If it were possible to safely jettison one or more depleted batteries from a drone during flight, the range or flight duration could be increased. Similar "staging" techniques are used during multi-stage rocket flight, dropping tip tanks from an aircraft or ballast from a hot air balloon, etc.
A few thoughts/ideas;
DETACHMENT
For safety reasons, the each drone battery should be electrically "detached" from the drone first followed by the physical jettison. The jettison time could be (1) pre-programmed in the flight software, (2) the pilot could control the jettison or (3) the battery could be jettisoned over a pre-determined geographic area of interest (AOI) . To reduce possible attitude perturbations during the jettison, the center-of-gravity of each "JettBatt" should be as close to the entire vehicle CG as possible.
RECOVERY
Parachute recovery of the jettisoned battery is probably the preferred method of battery recovery. The landing speed using a simple steamer could be quite high. Of course, the drone could also descend to a "reasonable" altitude or land and literally drop the battery.
Since batteries can be costly, a method for locating the JettBatt on the ground is necessary. A GPS locator or beacon could be included with the JettBatt. The drone operator could also note the telemetered GPS coordinates of the vehicle when the JettBatt is released. Or perhaps a nice physical hike is in order.
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