Meteorological Equipment

Meteorological Equipment aims to procure new and replacement meteorological equipment for Navy and Marine Corps Air Stations, Navy ships, Marine Corps Operational Force units, and other activities required to provide weather observations and safety of flight capabilities. It also includes the procurement of new Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment (IPOE) equipment for submarines. The program is coordinated with other Department of Defense (DoD) and civilian agencies to integrate next-generation polar and geostationary orbiting satellite families and new sensors of opportunity into the hardware design and software upgrades for Environmental Satellite Receiver Processor Systems both afloat and ashore. Additionally, it provides hazardous weather detection and display capability to support efficient planning and execution of aircraft and small boat launch/recovery operations as well as severe weather-dependent evolutions such as underway replenishments.

The Meteorological Equipment budget line item also includes the procurement of Government Off-The-Shelf/Commercial Off-The-Shelf hardware and associated software upgrades for Automated Surface Observing Systems (ASOS) and Supplemental Weather Radars (SWR) essential for aviation safety, Naval Aviation operations, and resource protection. Furthermore, it procures Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) ocean sensor systems including Autonomous Undersea Vehicles (AUV) carrying sensors that characterize the ocean bottom and long-duration buoyancy-driven ocean Gliders that sense ocean volume parameters. The program also identifies, transitions, demonstrates, validates, and fields state-of-the-art decision support software and hardware technologies from government and commercial industry's technology base through the Naval Integrated Tactical Environmental System - Next Generation (NITES-Next) program. These capabilities allow mission planners and warfighters to optimize their sensor employment on airborne, surface, and subsurface platforms in support of various Naval Composite Warfare mission areas.