Drone fleet takes to the skies in Oglethorpe County

New drones provide different perspective on county.

Katherine Davis  |  October 23, 2025

The full fleet of three drones purchased by the Oglethorpe County Board of Commissioners has arrived and is being put to use.

“Drones are becoming a part of everyday life,” Emergency Management Agency director Douglas Spencer said. “A lot of the jurisdictions around us have drones, and have had drones for a while.”

The first drone, a Parrot ANAFI USA, is intended to be used for autonomous survey and can assist with planning and zoning for things like construction. But hasn’t been completely deployed yet, as Spencer is the only pilot for it.

Another, a Teledyne FLIR SIRAS, is designed to be manually controlled and used for any public safety event. 

It offers a bird’s eye view that gives first responders more information about the emergency and surrounding area, resolving them faster and keeping people safer. It is fully operational and has already been used for a search and rescue operation.

That drone also has also been used around box culvert bridges that were damaged by Hurricane Helene to spot areas that need more erosion control.

“Having that bird’s eye view of that kind of project, that’s really useful for the county to look at,” EMS director Josh Robinson said.

The third drone is used for practice before piloting the larger, more expensive ones.

Spencer and Robinson are the only two certified pilots. Both said the drones have met expectations and are satisfied with their performance.

Learning how to operate them, however, has been a challenge.

Robinson said he tries to take the Teledyne FLIR SIRAS out about once a week to prevent issues with the smart batteries. Each battery allows approximately 25 minutes of flight time.

They’ve been testing how the drones function in different weather conditions and the extent of their range.

Robinson said the topography of an area affects how the drone functions. Granite, for example, can interfere with signals and cause the controller to lose connection with the drone.

Birds have also attacked the drones.

“We’ve had to dodge buzzards and get away from hawks and little tweety birds,” Robinson said, laughing.

Moving forward

Spencer said he wants to recruit more pilots and is looking for people within EMS and fire and rescue who will volunteer to fly the drones. There’s interest, but no definitive time for when training will occur.

Anybody who is a certified pilot would need to take an online training course to be certified to fly a drone, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Those who are new to flying need to take an aeronautical knowledge test at an FAA-approved testing center.

Robinson said he studied for a month before taking his test.

“I would tell anybody, if they wanted to become a drone pilot, to not take that task on lightly because it’s not an easy test,” Robinson said. “There’s a lot of information.”

The data the drones collect is not public data, but it is county data. It can be requested by a Freedom of Information Act request, but whether it can be released is based on the policies of whoever possesses the data being requested.

“The drone, in and of itself, does not change any of the policies that the county already has, as far as public information,” Spencer said. “If we’re responding to an EMS event, the release of public information is EMS policy.”

But the drones can’t be flown onto private property without due cause.

“I don’t think there was ever any intention that we’re just going to put the drone in the air and go see what we can see,” Robinson said. “The majority of the stuff we’ve flown has either been a request from the Sheriff’s Office, a request from the county.”

Spencer agreed.

“I want to make sure that everybody understands that this doesn’t give us new capabilities,” he said. “It gives us a new tool to do the things that we’re already doing.”