Editor’s note: This article is part of Police1’s Drone Week, which explores how agencies are integrating drones into daily operations, where the technology is headed and what leaders must consider as their programs grow — from communications and staffing to policy, transparency and community trust. Thanks to our Drone Week sponsor, Flock.
By Sgt. Sukh Bhela
The call was a barricaded suspect. The drone launched, and 90 seconds later it was holding over the backyard with a perfect view of everything that mattered: the suspect, the fence line, the neighbor watering his lawn 30 feet from all of it.
Exactly one person could see any of that: the pilot, the officer flying the aircraft, eyes locked on the controller in his hands.
Everyone else on the call, the officers holding the perimeter, the supervisor running the incident, got that picture the only way it could travel: the pilot describing it over the radio, one sentence at a time.
I’ve lived that gap from every seat. I’ve been the pilot narrating. I’ve been the sergeant running the drone team. And I’ve been the incident commander, the person responsible for running the whole call, making decisions off a secondhand description of a picture someone else was looking at.
Here’s the lesson those seats taught me. Agencies plan the flight. Airspace, batteries, altitude, preflight checklists. Almost nobody plans the information. But the video is the entire reason the aircraft is up there, and it needs a plan the same way the flight does: decided before launch, not improvised during the incident. Who receives the video? Who interprets it? How does it reach the person making decisions?
That’s a communications plan. It costs nothing, and it’s the difference between a drone that helps command and a drone that just flies. Here it is, one question at a time.
This capability checklist helps agencies evaluate the operational foundation, coordination and safeguards needed to advance real-time drone response responsibly
Who should receive the video?
On most scenes, the honest answer is nobody. The feed stays on the controller in the pilot’s hands.
So the pilot narrates. He describes the scene to the incident commander over a radio channel that’s already saturated. The commander repeats a version of it to the arrest team. Somebody briefs the arriving units on a version of that. By the third hop, people are working off a summary of a summary, each one a few seconds older and a little less accurate. On a fast call, those losses compound.
The principle: anyone whose decisions depend on what the drone sees should be able to see it. At minimum, that’s the incident commander’s post. Often, it’s also the supervisor whose team will act on it.
How the video gets there matters less than deciding in advance that it will. A screen at the command post. A tablet. A streaming link. Even a second phone propped where the right people can see it. Every agency can solve the plumbing somehow. What no agency can improvise mid-incident is the decision itself.
And moving the feed protects your pilot, too. Make no mistake, the pilot never stops talking. Their eyes are the only zero-latency sensor on the scene: live video runs a beat behind, and if the feed drops mid-call, the pilot’s voice is what’s left. They will always call out what they see, and they should. But there’s a difference between a pilot calling observations and a pilot serving as the communication hub for the whole incident, interpreting and briefing every role while flying the aircraft. The feed takes the second job off their plate and leaves them the first.
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Who should interpret it?
Here’s the part most agencies never think about: watching the video is a job, and it should belong to one person.
Call them the watcher, though the name undersells the job. The watcher is a bridge. They stand at the command post holding the full context of the incident: the assignments, the perimeter, the intel, what command intends to do next. The pilot calls out what they see. The watcher turns it into what it means. “Subject moving west along the fence line” becomes “he’s headed for the gap on the south perimeter nobody has closed yet.” The pilot has the view. The command post has the meaning. The watcher connects the two, on a rhythm: “no change” every few minutes, and exceptions immediately: “He’s up. Moving toward the gate.”
Why one person? Because when everyone watches, no one is responsible for noticing. Five people can look at the same screen and each assume someone else will call out the change. Name the watcher and that ambiguity disappears.
Why can’t the pilot just do this? Because the pilot doesn’t hold command’s context, and can’t. They’re flying. They know what the camera sees. They don’t know which corner is thin, what the latest intel says or what command is about to do. Narration without context is how you end up with a radio full of accurate observations and no decisions. And it runs the other way too: because the watcher holds the whole picture, command can finally use the drone as an extension of itself, swinging it to the north side because that’s where the scene is thinnest, not because the camera happened to drift there.
And where does the watcher stand? At the command post, at the commander’s elbow, not at the pilot’s shoulder. That’s the whole point of moving the feed: the person interpreting the picture gets to stand next to the person making decisions instead of next to the aircraft. The conclusions travel three feet instead of three radio hops. The pilot works from wherever the mission puts them.
The watcher still can’t read the pilot’s mind, so two habits keep the link clean. The drone gets tasked out loud, like any unit: “Drone has the back fence.” Everyone hears the assignment, so the watcher knows why the camera is where it is, and notices when the picture stops matching it. And when it stops matching, the watcher asks; the pilot answers short: “Following movement, west fence.” Add the flight calls every pilot makes anyway, launching, coming home for battery and a view change is never a mystery.
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How should information flow to the incident commander?
Conclusions, not pixels. The commander gets the watcher’s calls, on a rhythm, with exceptions the moment they happen.
Then the flow has to finish the trip, because drone intelligence that stays in the air changes nothing on the ground. Every significant observation should end in one of three places, out loud: it moves somebody (a unit shifts, the perimeter closes a gap, a team stages closer), it updates the picture everyone is working from or command sets it aside on purpose.
The drone finds an open gate on the south perimeter. That is not information. That is a decision waiting. Either a unit closes that gap in the next 60 seconds or command accepts it knowingly. The watcher calls it, the commander decides it, someone owns it. That loop, observation to decision to assignment, is the entire reason the aircraft is up there.
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Why the commander shouldn’t become another person watching the screen
This is the counterintuitive one, and it’s where the communications plan earns its keep.
Live video is hypnotic. It feels like command, because you’re seeing more than any commander has ever seen from a command post. But a commander staring at a feed is a spotter, not a commander. I’ve watched one lock onto a screen for three straight minutes while a staging question and a perimeter gap sat waiting. The suspect never moved. The incident did.
The commander’s job is the whole incident: the perimeter the camera isn’t pointed at, the units still arriving, the intelligence that hasn’t reached anyone yet, the decisions only command can make. You can’t hold the whole picture while staring at one corner of it. After-action reviews of critical incidents keep finding the same two failures: communication broke down and the command post lost the picture — and it’s rarely the tactics. Watched wrong, the drone makes that worse, not better. Tunnel vision used to need chaos. Now it comes in 4K.
The communications plan is what frees the commander from the screen. When the feed has a home, the picture has a watcher, and the updates arrive on a rhythm, the commander can do the one job nobody else on the call can do.
The communications plan, before the aircraft launches
Six decisions, made ahead of time. None of them require buying anything.
- The feed leaves the controller: Decide where the video displays before the drone is in the air.
- Name the watcher: One person turns what the drone sees into what it means for the call. Not the pilot. Not the commander.
- Link the pilot and the watcher: Task the drone out loud. The watcher asks; the pilot answers short. A view change should never be a mystery.
- Set the rhythm: Updates every few minutes. Exceptions immediately.
- Close the loop: Everything significant becomes an assignment, an update to the picture, or a deliberate “noted.”
- Command commands: The incident commander works off conclusions, not the screen.
A barricade needs all six. A routine area search might need two. The scale changes with the call. The questions don’t, and that’s why the plan belongs in the program, not in the moment.
Write it into the drone program’s procedures. Brief it at the start of every deployment, the same breath as the flight plan.
The aircraft was never the hard part. The drone gives you the view. The communications plan is what turns the view into better decisions.
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About the author
Sukh Bhela is a California police sergeant who has served as a UAS operator, UAS supervisor, and incident commander during critical incidents. His experience leading patrol operations and integrating drone technology into public safety responses led him to found BabbarOps, where he builds tools for live situational awareness and incident command. He writes about policing, drone operations, leadership, and the technology shaping the future of emergency response.
The views expressed here are the author’s own, written in his personal capacity. They do not represent, and are not made on behalf of, any law enforcement agency or employer.