But perhaps most notably, the test day came at something of an inflection point for UAS technology. The data from the SØ drones (spoken as “S zero”) will be used in the agency’s hurricane models for the first time this hurricane season — a milestone for the agency’s efforts to improve forecasts with cutting-edge tools.
NOAA recently announced that a preliminary study found that inputting UAS data into its Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System improved the accuracy of the intensity forecast by 10%. As the hurricane season that began June 1 takes shape, better data could translate into information that saves lives.
The achievement is the exact thing that the emerging technologies team set out to accomplish when it began exploring the use of drones in hurricanes over a decade ago.
“This is the first year where it was really smooth, and that’s not a coincidence,” said Joe Cione, lead meteorologist for emerging technologies with the Hurricane Research Division at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Lab. “I think it’s from everything we learned before, and the Black Swift is just ready to go.”
The toolbox onboard
The flight took off into the clouds at roughly 10:50 a.m., and made its way toward a destination off Florida’s eastern coast — over 170 miles away from where NASA’s Artemis II mission launched just a week prior.
Over the Atlantic Ocean, the P-3 began low to the surface and spiraled up in altitude to prepare for the first drops and box patterns — a technique in which the plane flies in a box-like shape to get validation data from four different orientations to the wind.
Onboard, multiple tools were slated for deployment. While those devices sit in a broader ecosystem of hurricane-monitoring tech at NOAA that includes several types of uncrewed surface vehicles, ocean gliders, drifters and floats, they have the somewhat unique attribute of being designed to be deployed via airplane.
The Black Swift drones, for their part, are small and lightweight with a wingspan of about 4.5 feet and have the ability to fold neatly into tubes that serve as their vehicle out of the chute.
Once in the air, those tubes break open to release the small unmanned aircraft into the storm. Per unit, the drones cost about $20,000, Cione said, though that price is expected to decrease as the agency purchases larger batches.
