The government and all of its friends
In most cases, only governments can afford UAVs and combat robots. A Predator costs about $4.5 million before you add all the missiles at a cost of about $68,000 apiece. The PackBot runs somewhere around $60,000—very reasonable if you’re in the market for a tough, partially amphibious search-and-rescue or bomb-disposal robot.
It isn’t just the military and CIA that use drone aircraft. The United States’s border with Mexico is patrolled constantly by Predator drones operated by Customs. The DEA doesn’t have any Predators in service, but they may utilize smaller drone aircraft to patrol areas of the West Coast for drug fields.
As the Predator fleet ages and newer versions are phased into military service, it’s likely drones will begin to enter the civilian sphere, first in service to law enforcement agencies and then to private concerns with an interest in maintaining an enduring presence in the sky. Cops, mapmakers, and even local news affiliates could end up operating Predators within the next decade.