The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has been involved in tracking and attempting to accurately forecast clouds since the dawn of the satellite era in the 1960s. The white formations of water droplets can disrupt communication signals or block a visual line of sight, making or breaking decisions for the warfighter. As battlefield technology improved, the need for precision in weather forecasts also increased. A general forecast of “partly cloudy” didn’t cut it. U.S. forces needed to know if, at a specific location at a specific time, there would be a puffy cloud that got in the way. Northrop Grumman developed world class technologies and systems to answer this question.
Over the last 20 years, our atmospheric scientists have created a high-fidelity cloud model that covers the globe and provides instantaneous data. This second-generation Cloud Depiction and Forecast System (CDFS II) collects weather data from military, civilian or other friendly countries’ satellites, and then that information gets fused together to create a picture of clouds around the world at any given instant in time. There’s nothing else like it on the market.
“That instantaneous nature as well as that global reach makes the capabilities that we've developed something that most other people have never even really attempted to do. It’s a really fascinating challenge,” said Tim Nobis, systems engineering manager who leads a group of atmospheric scientists at Northrop Grumman. “And I would argue we have some of the deepest subject matter expert capabilities in this area because of the fact we’ve had this heritage for as long as we do.”
Tim and his team have been defining possible in this arena for decades through various contracts with DoD. If a customer wanted to know if, at noon tomorrow, at a specific longitude and latitude, a pilot or satellites would be able to see the ground, the Northrop Grumman team could tell them with unprecedented accuracy. In a world that constantly demands immediate results, they’re one step ahead by delivering the future.
