Automated Meteorological and Oceanographic Data Collection and Distribution in Support of C4I, Weapons, and Remote Sensing Systems

On-scene characterization of the battlespace environment is critical toward providing the warfighter with an effective understanding of the environment and its impact on weapon systems and sensors and requires the rapid acquisition and dissemination of on-scene meteorological and oceanographic (METOC) measurements. The current practice of manually observing and recording METOC data is labor intensive, outdated, and no longer capable of satisfying the requirements for higher temporal and spatial observations. This study reviews the current methodology to characterize the battlespace environment, summarizes relevant Navy needs, and describes the results of integrating a prototype small combatant integrated METOC system (SCIMS) developed by the Naval Postgraduate School, with a prototype data processing and distribution system (Weather Viewer) developed by SPAWARSYSCEN San Diego. At-sea demonstration included the acquisition, encoding, transmission and retrieval of real-time observations to/from shore based METOC data servers at Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center via commercial telephone access to the Internet. The demonstration further served as the basis for development of a PC based prototype shipboard METOC archive and reports system called SMART Log. The study concludes with particular recommendations for updating and improving the system of environmental data collection, processing, utilization, and archival.