thermal infrared power line surveys, law enforcement, telecommunications, weather monitoring, aerial imaging/mapping, television news coverage, sporting events, moviemaking, Environmental monitoring, oil and gas exploration, and freight transport. Today we have updated the designs and improved the technology so much and will continue to do so.

With the growing use of unmanned vehicles it is predicted it could result in more than 34,000 manufacturing jobs and more than 70,000 new jobs in 3 years. “As new jobs are created, additional money is spent at the local level, creating additional demand for local services, which in turn, creates even more jobs (i.e., grocery clerks, barbers, school teachers, home builders, etc.). These indirect and induced jobs are forecast and included in the total jobs created.” Though the economic benefits will not be distributed evenly. The predicted revenues from the top 10 states in terms of job creation and additional revenue as production of unmanned vehicles increase from 2015-2025 is $82 billion.
Unmanned vehicles could change and advance the agriculture field of today. Before the use of unmanned vehicles, remote-sensing data had to be collected with satellites, ground instruments, and piloted aircrafts. While unmanned vehicles are less costly then the cost of a manned aircraft, they are also more efficient. Manned aircraft must operate at an elevation between 2000 and 3000 feet, and are limited to collecting images at resolutions of about 18 inches, but the altitude can drastically affect resolutions. An unmanned vehicle has the capability of flying as low as 100 feet above the ground, the ability to zoom in to a resolution of about 1/8 of an inch, and is able to cover 1,000 acres in 1 hour. With this a farmer will be able to boost yield, productivity and profit while enhancing environmental stewardship.
Unmanned vehicles have also improved the field of fighting wildfires. In recent years, firefighters have gained a huge advantage with aircrafts equipped with heat-detecting infrared sensors and special communication equipment now can relay to firefighting teams on the ground, in minutes, a fire's precise location, as well as where new "hotspots" are cropping up, even before they burst into visible flame. This technology has saved firefighters valuable time when going to fight wildfires. Data collection that used to take hours to get now takes only a couple of minutes.

With all the great uses for this technology, I have a concern that society’s fear of government and law enforcement misuse may keep the advancement of this technology from happening. Society fears that with this technology government and law officials may use it to conduct surveillance, which they feel violates their constitutional fourth amendment rights. If such uses were to be approved, legislators feel that it should be accompanied with a warrant and should be deemed useless without one. But such uses are still years from approval except for the traditional use of war fighting and combat surveillance.
Reference:
Amy Grahan (2012). Fighting fire with data, spacecraft, drones. CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/26/tech/innovation/technology-fighting-fire/
Gregory McNeal (2014). Drones and Aerial Surveillance Considerations and Legislators. Brookings. http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2014/11/drones-and-aerial-surveillance
Michele Nash-Hoff (2013). What is the Importance of Unmanned Vehicles to our Economy? IndustryWeek. http://www.industryweek.com/emerging-technologies/what-importance-unmanned-vehicles-our-economy
Mississippi State University, Office of Agricultural Communications. (2015, January 26). Pilotless aircraft will play critical roles in precision agriculture. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 22, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150126170540.htm