Maybe a year and a half ago, there were reports of fleets of drones patrolling/maneuvering over the eastern Colorado plains. They did it at night, and were flying in regular grid orientations - choreographed mapping was the best explanation I read. The funny thing was, there was nothing out there except vacant land, barren pasture and sparse crops. No potential targeting and no place for the drones to hide when daylight returned.
If you think about it, mapping isn't a productive use for them. Sure they can maybe learn to deal with ground variations at low levels, but there are other more effective/efficient means of data acquisition - assuming gaps in coverage even exist now. Instead I'd posit that these are exercises in machine learning where the drone fleets are learning how to act in concert with each other.
I'm certain we won't be happy when we learn the why part though.
Good point. Seems any of that land would pull up on a real estate website.