Weather Service

Abstract

This budget activity funds operational development necessary to acquire, sustain, and enhance segments of the Air Force Weather Weapon System (AFWWS). Activities also include studies and analysis to support current program planning. Management Service costs include Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC) and Advisory and Assistance Service (A&AS). AFWWS provides timely, accurate, consistent and relevant space and atmospheric (a.k.a. terrestrial) weather information for global battlespace situational awareness. AFWWS supports worldwide operations of Air Force and Army warfighters, Special Operation Forces, and other government agencies with weather observing and forecasting capabilities at in-garrison and deployed locations, as well as centralized, reach-back capabilities. AFWWS activities align under four capability areas: Weather Data Collection, Weather Data Analysis and Dissemination, Weather Forecasting, and Product Tailoring/Warfighter Applications. This alignment ensures an integrated and systems-oriented approach to program management decisions. Next Generation Radar (NEXRAD) is a tri-agency program between the National Weather Service, Federal Aviation Administration and the US Air Force that operates 159 WSR-88D Doppler weather radars throughout the United States, two territories and select overseas military locations. The Weather Data Analysis (WDA) program of record provides a large-scale data processing, product generation, and presentation system supporting Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services architecture and providing capability to ingest, process, store, access, and disseminate meteorological oceanographic (METOC) data. DoD Warfighter Capability/Benefits include the following; centralized Weather Web Service capability, increased availability of weather impacts and products, improved global, regional, and execution forecasts, specific, mission-tailored weather data on demand, and finally integrated M2M interfaces that shorten the COCOM kill chain. Weather Forecasting provides advanced scientific numerical weather prediction capabilities for automated, high resolution forecast products for mission execution, rehearsal, and planning. Weather Forecasting includes projects for Numerical Weather Modeling (NWM); Weather Services - Live, Virtual, Constructive (WS-LVC) and the Space Weather Analysis and Forecast System. Space Weather and Forecasting Systems (SWAFS) is a custom developed suite of software that rapidly ingests, processes and stores all available space environmental data, and disseminates products DoD-wide. It provides space weather products to decision makers in support of 1) Satellite operations, 2) Predictions of HF & UHF/SHF (SATCOM) communications outages, 3) GPS inaccuracies in navigation, 4) Tracking objects like satellites, debris, projectiles in space and forecasts for radar outages and early warning radar false launch indications, 5) National, strategic, operational & tactical intelligence collection, 6) Radiation forecasts for high altitude space flight operations. SWAFS will integrate with the Global Assimilation of Ionosphere Measurement -Full Physics (GAIM-FP) application and provide enhancements to Air Force Weather's communication outage forecasting capability. This program is in Budget Activity 7, Operational System Development, because this budget activity includes development efforts to upgrade systems that have been fielded or have received approval for full rate production and anticipate production funding in the current or subsequent fiscal year.

Document Details

• Document Type: Project
• Publication Date: Oct 01, 2018
• Source ID: 672738_0305111F_7_3600_PB_2018

Tags

Fields of Study

• Environmental science

Readers

• Aerospace Engineering.
• Atmospheric Science/Meteorology
• Enterprise Information Systems Architecture and Joint Command Capability Interoperability Support.

Technology Areas

• Space
• Space - Satellites