Aviation Week magazine named Raytheon Corp. and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as the recipients of its Laureate award on Friday for the development of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can gather life-saving data during hurricanes in near real-time.
The Raytheon Coyote UAV was developed for military use and can launch from the ground or air. It can fly 50 miles from its host aircraft into conditions that are too dangerous manned flights to gather data.
“Weather forecasters are able to better understand storm behavior and improve hurricane models based on the real-time information provided by our Coyotes,” Thomas Bussing, vice president of advanced missile systems at Raytheon, said. “Coyote UAVs are collecting and delivering robust storm data that could ultimately save lives.”
The Coyote UAV was used during Hurricane Maria last year. It was launched from an NOAA WP-3-# Orion hurricane hunter aircraft and transmitted data from critical areas of the hurricane to researchers in near real-time.
“We think unmanned technologies that explore dangerous and difficult to observe regions of the storm may improve our physical understanding, provide enhanced situational awareness and might ultimately improve the accuracy of hurricane intensity forecasts in the future,” Joseph Cione, a hurricane researcher at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory and principal investigator of NOAA’s Coyote project, said. “The Coyotes we deployed in Hurricane Maria collected critical, continuous observations in the lower part of the hurricane, an area impossible to reach with manned aircraft.”