jaxfladude wrote:**Sorry if this post is too much off topic but hopefully relevant enough.**
Are there any projects/plans or testing/prototypes of a unnamed aerial drone(ie like ones used for military) for hurricane reconnaissance?
Or does the nature of hurricanes/tropical systems that require onboard human controlled flights?
Man, the US needs newer planes and/or more updated/better maintenance for the fleet of Hurricane Hunters....better funding....
rant over
Back to Ida, hopefully this will be less than forecast but still time for for Ida to get bigger/stronger/more dangerous at landfall...Prayers....
Around five years or so ago, NASA had a Global Hawk that was used for hurricane-related data collection:
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/aircraft/GlobalHawk/index.html
It definitely isn't the kind of aircraft you'd want to fly into a storm, by any means, but it has a good high-altitude capability and a long loiter time, both of which could be good for collecting environmental data around a storm. I don't know its current status, though.
