The Consequences of Weather
Knowing the weather forecast is one thing... knowing the specific effects it will have on mission critical sensor systems is another. AER's WIST division develops tools that use advanced physical modeling of the environment to predict the consequences of weather on operations that utilize both imaging and non-line of sight acoustic sensor systems. We make extensive use of multi-spectral satellite imagery and GIS/image processing for state of the art description of near surface conditions. WIST products are used in both live combat operations as well as modeling and simulation activities.
WIST is also performing projects that support large scale modeling and simulation activity with computationally fast weather enabled sensor performance calculations and connectivity to extensively indexed historical global weather archives. These tools eliminate much of the 'handwork' required to provide weather to M&S users and allow realistic physical modeling calculations in high volume applications.
In some cases our projects take the form of efficient field deployable decision-aid applications. This software enables users to retrieve forecast weather data and perform predictive environmental/sensor system modeling to develop mission plans for sensor employment that reflect expected weather conditions.
We work closely with laboratories and operators from all three military services to develop state of the art weather enabled sensor performance prediction tools. Our group has a broad spectrum of expertise ranging from concept and algorithm development through to delivery and support of production level applications. Technical knowledge and activities span each of the core phenomenology elements of the source-to-sensor response vector including target models, target signatures, thermal and acoustic terrain background description, EO and acoustic atmospheric propagation, sensor system models, and meteorological data distribution and ingest at all levels of the modeling task chain.
Our Expert: Guy Seeley