Weather Service
This budget activity funds the operational development necessary to acquire and modernize Air Force Weather Service [AFWS] capabilities in support of the 2026 National Defense Strategy's [NDS] lines of effort. To prioritize military excellence and readiness, AFWS provides timely, accurate, resilient, and relevant environmental information to enable global battle-space situational awareness for the Air Force [AF], Army, Special Operations Forces [SOF], Space Force [USSF], combatant commands, the Intelligence Community [IC], and other government agencies. AFWS provides extreme weather impacts and assessments, as well as space and terrestrial weather sensing, forecasting, and weather analytic capabilities, at home station and deployed, in order to deliver critical environmental information in support of decision makers to gain the asymmetric advantage during the full spectrum of air and space combat operations. AFWS decreases the risk to mission and risk to force by increasing the lethality, effectiveness, and survivability of Department of War [DoW] weapon systems. To re-establish deterrence, AFWS development efforts integrate DoW, government agency, commercial, and international partner environmental data and software with AFWS information systems for processing, storing, exploiting, and disseminating all-domain weather information for analysis, forecasting, mission integration, and greater interoperability. To rebuild our military and maximize lethality, AFWS sensors and information systems are being modernized through improvements to architecture and system efficiency, cybersecurity, joint all-domain command and control [JADC2] and sensing grid integration, environmental sensor development, migration to cloud computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning [AI/ML] initiatives, and expanding agile software development, rapid delivery, and integration practices. The AF Weather Enterprise digital transformation and cloud migration effort modernizes key capabilities providing the military advantage to accurately predict environmental impacts optimizing mission planning, targeting, weaponeering, mission execution, battle damage assessment, and space systems operations.
FY2027 planned work -Funding will be used for the continued improvement of forecasting capabilities at the edge utilizing AI/ML capabilities. The team will begin researching the development of a new smaller expeditionary weather sensor and other observing capabilities.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding increased minimally due to standard operating costs.
FY2026 plans — current year -Funding will support component integration as well as functionality modifications and testing of component sensor systems, in particular the edge node AI/ML local weather model and compute hardware.
FY2027 planned work -Funding will support evaluation and improvement of processes and technology for Cloud operations and integration of environmental data into C2 and planning systems. -Continue the support of cyber security automation, data transformations, and new satellite data integration to the AFW-VPC platform as well as decision-making systems.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Program increased due to increased technical support required for JADC2 and IC integration efforts.
FY2026 plans — current year -Funding will support cyber security automation, data transformations, and new satellite data integration to the AFW-VPC platform as well as JADC2 and IC integration.
FY2027 planned work -Testing, evaluation, integration, and exploitation of emerging commercial weather capabilities to provide the AF Weather community with additional data sources that boost environmental intelligence, fill capability gaps, and improve weather modeling.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Previous efforts regarding CWD utilized congressional add funds.
FY2027 planned work -Funding will support continued model code optimization, model blending, hydrology prediction, AI/ML-based contrail analysis and prediction, and classified modeling development. -Continue application development supporting the IC community.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decreased to support A&AS reductions.
FY2026 plans — current year -Continue model code optimization, model blending, hydrology prediction, AI/ML-based contrail analysis and prediction, and classified modeling development. -Begin research and development on new aerosol model.
FY2027 planned work -Funding will support the continued BIFROST Portal development and mission-focused weather workflow applications for weather and non-weather operators, 14WS applications, and C2 integration. -The development will include research and testing AI/ML based applications to improve the efficiency and accuracy of weather workflow applications.
FY2026 to FY2027 change Funding decreased to support A&AS and FFRDC reductions.
FY2026 plans — current year -Continue BIFROST Portal development and mission-focused weather workflow applications for weather and non-weather operators, 14WS applications, and C2 integration.