Selected Questions of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Visibility

Abstract

The fundamental goal of this paper to show the historical background of unmanned aerial vehicles and their applications, and highlight those meteorological elements and phenomena, which have a key role in mission execution. Prioritizing the parameters which are not only directly obstructing the operations but also performing special missions. Out of these meteorological parameters perhaps the most important besides the low ceiling is visibility, which frequently limits surveillance, reconnaissance and monitoring tasks of unmanned aerial vehicles. This key role draws attention to the importance of visibility forecasts during meteorological support of UAV operations. Unfortunately the visibility forecasts have limitations at all of the basic methods and it has serious consequences in the performance of the forecasts. This paper shows these limitations and gives a recommendation to merge statistical and numerical forecast methods in order to dissolve the mentioned limitations.