There's also the fact that this is optimizing for power usage in the air, when really what we'll want to optimize for most likely is power usage while doing some specific task in the air, and that task may necessitate specifics of what altitudes it can function at.
That's the real challenge. Being able to, for example, loiter over a suspected clanlab 24/7 for a month to gather evidence is far more taxing than flying an optimized route.
