Drone ROI in Des Moines: Savings, Hours and Payback

What is drone ROI in Des Moines and where does the return come from?

Drone ROI in Des Moines is the return a business earns when a drone takes over work a person would otherwise do, measured against a lease payment. For most sites in this metro, that work is scheduled perimeter and yard patrol, lot checks and alarm verification that security guards handle now. The return is not a cut to the whole security budget. It is the share of guard hours a drone can cover reliably, valued at the local wage for this job.

Three things produce the return. Hours a drone takes over can free existing guards for work only a person can do, or let you staff fewer posts. A drone can also cover the ground between fixed posts, so the people you keep stand where a person is needed. An unfilled shift is a coverage cost of its own, and a drone that holds a route through a vacancy protects that coverage. A site assessment separates these three, because each moves the number differently.

What does the local wage data say about guard labor?

The government wage data on this page is the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics series for security guards in the Des Moines-West Des Moines metro, May 2024. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes that metro table, and the panel beside this text shows the local wage for this job. The savings range is priced on that wage, so the labor side of the estimate reflects this market rather than a national average.

We did not retrieve the local count of guards from the metro table in this research pass, so this page does not state how many guards work in the metro. Nationally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 5,100 more jobs for security guards and gambling surveillance officers combined from 2024 to 2034. A May 2021 count put the national guard workforce at about 1.06 million. Those are national figures, and they describe a large job with modest projected growth. The typical headcount on this page assumes one guard per post, a working assumption rather than a sourced count.

How does the drone ROI math work?

The math has four inputs. The first is the guard hours per week that a drone can take over on your route. The second is the share of those hours a drone can cover without a person, since a drone that flies only part of a patrol still needs a guard for the rest. The third is the local wage for this job, which sets what each hour is worth. The fourth is the lease cost, quoted as a fixed robot lease payment after the site assessment and set against the hours.

The offset is easy to state and easy to get wrong. Take the hours a drone covers, keep only the share that does not still need a person, value that at the local wage, then compare it with the lease payment plus any guard time that stays on site during go-live. A drone that covers half a route while the same two guards still stand on it saves little labor, which is why the share matters more than the headline hours.

One vendor's chief executive, quoted in a 2025 security news report, said robots can navigate about 90 percent of a typical patrol while people still verify every threat. That is a vendor claim about its own deployments, not a measured result at your facility. Test it on your own route rather than carrying it into the math.

How much of a guard's shift can a drone realistically take?

The honest answer depends on the task, not the job title. Drones handle repeated, scheduled passes over a fixed route, in daylight and after dark, and they can report anything out of place from a camera feed. They are weaker where a decision needs a person, such as confronting someone, checking a door that must be physically tried or handling a medical problem. Most sites end up with a split: the drone takes the repeated passes, and a guard takes verification and response.

The same 2025 report described one remote employee supervising six to eight robots across several sites, and a vendor deploying about 50 robots across roughly 25 customers. Those are one vendor's figures and describe its deployments, not a benchmark for a Des Moines site. They do show the pattern that matters: one person can watch several patrols, so the saving comes from patrols that no longer need a guard standing on them.

Adoption is still early outside the largest operations. A 2025 survey of first responders, not security firms, found that nearly half expect daily drone and robotics use within five years. That is an expectation, not current practice, and it should not be read as evidence that patrol drones are already routine at sites like yours.

Why does turnover change the return?

Turnover is a cost in security work that does not show up in the hourly wage. According to UC Berkeley Labor Center figures, as cited in a news report, annual turnover in the security industry was 89 percent in 2024, against a 66 percent private-sector average, and above that average every year for a decade. We did not open the original Berkeley report, so treat these figures as reported rather than checked.

A second summary from a workforce software blog reports 50.8 percent security industry turnover in 2023, against 38.4 percent for the overall workforce. The blog does not name the original survey, so use it only as a directional check. Both sources point the same way: a security operation that loses people covers open posts with overtime, temporary staff or gaps in patrols.

Turnover helps the return in one specific way. A drone that holds a route through a vacancy keeps coverage steady while you hire, and it lets the staff you keep spend time on work only a person can do. It does not remove recruiting cost, so do not model it as if it did. Model the return on hours first, then add vacancy coverage as a separate line that your own roster supports.

What changes the number up or down?

Route shape matters most. One long perimeter that a drone flies end to end produces more usable hours than a cluster of short posts, because each short post adds setup and handoff time. Hours after dark, in bad weather or in airspace with limits also change the number, since a grounded drone leaves the guard on the route.

Wage and vacancy history push the number up. A higher local wage for this job raises the value of each hour, and a history of open posts raises the value of the coverage a drone holds steady. Pushing it down are short routes, frequent alarms that need a person to verify, and a start date set before the route has been proven on the ground.

What are the risks to the return and how do you avoid them?

The largest risk is regulatory. The FAA's Part 108 rule for routine beyond-visual-line-of-sight flight was, as of September 8, 2026, still under White House review, after its statutory deadline of January 16, 2026 and an executive order deadline of about February 1, 2026 had both passed. Until the rule takes effect, routine flight beyond visual line of sight needs a Part 107 waiver or a Part 135 certificate, and a docked security patrol is that kind of flight.

Avoid the regulatory risk by phasing the work. Start with the portions of the route that current rules allow, keep guards on the full route until the waiver or certificate path is confirmed, and ask the quote to state what changes if the rule does. Federal review timing is outside any site's control, so plan the return on a range that still holds without a rule change.

The operational risks are weather, lighting, camera coverage and who watches the feed. A drone that cannot see, or that has no one watching at night, hands hours back to the guards, and the return falls. Ask for the backup and dispatch arrangement in writing before you sign.

How long does it take from assessment to payback?

The timeline runs in phases. The site assessment comes first and covers the route survey, the hours inventory and the regulatory check. The assessment is free, and the lease payment is quoted after it. Next come deployment and integration, staff training, and a go-live period where guards and the drone run the route together.

Payback is the point where the cumulative hours the drone covers, valued at the local wage for this job, exceed the lease payment plus the guard time that stays on the route during go-live. Payback therefore depends on how fast the drone reaches steady hours, so the go-live period matters more than the signing date. We do not give a payback month before the assessment, because a month without the route behind it is a guess.

How do you get a precise figure from a free site assessment?

We are a US commercial robot integrator. We choose the robot for the site, lease it through financing, deploy and integrate it, train the staff who work with it, and service it nationwide. That gives you one partner for the lease, the setup and the repairs, which matters when a route is down at night.

To make the assessment precise, bring the post orders, the guard schedule for the route, the alarm log for recent months, a site plan, the hours of darkness, and any building or airspace limits. With those, the range narrows to a figure you can test against your own roster and budget.

The assessment returns a route map, the share of hours a drone can take over, a lease quote and the go-live steps. If the numbers do not support a drone on your site, the assessment should say so, and that is a useful result too.