"So far, I haven't seen one significant regulatory, policy or technical barrier to using these things for search. This is an emergency function, it is not surveillance, and the thing does not have to be capable of the actual extraction to save thousands of dollars and priceless time in the search."
I think cost is the barrier. This hasn't been budgeted for, so where does the money come from? Unfortunately, the cheap consumer drones are not usable, because they don't have the range (generally line of sight).
The other end of the spectrum are the Predator-type military drones. I'm not entirely clear on acquisition cost, but I saw a Time article last week that put its operating cost at around $4,000 an HOUR.
