For all I talk about “The Mission” and airplanes being airplanes, I don’t really show off many of said missions. Let’s fix that.
This video came across my LinkedIn feed earlier this week and I think it’s pretty darn cool. It’s from a UAV manufacturing company called Black Swift Technologies, and shows one of their canister-launched aircraft being deployed into a tropical storm by NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
The video’s description includes a link to another video that provides a clearer, animated visual of the entire sequence, but here’s the run-down of what you’re seeing:
The canister containing the UAV gets pushed out of a hole in the belly of NOAA’s aircraft, a custom-modified Lockheed P-3 Orion (which were actually originally designed to be submarine hunting aircraft).
After a short descent to get away from the host aircraft, a small parachute deploys from one end of the canister to slow it down slightly, but primarily to stabilize it to make sure the correct end is pointing down (well, down-ish). Once the canister has been stabilized enough, it slides down and off to reveal the aircraft that was encased inside.
This shows off one of the bigger engineering challenges with any UAV that has to go in a canister or tube—how do you fold up your wings, tails, and other sticking-out parts to fit within your required canister diameter? For a brief moment at timestamp 0:11, you can see an aileron on the left side of the canister. If you watch closely, this is actually the aileron for the right wing, nestled on top of the left.
Once the canister shell is all the way off, the wings are able to pop open. And after a few seconds—likely for the autopilot to check that the wings and tails are locked into position—the bird is released from the canister “lid” and parachute to begin its flight.
So why is NOAA tossing tiny aircraft into tropical storms? These UAVs can do what almost nothing else can: they’re able to fly through the storm to collect real-time data on air pressure, temperature, humidity, and wind speed. They can even fly a few dozen feet above the surface of the ocean, which is right where tropical storms change their intensity.
The data collected is invaluable for informing tropical storm and hurricane forecast models. The more data that is collected from inside the storm, the better those models become, and this lets NOAA and other agencies provide more accurate and detailed storm warnings.
This particular UAV flew through the storm for 119 minutes. That’s two hours of data collection to inform a forecast that will help communities prepare and keep people safe.
All from a little four-pound airplane.