Remote Operated Aircraft Targets Hurricanes

burnin1965 writes "Usually news articles about remote operated UAVs involve blowing people up. NASA's application takes a different path and uses the utility of the aircraft for scientific research that will benefit humanity. I haven't read much about NASA's Global Hawk lately, but they have been busy providing up-close access to the recent string of hurricanes."

Comments

Re:UAVs are not normally used to 'blow people up'

[TooMuchToDo]

Depends. The original UAVs, the Predator and Global Hawk UAVs were not originally carrying anything except surveillance gear. Now, both the Predator and it's big brother the Reaper [http://www.google.com/search?q=Reaper+UAV] carry Hellfire missiles in day-to-day operations. I don't believe the Global Hawk does this though (although they are *great* for long range/loiter operations compared to the Predator/Reaper).