Most expensive Yacht owners spare no expense in flotation devices. Ship owners, US Coast Guard and the United States Navy have invested thousands if not millions in flotation and drowning prevention devices. There are companies, which specialize in just making and selling nifty flotation devices. One Canadian company Waterkite, whose technical team are self proclaimed marketing geniuses believe that such flotation devices are the only way to go. But lets face it face it flotation devices can only be thrown 50 yards at maximum and you have a man over board and traveling away from them at 20-35 knots, it is not even going to get close.

I therefore propose a small puffy UAV or unmanned aerial vehicle, which can be hand launched to the potential drowning victim. This device would look like an exaggerated model airplane, which needs a diet or looks like it belongs in a cartoon of some type. This device would not be any more complicated than a GPS with a dial on it and a push button to start the battery which runs the propeller, point and shoot. Ever turn on an Alpha Numeric Pager; add a dial and throw it, it is that simple.

UAVs in the future will have many more military applications than are being used today and the lists of commercial uses and killer aps is growing. Here are some other UAV uses or potential application.

http://worldthinktank.net/wttbbs/index.php?s=c0f56a3fb1530e29f7e9bab6a3779b76&showforum=23

http://worldthinktank.net/wttbbs/index.php?s=c0f56a3fb1530e29f7e9bab6a3779b76&showforum=236

To bring this particular FFD Flying Floating Device application to the general understanding of the public and what the future of UAVs can mean, you may wish to take a look at this article to see just how useful something like this could be:

http://ezinearticles.com/?id=80489

Some may criticize and a few have for introducing future technologies in this way, but to them we must say; why don't you read Caleb Carr, Ben Bova, Arthur C Clark, Tom Clancy, Michael Creighton who write about possible futures which should be looked at. If folks think we should not write such articles for the masses, then they should never go see a Sci Fi movie or future action drama? People want to be entertained and it is a good way to teach them, because they often do not think about how these technological advances can help people, they look at research and development spending for military as wasteful. Yet we know that people are dying and drown every day; last week 2000 deaths from the Flood from Hurricane Stan remnants in Guatemala and remember the flooding from the levee breaches in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina?

Getting a flotation device to a drowning victim is about the best thing you can do and the faster the better, therefore a flying flotation device makes sense. Often rescuers hesitate and do not make good use of their tools or the latest technologies and are complete afraid. Often they are so busy trying to be safe that it takes them 15-minutes to get locked and loaded and ready for the rescue. This is a known fact of real men, who are forced to use procedure rescue techniques that take 10-minutes to complete. Some say this is a sorry excuse for a human being who is suppose to be a tough guy, that is many peoples take on it as they watch the firemen slowly put on their safety gear or police pull over and put on their vests in the middle of a back robbery going down, before rolling to the scene? What about the people who are going to be shot while they are getting ready? Serve and protect, just turned into, protect yourself forget about the public. This is such a common occurrence by so rarely addressed. If humans cannot get it done, use robots and technology and lets save some taxpayers some money in all these training of first responders for such things as sexual harassment at FEMA. We can build these FFDs or Flying Flotation Device units for under $1,000 on economies of scale.