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For further information, please visit The Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO) Uncrewed Systems Program webpage.

NOAA UAS Program Hosts the FY17 Project Kick-Off Webinar

Nine NOAA teams were awarded funding to explore the use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to capture NOAA observation requirements.

The NOAA Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Program hosted NOAA UAS Program FY17 Project Kick-Off on June 15th to congratulate the winning teams and outline the UAS Program’s requirements for this year’s Principle Investigators (PI).  UAS Program Director, Robbie Hood, led the webinar with support briefing from OMAO and AOC.  Robbie focused on the engineering reviews, reporting requirements, and preparations for the Mission Concept Review (MCR) which will be an opportunity to more openly discuss the strategy for each project to capture any objectives/observation requirements and lead to Research to Operations (R2O) transition opportunities.

Background
The overall goal of the projects across all of its objectives will be to identify UAS observing strategies or technologies that can be developed, tested and matured for transition into NOAA operations by one or more Line Offices. A UAS observing strategy is simply how a Line Office will use UAS observations to meet its mission. Based on observing requirements, the basic elements of a UAS observing strategy include: 

  • Platform selection, 
  • Payload selection, 
  • A concept of operations, 
  • Information management plan, 
  • Life-cycle management plan and 
  • Staffing, safety, training and proficiency plans.

The NOAA UAS Program will be next hosting a UAS coordination webinar with the FY16 Projects to capture lessons learned and best practices from the FY16 UAS season.

Fig 1.