Saturday, August 14, 2010

Military surveillance drone switched from protecting our troops in mid east death trap to researching rarely occurring clouds under NASA/NOAA

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US Air Force transfers surveillance drone from protecting our military to studying US weather patterns that rarely occur.
"The federal government is preparing to launch a study to solve one of the most vexing questions about hurricanes: Why do some storm systems rapidly intensify into destructive cyclones,
  • while most remain weak?
Starting this week, a squadron of manned and unmanned aircraft is poised to investigate an
  • intriguing theory
New to the data collection effort this year is the Global Hawk, a high-altitude, jet-powered unmanned surveillance drone about the size of a corporate jet.
  • The aircraft - given to NASA by the Air Force -
will launch missions from Dryden, Calif., fly over the U.S.-Mexico border, and then into the Gulf of Mexico. Unlike a piloted craft, which must return to land so the crew can rest, it can spend 24 hours on station, Marks said.
  • While forecasters are hoping to catch a storm in formation, they know that most won't.
  • "We're going to sample a lot of duds," he said. ...
The combined fleet of manned aircraft and unmanned high-altitude surveillance drones, able to drop probes deep into the clouds,
  • will be able to send back a real-time, wide-ranging image of an entire storm system,
  • not just observations from a single plane or distant satellite.
"The reason we're sampling the whole domain with this many aircraft is that we can get a better idea of what these embryonic systems look like, said Frank Marks, the director of
AP story via 106.5FM radio website, Mobile Alabama. photo of Iraq soldier crying from ColorLine News

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