Title: Hurricane Hunters from NOAA and the Air Force Face the Growing
Storm

Related work: GAO-25-107210, Hurricane Hunter Aircraft: NOAA and Air
Force Should Take Steps to Meet Growing Demand for Reconnaissance
Missions  

Description: On this special episode of the Watchdog Report, we'll
listen in on a conversation between GAO Director Cardell Johnson and his
team, who worked on a new report that looks at some of the challenges
Hurricane Hunters are facing as weather events become more frequent and
severe. 

Released: March 2025

{Music}

[Eli:] Satellites can give you a suggestion of what's going on, but
Hurricane Hunter planes tell you what's happening.

[Holly Hobbs:] To better understand and predict tropical cyclones and
winter storms, NOAA and the U.S. Air Force fly aircraft, known as
Hurricane Hunters, directly into and above these storms. 
On this special episode of the Watchdog Report, we'll listen in on a
conversation between GAO Director Cardell Johnson and his team, who have
a new report out that looks at the work and some of the challenges
Hurricane Hunters are facing as weather events become more frequent and
severe. 
Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report

[Cardell Johnson:] 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. 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 by NOAA and Air Force
aircraft that go into tropical cyclones like hurricanes or tropical
storms, and also into the 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 to develop their forecasts, to help
determine evacuation areas, to help determine warnings and watches.

[Cardell Johnson:] So like one of the questions I know we had when we
first began this review, will be "Okay, why are we flying planes with
humans on them into these 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 it ended up being a
category five. So that helped, prepare people for evacuations, so that
really shows the value of Hurricane Hunter planes.

[Cardell Johnson:] One of the concerns that Congress had, when they
asked us to do this work is about why, is the, NOAA in 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 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 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. And 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, so 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 Johnson:] Yeah. 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 have less
confidence in their forecast. 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 there's social
consequences, 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 a 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 the emergency
management officials as well. 

[Cardell Johnson:] 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.
So can we talk a little bit about some of the significant challenges
that we described in our report? 

[Eli:] One other place we also visited, the Aircraft Operations Center
for NOAA, in Lakeland, Florida. And I think 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, we're starting to really feel that strain because the demand
for missions has just increased so much more. So they're really
struggling to go from six 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
structures largely stayed the same. So they're actively 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 Johnson:] So doing our oversight work, right, especially when
there's multiple agencies involved in a particular program or operation,
you often see, some issues related to that coordination and
collaboration. Scott, can you talk a little bit about some of those,
coordination, 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 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 the flights
happen. So, I think at a daily basis, we found really very, very strong,
coordination. I think at a longer-term basis, Josh, we--it was kind of 
a different story for us. 

[Josh:] At the senior leadership levels, so above the folks who were
doing the flights, but and the senior leadership for Air Force and NOAA,
they're not communicating with each other about their plans for their
respective Hurricane Hunter programs. 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 the 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. And 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, 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 in more of a
siloed approach without talking to each other. So, we had a
recommendation, in our report to try to address that. 

[Cardell Johnson:] What is NOAA and Air Force's plan to sort of address
more of these challenges? 

[Scott:] In the case of NOAA, they are undertaking, a big effort to
replace their whole fleet of aircraft. And 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. 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 know you looked into some of
their 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 to 10 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 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
goes down, either because of maintenance issues or the staff are
unavailable, those missions generally, there's not going to be backup
available to fly those high-altitude missions. So with that, the new
planes that NOAA is planning to acquire, they're going to be acquiring
two of those planes to be able to actually have some backup
capabilities. 

[Cardell Johnson:] 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 check out
our report, and read the eight recommendations that we make to the Air
Force and to NOAA. Thank you very much for listening.

[Holly Hobbs:] Yes! Thank you for listening to this special edition of
the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen. And make sure to leave a rating and
review to let others know about the work we're doing. For more from the
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us at GAO.gov.