From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Hurricane Hunters: Improvements Needed in Operations, Planning, and Communication Description: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Air Force fly aircraft, known as Hurricane Hunters, into tropical cyclones and winter storms. These aircraft collect critical data to help forecast a storm's track and intensity. But limited aircraft availability and staffing shortages have impacted these efforts. GAO Director Cardell Johnson and his team discuss a new GAO report on Hurricane Hunter aircraft. Related Work: GAO-25-107210, Hurricane Hunter Aircraft: NOAA and Air Force Should Take Steps to Meet Growing Demand for Reconnaissance Missions Released: March 2025 [ START ] {Music} [ Cardell Johnson, director: ] Why are we flying planes with humans on them into these storms? Why don't we use drones or satellites? [ Eli, Analyst: ] Satellites can give you a suggestion of what's going on. But hurricane hunter planes tell you what's happening. [ Josh, Senior Analyst: ] These planes are flying in the harshest conditions you can imagine. Most airplanes fly away from storms. These planes are going right into the storms, and really, they're taking a beating. The mission has expanded, but the number of hurricane hunter planes stayed the same. [ Eli, Analyst: ] They're one illness or injury away from having to cancel missions. [ Cardell Johnson: ] What is NOAA's and Air Force's plan to address more of these challenges? [ Scott, Assistant Director: ] A big effort to replace their whole fleet of aircraft. [ Josh: ] At the senior leadership level for Air Force and NOAA, they're not communicating with each other. {Music} [ Cardell: ] Hello, everyone. I'm Cardell Johnson, a director here at the United States Government Accountability Office. And today, I'm excited to talk with you about some recent oversight work that we've done on Hurricane Hunters. Yes, you heard that correctly. So did you know that the federal government has two agencies, the Air Force under the Department of Defense, as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They both share a joint mission that fly planes into the eye of a hurricane to collect critical data that is used for forecasting, and that feeds into the emergency alert system. Now, Congress has asked GAO to take a look at the Hurricane Hunter program because they had concerns about the aging planes, as well as some of the workforce issues. So, Josh, can you talk about what is a mission? And what sort of data does NOAA and the Air Force collect when they go on these missions? [ Josh: ] Absolutely. So missions are flights, like you mentioned, by NOAA and Air Force aircraft, that go into tropical cyclones like hurricanes or tropical storms, and also into winter storms like atmospheric rivers to collect data from the storms--a range of things like information, wind speed and direction, precipitation. And all the information that the planes collect are fed to the forecasters from the weather service that then they use that information, develop their forecasts to help determine evacuation areas, to help to determine warnings and watches. [ Cardell: ] So like one of the questions I know we had when we first began this review, and probably a lot of the viewers have, will be 'okay, why are we flying planes with humans on them into these, like, storms? Why don't we use drones or satellites?' So, Eli, can you speak to that a little bit? [ Eli: ] Yeah. Of course. So what we learned, from our conversations with NOAA and Air Force officials, is that the data collected by the hurricane hunter planes is irreplaceable and cannot be replicated by satellites or drones. And as one NOAA official put it, it's like satellites can give you a suggestion of what's going on, but hurricane hunter planes tell you what's happening inside the storm. So, we heard a lot about Hurricane Otis, which I believe was in 2023, in Acapulco. So, it hit Acapulco, and once the plane was able to get in, they found that the hurricane was actually rapidly intensifying and ended up being a Category five. So that helped, you know, prepare people evacuations. So that really shows the value of hurricane hunter planes. [ Cardell: ] One of the concerns that Congress had, when they asked us to do this work is about 'why, is the, NOAA and the Air Force missing some of their missions?' And I think in particular, this came to a head with one of the hurricanes in 2023, Adelia, where some of the, one of the planes were not able to fly. They were grounded. And so that led to a lot of questions about like why missions are being missed. So, can we talk a little bit about the missed missions here? [ Josh: ] In talking to folks at the agencies what we heard generally, when missions are missed, it's usually because of 1 or 2 reasons, either aircraft issues like maintenance problems with the planes or the planes are aging. You know, the two of the NOAA planes are actually 50-plus years old at this point. And these planes are flying in the harshest conditions you can imagine. Most airplanes, they fly away from storms. These planes are like, you're going right into the storms and really they're taking a beating. And so you have old aircraft flying in harsh conditions. Things are breaking a lot. You have supply chain issues. It's hard to repair the planes because they are so old. So, you might have aircraft that are down. Then the other issue that can cause missed missions are staffing shortages. That's an issue that affects both NOAA and Air Force. [ Cardell: ] Yeah. So just for the benefit of the viewers, can you talk a little bit about like what's the consequence of a missed mission? [ Josh: ] You have less accurate forecasts and the forecasters are less confident in their forecasts. So, when they're talking to the local and state officials, those officials know the forecasters may not be as sure about exactly where the storm is going to make landfall or how strong it's going to be at landfall. So that can then translate into having the officials make larger evacuation areas to be on the safe side to make sure that people stay safe. And when you evacuate folks, you know, there's social consequences and economic consequences. You want those evacuations to be as targeted as possible. [ Scott: ] Yeah. I mean, when we were at the Hurricane Center, they talked about the precision that you can give an evacuation order is really important. The difference between having to evacuate a single county versus multiple counties, it's much harder to evacuate larger areas and it's much more disruptive. So, the more confidence and the more precise a forecast can be for a storm, it really helps to benefit, you know, the emergency management officials as well. [ Cardell: ] Yeah. So, you know, we do our oversight work, you know, we like to, to get out of Washington, right? And we like to go to, various sites. So for this job, you know, we were able to get down to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. We also went over to the National Hurricane Center, over in Miami, Florida. And we were doing this so we could get a sense of some of the challenges that they face in administration. So, can we talk a little bit about some of the significant challenges that we describe in our report? [ Eli: ] One other place, we also visited, the Aircraft Operations Center for NOAA in Lakeland, Florida. And I think kind of what came out of that is just, like, for me, the biggest takeaway was just how the staff there, the maintenance and the aircrews, are so dedicated to their work and have been doing it for so long. But at the same time are starting to really feel that strain because of how important the data is. The demand for missions has just increased so much more. So, they're really struggling to go from 6-month operations during the hurricane season to now year-round with the addition of the winter season operations. So, NOAA described it as like we're often one illness or injury away from having to cancel missions. [ Josh: ] The mission has expanded, but the number of hurricane hunter planes has stayed the same, and the number of staff and staffing structure has largely stayed the same. So they're being asked to do a lot more with the same resources, which is stretching everyone thin. And both, you know, that puts more wear on the planes themselves and also on the staff. [ Cardell: ] So doing our oversight work, right, especially when there's multiple agencies involved in a particular program or operation, you often see, you know, some issues related to that coordination and collaboration. So, Scott, can you talk a little bit about some of those, coordination and collaboration challenges that we heard? [ Scott: ] I think, on a day-to-day basis, we've found very strong collaboration between the Air Force and NOAA. When a forecaster has a request for information on a particular storm that is fed to an entity. It's actually an Air Force entity that is co-located at the Hurricane Center. And then that group works to coordinate with both NOAA and Air Force to try to figure out which planes are able to fly. And they help to make to make the flights happen. So, I think at a daily basis, we found really very, very strong coordination. I think at a longer-term basis, you know, I know Josh, it was kind of a different story for us. [ Josh: ] At the, the senior leadership level, so above the folks who are doing the flights. But the senior leadership for Air Force and NOAA, they're not communicating with each other about their plans for their respective Hurricane Hunter programs. You have both agencies have different plans for NOAA's case to actually acquire new aircraft, and then for Air Force's case to upgrade their existing aircraft. One NOAA senior official described it to us, she used an analogy of 'if you're trying to build a house and you had two crews--each building one half of a house without talking to each other--and just hoping that when they bring the two halves of the house together. That all the electrical wires, the plumbing, all the systems are going to connect and work properly. Odds are that's not going to happen.' So, for the Hurricane Hunter program, it really would be better is to have senior leadership from both NOAA and Air Force talking to each other. You're discussing what the needs are so that collectively they can meet the needs of the nation for this aerial reconnaissance and have more of a government-wide approach to the long-term investments rather than having each agency doing it and more of a siloed approach without talking to each other. So, we had a recommendation in our report to try to address that. [ Cardell: ] What is NOAA's and Air Force's plan to sort of address, you know, more of these challenges? [ Scott: ] In the case of NOAA, they are undertaking a big effort to replace their whole fleet of aircraft. And they're partway through that process. I would say they're kind of at the beginning stages of that process. But it's going to involve replacing both their plane that flies above the storms and then also their planes that fly into the storms. And they have begun to receive some appropriations. They have a recapitalization plan that they have decided upon. None of the--a few of the planes are getting close to being utilized. But it's still going to be a few years before that gets rolled out. And I think, you know, in the case of Air Force, they don't have any plans to replace their aircraft at this time. But we did have some discussions, you know, Eli, I know, you looked into that a little bit, some of their, you know, efforts to update their aircraft. [ Eli: ] So, one thing that came out and I think this touches on the coordination piece, the Air Force and the NOAA have very different capabilities on their aircraft. So, the challenge that the Air Force faces is trying to have the same technological capabilities that NOAA has on their aircraft. But because when we talk to the Air Force, we talked about how it can take anywhere from 5 to10 years to include a new capability onto their aircraft. So I know one thing was the communications bandwidth, that they've been working on since 2011. So, you know, it just kind of shows that this is kind of what happens when you have two different, very different agencies, have the hurricane hunter planes. [ Josh: ] And one thing I wanted to add, that Scott mentioned about for NOAA's plans to acquire new aircraft, we haven't talked about this yet, but one of the challenges we heard about for, for NOAA is that we mentioned that they have an aircraft that flies these high elevation, high-altitude missions above the storms. But they only have one of those aircraft, and the Air Force doesn't have any of those. So if that plane is goes down, either because of maintenance issues or the staff are unavailable, those missions generally, there's not going be backup available to fly those high altitude missions. So, with the new planes that NOAA's planning to acquire, they're going to be acquiring two of those planes to be able to actually have some backup capabilities. [ Cardell: ] See, I told y'all this would be fascinating. We could talk about this all day. But if you'd like to learn more about the work that we did here, dive a little deeper into all these challenges that we discussed, we'd encourage you to visit our website, GAO.gov, where you can check out our report, and read the 8 recommendations that we make to the Air Force and to NOAA. Thank you very much for listening. Have a good day. [END] For more info, check out our report GAO-25-107210 at GAO.gov