Manned Aircraft is much more expensive than drones, especially fuel cost. You can get like a DJI drone for like around $2000 (there are cheaper ones, but then you have to fly closer, since the cameras sucks on the cheaper ones) with good enough cameras to see the license plates by flying just hovering outside of the edge of the highway (so that, if it fails for some reason, it falls outside of the highway and doesn’t affect the traffic), and angle it towards the highway, and you’ll see all the license plates clearly, and with the help of the distance markers on the side of the road, determine their speed. As long as they don’t crash the drones, they are gonna last a long time, and if batteries are worn out, they can just get new ones. It’s not exactly “cheap”, but the government has a lot of budget. Getting like 20 of these can cover a lot of area. You don’t have to catch every one, just enough to make people think again before trying to speed. And randomly change the locations of patrol so there is no way to predict where they are being watched.

Also, they can get like some expensive ones, some cheap ones, mix and match. The cheaper ones will have trouble getting a clear license plate if it also have to keep a safe distance, but the people don’t know which drones are the expensive ones, get like 20 DJI Mavics, 40 DJI Mini 2 SE, mix them up. Think of like having real cameras mixed in with fake cameras.

I know it looks expensive, but just look at the police budget and it’s barely a dent. Cut out all of those “riot suppression” (aka: protest suppression) stuff from the budget and you got a lot of budget to work with.

As for manpower, redirect those writing tickets in the city, and teach them how to fly these drones. Parking violations have basically zero harm, fuck that shit, speeding has more potential to cause harm than parking violations.