Global Synthetic Weather Radar Capability in Support of the U.S. Air Force

The United States Air Force operates manned and unmanned flight missions all over the world. Accurate weather information in both the pre-flight planning and execution portion of flight is very important for mission success. Currently there are large weather data sparse/denied areas of the globe where the US Air Force is actively operating. The US Air Force is partnering with MIT Lincoln Laboratory to develop global radar-like mosaics and radar-forward forecasts in support of US Air Force flight operations. This capability will utilize global lightning, the Global Air-Land Weather Exploitation Model (GALWEM) numerical model, and global weather satellite images as input to a machine learning framework to create synthetic weather radar mosaics and forecasts out to 12 hours. This capability will eventually be transitioned to the US Air Force so that the weather information can be used in Air Force decision support systems, such as the Weather Common Component (WxCC) via machine-to-machine web services and Air Force Weather-Web Services (AFW-WEBS) viewer. This presentation will provide an overview and results from this partnership.