Weather Service

Abstract

This budget activity funds the operational development necessary to acquire, sustain, and modernize Air Force Weather Service (AFWS) capabilities in support of the 2018 National Defense Strategy's (NDS) three lines of effort. To improve readiness for a more lethal force, AFWS provides timely, accurate, resilient, and relevant environmental information to enable global battlespace situational awareness for Air Force (AF), Army, Special Operations Forces (SOF), Space Force (USSF), combatant commands, the Intelligence Community (IC), and other government agencies. AFWS provides climate impacts and assessments, as well as space and terrestrial weather sensing, forecasting, and weather analytic capabilities, at home station and deployed, in order to deliver critical environmental intelligence in support of decision makers to gain the asymmetric advantage during the full spectrum of air and space combat operations. AFWS decreases the risk to mission and risk to force by increasing the lethality, effectiveness, and survivability of Department of Defense (DoD) weapon systems. To strengthen alliances and partnerships, AFWS development efforts integrate DoD, government agency, commercial, and international partner environmental data with AFWS information system equipment for processing, storing, exploiting, and disseminating multi-domain weather information for analysis, forecasting, mission integration, and greater interoperability. To ensure greater performance and affordability for the Department of the AF, AFWS sensors and information systems are being modernized through improvements to architecture and system efficiency, cybersecurity, joint all-domain command and control (JADC2) and sensing grid integration, migration to cloud computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) initiatives, and expanding agile software development, delivery, and integration practices. The AF Weather Enterprise digital transformation and cloud migration effort modernizes key capabilities providing the military advantage to accurately predict environmental impacts optimizing mission planning, targeting, weaponeering, mission execution, battle damage assessment, and space systems operations. AFWS aligns activities under four capability areas: Weather Data Collection, Weather Data Analysis and Dissemination, Weather Forecasting, and Product Tailoring/Warfighter Applications (PTWA). This alignment ensures an integrated and systems-oriented approach to program management decisions. Of these four capability areas, three (Weather Data Analysis and Dissemination, Weather Forecasting, and PTWA) are addressed by APPN 3600, BA 07, PE 0305111F, Project 672738 - Weather Service. Effective FY 2021, a portion of the APPN 3600 funding and activities from Weather Data Analysis and Dissemination and Weather Forecasting are migrated to the PTWA capability area to better address development of applications, software, command and control (C2) system integration, and web interfaces that directly impact the warfighter within the Weather Application Rapid Production (WARPspeed) program of record. In FY 2021, WDA Increment 5 and WARPspeed programs of record were approved as Software Acquisition Pathway Programs and are considering the potential for conversion of funding to APPN 3600, BA 08, as part of a pilot to better align funding with this new designation. By FY 2023, a portion of the APPN 3600 funding and activities from AF PE 0305111F, Project 672738, Weather Service, will be transferred to the USSF PE 1203940SF, Space Situational Awareness Operations, in order to align current AF ground-based space sensing projects to the USSF. 1. Weather Data Analysis and Dissemination provides a cybersecure cloud computing-based Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) environment for software development and deployment; large-scale environmental data ingest, processing, and product generation; the machine-to-machine dissemination of specific, mission-tailored weather data on-demand to support warfighter operations; and weapon system interoperability, rapidly integrating into C2 nodes and shortening the Combatant Commander kill chain. The Weather Data Analysis and Dissemination capability area includes activities for Weather Data Analysis Increment 4 (WDA Inc 4) and its follow-on, Weather Data Analysis Increment 5 (WDA Inc 5). 2. Weather Forecasting provides global and regional advanced scientific numerical weather and climate prediction capabilities for automated, high-resolution forecast products supporting mission planning and execution with an emphasis on clouds, theater scale weather, aerosol/chemical constituents, hydrology, machine learning, and space environmental characterization. Weather Forecasting includes activities for Numerical Weather Modeling (NWM) and Space Weather Analysis and Forecast System (SWAFS). By FY 2023, the SWAFS portion of the APPN 3600 funding and activities from AF PE 0305111F, Weather Service, will be transferred to the USSF PE 1203940SF, Space Situational Awareness Operations. 3. Product Tailoring Warfighter Applications (PTWA) provides software applications that provide and enhance environmental intelligence to support rapid warfighter decision-making. PTWA includes the program, Weather Applications Rapid Production (WARPspeed), which is a suite of software applications developed and delivered across multiple security classification levels and encompasses weather workflow tools and decision aids used to tailor terrestrial and space environmental information, which include both Forecaster-in-the-Loop (FITL) and automated machine-to-machine processes enhanced by AI/ML. WARPspeed leverages the Weather Data Analysis Increment 5 (WDA Inc 5) cloud computing, data processing, and CI/CD platforms to rapidly develop, deliver, and sustain software capabilities, whether deployed into the AF Weather Virtual Private Cloud (AFW-VPC) or to warfighter processing nodes at the edge. The PTWA program Joint Environmental Toolkit (JET) subsumed several software and web development efforts previously aligned under the Weather Data Analysis and Dissemination capability area in FY 2021 and was renamed to WARPspeed. PTWA and WARPspeed also now include Weather Services - Live, Virtual, Constructive (WS-LVC) and the machine learning Global Synthetic Weather Radar (GSWR) capabilities, which were previously aligned under Weather Forecasting. The WARPspeed program of record is not a new start. Activities include research 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). This requirement supports performance of a full financial audit as required by title 10 U.S.C. Chapter 9A, SEC 240-D. 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, 2022
• Source ID: 672738_0305111F_7_3600_PB_2022

Tags

Fields of Study

• Environmental science

Readers

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

Technology Areas

• AI & ML
• AI & ML - DoD AI Strategy
• Cyber
• Fully Networked C3
• Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control
• Space