The standard story arc for something like this is that it is pitched as a humanitarian/environmental technology, but it is the military that provide the money and that where it gets used. I'm not being overly judgemental - the good guys (e.g. Ukraine) need good military tech. But lets not kid ourselves.

Basically any technology that makes any difference will have a military value, and will be used by the military.

One of the few things that are not obviously, if in any way at all, usable for any military purposes is targeted advertising. Whether it's used by the good guys more is an interesting topic.

That's not actually true about ad targeting. The tech used there is a big information warfare thing, which has major military applications

I receive targeted recruitment ads from the U.S. Army and Navy frequently. Targeted advertising appears to be a valuable tool in encouraging young people to join the military.

Bad actors are using ad tech to subvert democracy (cf Cambridge Analytica).

Wildland forest fires were actually the inspiration for this technology! A year ago Seattle had the worst air quality in the world for a few days, which piqued my interest in the area. Speaking to people in the USFS we learned about the challenges of getting real-time high-resolution data, and realized that an ultra long endurance drone would be a great way to get this.

Any idea how big an effect air quality has on cell efficiency? Do cells work with diffuse light or is 20km high enough to be unaffected?

Flying at 20 km should place us above cloud cover and fire smoke, but the cells do work surprisingly well in diffuse light. Ensuring that we use imaging sensors that can cut through the smoke will be key (most likely LWIR or MWIR)

You know what would be really helpful in such a use case? Thermal imaging. Now I'll admit I know nothing about Thermal Imaging, but I imagine if it was possible to get a live high resolution thermal image of an area, you could identify hotspots quickly. Heck, even for SAR missions, being able to thermal image a large area and look for warm bodies may be very useful.

Of course I have no idea if this is feasible or not, but I assume someone here will correct me if I'm pipe-dreaming.

its very feasible with satellites and drones run by DARPA or USAF. Even helicopters use IR and "night vision". the sensing systems are expensive

There are commercial sats doing this.

Not live at that resolution, AFAIK.

Planet has the spatial resolution but not the temporal resolution.

NOAA has the temporal resolution but not the spatial resolution.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Planet has sub 10-cm resolution? That's surprising

50cm, not 10cm, but enough.

TBH I thought they had 15cm, but for human-scale large object monitoring (fires, traffic, construction) 50cm is enough.

Why does forest fires need 10cm resolution? I'm fairly familiar that space (in Australia though) and I've never heard that requirement.

There are other fields where 10cm resolution is required though, obviously.

Might be great for preventing the spread of small fires that just started. Dump some chemicals on it 10 minutes later and prevent a bigger problem.