Weather Service

The Weather Service falls under the Research, Development, Test & Evaluation budget activity for the Air Force. The specific goals and objectives of this program include providing timely, accurate, and resilient environmental information to support global battlespace situational awareness for the Air Force, Army, Special Operations Forces, Space Force, combatant commands, the Intelligence Community, and other government agencies. The program aims to decrease risk to mission and force by increasing the lethality, effectiveness, and survivability of Department of Defense weapon systems. Additionally, it seeks to strengthen alliances and partnerships by integrating environmental data from various sources for greater interoperability. The program aligns its activities under four capability areas: Weather Data Collection, Weather Data Analysis and Dissemination, Weather Forecasting, and Product Tailoring/Warfighter Applications.

The Weather Service program focuses on several key objectives within its capability areas. For Weather Data Collection, it aims to provide automated atmospheric and ground-based space environmental sensing capabilities worldwide to support environmental battlespace awareness and safety of flight. In the area of Weather Data Analysis and Dissemination, the program seeks to establish a cybersecure cloud computing-based platform for processing large-scale environmental data and disseminating mission-tailored weather data on-demand to support warfighter operations and weapon system interoperability. In Weather Forecasting, the program aims to provide advanced scientific numerical weather and climate prediction capabilities for mission planning and execution. Lastly, in Product Tailoring/Warfighter Applications, the program focuses on developing software applications that enhance environmental information to support rapid warfighter decision-making through both manual and automated processes.

Overall, the Weather Service program's objectives are geared towards modernizing key capabilities to provide a military advantage in accurately predicting environmental impacts for mission planning, targeting, weaponeering, mission execution, battle damage assessment, and space systems operations.