Short History of DoD Space-based Weather

Know the ground, know the weather; your victory will then be total. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

It’s More Than the Satellite

Ground System Sensors• Camera, Line Scanner, IR, Space Weather

Math• ENIAC was used to create the first forecasts via computer in

1950• (MOS) were developed in the 1970s and 1980s for individual

forecast points (locations). Satellites/orbits Weather Enterprise• Civil/Military/Academic/Hierarchical mix

How Long Have We Asked About Weather?

Cavemen had their eyes and a wet finger• What did they talk about during awkward silences?

Around 650 B.C., Babylonians used clouds and optical phenomena such as haloes.

~ 525 B.C. Sun Tzu Around 340 B.C., Aristotle wrote Meteorologica, theories about

the formation of rain, clouds, hail, wind, thunder, lightning, and hurricanes.

By 300 B.C., Chinese astronomers had a calendar that divided the year into 24 festivals, each festival associated with a different type of weather.

The word “meteorology" is from the Greek: "lofty; high (in the sky)"

sputnik.wav

First Image from Orbit

Explorer VI-Aug 1959-Crossing Mexico(That’s the Pacific. Yes, really……)- Later first ASAT target

Timeline

1920s - invention of the radiosonde. Small lightweight boxes equipped with weather instruments and a radio transmitter

<1950 – Talk of photo recon w/cloud info• 1951 RAND study on feasibility of weather recon• 1956 TIROS Program begins

1960 – TIROS-1 NASA experimental TV weather

Timeline

4/1961 – NASA gets WX mission/NRO has doubts 7/1961 – NRO gets military mission 9/1962 – Pictures coming back• Support to Cuban Missile Crisis• Gen LeMay & SAC agreed to support & launch• Scouts (62-64), Thors (64-80s)

1963 Infrared pictures• First discussion of Civil/Military weather split

1964 Tactical and Strategic data 1965 Program shift to Gen Schriever’s portfolio 1972 Dual Redundancy

Timeline

1973 Program becomes unclassified 1973 Second conversation Civil/Military mix 1974 NUDET mission (now GPS, among others) 1980-1983 No working DMSP – Greatly affects NOAA discussions Mid-1980s Current 5D-3 Satellite 1993 OMB looks again at Civil/Military mix 1994 Pres Clinton creates NPOESS program 2010 NPOESS ‘disaggregated’ 2012 DWSS canceled 2014 ‘Resistance is Futile’; move to SBIRS What Now?

Weather Modeling

1955 -- Operational numerical weather prediction; statistics based (WDD 1954)• Joint Numerical Weather Prediction Unit (JNWPU)• Joint project by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Weather Bureau• Modeled the atmosphere in the Northern Hemisphere

1956 -- Monthly and seasonal patterns in the troposphere • First successful climate model

1966 -- Forecasts based on primitive-equation models• West Germany and the United States • United Kingdom 1972 and Australia 1977

Gravity waves, mid-1980s 1986 -- Initialize and model soil and vegetation types• Led to more realistic forecasts

January 1994 -- Climate System Model (CSM) was developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research

Group Captain James Martin Stagg6 Jun 1944

Notable Military Weather Pioneers

Lt Col Tom Haig,1st DMSP PM

MG (ret) Jack Kulpa,2nd DMSP PM

Col Scott Larrimore,Last DMSP SPO Director

DMSP ‘Save’ AN/SMQ-10; USS America

A Very Successful Mission by Most Measures