Fighter Jet Being Transformed from 'Tank Killer' to 'Storm Penetrator'

Fighter Jet Being Transformed from 'Tank Killer' to 'Storm Penetrator'

Quote:

November 17, 2011

Tornado chasing is already extreme, but it's about to be taken to a whole new level.

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced that it will spend more than $10 million on converting an A-10 Thunderbolt jet fighter, aka the "tank killer", into a severe storm penetrator.

Already hardened for wartime use, the A-10 will be able to endure incredibly severe enviroments as those found in intense severe thunderstorms, according to NSF's Brad Smull. From battering hail, high winds and lightning strikes, the A-10 will be able to handle it all.

This will not be the first aircraft to be flown into severe thunderstorms for the purpose of advancing science. The A-10 will actually be a replacement for the veteran T-28 military trainer, which was flown on storm chasing missions for 35 years before being grounded in 2005.

While the T-28 was successful in collecting data on variables such as wind speed, water vapor and electrical currents, the A-10 will be capable of carrying more instruments, flying higher and staying in storms longer than the T-28, according to sciencemag.org.

"We are very excited about the A-10's capabilities," said Sonia Lasher-Trapp with Purdue University in a live chat on ScienceNOW Thursday. "We have the need to �see' inside the storms - the rain, the ice, the hail - and this aircraft will help us do that, in stronger storms than we've ever sampled before."

The main goal with the project is to advance the science of meteorology by gaining a better understanding of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes so that more accurate forecasts and warnings can be issued to save lives and property.

"Right now we can forecast the potential for severe storms to have damaging wind, hail, lightning and tornadoes, but much more needs to be learned to refine and improve these forecasts," explained Lasher-Trapp. "The improvements we seek must come in part from better data collection inside the storms, with which we can test our ideas, models, and interpretations of other meteorological data."

She continued, "The potential payoff is huge: What if you could forecast lightning from a given storm, and someday be able to warn the public that the storms on a particular summer afternoon are going to be especially electrical, or say with high certainty that really big hailstones will fall? No promises that these answers will come very soon, but those would be some of the ultimate goals."

The NSF hopes the A-10 will be ready for initial use and testing as soon as 2013.