Performance Support Delivery System for Use in Aviation and Range Weather Forecasting. (Fomerly paper 5.17)

This paper describes several areas in aviation and range weather forecasting where performance support and training can improve operational weather support capabilities. Air Force Weather is using SAIC's multimedia-based Performance Support Delivery System (PSDS) in a performance-support context at the operational weather squadrons, where weather forecasting is now performed for multiple Air Force bases and Army installations in a geographic region. That application of the PSDS provides animations of the weather regimes as they evolve over time, detailed terrain using the National Imagery and Mapping Agency's high-resolution Digital Terrain Elevation Data, fly-ins and fly-arounds to familiarize the forecaster with the local terrain, animation of characteristic wind flows and the associated weather, a description of the principal geographical features, seasonal controls, and local factors, as well as practical information such as the customers, weapon systems, weather impacts, and warning criteria at each base. A decision-tree tool for icing forecasting and a low-level wind shear calculator are also provided. Many of those capabilities of the PSDS are useful in range weather forecasting. To meet range-unique requirements, the PSDS is easily adapted to assist the launch weather officer (LWO) in determining whether launch-commit criteria for a particular launch have been violated. Thunderstorms, associated lightning events, triggered-lightning probabilities, launch-vehicle trajectories, and the return-to-launch site could be animated in a simulation designed to train LWOs to identify threatening situations and provide warnings when minimum distance criteria are likely to be violated as the launch vehicle rises through the troposphere.