Police drones that take off by themselves and are flown by an officer sitting in the Perth CBD will soon be in the air over Perth's southern suburbs. The State Government calls the program an Australian first.
Police Minister Reece Whitby is announcing the program today, Sunday 25 October 2026. Six drones will be stationed in weatherproof docking boxes at Rockingham, Kwinana and Baldivis, according to The West Australian, which first reported the plan on Saturday night. Pilots at a new remote operations command centre in the city, about 50 kilometres away, will fly them.
How it works
The system is known in policing circles as "drone first responder", and WA Police has called its version DFR X. Each drone lives in a transportable dock that recharges its battery automatically. When a job comes in, an operator in the CBD can launch the drone and have it over the scene well before a patrol car gets there. Officers on the way then get a live picture of what they are heading into.
The Government says the drones will be used for violent incidents, missing person searches, dangerous driving and welfare checks. The program has been cleared by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. Fremantle and Cottesloe are next in line for docks.
The launch follows a drone-in-a-box trial that ran for more than a year. WA Police picked a supplier for that pilot in 2024, aviation industry media reported at the time.
What the minister and commissioner say
Mr Whitby said no other Australian police force had gone this far with drones, and he had a blunt message for offenders.
"You won't see us coming, you won't hear us coming, but we'll be there in the air watching your every move." — Reece Whitby, Police Minister
He also moved to head off privacy concerns. He said the drones were "not a licence for police to watch the community" and were there to respond to real incidents, not to monitor everyday life.
Police Commissioner Col Blanch said the main benefit was getting a clear picture early, which shapes how police approach a job and where they send resources.
"The drone does not make the policing decisions. Our officers do." — Col Blanch, WA Police Commissioner
Why it matters
For people in Rockingham, Kwinana and Baldivis, a police drone overhead is about to become a normal sight. The pitch is speed. In a family violence call, a crash on Mandurah Road or a search for a missing child, a drone can reach the scene in the first few minutes, before the first car arrives.
The other side of the argument is the one Mr Whitby addressed head-on. Drones that can be sent anywhere from a city control room make some people uneasy about surveillance. The questions people are likely to ask are practical ones. Is footage recorded and kept? For how long? Who can see it? And what stops a drone being sent up when there is no specific incident? The Government's announcement says every deployment will be tied to an operational need. The detailed rules on footage and oversight are the part to watch as the program expands.
What happens next
The six southern drones are the first stage. Docks at Fremantle and Cottesloe are next, which would bring the program to the coastal suburbs that fill up over summer. The Government has not yet said publicly how many more locations will follow, or when.
Everything Perth will update this story when the Government's media statement and further details are released.
Photo: a Belgian Federal Police drone in Brussels, 2016 (file photo, not a WA Police drone), via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 public domain).
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