UAVs

Practical applications of the UAV are wide and varied. I think I came up with a pretty comprehensive list;
Military Reconnaissance, instant access to intelligence, emergency response, search and rescue, forensics, traffic accident reconstruction, GIS mapping, arial surveys, environmental monitoring and crowd control.
The civilian purposes that the UAV is currently used for in the United States are; Hurricane hunting, 3-D mapping, Protecting wildlife populations and wildlife management. In other countries they are used for treating farmland (Japan) and Search and Rescue (Canada).
Civilian UAVs are regulated with a Certificate of Authorization given by the FAA. This is currently only granted to federal, state and local governments. It is also restricted so that they can only be flown in specified areas. The restrictions are; Flight below 400 ft. AGL, Daytime ops in VFR, Range limited to visual line of sight and greater than 5 miles from an airport.
Today the FAA is fighting to allow commercial drones in NAS by 2015. They hope to have 7,500 of them certified to be in air space by 2020. According to a report done by aeryon.com on May 14, 2012, the FAA is actively trying to integrate unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). Their main focus is on safety and streamlining the process for the Certificate of Authorization (COA). They are promoting the UAS for public safety use such as search and rescue. They say this is a viable option. I think the logistical problems would be making sure that they are used by professionals, not recreationally, so they can control their useable space.  That way they will not cause problems with civilian safety. I believe the perception would be that they are being used to invade our privacy. I think Americans are very particular about the invasion of privacy by the government.
The UAVs have transformed our military strategy when they became lethal. The traditional mission was intelligence gathering and guiding weapons to their targets. Now the focus is on intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, suppression of enemy air defense and counter-air. Now that we can attack with it, it seems easier to be misused because their is no moral or ethical lines that may be blurred by seeing the aftermath of your attack.
Integration would be efficient financially because the initial cost and operating expenses are low. However because we need to regulate these and have safety concerns, the cost would be significantly higher because of the need for trained professionals to fly and operate them. Ethically I feel there is too much room to abuse these. Americans are not typically responsible with using things recreationally in a safe and effective manner. Once the door opens, it is hard to keep tight controls and safety standards. UAVs are wonderful for being able to get information quickly and efficiently in the field. Being unable to easily control a UAV causes problems with being able to complete a task properly and getting the data that needs to be used.
There are current jobs available for civilian use of UAVs in flight and in management at jobs.uavjobbank.com.