As recent conflicts around the world have proven, information dominance is essential for successful military operations. The ability for soldiers, sailors and airmen to collect, share and access information in a timely fashion, and to deny the enemy that same capability, is a key component to modern warfare. The foundation for information dominance lies in effective, secure military communications. Unfortunately, both space and terrestrial weather environments can degrade military communication systems. One of the objectives of the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) is to provide analysis and forecast products that provide military communicators and the end users with a “single picture of potential environmental effects” that may impact their systems.

This paper discusses the parallel aspects of environmental sensing, collecting space and terrestrial weather data, current and future modeling of the space and terrestrial environments, and generation of environmental products that are associated with impacts to military communications. The characteristics and technical aspects of terrestrial and space weather are for the most part distinct, and currently separate space and terrestrial products are generated. However, similarities do exist in obtaining, transmitting and processing data. These similar aspects of data collection and data flow into the respective models, and the eventual merge of data are presented as concepts for future implementation at AFWA.