That’s fair, there’s other angles of observation made available already.

Seeing as you like speculating about cyberpunk, how about if observation is just the initial way to way to sell the drone cloud? Depending on how cheap you can make them, there’s an argument to made for reducing time-to-intercept for low-speed aerial objects.

If you’ve got a bunch of drones overhead already, you could run one in to the path of a kamikaze drone, or if your swarm is even lightly armed, you can extend engagement range and reduce required accuracy with a single buckshot shell to shoot an offending drone down.

If you’re content to prioritize executive safety over public saftey, there’s a lot that can be done.

Drone displays terrify me.

Not to mention, the minute it happens, the government will carpet the skies with observation drones in the name of safety