Domino effect began with weather forecast

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Scott Elliott
  • Air Force Print News
WASHINGTON --  Trace any Operation Iraqi Freedom mission back to its origin, and you will find the first action in the series of events was a weather forecast, said the senior weather officer for U.S. Central Command Air Forces.

“We’re domino pushers,” said Lt. Col. Tom Frooninckx, commander of the 28th Operational Weather Squadron during a telephone interview from Shaw Air Force Base, S.C. “The moment we issue a military weather forecast, a series of decisions are made and a series of events unfolds, which resembles a path of falling dominoes.

“The last domino represents mission success or failure,” he said.

While there are about 350 active-duty, Reserve and Air National Guard weather forecasters deployed for OIF, Frooninckx said many of the products commanders in the Southwest Asia use to make decisions are actually created at Shaw.

Using a variety of data sources, ranging from satellite imagery and weather balloons to the on-site observations from combat weather team members, the 28th OWS generates a theater weather forecast. That product is then electronically “pushed” to deployed forces.

Because access to the satellite imagery is available from just about anywhere, Frooninckx said it is not necessary to deploy as many forecasters to achieve the same result.

“All the data is used by the weather forecasters at Shaw,” he said. “You gain no advantage by being closer to the action.”

Besides reducing the manning “footprint” by not having to deploy as many forecasters, Frooninckx is able to significantly reduce the amount of electronic bandwidth his product would require in theater -- bandwidth that is vital for command, control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations.

“The volume of data that is needed to provide accurate weather support is quite large,” he said. “The satellite imagery that comes in about every 30 minutes is megabyte-intensive, and that’s just a small part of the weather database.”

The list of products forecasters put together numbers into the thousands, Frooninckx said. It is all available, with the click of a mouse, via multiple mechanisms and Web site servers, including one at Shaw as well as at the Combined Air Operations Center in Southwest Asia.

Not only are weather forecasts available for current operations, mission planners and weaponeers use the forecasts to determine what munitions or flight altitude would produce maximum results in future air tasking orders, Frooninckx said.

Having successfully produced OIF’s main weather forecasts from Shaw is validation that weather support can be provided “via reachback,” Frooninckx said.

“One of the big lessons we learned in (Operation) Desert Storm was that the weather operation was not centralized,” he said. “There were weather people everywhere, doing their own thing. I’m happy to say that, thus far, in both OIF and (Operation Enduring Freedom), we’ve done very well.

“Mother Nature won’t allow us to be perfect, but we’ve done very well in terms forecasting significant weather events,” Frooninckx said. “There was never a day in this war that a weather forecast we put out was not used by someone to make a very significant decision that, in some way, lead to the success of the operation against Iraq.”