Thailand: For the past month, planes from many airfields around Thailand have daily been flying out for a mission of great importance to Thailand, the war on drought, the worst in the Thai Kingdom since more than seven years.

Those Thai airplanes carry a payload of rainmaking chemicals, prepared to a special formula by the King of Thailand, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has taken personal command of the whole rain-making operation.

Pilots and crew-members from Thailand's rainmaking force, called Royal Rain Makers in Thailand, wear uniforms with the words "Cloud Attacker" on the shoulder patches of their flight jackets.

After filling up the plane with cloud-seeding chemicals, a small plane from Thailand's rain-making force takes of to gain an altitude of 5,000 feet (1,525 meters) chasing some small clouds. "Those small clouds can be hard to catch, when there is a strong", explains onboard technician Khun Jiti Tewan.

Once they plane is able to flight above the small clouds, the airplane starts spraying sodium chloride onto the clouds through a tube at the rear of the airplane. "These are small clouds, from which we try to create bigger clouds, by spraying them with chemicals to form a skeletal structure for water vapor to cling on to," Khun Jiti Tewan says.

"Now we have two more stages to go" Jiti Tewan adds, and a few moments later another aircraft takes a bumpy ride through the lower part of the formed cloud and starts spraying dry ice. "This is done to fatten the cloud and to concentrate the humidity in the cloud" Jiti Tewan explains.

A third airplane follows for the final run, spraying yet other chemicals that lower the cloud's temperature, which will eventually trigger the rainfall.

The drought in Thailand has already damaged 5.2 million acres (2 million hectares) of farmland, and caused 7.5 billion baht (US$191 million, Euro147 million) in losses for the farmers and the Thai economy. More than 9 million Thai people in 71 of Thailand's 76 provinces are affected by water shortages in Thailand this year.

Water reservoirs in Northeast Thailand, where most Thais people farm for a living, were down to less than 8% of capacity. Many people in the Northeast are relying on supplies of drinking water brought in by trucks. Needed irrigation of crops is completely out of question.

The 77-year-old revered King of Thailand called the Thai government's attention to the drought problem in early March, as water supplies in many provinces was becoming very critical. This led the government of Thailand to setup a special rain-making center at Hua Hin airfield, where the King's summer palace is located.

The Thai Monarch, who for decades has studied water management and artificial rainmaking took personally command of the center and have since begin March ordered more than 575 flights from the center and nine other airfields around Thailand.

Cloud seeding for rainmaking dates back to the 1940s and is still a controversial process among weather experts and scientists, with many claiming that its efficacy is limited and unproven. But it seems to work in Thailand, where the clouds attacked by the Thai Cloud Attackers nearly always produce rain.

Generally, it relies on such chemicals as silver iodide to form ice crystals that melt as they fall through a storm cloud.

In Thailand, cloud seeding is supervised by the Thai King, who is not only a promoter, but also the inventor of the used system. Based on King's decades of study and observation, he has come up with his own cloud seeding process and chemical formula, including silver iodide to form ice crystals that melt as they fall to the ground.

The Thai King's formula for rain-making, invented in the year 1971, has been patented in the Asia, the United States and Europe. Several Asian countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines are currently seeking technical assistance from Thailand for artificial rainmaking, as the rain-making operation proves very successful in Thailand.

A government report said that the rainmaking efforts has helped solve the drought problem in many provinces, but that more than 4,000 villages nationwide are still marked as "red zone", meaning that there is not enough water for human consumption, let alone for farming.