EO/IR Weather Systems

EO/IR Weather Systems under the Air Force's Research, Development, Test & Evaluation budget activity, aims to provide global Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) coverage to meet Space-Based Environmental Monitoring (SBEM) Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) Gaps 1) Cloud Characterization (CC) and 2) Theatre Weather Imagery (TWI). This program is intended to replace the obsolete and aging Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) and EWS-Geostationary (EWS-G) systems, which are projected to reach their end-of-life in June 2026 and September 2030 respectively. The primary objectives include ensuring the production of global predictive weather data, supporting daily air operations and intelligence gathering for strategic mission planning, forecasting and monitoring adverse weather conditions over specific regions, and maintaining the SBEM civil/international partnership for the Family of Systems architecture.

The program also focuses on a distributed LEO architecture for scalability and increased operational resilience. It aims to prototype the latest industry capabilities for simplified sensor designs while meeting CC and TWI requirements and data latencies in a distributed architecture. The Space Force plans to pursue competitive prototyping of sensor and bus designs for a proliferated LEO architecture while leveraging existing SBEM Family of Systems. The program's planned activities include technology risk reduction, operational demonstrations, and system resiliency implementation necessary to operate in the contested space domain. Additionally, it will use Section 815 Other Transaction Authority (OTA) contracts for technology risk reduction and operational demonstration efforts. The Phase III operational system replacement acquisition strategy will be decided in early FY 2025 based on the outcomes of Phase II efforts.