WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force is on course to launch no less than two weather monitoring satellites next yr while determining a long-term substitute for its aging fleet that currently supplies essential yet insufficient environmental monitoring.
In the approaching years, some capability will come from U.S. military-owned satellites but DoD planners and weather analysts for probably the most part will use data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Europe’s Eumetsat, the Japan Meteorological Agency and other partners, officials said Nov. 20.
Col. Patrick Williams, director of weather for the U.S. Air Force, said the military can now not depend on the aging Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) constellation. Only two are still functioning, and their limited observational capabilities are insufficient for contemporary military missions, Williams said at a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event.
The Mitchell Institute on Monday released a report criticizing DoD’s lagging efforts to recapitalize its environmental monitoring satellites. “For over 20 years, multiple incomplete substitute programs have resulted on this capability gap as DMSP involves its end of life,” said the creator of the report, senior fellow Tim Ryan.
DMSP satellites in sun-synchronous low Earth polar orbits carry sensors to measure parameters like cloud cover, precipitation, temperature, and moisture within the atmosphere. They’re utilized by the Air Force Weather Agency and other organizations to generate environmental evaluation and forecasting models needed for planning aviation missions, ship routing, missile testing and other military operations.
“There are usually not enough DMSPs to provide us enough of a refresh rate,” Williams said. “So it would as well be a dead constellation at this point.”
Ryan within the report lays out several unsuccessful efforts by the Air Force over the past 20 years to exchange DMSPs. “Knowing DMSP is on its last legs, leaders are augmenting U.S. capabilities with a family-of-systems approach that mixes data from other sensors on orbit through partnerships with NOAA and U.S. allies,” he said. But he called this a “band aid” that doesn’t address certain coverage requirements and refresh rates which can be “very military specific.”
Latest programs within the works
Under a program called EWS, short for Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) Weather Systems, the Space Force plans to launch a prototype cubesat in 2024 and a small EO/IR satellite in 2025 that may perform similar functions as DMSP.
It also plans to launch in 2024 the primary of two Weather System Follow-on Microwave, or WSF-M satellites. These will collect data on the conditions of the ocean surface and other atmospheric conditions.
Ryan argued that these projects are usually not moving fast enough and noted that there continues to be no long-term plan to obtain a constellation of EO/IR satellites. To get a one-hour refresh rate, he noted, requires 12 satellites.
The EWS must be a top priority, said Ryan, since the military needs accurate data on cloud cover to launch munitions, and intelligence agencies depend on that data to plan satellite imagery collections.
Williams said the Air Force, which manages weather data collection and evaluation for the U.S. military, has established agreements with many partners to make sure demands are met. “We don’t at all times have all of the assets that we want when we want them. So we want others to assist us out,” he said. “And until we will have our own reliable, relevant data at our fingertips, we’ve to depend on others.”
“There’s a danger in that,” he said. “But without delay, they’re all willing participants, in order that’s a very good thing.”
The Space Force recently took ownership of a retired NOAA weather satellite to fill gaps in coverage over the Indian Ocean.
DMSP has ‘a number of more years’
Lt. Col. Joseph Maguadog, materiel leader for weather systems at Space Systems Command, said the remaining DMSP satellites still have a “a number of more years of life.”
Maguadog’s office oversees the EWS program. Studies are underway to find out probably the most appropriate solution to exchange DMSP, he said on the Mitchell Institute event.
The U.S. military is getting the info it needs via “a family of systems with our partners and NOAA, the European Meteorological Agency, the Japan Meteorological Agency,” he said. “And the one way that we’re going to deliver the refresh rates that our DoD operators need today is to proceed to work inside that family of systems.”
A shoebox-size cubesat demonstration projected to launch in March 2024 is about “attempting to push the bounds of how small we will make this,” Maguadog said. “There are plenty of things that we’ve got to review as we’re attempting to drive towards a smaller and cheaper capability.”
In 2025 the Space Force will launch a small EO/IR satellite as an “operational demonstration.”
Considered one of the problems is “disaggregate” the functions of jack-of-all-trades satellites like DMSP into multiple smaller spacecraft, he said. “If our users cannot ingest the info or the info data shouldn’t be operationally viable, we’re going to contemplate that a failure.”
The Space Systems Command is working with weather data users to be certain that that an architecture of small satellites could be arrange in a way that supports their needs, Maguadog said.
No matter what future satellites are acquired, he said, “the partnerships with NOAA our allies have and can proceed to be a key to our success.”