Drones for intercepting lightning
The Japanese are demonstrating lightning rod drones to intercept lightning strikes in flight.
They say that lightning causes up to $1.4 billion in damage to the country every year, and regular lightning rods cannot protect everywhere, so the idea is not as useless as it might seem at first glance.
The idea is that the copters will be launched in bad weather and take the hit, while redirecting energy to ground batteries.