WASHINGTON--For decades, U.S. government scientists have sliced specially equipped planes through hurricanes and other severe weather on a quest for crucial data to fuel weather forecasts. But in the future, drones are expected to do more and more of that work.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) wants to tap more and more unmanned planes like this Aerosonde model, seen here during a 2005 demo in Florida, to gather data from severe storms in ways that manned vehicles can't.
(Credit: NASA)In the coming years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration envisions acquiring and leasing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), a senior official said Friday at a conference here put on by the Association for Unmanned Vehicles International. They'll be tasked with monitoring everything from weather conditions and fires to ice melting in the Arctic and endangered marine mammals near Hawaii.
"We think the time has come," said Scott Ryder, chief of staff for NOAA's unmanned systems division. "We're going to do it with this technology, and we're on our way."
UAVs could prove a boon to NOAA's operations because traditional hurricane-hunting missions using manned WP-3D Orion or Gulfstream-IV jet aircrafts face numerous limitations, Ryder said.
For one thing, they can't descend too low in the storm because high winds can kick salt water up into the engines, causing damage and potentially endangering flight crews, although Ryder said no lives have been lost as a result of such accidents yet. Hurricane hunting aircraft also aren't as adept at predicting storms that are more than 72 hours away, which is a problem, since the Federal Emergency Management Agency would like to be able to make evacuation calls 96 hours in advance, Ryder said.
By contrast, a high-endurance UAV can remain in the eye of a storm for several hours and stay at altitudes as low as 80 meters, about 50 percent lower than a traditional hurricane-hunter's minimum altitude range.
Last November, NOAA sent an Aerosonde UAV into Hurricane Noel for 17 hours and 27 minutes, collecting 7.5 hours' worth of data from the storm's core. A handful of other demonstrations have occurred during the past few years. In 2009 and 2010, NOAA plans to work with NASA to study hurricanes using a UAV called the Global Hawk, which the U.S. Air Force has used extensively in combat.
For now, the UAV program is in its infancy, but some other projects have already begun in "testbeds" in the Arctic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico regions, Ryder said.
Compared with the Defense Department's $15 billion budget for unmanned systems this year, NOAA's share of the pie is a minuscule $3 million. But the agency has requested double that for next year, and Ryder said he expects spending to swell to $25 million to $30 million two or three years from now. (Ryder, for his part, did concede that as a political appointee, he most likely won't be around at that point.)
Beyond hurricane research, NOAA also plans to use UAVs to fill "critical gaps" in its existing satellite coverage, Ryder said. For example, it's not always possible to get complete climate information over the Pacific Ocean using satellites alone, he said.
Another potential use is monitoring so-called "atmospheric rivers," which can cause flooding rains NOAA found contributed to massive mudslides in Southern California in 2005. It also plans to work with NASA during the next few years to conduct missions in the Arctic and Antarctic to gather data about climate change.
WASHINGTON--Singapore may not occupy much more than a tiny dot on the world map, but it's counting on drones and other remote-controlled vehicles to make its military mighty.
As one of the world's busiest sea ports, the Asian city-state's "survival and prosperity depends on national security," Tan Peng Yam, deputy chief executive of the country's Defense Science &Technology Agency, told attendees at the first day of the annual North America symposium put on here by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
Singapore recently added this Israeli-made UAV to its Air Force fleet.
(Credit: Government of Singapore)Because a third of the world's trade--including 90 percent of China's trade and 80 percent of Japan's trade--flows through the bordering Straits of Malacca, the country of about 4.5 million people could find itself a "lucrative terrorist target," Yam said.
That's where the robotic vehicles come in. Since the late 1970s, shortly after the British withdrew from the colonial outpost, Singapore's military has been testing out unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in an attempt to make up for its limited human resources. They've now become "indispensable" for tackling the dreaded four d's of military missions--"the dull, dirty, dangerous and demanding" ones, that is, Yam said.
Earlier this year, the Singapore government unveiled plans to revamp its Air Force organization into five commands--including a new one devoted solely to building up UAV "expertise and capabilities." In late May, the Air Force added to its lineup Israeli-made Hermes 450 UAVs, which are designed for surveillance and have also been used by the British government and by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The country is also trying to get "people who never worked in defense before" interested in the robots, Yam said. The government announced a contest in January to build the best "urban warrior" robot, backed by a $1 million cash prize. The idea is for teams to devise an unmanned ground vehicle that's the swiftest at completing a sequence of tasks--climbing stairs, navigating pavement, moving along corridors, entering rooms and even operating elevators.
A country whose area is less than a quarter of Rhode Island's does encounter some unique challenges in its UAV rollout, though. "If a UAV goes out of control," Yam said, "it will go into our neighboring countries." (To help get around the skimpy-airspace problem, the government has taken to using a simulator.)
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