TAMDAR enabled atmospheric knowledge system and the warfighter

Accurate knowledge of the atmosphere and ability to forecast the weather is even more important today with the precision timing required by maneuver warfare and modern sensors that rely on this knowledge for proper operation. AirDat, LLC has developed and deployed the commercial Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Reporting (TAMDAR) system in the contiguous United States, Alaska, and parts of Mexico with great success. Hundreds of TAMDAR sensors, providing thousands of soundings daily in real time to AirDat's Operations Center, enable AirDat to produce highly accurate and precise atmospheric knowledge and forecasting models. AirDat is working to bring this capability to Department of Defense (DOD) to provide the U.S. and coalition warfighter with actionable knowledge of the battlespace environment through TAMDAR-enabled, highly accurate, high resolution weather models.

In this presentation, an overview of AirDat's efforts to bring this capability to the warfighter will be provided as well as a discussion of the results collected. Specifically the presentation will discuss:

1. AirDat's vision for a deployed DOD TAMDAR system.

2. The Navy Research Lab (NRL) sponsored TAMDAR-UAS Flight Test Demonstration using manned aircraft emulating a Predator UAS integrated with AirDat's commercial TAMDAR sensor. Atmospheric data was collected and transmitted in near real-time from a simulated theater of operation over three one-week deployment periods. The flights were conducted over the Patuxent River NAS and the three deployment periods were spread across different seasons. The purpose of the experiment was to determine the impact of this data collection platform on weather forecasts.

3. AirDat's development of a smaller and lighter prototype version of the commercial TAMDAR sensor, named TAMDAR-U, which is optimized for implementation on small and medium sized unmanned aerial systems.

4. The Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) sponsored collaboration with the Army Research Lab (ARL) and New Mexico State University/Physical Sciences Lab (NMSU/PSL) to demonstrate the ability to collect atmospheric data close to the battlefield and transmit that data in near real time to provide improvements in near term battlefield forecasts. For this project AirDat installed and operated the prototype TAMDAR-U on NMSU/PSL Aerostar small tactical UAS. The results of this effort will also be discussed.

5. Future projects planned with the DOD