[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING THE NATION'S CURRENT
AND NEXT GENERATION
WEATHER SATELLITE PROGRAMS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
July 7, 2016
__________
Serial No. 114-86
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., ZOE LOFGREN, California
Wisconsin DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
DANA ROHRABACHER, California DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ERIC SWALWELL, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois AMI BERA, California
BILL POSEY, Florida ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts
RANDY K. WEBER, Texas DON S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
STEVE KNIGHT, California PAUL TONKO, New York
BRIAN BABIN, Texas MARK TAKANO, California
BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas BILL FOSTER, Illinois
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia
GARY PALMER, Alabama
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana
DARIN LaHOOD, Illinois
WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio
------
Subcommittee on Environment
HON. JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma, Chair
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR. SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
RANDY WEBER, Texas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
JOHN MOOLENAAR, Michigan AMI BERA, California
BRIAN BABIN, Texas MARK TAKANO, California
BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas BILL FOSTER, Illinois
GARY PALMER, Alabama EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana
C O N T E N T S
July 7, 2016
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Jim Bridenstine, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Environment, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 4
Written Statement............................................ 6
Statement by Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Ranking Minority
Member, Subcommittee on Enviorment, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 8
Written Statement............................................ 10
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Minority Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
U.S. House of Representatives.................................. 12
Written Statement............................................ 13
Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 78
Written Statement............................................ 80
Witnesses:
Dr. Stephen Volz, Assistant Administrator, National Environmental
Satellite, Data, and Information Services, National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration
Oral Statement............................................... 14
Written Statement............................................ 17
Mr. David Powner, Director, Information Technology Management
Issues, Government Accountability Office
Oral Statement............................................... 30
Written Statement............................................ 32
Mr. Ralph Stoffler, Director of Weather, Deputy Chief of Staff
for Operations, U.S. Air Force
Oral Statement............................................... 51
Written Statement............................................ 53
Ms. Cristina Chaplain, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing
Management, Government Accountability Office
Oral Statement............................................... 62
Written Statement............................................ 64
Discussion....................................................... 82
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. Stephen Volz, Assistant Administrator, National Environmental
Satellite, Data, and Information Services, National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration..................................... 104
Ms. Cristina Chaplain, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing
Management, Government Accountability Office................... 114
EXAMINING THE NATION'S CURRENT
AND NEXT GENERATION
WEATHER SATELLITE PROGRAMS
----------
THURSDAY, JULY 7, 2016
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Environment,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m., in
Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jim
Bridenstine [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
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Chairman Bridenstine. The Subcommittee on Environment will
come to order. Without objection, the Chair is authorized to
declare recesses of the subcommittee at any time.
Welcome to today's hearing entitled ``Examining the
Nation's Current and Next Generation Weather Satellite
Programs.'' I recognize myself for five minutes for an opening
statement.
I'd like to first thank our witnesses for being here today.
This committee has a longstanding interest in the weather
satellite programs of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, as evidenced by our continued oversight of
these programs spanning multiple Congresses. I am also pleased
to have the Department of Defense here today to discuss their
weather satellite missions and the cooperation and coordination
between the DOD and NOAA that result in expert forecasts that
save lives and property.
After the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental
Satellite System, NPOESS, partnership failed to curb costs or
yield benefits, the Administration directed NOAA and the DOD to
develop individual polar-orbiting weather satellite programs.
This has come to fruition with NOAA's Joint Polar Satellite
System, JPSS, the first of which is slated to launch in March
of 2017. Given that we are currently relying on the
experimental-turned-operational Suomi NPP, it is my hope that
this program suffers no further delays, and this launch date is
met.
There has been improvement in the JPSS program over the
past few years, but there are still potential causes of
concern, which we will explore today. Meanwhile, the DOD began
its own weather satellite program, the Defense Weather
Satellite System, DWSS. However, this plan was scrapped in
2012, and the Department is now planning a new generation
called the Weather System Follow-On, WSF.
In the meantime, the DOD currently relies on its existing
satellite system, the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program,
DMSP. These DOD satellites, much like NOAA's existing fleet,
are ageing rapidly. One of them, DMSP-19, failed earlier this
year, increasing the fragility of the system. The possibility
of data gaps looms large as both agencies look to create a more
robust satellite architecture.
Further complicating these issues is the reliance the
agencies place on themselves and our international partners for
critical weather data. For polar-orbiting satellite data, there
are three primary orbits. The early-morning orbit is operated
by the DOD, the mid-morning orbit by EUMETSAT's MetOp program,
our partnering satellite agency in Europe, and the early-
afternoon orbit by NOAA. Eighty percent of the data that goes
into our numerical weather models comes from polar-orbiting
satellites. Since we rely so heavily on these satellites, it is
important for these orbits to continually be filled.
While these government satellites systems play an important
role in providing data that predicts weather, I also want to
highlight the growing role of the private sector. Let me be
absolutely clear: I am not in any way suggesting the
privatization of NOAA. Some people have suggested that, or the
National Weather Service. However, the advancements of the
commercial weather satellite industry have real potential to
improve our forecasting capabilities, as well as provide gap
mitigation in the event one of our satellites suffers a failure
or further delays.
NOAA has released a Commercial Space Policy, a draft of its
Commercial Space Activities Assessment process, and is
currently operating a commercial weather data pilot program to
test and validate private sector data for integration into its
numerical weather models. I applaud NOAA's progress, and look
forward to further action on this front. This Committee will
remain vigilant in its oversight responsibilities to ensure
that Americans have the best possible weather forecasts to save
lives and property.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Bridenstine follows:]
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Chairman Bridenstine. I now recognize the gentlewoman from
Oregon, the Ranking Member, Ms. Bonamici, for an opening
statement.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you for your ongoing interest in the important issue of
improving weather forecasting, and thank you to all of our
witnesses for being here today.
The data collected by NOAA's weather satellites are the
backbone of NOAA's weather prediction capabilities and support
weather forecasting activities around the globe. NOAA, in
coordination with its interagency and international partners,
is working diligently to move the national weather satellite
system into a robust state so we will have the certainty and
continuity of accurate and reliable forecasts and severe storm
warnings.
In addition to providing uninterrupted weather observations
in the near term, NOAA is actively assessing what new
capabilities will be required beyond the 2020s to protect
American lives and property during extreme weather events. I am
looking forward to hearing about both of these efforts.
As we've discussed in the past, however, both the
geostationary and polar weather satellite programs--GOES and
JPSS--have experienced schedule delays, significant cost
growth, technical performance concerns, and management
challenges. Although any and all remaining challenges must be
addressed, I am pleased to note that NOAA has made significant
progress, and we expect to soon be celebrating the successful
launches of GOES-R and JPSS-1 satellites.
It is critical that these programs remain on schedule to
minimize the potential risk to the collection of observations
and data that are needed for NOAA's weather forecasting
activities. Even the best-laid plans can be met with
unanticipated events, a launch failure, or a potential
satellite malfunction, for example. I will be listening for an
update on the status of NOAA's contingency plans in the event
that we do face a gap in data continuity, and I look forward to
hearing about NOAA's efforts to put the weather satellite
programs on a path to the robust state that the 2013
independent review team recommended.
In addition, the strength of our civil weather satellite
system relies heavily on the interagency and international
partnerships that NOAA has in place over decades. This
morning's hearing provides the opportunity for us to learn more
about NOAA's work with the Department of Defense and the
communication among partners on future weather satellite
planning efforts.
As we look ahead, NOAA's partnerships are expected to
extend to commercial entities. NOAA is taking concrete steps
toward implementing its commercial weather data pilot program
in response to direction in the fiscal year 2016 Omnibus
Appropriations Act. In fact, I understand that Dr. Volz will be
attending an industry day workshop immediately following our
hearing where he will receive feedback from companies
interested in participating in the pilot program. I'm
encouraged that NOAA has implemented the commercial weather
data pilot program promptly and has provided an open dialogue
throughout the process.
Finally, the planned launches of both GOES-R and JPSS-1
satellites should not mark the conclusion of NOAA's
programmatic efforts but rather should be the figurative
launching pad of the planning and development of our next
generation of weather satellites. I look forward to hearing
about both NOAA's polar follow-on program and its long-term
architecture plans.
And before I yield back the balance of my time, I'm going
to note, Mr. Chairman, I do need to run to a markup, and I'm
going to do my best to get back as soon as possible. My
colleague Mr. Grayson will take over until I can get back.
And I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Bonamici follows:]
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Chairman Bridenstine. The gentlelady yields back.
I'd like to now recognize the Ranking Member of the full
Committee, Ms. Johnson, for a five-minute opening statement.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Let me welcome the witnesses, and I'm pleased to see that
Dr. Volz and Dr. Powner are here again to provide updates on
our nation's critical weather satellite development programs,
JPSS and GOES-R. I am looking forward to hearing from both of
you and Mr. Stoffler and Ms. Chaplain about the relationship
between the Department of Defense and NOAA and how that
partnership helps meet both civilian and defense needs.
I want to be clear that NOAA's weather satellite programs
play a critical role in ensuring the continued health of our
weather forecasting capabilities, and they support weather
forecasting activities around the globe. Although both JPSS and
GOES-R has experienced significant cost growth and management
and technical challenges during this development, I am pleased
to learn that NOAA has responded to recommendations from GAO
and others and that we expect to have both satellites launched
within the year.
However, as we will hear today, there is still more work to
be done. Concerns about a potential gap in our satellite
coverage must be addressed and NOAA must apply lessons learned
to ensure future programs do not face identical challenges.
As I've said before, we must take all necessary steps to
ensure that there is not a gap in satellite coverage in support
of our weather forecasting capabilities. The successful launch
of these satellites is critical to ensure our nation maintains
its weather forecasting capabilities. However, it represents
the first step, not the last in NOAA's ever-evolving efforts to
protect American lives, property, and critical infrastructure.
I look forward to hearing more about NOAA's plans to
maintain and improve the Nation's weather forecasting
capabilities. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding the
hearing, and I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
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Chairman Bridenstine. I'd like to thank the Ranking Member
for her opening statement.
I'd like to introduce our witnesses today. Our first
witness today is Dr. Stephen Volz, Assistant Administrator for
the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information
Services at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. Dr. Volz has a doctorate in experimental
condensed matter physics from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign and a master's in physics from Illinois and a
bachelor's in physics from the University of Virginia.
Our next witness today is Mr. David Powner, Director of
Information Technology Management Issues at the Government
Accountability Office. Mr. Powner received his bachelor's
degree in business administration from the University of Denver
and attended the Senior Executive Fellows Program at Harvard
University.
Our third witness today is Mr. Ralph Stoffler, Director of
Weather and Deputy Chief Of Staff for Operations at the U.S.
Air Force. Mr. Stoffler received his bachelor's of science in
meteorology from the University of Oklahoma in Norman--Boomer--
and his master's degree in systems management from the
University of Southern California Los Angeles.
Our final witness today is Ms. Cristina Chaplain, Director
of Acquisition and Sourcing Management at the Government
Accountability Office. Ms. Chaplain received her bachelor's
degree magna cum laude in international relations from Boston
University and her master's degree in journalism from Columbia
University.
I'd like to now recognize Dr. Volz for a five-minute
opening statement.
TESTIMONY OF DR. STEPHEN VOLZ,
ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR,
NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL SATELLITE,
DATA, AND INFORMATION SERVICES,
NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION
Dr. Volz. Good morning, Chairman Bridenstine, Ranking
Member Bonamici, who unfortunately had to depart, and Members
of the Committee. I'm Dr. Stephen Volz, as indicated, Assistant
Administrator for NOAA's Satellite, Environmental, Data, and
Information Service called NESDIS.
The United States depends on NOAA to collect and provide
the critical Earth observations and information needed for
weather forecasts, for disaster preparedness, all-hazards
response and recovery, for the protection of critical
infrastructure and natural resources, and also for the
continued economic vitality of the nation.
Currently, NOAA's observation portfolio is strong and will
soon be even stronger. NOAA has launched, with support from our
partners, international and interagency, two missions over the
last 18 months, first, the space weather Deep Space Climate
Observing--Observatory satellite or DSCOVR in February of 2015
and also the ocean-observing satellite Jason-3 just earlier
this year.
Within the next year, NOAA plans to launch the next-
generation geostationary and polar-orbiting environmental
satellites GOES-R and JPSS-1 and the COSMIC-2A radio
occultation constellation of satellites. These launches are
only the beginning of a series of next-generation satellites
soon to take flight.
But a significant portion of what NESDIS does is not just
in space. All elements of the integrated observing system with
satellites, ground operations, assured satellite
communications, reliable data archives are essential for our
continued mission success. Beginning with the launch of JPSS-1,
NESDIS will bring online in stages, a new upgraded ground
operating system with enhanced reliability security, and lower
data latency. This ground system will operate, ingest, and
process data, providing information to users around the globe.
Similarly, for GOES-R we're deploying six new ground
antennae enhanced to handle the increased data rate expected
from GOES-R while staying within the narrow accessible
frequency range allowed for our satellite transmissions.
In fiscal year 2016, NOAA received funding from Congress to
initiate the polar follow-on, the extension of the polar
constellation. With this critical funding, the JPSS program now
includes five polar-orbiting satellites, Suomi NPP, JPSS-1, 2,
3, and 4. This series of satellites supported by a NOAA
industrial collaboration over the past years and into the
future years is making excellent progress now on the Polar
Follow-On, procuring the critical instrument long lead items so
that we can ensure the delivery of these satellites on cost and
on schedule.
Earth's weather systems are a global phenomenon, and NOAA's
satellites are only one piece of a global observing
constellation. We are able to accomplish what we do because our
many productive and mutually beneficial scientific and
operations partnerships built up over years of cooperation and
formal agreements that are underpinned by a full, open, and
timely data-sharing policy. These partnerships allow us to
ensure the continued operation of the robust global
constellation needed to meet the needs of our users and
stakeholders.
In order to produce trusted, reliable data that our nation
depends on every day, quality, validated observations are
needed from multiple polar orbits, as Mr. Chairman Bridenstine
mentioned. Continuing our partnerships now 30 years strong,
NOAA and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of
Meteorological Satellites, or EUMETSAT, have agreed to share
the burden of the polar-orbiting satellite for the next 25
years. NOAA and EUMETSAT will continue splitting coverage for
the two primary orbits, the midmorning and afternoon, and
openly sharing data from our--with our respective missions.
Within the United States, interagency collaboration allows
us to leverage the capabilities, the capacity, and the
infrastructure of other U.S. agencies such as with NASA, which
is NOAA's acquisition agent, and with the Department of
Defense. The United States Air Force Defense Meteorological
Satellite Program, or DMSP satellites, provide observations for
the third early-morning orbit that is important for us. And
NOAA operates the ground system development and oversees daily
operations of the DMSP satellites out of our NOAA Satellite Ops
Facility in Suitland, Maryland. These partnerships continue to
provide excellent value for the U.S. Government as a whole.
Looking to the future, we are now preparing for the future
observing system, evaluating changes in technology, emerging
partnership opportunities, and national trends. Partnerships
with the commercial sector and academic institutions can
provide flexibility, including more innovative observing
approaches, potentially enhancing our overall observing system
reliability.
This year, through the Commercial Weather Data Pilot,
NESDIS is working with the emerging commercial Earth
observation community to explore the present capabilities to
meet NOAA's observing requirements. Our comprehensive system
study will consider all sources as we map out the observing
system of the future. Our goal is to deploy an observing system
within stable budget requirements but which is also agile and
resilient and is responsive to the rapidly changing
capabilities and technology of the future.
We appreciate Congress' strong support and we look forward
to answering questions during the hearing today. Thank you,
sir.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Volz follows:]
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Chairman Bridenstine. Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Powner, you're recognized for five minutes.
TESTIMONY OF MR. DAVID POWNER, DIRECTOR,
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT ISSUES,
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Powner. Chairman Bridenstine, Ranking Member Johnson,
and Members of the Subcommittee, since my December testimony
before this subcommittee, we have continued to review the JPSS
program and NOAA's policies and procedures for determining the
life span of existing and future satellites. Accurately
depicting these life spans is important, given potential gaps
in coverage and the timing of the out-year satellite
acquisitions.
This morning, I will provide an update on the JPSS program,
the latest of our estimate on the potential gap, a security
assessment of the ground stations, and some observations about
the Polar Follow-On program.
JPSS's launch date of March 2017 is on target according to
NOAA despite the program missing interim milestones for the
spacecraft, ATMS, and the ground segment. This is the case
since the program had sufficient costs and schedule reserves
built into it. This committee's persistent questioning of these
reserves over the past several years demonstrates the important
role your consistent oversight has played.
We still remain concerned about the launch date because the
launch readiness date just slipped one month from December 2016
to January 2017. Two key areas to watch are the August ground
station delivery and the upcoming thermal vac test, which is to
start at the end of this month.
So with the March 2017 launch date and a three month
checkout period, which is somewhat optimistic, JPSS-1 is
expected to be the primary operational satellite in the early
afternoon orbit around June 2017 or roughly a year from now.
I'd like to display a chart that I showed at the December
hearing.
[Slide.]
At that hearing I testified and NOAA agreed that it was
extending the NPP life span from October 2016 to 2020. That's
the red arrow at the top of the chart. At that time, we
questioned whether it should be extended the full four years
given NOAA's assessment. Since then, we've learned that NOAA
now labels this four-year extension as fuel-limited life, and
it is not the expected life of the spacecraft and sensors. This
is just another instance where NOAA's charts and satellite life
spans have been misleading to the Congress.
Another key question is whether the ATMS instrument on NPP
will last until J-1's ATMS becomes operational. We testified in
December about the ATMS issues, and they continue.
Just recently, we made recommendations to NOAA to develop a
policy for updating its fly-out charts to include having these
life spans consistently and accurately reported based on
detailed analyses. We believe this rigor in developing the fly-
out charts is critical for NOAA to rebuild trust with both this
committee and with the appropriation committees.
Mr. Chairman, I'd now like to turn to the ground station
security findings and recommendations. This is an important
area because NOAA has reported several incidents regarding
access to its ground system, including hostile probes and
unauthorized access. To its credit, NOAA has a systems security
plan, has performed detailed penetration tests, and is working
to address known vulnerabilities. However, NOAA has determined
that the JPSS ground system is at high risk of compromise due
to the significant number of controls that are not fully
implemented.
[Slide.]
As this next chart displays, NOAA has been working on over
1,000 critical and high vulnerabilities on the current ground
station and hundreds more have been identified from penetration
tests on the ground upgrade. Just last night, NOAA provided an
update on open vulnerabilities and they report decreasing
roughly 1,500 open critical and high vulnerabilities down to
about 1,200, a decrease of 300. Of concern are the critical
vulnerabilities associated with the current operational ground
station. These actually increased slightly. No one needs to
close these vulnerabilities much quicker. Some areas to address
these vulnerabilities include applying recommended patches and
implementing stronger access controls.
Turning to the follow-on program, we are all for robust
constellations and avoiding any potential gaps like the one we
hope does not occur between NPP and J-1, but proposals to build
J-3 and 4 to store nearly 3 and six years respectively need to
be supported by cost-benefit analyses of different storage and
launch scenarios. In addition, these continuity decisions need
to be balanced with minimizing program costs.
In conclusion, NOAA has done a solid job coming out of the
NPOESS debacle and being on the verge of the J-1 launch.
Monitoring the remaining tests in the ground station delivery
is important in these remaining months to see if the March 2017
launch date holds.
Regarding the gap between NPP and J-1, ATMS aware is the
critical watch list item. NOAA also needs to more accurately
inform Congress of satellite life spans and potential gaps in
coverage, and finally, they need to better secure ground
stations to avoid security incidents involving the loss of
critical weather data.
This concludes my statement. I look forward to your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Powner follows:]
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Chairman Bridenstine. I'd like to thank the gentleman.
Mr. Stoffler, you're recognized for five minutes for an
opening statement.
TESTIMONY OF MR. RALPH STOFFLER,
DIRECTOR OF WEATHER,
DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR OPERATIONS,
U.S. AIR FORCE
Mr. Stoffler. Chairman Bridenstine, Ranking Member
Bonamici, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you----
Chairman Bridenstine. Would the gentleman yield for one
second? Can you move your microphone to be in front of you? All
right. Good.
Mr. Stoffler. Let me start again then. Chairman
Bridenstine, Ranking Member Bonamici, and members of the
subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before
you this morning to discuss space-based environmental
monitoring and the partnerships that ensure accurate and timely
forecast capabilities.
Air Force weather is comprised of people, systems, and
processes that together deliver unique services to the joint
war fighter United States Air Force and the United States Army.
Air Force's weather primary mission is centered on analyzing
and forecasting global weather and solar impacts on military
and combat operations. We strive to minimize the impact of
weather threats to friendly forces while simultaneously
capitalizing on weather conditions that maximize the
operational advantage over enemy forces and exploit enemy
weaknesses.
We achieve our mission with total force airmen, uniformed
and civil servants around the world, educated and trained on
space and weather impacts to the war fighting mission. Our
airmen serve in capacities requiring combat field skills, move-
shoot communicate skills, combat lifesaver qualifications, and
Army airborne and special operations parachutist competencies.
We develop theater weather-sensing strategies for each
operation and leverage all appropriate available data sets. We
minimize data gaps by deploying Air Force tactical weather
centers and incorporating data from nontraditional weather
sources to develop the environmental picture of the battle
space.
We achieve this through cooperative engagements with our
coalition partners, military-to-military engagements, national
and international cooperation, and Department of Defense unique
programs. We analyze and assimilate this data into our
operational centers and our numerical models to present a
unified forecast to the coalition war fighting team for
multiple security classification levels.
The war fighter receives a timely and consistent battle
space weather picture in the planning and execution phases of
an operation that addresses strategic operational and tactical
needs.
In the post-combat portion of operations, we work to
normalize the impact to nations by training personnel and
restoring basic meteorological services, which allows the
Department of Defense to withdraw its resources to be ready for
the next engagement.
Fundamental to nearly all military operations and all
levels of the military decision-making process is the
information and data provided by weather satellites. We fully
recognize that the American private sector can provide
technological advances and research in the science of our craft
to provide an essential element to our weather enterprise.
While this progress is exciting, we must balance our portfolio
with constraints in human capital, physical means, and
prioritization to ensure our future capabilities directly
correlate to the combat commanders' war fighting needs.
Thank you again for the opportunity and privilege to
testify before you today. I'm happy to answer any questions you
may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Stoffler follows:]
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Chairman Bridenstine. I'd like to thank the gentleman for
his testimony.
Ms. Chaplain, you're recognized for five minutes.
TESTIMONY OF MS. CRISTINA CHAPLAIN,
DIRECTOR, ACQUISITION AND SOURCING MANAGEMENT,
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. Chaplain. Chairman Bridenstine, Chairman Smith, Ranking
Member Johnson, Ranking Member Bonamici, and Members of the
Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to discuss GAO's recent
work on defense weather satellites, DOD's polar-orbiting
weather satellites, known as DMSP, currently cross the equator
in the early and midmorning orbits while NOAA satellites cross
the equator in the afternoon orbit. DOD will not continue
replacing satellites in the midmorning orbit as it was decided
in the aftermath of the NPOESS program that the United States
would rely on the Europeans for this orbit.
In addition, last year, DOD was directed not to launch the
last DMSP satellite planned for the early-morning orbit in
light of Congressional concerns with lack of planning,
coordination, and execution of activities to continue meeting
DOD's weather requirements. But because the 19th DMSP satellite
in the early-morning orbit recently failed prematurely, DOD has
put dismantling of its last satellite on hold.
DOD undertook an analysis of alternatives for future
weather satellites from 2012 to 2014. We were mandated by the
Congress to review this study. Undertaking the analysis was a
good step. In the past, we have found satellite programs did
not perform a rigorous analysis or conducted one with a
solution already in mind.
In addition, DOD is considering significant changes to its
future space architectures to increase resiliency and is
operating under a constrained budgetary environment, which
ultimately means DOD needs to find ways to reduce the cost of
acquisition either by paring back its requirements or doing
business differently. A thorough analysis of alternatives can
help DOD navigate all these challenges.
Ideally, DOD would have conducted this analysis in the
aftermath of the cancelation of NPOESS in 2010. By the time it
started its analysis in 2012, it was already facing a gap for
measuring ocean winds and more gaps were looming. The lag in
planning for a new satellite system is not unique to weather.
The GAO has been concerned about similar lags from its warning
satellites and protected communication satellites. The longer
it takes to assess and decide on what path to take the more DOD
is at risk of facing critical gaps or having to continue buying
legacy satellites.
We found DOD made an effort to plan for future weather
satellites with a more cost-effective approach in mind,
including consideration of which capabilities DOD needed to
provide and which could be provided by leveraging other sources
of data. The effort to rationalize requirements is also a
positive step. Too often, past programs sought to answer to
many requirements, all with the most advanced technologies. The
technology and design problems encountered by NPOESS were
partly due to problems with reigning in requirements.
We also found the analysis was useful for informing plans
for new satellites that can measure ocean winds and tropical
cyclone intensity and for a new space weather sensor that could
be integrated on other satellites. However, we found the
analysis was less useful for informing plans for DOD's two
highest priority capabilities, cloud characterization and
theater weather imagery data, now facing near-term gaps over
the Indian Ocean. While DOD consulted with a wide range of
stakeholders in conducting the analysis, it did not effectively
collaborate with NOAA, which represents DOD's interests to
international partners.
Specifically, NOAA was not involved in the reviews or the
analysis or regular discussions with the study leadership team,
the discussions were had with the technical consultant to NOAA.
The lack of formal collaboration and coordination with NOAA
contributed to an incorrect assumption about the continued
availability of critical weather data from European satellites.
As a result, the analysis did not fully assess solutions for
these high-priority capabilities.
Because DOD did not thoroughly evaluate its top-two weather
priorities during the analysis, DOD is now assessing how to
fill these gaps leading to additional lags and planning. The
failure of DMSP satellite and the termination of DMSP-20 have
heightened the need to do so. It should also be noted that
ineffective coordination has been a recurring problem in space
notably with the NPOESS program but with other space programs
as well.
In closing, we recognize that this type of analysis is
extremely challenging to conduct, more so given the rigor and
scope DOD applied to it. But in light of the importance of
cloud characterization and theater weather imagery data to
DOD's mission, it was incumbent on the Air Force to work more
effectively with NOAA. Since our report, they have taken
actions, and I can talk about those during the hearing.
This concludes my statement, and I'm happy to answer any
questions you have.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Chaplain follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bridenstine. Thank you for your testimony, Ms.
Chaplain.
We have with us--now, we're going to go a little bit out of
order--but the chairman of the full committee, a good friend of
mine from Texas, Mr. Smith, you are recognized for five minutes
for an opening statement.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
opportunity to be able to go out of turn for an opening
statement. And I want to thank our witnesses for being here
today.
The Science Committee has held many hearings on NOAA's
troubled weather satellite programs over the years. These
problems largely stem from the federal government's ill-fated
consolidation of civilian and military weather and climate
systems, which created slow, costly, and inefficient
interagency programs to handle our weather prediction.
In 2010, when it became apparent that the National Polar-
orbiting Environmental Satellite System was a failure, the
Administration canceled it and left the agencies, namely NOAA
and DOD, to create their own individual polar programs. In
NOAA's case, they initiated the JPSS satellite, which
unfortunately has continually encountered delays, cost overruns
and mismanagement.
Over the last several years, NOAA's spending for satellite
operations has ballooned to account for roughly 40 percent of
its total budget, over $2 billion. This prevents NOAA from
adequately pursuing other important areas of science, service,
and stewardship.
NOAA now proposes to move forward with the next series of
weather satellites using the same technology, the Polar Follow-
On. So I am concerned that the same problems that have occurred
over the last ten years will continue. This Committee needs
assurance that NOAA will get its government satellite spending
under control and be able to meet future forecasting needs.
Congress should not continue to fund an over-budget program
that has not performed up to its standards.
So what is NOAA doing differently with its next series of
satellites that justifies such high continued funding? I fear
the answer is nothing. I am also not convinced that NOAA is
adequately mitigating the very real possibility of a gap in our
weather data. In the face of real threats, NOAA should be doing
all it can to prevent data gaps, yet they continue to drag
their feet and not consider all options. The growing private
sector weather enterprise could mitigate NOAA's shortcomings
through new technologies and sources of data, but NOAA shows
that it will only take action if forced to do so.
If NOAA is afraid of innovation, maybe they shouldn't be in
the business of deciding what technologies are needed for
improved forecasting. For instance, commercial satellites
equipped with the latest technology could help prevent data
gaps, provide new kinds of advanced data, improve current and
future model forecasts, and do so on a much faster timeline at
lower cost than large and slow government systems. So why isn't
NOAA considering these?
NOAA should absolutely consider the help that the private
sector can provide. In this case, commercial innovation beats
the status quo of slow, costly government systems. Faster,
better, and cheaper solutions take vision, competence, and
courage. NOAA needs more of these qualities.
Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing from our witnesses
today about how we can get our nation's future weather data
back on track and on time to provide our citizens with the
critical weather forecasts they need and deserve.
Let me also say, regrettably, I have another committee
markup going on at the same time, so I'm going to be shuttling
back and forth between the committees.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bridenstine. Thank you, Chairman, for your opening
statement. Thank you to all of our witnesses for their
testimonies.
Members are reminded that Committee rules limit questioning
to five minutes. The Chair now recognizes himself for five
minutes.
I wanted to start by addressing the issue that we recently
had on another committee I serve on, the Armed Services
Committee, with Meteosat-7, which was going to do cloud
characterization and theater weather imagery over the Indian
Ocean, which is critically important for our war fighters
serving in that part of the world. We had hearings on our
committee when we learned that Meteosat-7 was not going to be
able to continue doing those functions and that the Europeans
were not planning to replace it with what we thought they were
going to plan to replace it with, so we started having hearings
and trying to figure out what are we going to mitigate this gap
with.
And then, ultimately, we just learned last week that the
Europeans are indeed going to launch a new satellite and move
Meteosat-8 over to a region that is close to where Meteosat-7
was so we can get some of the same capabilities back.
I wanted to ask Mr. Stoffler if you would comment on the
process that we went through from believing we were secure in a
solution to not having a solution and then going and finally
looking like we've got a good solution. If you could share with
us what the solution is and the process that we went through to
get there.
Mr. Stoffler. Chairman, I appreciate that question. And
certainly you're very correct. We were planning all along that
the Europeans would provide us the capabilities over the Indian
Ocean. They, like us, have their own priorities and they had to
make a change to their plans. When we were first informed of
that possibility, we looked at all alternative options that
were out there.
Certainly, there are other geostationary capabilities over
the Indian Ocean and particularly provided both by Russia and
China. Our systems are capable of receiving Chinese data, and
we did an evaluation of that. When we determined the potential
of hackings that took place at NOAA, we locked our systems
down. We had the CIO of the Air Force evaluate the situation,
and we were told unless this data was really highly
operationally needed, we should not use it.
We then went to the Director of Operations to determine if
we should use it, and the answer was clearly no. Once we were
told that Chinese data is off the table, we had to find another
alternative.
At that point in time, we began several actions. One was to
go back to the Joint Staff and advise them of this change. We
provided briefings, and we also began an outreach on the
military side to work with our allies to see what they could do
to convince our European allies to move over, and of course we
outreached to our NOAA partners to see what they could do to
help us in that regard.
I think we've been very successful, and the end result is
we now have what I would call a multi-pronged attack to resolve
that problem. First, as you've already said yourself, Europe
has been most cooperative. Meteosat-8 is being moved over. It's
going to cover the critical components of our operations in
Syria and Iraq. We will experience a short gap over eastern
Afghanistan, and our plan there is to work cooperatively with
India to use Indian data to close that gap.
Chairman Bridenstine. Now, would that happen immediately or
is that--you said we're going to have a gap. How long is that
gap going to be?
Mr. Stoffler. We don't think that we're really going to
have a gap. Right now, India--the Indian satellite is already
operational. It's already there. The data is already available
here in the United States at a variety of universities. It's a
matter of getting here quicker and more efficiently so we can
use it operationally.
Chairman Bridenstine. Okay.
Mr. Stoffler. And we're working in conjunction with our
NOAA partners to make that happen for us, so we feel very
positive that we're going to be able to do that.
Chairman Bridenstine. At what point did you guys reach out
to NOAA to seek assistance? Or did you?
Mr. Stoffler. I think certainly at my level we had a lot of
informal talks and what the best way forward was, but we didn't
really reach out to NOAA formally until after we had made the
decision that the Chinese data set would not be able to be
used. At that point in time the Air Force A3 wrote a letter to
NOAA, NESDIS in particular, asking to see if NOAA could help us
possibly moving a spare NOAA satellite over the Indian Ocean.
Chairman Bridenstine. I want to bring up something that
I've heard as an idea. I'm not saying it's a good idea; I'm
saying it's an idea, and I want to get your input on it. During
the George W. Bush Administration, they established the
National Executive Committee on Positioning, Navigation, and
Timing to coordinate and provide high-level guidance for GPS.
It was co-chaired by the Deputy Defense Secretary, the Deputy
Transportation Secretary.
The executive committee only meets about twice a year,
which seems doable even for people who are extremely busy, as I
know you are. The National Executive Committee has a permanent
staff, working groups, and includes every agency with GPS
equities. Is it worth considering a national executive
committee approach for weather to get attention, coordination,
and guidance at the highest levels when we face these kind of
gaps?
Mr. Stoffler. Certainly from my perspective, Mr. Chairman,
is that there are a significant number of coordination
activities that take place already. We've got the Joint Center
for Data Assimilation. We also work with the Development
Testbed Center, so certainly at my level and below there's lots
of coordination that takes place. I find that very effective.
During the NPOESS era, we actually had a meeting similar to
that, a senior users' group meeting where NOAA, NASA, and the
DOD got together pretty routinely to discuss things in a very
high-level. As you have already attested yourself, the result
of that wasn't necessarily positive so I'm not convinced that
adding another level of high-level bureaucracy is going to
improve the process.
Chairman Bridenstine. Dr. Volz, what are your thoughts on
that?
Dr. Volz. Thank you. I think that the points you make is
the need for greater coordination at the senior executive
level. And as Mr. Stoffler mentioned, when the Air Force
reached out to us after their Chinese assessment and asked for
assistance, we were able to communicate to them our status on
GOES but also that we have been working for some time with our
European partners through an international Coordination Group
on Meteorological Satellites for covering this particular
observing system requirement over the Indian Ocean. So that had
been in work for some time.
I bring that up because we have global coordination
activities already in place for meteorological activities for--
across all the major met agencies in the world. And this is one
example where the need for observations over the Indian Ocean
was well understood, and there had been a history and we knew
it was going to be going away and there was a path for an
interim solution to solve it.
So I think addressing the collaborative needs wouldn't
necessarily require an executive committee but greater
coordination between the DOD and NOAA as we serve in that role
as the international agent for weather for the United States
around the world and we have done for many, many years
effectively.
Chairman Bridenstine. All right. My time is expired. I'd
like to recognize the acting Ranking Member, Mr. Grayson from
Florida.
Mr. Grayson. Thank you. Mr. Stoffler, I want to
congratulate you on your origins. As I frequently tell the
Chair, not everybody can be so fortunate as to be from
Oklahoma.
Mr. Stoffler. That's correct.
Mr. Grayson. Tell me, what kind of data do DOD satellites
collect other than weather data?
Mr. Stoffler. If you're making reference to the defense
meteorological satellite program, we have seven different
sensors on there, and they collect weather information as well
as space weather information.
Mr. Grayson. What are the sensors?
Mr. Stoffler. Specifically, we have a sounder, we have----
Mr. Grayson. What's that?
Mr. Stoffler. The sounder is something where we collect
information regarding remote sensing of the atmosphere. This is
data that you would incorporate into the models. The key
essential that we have on DMSP is the EO/IR capability where we
actually take pictures of the atmosphere to see the clouds,
specifically visible imagery and infrared imagery.
Mr. Grayson. What other sensors?
Mr. Stoffler. I'd have to give you a precise breakdown at
another time, sir.
Mr. Grayson. All right. Well, give me an idea of what
they're actually used for. What kind of data do they collect?
Mr. Stoffler. Well, I mean, the primary mission is we take
the actual pictures, the IR and the vis, and we incorporate it
into a cloud depiction forecasting system. That is the primary
purpose of the DMSP. We use the sounding data and we
incorporate it into our models from a data simulation
perspective, and we use the space weather centers in--to
support of our ionospheric modeling system. So those three are
the primary areas.
Mr. Grayson. I got the impression from your testimony that
the information is used to provide--how shall I put this--
weather reports to troops in the field. Is that correct?
Mr. Stoffler. From the satellite perspective, we use the
data in two aspects. One, clouds are very, very important to
the war fighter, so if I'm sitting in the AOR and I'm planning
a mission or strike and the air operations center wants to know
five or six hours from now where are the clouds going to be,
where's the cloud-free line of sight, where am I going to hit
the target, DMSP provides this data were we can forecast and
where those cloud-free areas are going to be. So from an RPA
perspective, from a strike perspective, from a bombing
perspective, that's where that helps.
The sounding data we use for the long-range forecasts out
to 10 days to actually create numerical weather prediction on
the bigger range weather features.
The other thing which the DMSP is very critical for is in
the execution phase. If you want to know where a haboob is
going to be or where you're going to have severe thunderstorm
activity, again from an execution point of view, that's what we
use that data for. And we make the data available via the DCGS
backbone so they can actually see it downrange.
Mr. Grayson. Is that information used now or is it just
something that's been used in the past? Let me be more
specific. Has it been used in the past 30 days?
Mr. Stoffler. Yes.
Mr. Grayson. Where?
Mr. Stoffler. We use that information each and every day.
Mr. Grayson. Where do you use that?
Mr. Stoffler. We use it in, we use it in, we use it in
CENTCOM, we use it in PACOM, we use it in SOUTHCOM.
Mr. Grayson. Could you be more specific?
Mr. Stoffler. Okay. I would say that at Kabul, for example,
we would use that. At Bagram Air Force Base we would use that.
We would use it over Syria. We would use it over our operations
in Iraq. We would use it over places in Russia. We also use it
in South America. We use it in Korea, and it's used in northern
Europe. So basically any place where there's a DOD operation
going on, we would use that data.
Mr. Grayson. I'm surprised to hear you mention South
America. What's that all about?
Mr. Stoffler. We have some counter-drug operations in South
America, and we actually have a few weather teams deployed down
there.
Mr. Grayson. All right. It sounds like the division of
labor between you all and NOAA is somewhat ad hoc. Is that a
fair statement?
Mr. Stoffler. I would not say that it's ad hoc. Our mission
is very focused OCONUS on military operations.
Mr. Grayson. But in terms of who covers what, that seems to
be done almost on a case-by-case basis rather than according to
some kind of master plan. Is that fair to say?
Mr. Stoffler. I think you need to look at what I would call
the international plan. From an international point of view,
from a data-providing point of view, NOAA certainly provides
from our perspective the two geostationary satellites, GOES
East, GOES West. We use the two European satellites, and we use
a Japanese satellite. We also use a European one. So I think
there is an international plan of distribution of
responsibilities regarding data collections.
Mr. Grayson. Dr. Volz, from your perspective, is the
division of labor between NOAA and DOD ad hoc or is it
according to some master plan?
Dr. Volz. I think the missions of the two agencies are very
different, and the products and services the two agencies
provide are different as well. NOAA has a very focused weather
forecast alerts-and-warnings responsibility for the United
States, and as part of our global observation generate the
numerical weather predictions requires global observations. We
also have oceans and coastal observation requirements, and
products and services we provide.
When you think about speaking--it's not my field exactly--
but what the DOD is providing is a very service-oriented
delivery to their own resources or their own applications. We
provide a general observation requirement in weather
forecasting for all users, and it's up to our other users to
come up with more specific, detailed recommendations in
forecasts and products for their particular service
application.
So I don't think it's overlap in terms of the mission
requirements. Ours are broader and more general to the general
populace, and DOD has a completely different mission from ours.
Mr. Grayson. My time is up. Thank you all.
Chairman Bridenstine. Great questions. As somebody who
serves in the United States military, maybe I can help. When it
comes to mesoscale forecasting in Afghanistan, which is a
smaller level, in Afghanistan that's not where NOAA is going to
be serving the war fighter. NOAA is focused on the United
States of America. The DMSP programs and all the weather
satellite programs operated by the Department of Defense feed
models that will ultimately enable me to determine whether or
not I can use a laser-guided weapon or a GPS-guided weapon for
a specific target in Afghanistan or some other part of the
world. Of course, I did counter-drug operations in Central and
South America as a Navy pilot, and I was very grateful that we
had excellent weather data down south. It could have been
better, but my goodness, weather in Central and South America
changes so rapidly. You literally see the thunderstorms
growing.
I'd like to now recognize Mr. Moolenaar from Michigan.
Mr. Moolenaar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank
our witnesses today.
I want to begin with Mr. Stoffler. If you--just on--after
canceling the Defense Weather Satellite System, the Department
of Defense initiated an analysis of alternatives for space-
based environmental monitoring, and it's my understanding that
the conclusions of this analysis prioritized a number of
mission-critical issues for Department of Defense to pursue,
and I just wanted to get your perspective. Is Department of
Defense pursuing all the mission areas as prioritized in this
analysis of alternatives?
Mr. Stoffler. Thank you for that question, sir, and yes, we
are. We are pursuing all of them. When we did the analysis, we
reviewed the initial requirements of the NPOESS program. We
revalidated 11 of the 12 original requirements as having clear
military utility, and then we determined that a significant
number of the needs that we had could be met by existing
national and international assets, so we're focused on--only on
buying material capabilities for gaps 3, 8, and 11, i.e.,
tropical cyclone monitoring, ocean vector winds, and the space-
based energetic charged particle sensors.
Mr. Moolenaar. So you feel that this plan is helping to
mitigate these gaps?
Mr. Stoffler. No question, yes, it is.
Mr. Moolenaar. Okay. Ms. Chaplain, would you--any comments
on that assessment at all?
Ms. Chaplain. A couple things. I would add that the first
two capabilities, cloud characterization, theater weather
imagery, there are still questions about how to meet those
capabilities, and DOD is still studying that after the AOA.
During the AOA, they consulted some with NOAA on the
possibility of using European satellites to fill some of those
gaps, but because they didn't consult with them enough, they
didn't get information that helped them form good assumptions
for that study. So that's a still the question up in the air,
those two capabilities.
Mr. Moolenaar. Okay. Thank you for that feedback.
Mr. Powner, I wondered, I understand that NOAA needs to
launch the first polar satellite JPSS-1, as well as the follow-
up JPSS-2 to have a more robust system, and after that, when
does NOAA need to launch the remaining two satellites?
Mr. Powner. Well, I think that's still in question. When
you look at--our main concern is the potential gap right here
and now between NPP and J-1. I think when you look at the plan
for J-2 and you look at the follow-on programs, J-3 and 4,
those gaps go away. They really go--the near-term issue is with
ATMS on NPP and will it last long enough until we get J-1 up
there and transition over to the ATMS on J-1. That's, I think,
the key question in the near term.
When you look at the out year, there is a robust
constellation being planned. In fact, they're even planning to
store satellites 3 and 4, the follow-on programs, for
relatively 2 to three years and then 5 to six years. That's the
current plan. So after we get past this first hurdle, I think
the robustness begins.
Mr. Moolenaar. Okay. And are we saving money by building
satellites now? Is that your understanding?
Mr. Powner. Well, that's the key question. When you look at
the out-years satellites, there's economies of scale to go
ahead and build these things quicker, especially if we're
replicating what we're doing on J-2. And we get that. And we
ought to take advantage of that. And we also ought to take
advantage of some firm fixed prices because we've done these
things. There's opportunities to save money.
But there's also a challenge with building them quickly and
storing them. There's a cost with that. And you've also got to
balance that with the annual appropriation process. How do you
balance all those things? And I just think NOAA needs to be
real clear in their plans forward that we're justifying the
best decisions to ensure robustness but still do it where we're
fiscally responsible.
Mr. Moolenaar. And then are you concerned at all about
there may be emerging technologies that if we build things now
that we wouldn't be able to take advantage of those new
technologies?
Mr. Powner. Absolutely. I mean, there's always, you know,
leaps with some of these technologies that help with the
forecasting with our observational sensors and the whole bit.
So again, you know, we don't want to--there's some sweet spot
in there, and what--finding that sweet spot where we store not
excessively ensuring that we can actually enhance some of the
sensors going forward, and I think finding that sweet spot,
it's still kind of a TBD in our mind.
Mr. Moolenaar. Okay. Well, thank you very much.
And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Bridenstine. The gentleman yields back.
I now recognize the gentleman from Texas, Dr. Babin, for
five minutes.
Mr. Babin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you,
witnesses, for being here today.
Dr. Volz, it's my understanding that NOAA relies on data
from the three distinct polar orbits, early morning,
midmorning, and early afternoon, which are all being filled by
different partners, NOAA, DOD, and the European satellite
program, EUMETSAT. How important is each orbit?
Dr. Volz. In order to generate accurate forecasts and for
our numerical weather modeling, we need distributed data and
observations from around the globe as frequently as possible.
The models we use right now are--rely on all three orbits for
provision of data. So the timing, those 6:30 a.m., the 9:30
a.m., and the 1:30 p.m. timing are equally important to the
generation of our data models in our forecasts.
Mr. Babin. Okay. So the data from each orbit is weighed
equally when integrated into numerical weather models? Is that
the way that works?
Dr. Volz. I say the distribution of the timing of the data
are equally important. You need that snapshot from different
times of the day. We have different sensors in the different
orbits, so some are more powerful than others, so the impact of
individual measurements from an afternoon orbit may be more
than the early-morning orbit because of the quality of the
instrument--
Mr. Babin. I see.
Dr. Volz. --but you need at least the weather and
temperature soundings at those three orbits to support the
overall numerical weather modeling.
Mr. Babin. Okay. What would be the degradation of our
weather forecasts if there was a gap or if a partner decided
not to fill a certain orbit?
Dr. Volz. We've looked at over the years answering that
question as we went through the generation of the JPSS program
in a few years ago looking at what we called data denial
studies or analyses of the impact of the loss of a particular
orbit. And it does show up as a reduction in the accuracy of
the forecasts in the three- to five- or seven-day forecast
period when you remove one leg of that three-legged stool. And
I can give you the specific numbers. I can't quote them off the
top of my head, but there is a marked change in the accuracy of
the forecast in the short-term forecasts with the loss of any
one of those three.
Mr. Babin. Well, if you can't provide exact figures, can
you commit to this committee to do the appropriate research and
studies to determine the exact benefit, importance of each
separate orbit?
Dr. Volz. Yes, sir, we can take that
Mr. Babin. Okay.
Dr. Volz. --and respond.
Mr. Babin. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Babin. And then I'd like to ask several of you, as with
most other government satellite acquisitions, weather satellite
acquisition efforts consistently have experienced significant
cost increases and schedule delays. Why is this so, and what
can be done to your knowledge? Has anyone met cost schedule and
performance goals with their weather satellite acquisition
efforts? And I would say, Mr. Powner, if you would go first.
Mr. Powner. Well, clearly, I think there's a lot of lessons
learned looking at what happened with NPOESS and why we had
such huge cost overruns in launches and delays in planned
launches. One of the big things you can start with is the level
of complexity that was associated with NPOESS. At one time
there was an excessive amount of sensors. We got down to five.
I think decreasing the complexity is the first start in
ensuring that our requirements are real solid. Many times we
ask for so many things in our requirements have a lot of nice-
to-haves, but what do we essentially need. So that's been a
real lesson learned looking back over the--both the GOES and
the JPSS programs.
Mr. Babin. Okay. And how about Colonel Stoffler if you
don't mind?
Mr. Stoffler. Well, I can certainly echo, sir, what was
already mentioned, having been part of the NPOESS program. We
tend to want to really build capabilities, which advances of
the future. So if you make requirements that take you far in
advance, there's increased risk. And if you look at DMSP, when
you go from a capability that has two channels and you try to
go to 24 channels, that really causes a lot of risk. So
certainly from the DOD perspective, if you state requirements
which are reasonable and allow you to do what you need to do,
that's a key way of controlling cost.
Mr. Babin. Okay. And then we probably have enough time for
one more answer between Ms. Chaplain or Dr. Volz, whichever
one.
Ms. Chaplain. I like to add to that just because our work
consistently looks at this question. I would add in addition to
the issues which are very legitimate, oftentimes satellite
programs attempt to invent technology during the acquisition
phase, so if they run across natural discovery problems during
that phase, it has a lot of repercussions that drive up costs
and schedule.
In the case of NPOESS, oversight was a very big problem, as
well as coordination among the three agencies. And I think
weather satellites tend to be a little harder to do because of
that. They span so many communities. You have to bring a lot of
stakeholders together and work effectively to manage the
program right. So I think going forward both agencies need to
look at that issue.
Mr. Babin. Okay. That's great. Did you have something you
wanted to say, Dr. Volz?
Dr. Volz. Yes, please. I'd like to respond to that. I agree
with both the points of our GAO representation--representatives
have made. It's consistency and clarity, consistency of the
requirements and clarity of the mission I think which are key.
And the NPOESS example was a forced marriage between different
organizations with different service provisions that we talked
about earlier.
And I think the lesson was learned, and it has been applied
on our JPSS program. In fact, since the 2011 initiation, we
have held the Q-2 fiscal year 2017 launch date for the JPSS
mission for the last five years plus. So we've been able--with
changes and challenges that we have in development, we've
managed to keep that launch schedule on track. And we've
addressed the changes in requirements by holding to a firm
baseline of requirements, and that's the provision of the
follow-ons is that we do not want to change the mission now
when we have a proven instrument, a proven complement. We can
build it again with reliability and with an accurate cost and
schedule.
Mr. Babin. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time
is expired.
Chairman Bridenstine. I'd like to thank the gentleman from
Texas.
We're going to move into a second round, and I'd like to
start by asking Dr. Volz one of the things that came out of the
GAO report has been the challenge that we've had with the Suomi
NPP expected life, and now it's been extended. I don't think
anybody doubts the fact that Suomi NPP is going to be around
longer than the expected life at the time of its launch. I
think one of the concerns we have is that the process and the
procedures, the clarity for how we go about extending that
life, and--from our perspective it might look like it's
subjective. Can you give clarity on how you make that
determination, and then maybe in the future have published
standards or something that determine how we move forward so
then there isn't a question about why it was changed.
Dr. Volz. Yes, sir, and thank you. That's an excellent
point. And that was part of the dialogue we've been having with
the GAO over the past couple of months about how we do our fly-
out charts, how we do our projections. One case of terminology,
we don't extend life. We update our analysis on the projection
of probable life. We don't decide to terminate or to extend;
it's whether the satellite is functioning or not. And we use
our analysis, our understanding of its performance to see how
far we can project that performance into the future.
So what we have done with Suomi NPP, different from our
legacy satellites is from the start done statistical analysis
of the instrument capabilities, the instrument performance, the
spacecraft lifetime, the operations of it, how it wears out
over time. And based on the information from the satellite and
the general understanding of our electronic parts and hardware,
in the whole aerospace industry, come up with projected
probability of success or P sub S for these satellites into the
future.
That is our new baseline approach for Suomi NPP, and it
will be for JPSS and for our GOES satellites going forward. It
was not a methodology that was applied in the previous years,
so when we try and apply that same rigor to legacy satellites
which don't have the basis of information that we started with,
it's hard to retrofit that analysis. So we're not going to be
able look at a POES satellite launch 15 years ago and apply the
same rigor of analysis that we can to JPSS. We don't have the
basis. But our plan is to have a transparent process for how we
do this on an annual basis, how we update our fly-out charts,
where the assumptions that are built into it are stated, and
then we can discuss whether they're appropriate, but they're
clearly stated for all to see.
Chairman Bridenstine. That's great. We thank you for that.
When you think about the NOAA-16 satellite that broke up
randomly--and I shouldn't say randomly. It broke up. And do you
have any clarity on that? And one of the concerns we had is
could that same fate be the fate of Suomi NPP?
Dr. Volz. So given the--the answer to the first question is
I don't have clarity on the exact breakup reasons for NOAA 16.
It was non-communicative at the time. It had been inert for
some time, so it spontaneously devolved or broke up. So we
don't know the root cause. We can speculate on what they might
be.
But whether it was something internal to the spacecraft or
a micrometeor object debris, those effects and those risk
factors are factored into our analysis of Suomi NPP. So we
routinely, for example, do debris-avoidance maneuvers for Suomi
NPP when we know based on our tracking that there are potential
conjunctions with other debris. So we are mitigating that to
the extent that we can, that we can see these objects.
As I mentioned before, the health and status, the battery
life, the propulsion systems in the satellite we monitor on a
regular basis, so spontaneous explosion or breakup from
anything internal or tracking the engineering capabilities very
carefully on the spacecraft to know whether or not that's a
possibility and mitigating them if we see any effects.
Chairman Bridenstine. Okay. Got it. I wanted to ask about
the commercial pilot program, commercial data program. Can you
give us an update where you are on that and how it's going?
Dr. Volz. It's going at a relatively breakneck speed. I
know that may not seem like that to the commercial side, but to
the government side, it is relatively quick. We have--since
the--beginning of this fiscal year with the authorization for
the weather data pilot, we have, as you mentioned in you, or I
think Bonamici mentioned in her opening, we have released our
process for evaluation. We released an RFI to the community for
opportunities for provision of data for us to evaluate as part
of the pilot process, and we currently have on the street a
draft Request For Quotations from the commercial industry to
sell data to NOAA, to NESDIS for us to evaluate radio
occultation data for suitability in our use for weather
modeling. We expect that to be closed in a couple of weeks. We
actually have industry day this afternoon to answer questions,
and the actual request will go out in early August. And our
target is to have data on hand from vendors or at least under
contract by the end of this fiscal year.
The challenge right now is that the available data is an
empty set. There are no observing commercial systems out there
now providing data that we can use. That's why we asked for an
extension to fiscal year 2017. And the RFQ will actually ask
for data up through April of 2017, for--anticipating the launch
of these assets in the next 6 months so that we can get those
data on board, pay for them, and do our evaluation process
internally.
Chairman Bridenstine. Got it. And then, Mr. Stoffler, the
two highest priorities of course for CENTCOM--cloud
characterization and theater weather imagery--there are
commercial capabilities that are out there that might not be in
space just yet but are planning launches as early as 2019. One
of them would be hyperspectral capabilities. Would those
capabilities be valuable to you for cloud characterization or
theater weather imagery?
Mr. Stoffler. You are right on the money, Mr. Chairman.
Those capabilities would be very valuable to us, and we are
waiting with great anticipation when that data becomes
available.
Chairman Bridenstine. Now, is there a way that the federal
government on the Department of Defense side could partner with
a commercial company knowing full well that eventually the
commercial company will have customers that aren't necessarily
the Department of Defense but could be the agricultural
industry, could be the insurance industry or the transportation
industry, shipping industry, but to signal to the markets that
there is a demand from the Department of Defense for this kind
of capability? Are there ways of partnering today so that we
can help get this industry going?
Mr. Stoffler. We have what's called a CRADA, a relationship
with a variety of different organizations, both government and
industry, which we can leverage to advance these types of
capabilities. We've also done--just like NOAA has, our program
office has gone out and done a request for information to see
what's available out there. And as you've already indicated,
our biggest issue right now is that there is nothing to buy. So
we're waiting for that to happen.
Chairman Bridenstine. Is it possible to do a partnership
where maybe the private sector would provide the data for free
to the Department of Defense? In return, the private sector
would get an EELV launch or some kind of partnership like that?
Mr. Stoffler. I'd have to speak to our acquisition agents
to give you a proper read on that, sir.
Chairman Bridenstine. Okay. I'd like to recognize the
acting Ranking Member, Mr. Grayson, for a second round of
questioning.
Mr. Grayson. Thank you. Dr. Volz, the 2013 NOAA, NESDIS,
and NASA independent review team made several recommendations
regarding the weather satellite programs and putting them on
what was referred to as a robust state. Do you know what they
meant by robust?
Dr. Volz. Yes, sir. The robust means essentially single-
fault tolerant or two failures to a gap, which means you can
lose any major on-orbit asset and have a second one ready to
support the same mission, provide the same information content
without interruption. So that would require redundant
capability on orbit at the same time.
We are in that situation, for example, right now with the
geostationary satellite constellation. We have two active and
one is a backup for either of the two so we could lose one and
a satellite could move over and give us the same coverage. We
are not in that condition right now in the polar because
although we have legacy POES satellites, they are not as
capable and not as functioning at the capacity of the Suomi NPP
satellite.
So when we look at the JPSS-1 and the JPSS-2, getting to
the JPSS-2 launch so we have both J-1 and a J-2 on orbit both
effectively in their prime of life, get you to that condition
of robustness where you have two fully functioning satellites
in their prime lifetime ready to support the mission.
Mr. Grayson. So robustness in this case just means having a
backup, is that correct?
Dr. Volz. It's on orbit ready redundancy effectively, yes.
Mr. Grayson. All right. Apart from what you just said, is
there anything else that needs to be done in order to secure
that condition?
Dr. Volz. The robust condition, that is one approach. That
is one piece of the robustness. It also requires the overall
observing system is ready and available and functioning as
well, which includes not only those two satellites, but as we
mentioned that we have other assets in the morning orbit from
the Europeans and the early a.m. orbit from the DMSP and from
other partner satellites that we have a functioning ground
system which is redundant and capable to handle. If we have a
hurricane come through in one, we have a backup system, we have
redundant antennas, et cetera.
So the overall observing system on the NOAA piece needs to
be robust and reliable, and the observing system of a global
system needs to be able to provide the data that we rely on.
Quite frankly, our partnership with the Europeans is essential
as part of our collaborative efforts going through the years.
And their constellation robustness is as strong, their
requirements are as strong as ours.
Mr. Grayson. All right. Regarding NOAA's commercial weather
data pilot, what other kinds of data can you consider as being
likely or possible for future acquisition?
Dr. Volz. When you talk about the future capabilities,
there are potentially a number that are likely to be coming
around in the near term that are not yet available. Chairman
Bridenstine mentioned hyperspectral as one possibility. There
are a number of small satellite or even CubeSat versions of
sounders that are being planned or--NASA is working on
launching and we're working with NASA to understand the planned
capabilities there.
You look for areas where technologies are scalable to
smaller size or affordable by venture capitalists or small
companies and can meet our requirements. So those three factors
fold in in a couple of potentially significant ways, like I
mentioned, hyperspectral, microwave sounding, and additional
radio occultation.
Imagery has already gone through this transition. We're not
a big imagery buyer, but industry is already seeing that there
are commercial applications.
Our Commercial Weather Pilot focused on radio occultation
first and foremost because that was the most mature of these
potentially emerging capabilities, but I fully expect that as
we continue our engagement with the commercial sector, as we
look at our strategic plan for the next emerging capabilities
for our constellation, that there will be others who are
reaching that same level of maturity that will need to be
evaluated for their suitability for our measurements.
Mr. Grayson. So what kind of time frames are you
anticipating for the other data sets?
Dr. Volz. For the immediate future we're focused right now
on the radio occultation in the fiscal year 2016, fiscal year
2017. We are looking at options in fiscal year 2017. We've
issued another call for interest on other measurements.
Hyperspectral may be one, I mean, without tailoring it to
specific targets seeing what else is likely to be in the market
available. We are moving forward on our space weather
architecture and there are potential, and have been expressed
interest in providing space weather observations that could be
useful as well. So these are areas in the '17 in the near-term
time frame that may be viable for satisfying.
Our focus has to be on understanding the capabilities and
seeing how they match our requirements and our observational
needs. We are a requirements-driven organization, so we look to
what our requirements are and how they can best be met. And we
consider commercial emerging along with government-built as
the--what would be the best match to meet our mission
objectives.
Mr. Grayson. Can you be more specific about what time
frames we're talking about, how many years out and so on?
Dr. Volz. Right now for radio occultation we have seen
suggestions of launches in the next year. So that would mean we
would be looking at data from an RO system potentially by this
time next year or in fiscal year 2017 that would be ready for
evaluation. For these other hyperspectral, it's more suggested,
and it would depend on the maturity and the development pace of
the industry itself. I would not be surprised to see something
in the '18 to '19 time frame or there'll be potential
demonstrations on orbit at some of these others, but it depends
on sources and investments by others outside of our
organization.
Mr. Grayson. My time is up. Thank you all again.
Chairman Bridenstine. I'd like to thank the gentleman from
Florida.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Babin--Dr. Babin is
recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Babin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
Colonel Stoffler, one question I hear that I have for you,
let me read you a portion of the national space policy signed
by President Obama in 2010. The Secretary of Commerce through
the NOAA Administrator, the Secretary of defense through the
Secretary of the Air Force, and the NASA Administrator shall
work together and with their international partners to ensure
uninterrupted operational polar-orbiting environmental
satellite observations. The Secretary of Defense shall be
responsible for the morning orbit and the Secretary of Commerce
shall be responsible for the afternoon orbit. Are you familiar
with this national policy?
Mr. Stoffler. Yes, sir, I am.
Mr. Babin. Currently, does the DOD have a plan and money in
the budget for maintaining the morning orbit? If not, why is
DOD going against national policy?
Mr. Stoffler. Sir, at this particular time we're meeting
the national space policy objectives as long as DMSP continues
to be in orbit. Final decisions haven't been made on weather
satellite follow-on, but if we launch WSF in the morning orbit,
I believe that we're meeting the objectives of national space
policy.
Mr. Babin. Okay. All right. I understand that NOAA--this is
for you, Mr. Powner, I'm sorry. I understand that NOAA needs to
launch the first polar satellite, JPSS-1, as well as the
follow-up JPSS-2 to have a more robust system. We've mentioned
earlier this morning. After that when does NOAA need to launch
the remaining two satellites?
Mr. Powner. Well, I think that's what's--currently right
now I think the plan is to launch in the 2024 and '26 time
frames those two satellites and then actually they would be
stored for a period of time. So, for instance, J-3 I believe
the current plan is to launch 2024 and to store for about 2-1/2
years into 2026. With J-4 the plan would be in early 2026 to
have it ready to go in storage and launch in '31.
Mr. Babin. Okay. Thank you. Is NOAA and the federal
government actually saving money by building satellites now?
Mr. Powner. They could be because of the economies of
scale, but the--you know, you've got to offset that with some
of the storage costs. We understand that is in excess of--
although if you look at what happened with DMSP 20, that ended
up being in excess of some of the storage costs there. Again,
we've got to find what's that right area where we're building
it and having this robust constellation that Dr. Volz referred
to.
But also, too, you need to balance that with Congressional
budgets. We know that both the GOES program and the JPSS, those
two programs consume a large portion of NOAA's budget. So if in
fact you could address other priorities at some point and hold
off those out-year satellites, maybe that's the appropriate
thing to do that--we would just like to see the analysis
provided to Congress, not only this committee but we get the
same questions from the appropriation committees whether this
is the right cadence and sequence for the out-years satellites.
And it's really in NOAA's court to prove that that is the best
cadence with those out-year satellites.
Mr. Babin. Okay. And then one more question for Dr. Volz in
regard to the SNPP and the ATMS instrument onboard, if the ATMS
instrument fails on SNPP, what would be the backup for its
measurements until JPSS-1 is operational?
Dr. Volz. We have no immediate backup in orbit for the
ATMS. However, for the observing system requirements, ATMS is
one of a number of observations. You asked the question earlier
what does the loss of one satellite mean, and we can get back
to that specific answer. The loss of one instrument on one
satellite has an impact as well, but the system itself has
multiple observation points that are brought in that are used
as part of the numerical weather forecasting modeling. I don't
have the exact result to tell you what the specific impact
would be for the loss of ATMS. I can get that back to you.
We've done these studies in the past.
But the overall observing system, as we've talked about
already here, relies on multiple observations from multiple
points, so the loss of any particular asset, while unfortunate,
doesn't derail the entire observing system. It's an impact that
has to be absorbed if we don't have a backup for it in place at
the same time, which is the point of getting to the robust as
quickly as we can.
Mr. Babin. Thank you, Dr. Volz, and I'll----
Chairman Bridenstine. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Babin. Thank you.
Chairman Bridenstine. Thank you, Dr. Babin.
We'll go into a third-round as long as people are sticking
around. You're not--well, I'll ask a few questions then if
that's all right.
I wanted to bring up a couple of challenges that we've seen
within the Department of Defense and how we've applied some
solutions in the Department of Defense when it comes to the
space-based communications, for example. We now lease about 80
percent of our communications over the horizon from commercial
assets.
Now, that does a number of things for us. Chief among them,
it gives us the capacity and the throughput necessary to get
the information and the high-resolution, motion picture imagery
from the place where it is to the place that it needs to go.
That's number one. But number two, it also distributes the
architecture very rapidly in a way where it complicates the
targeting solution for our enemies. And of course we've seen
the Chinese and the Russians both advanced anti-satellite
directive-sent missiles, which are of concern to those of us on
this committee and on the Armed Services Committee. What--so
that partnership that we have with commercial industry to do
over-the-horizon indications I think is very valuable.
We've also seen for narrow-band communications, we've seen
the success of Iridium, which was a partnership between the
Department of Defense but also international partners, and it
was, you know, provided--financing initially for Motorola, but
eventually there was financing from a venture capital kind of
capability that came together. And now the Department of
Defense is using Iridium very robustly around the world.
I would also say when it comes to remote sensing and
imagery, we've seen the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
move forward on a commercial space policy where they're buying
imagery from space from commercial operators and they're going
to continue to do that. Again, it complicates the targeting
solution for the enemy by distributing the architecture, and it
also gets us more data, better data, higher revisit times,
things like this.
Are there partnerships like that when you think about
defense weather? Could we develop a partnership similar where
maybe we have a satellite bus and we attached to it payloads
that are necessary for cloud characterization or necessary for
theater weather imagery? And in this era of defense sequester,
which is damaging our Department of Defense, create more robust
partnerships that would be good not only for the Department of
Defense in bringing down costs because when you purchase from
commercial, you ultimately have more customers than just the
Department of Defense, which shares the cost but also
distributes the architecture?
Mr. Stoffler, could you comment? Are you guys having those
kind of conversations about bringing down cost, distributing
the architecture, and ultimately getting more data, better
data, and higher revisit times?
Mr. Stoffler. I appreciate that question, Chairman, and
again, you're right on the money. We are indeed going down that
pathway. The first example of that is already what we're doing
with gap 11. We're going to build a very small space weather,
and instead of sticking it on to one big huge weather
satellite, we're going to add that particular sensor to all
future Air Force satellites. So by using disaggregation and
placing individual weather sensors onto existing satellites, I
think we can get a better picture, a higher refresh rate, and
bring down overall costs and of course have more resiliency in
the constellation as well.
Chairman Bridenstine. Could you host those sensors on
commercial payloads that would even give us more opportunities
to launch, more opportunities to put those sensors in space?
Mr. Stoffler. I would be inclined to say that you probably
could, but again, it would be to our acquisition experts to
make that determination.
Chairman Bridenstine. Okay. One other challenge that I see
ahead of us, being from Oklahoma, on these issues I don't
really have any parochial interest, other than the fact that I
have constituents that die from tornadoes. My mission here is
to get as much data, the right data so that we can ultimately
move to a day where we have zero deaths from tornadoes.
Now, I know what we're talking about generally here is the
macro scale global initial conditions for weather forecasting,
but my concern is that as we go forward with a commercial
capability, we're going to have a lot of data. And when you
think about hyperspectral, when that capability comes online,
there's going to be a lot of data. One of my concerns is how do
we assimilate all that data into our models? Is that possible
now? What do we need to invest in? How can this committee be
helpful?
Mr. Stoffler, I'll start with you and then will go to Dr.
Volz.
Mr. Stoffler. Again, a very critical question, and I
appreciate that, Mr. Chairman. Certainly on the DOD side we
recognize that. We have developed an architectural design to
revamp our entire computing system to increase computing
capacity, remove legacy systems. We're going to a 4D-Var
assimilation scale, and we certainly believe that by the 2021
time frame our new architecture will be able to do all the
things that you've addressed.
Chairman Bridenstine. And do we need additional modeling
capabilities? Do we need additional computing capacity? Are you
saying that you're good and you have everything you need to
move out?
Mr. Stoffler. I think from an Air Force perspective we've
developed the plan. The Air Force has been very supportive, and
we're on path by 2021 to meet our objectives.
Chairman Bridenstine. Dr. Volz?
Dr. Volz. I think you pinpoint the exact challenge we have
is that we're in an age of explosion of data availability, and
the utilization of it effectively is going to be our greatest
challenge. And it's not just satellite data. It's incorporating
and merging satellite data with in situ ground data, airborne
data to get a better holistic pitcher of what's going on. And I
think it's always going to be--we're always going to be running
uphill on this and trying to get greater computing power. As we
bring in more data, as we simulate more data sources, the
challenges are going get more and more challenging.
So even though at this point we've come a long way in the
past three years with our high-performance computing within
NOAA and it's enabled us to ingest other data sources as part
of our gap mitigation efforts to support the polar
constellations, but now with the launch of GOES-R coming on in
just a few months, which is going to have a significant--60-
fold increase in the data rate that we see from now-casting,
how we integrate those data sets into the weather forecast on
modeling in the offices is going to challenge us as well.
So there will always be need for incremental and sometimes
leaps-forward steps in high-performance computing and the
modeling to ingest these new data sets. So I would never be
comfortable saying we're good where we are now. We are using
what we have, but we're always trying to figure out how to
bring these other data sets in more efficiently and more
effectively. It's going to be an ongoing challenge for as long
as we're working on this.
Chairman Bridenstine. Excellent. Earlier, Mr. Stoffler
mentioned that the Department of Defense is not going to accept
data from the Russians or the Chinese. Does NOAA have a
position on that?
Dr. Volz. NOAA does not use Russian or Chinese data in our
modeling and in our forecasts. We work with the scientific
community, with the academic community. Where the data are
available through our international partnerships, where the
data are available for assessment and analysis, and we are
working with our academic partners to understand the
capabilities. And they are getting stronger and better. So
there is enticing the availability or the quality of the data
that are available. We are not at this time using them as part
of our primary products and services.
Chairman Bridenstine. But there's not a policy position
that says we won't use them?
Dr. Volz. I don't know if there is or not.
Chairman Bridenstine. Okay.
Dr. Volz. We're not using them at the moment. I do not know
what the official policy might be on this.
Chairman Bridenstine. Okay. I'd like to yield to the acting
Ranking Member, Mr. Grayson from Florida.
Mr. Grayson. Dr. Volz, the May GAO report reviewed NOAA's
basis for initiating work on the polar follow-up satellites on
the basis that they wouldn't actually be put into use for a
decade or more. What is the agency's position with regard to
the GAO's recommendations and their observations?
Dr. Volz. There are a number of observations in their
report, and I think Mr. Powner has talked about the challenge
of building efficiency versus developing stale satellites which
sit around for a long time. And we've look very carefully at
the lessons from our own POES and from DMSP of how long those
satellites should be in storage and how much you want to be
able to refresh technology.
And I think the point was made that we need to show how our
plan is robust and appropriate mixture of stability and
requirements but also efficiency and production and
procurement. So I believe that the approach that we have as
we're going through this year, this calendar year of the final
program review of what the approach would be for the launch
cadence, for the launch development cadence for the PFO
instrument satellites will address those questions.
I think what we have is we're doing two things at once.
We're building at the most effective price-wise point to build
these satellites, but we're also building to get to that robust
constellation as quickly as we can. It only takes one launch
failure to disrupt an entire plan of what your launch cadence
should be. So we want to be able to have a satellite in storage
and ready when we need it, but we don't want to have it sitting
in storage for 20 years.
I think we've got the right balance in the way that we've
built and we plan on testing and storing the satellites, again,
taking lessons from other satellite histories to do this
appropriately for the JPSS PFO program.
Mr. Grayson. When we launch a satellite today, are we
putting in the same instruments and sensors that we put in 10
or 15 years ago?
Dr. Volz. No. The JPSS and the GOES-R satellite series are
leaps forward in capabilities and instrumentation. It is the
next generation, particularly for the GOES that we're seeing in
the launch this fall. JPSS is leveraging the instruments that
were developed in a research basis for the Suomi NPP satellite,
which was launched in 2011. The JPSS-1 through 4 satellites
will have those same instruments, so there is effectively
consistent performance and observations set that we will have
for the next 20 years from those four satellites. GOES-R will
have a similar 20-year period from '16 to the mid-'30s.
That doesn't mean our observing system is stagnant at that
point. We've talked about all these other emerging
capabilities, the other international partnerships that are
bringing their satellites in for the commercial side. That
backbone of those foundational measurements that are going to
get from JPSS and GOES complement and support the other
measurements that come in. And then we have the challenges that
Chairman Bridenstine just mentioned of merging those different
data to an integrated system which provides a much more
holistic and higher-quality understanding of the environment
that we're trying to provide.
Mr. Grayson. Well, if we're using dramatically different
instruments and sensors than we did 15 years ago, doesn't it
follow that we'll want to do the same thing when we do a launch
10 or 15 years from now when we basically have to completely
revise the guts if you will of the satellite before it's going
to have full functionality for launching 10 or 15 years from
now?
Dr. Volz. Excellent point in that what we're launching in
15 years from now or 20 years from now is the next generation
following what we have right now. So we are in the process
right now of starting a next-generation mission assessment and
development, our architecture studies of what should be the
leap after JPSS and GOES-R. There's a generational cycle of
major performance upgrades, and whether it's 10 or 20 years,
it's 20 years roughly where you have that basis where you get
used to using those instruments where all the modeling and all
the forecasters are using them, and you add incrementally from
other satellite observations increased capacity.
And then, as we have this basis for JPSS, we are now
looking at what should be the thing that follows, launching in
the 2030s. And we'll do that with testing and demonstrations
with commercial satellite examples, with NASA research and
other research satellites that are demonstrating capabilities.
And we'll be able to pick from those on-orbit experiments the
best step forward as opposed to just sitting in an a priori
position, saying I know what it should be. We get to
demonstrate with these research satellites and with the
commercial side to then decide what's the most effective path
forward for the backbone of the next generation, which will be
launching in the mid-'30s.
We will start building that in the next few years, but we
won't deploy it until after these four satellites, this
constellation is gone.
Mr. Grayson. Well, to be as specific as possible, did the
agency assess the likelihood that the polar follow-on
satellites would have to be--how shall I put this--updated
before being put into actual use, having been built now with
technology developments coming in the next decade or decade and
a half? And if so, what was that assessment and how much do you
think it might cost?
Dr. Volz. Yes, we did, and we actually made a conscious
decision a year ago, as we rolled out the plan for the PFO,
that we would hold the requirements baseline for the PFO JPSS-3
and 4 satellites to the same standards we set for JPSS-1 and 2.
We did that consciously aware of exactly the point I think that
Ms. Chaplain mentioned is that when you change requirements on
the system in the middle, you're basically developing a new
system and you lose all control of your cost and schedule. We
made that conscious decision that this suite of four satellites
would be consistent, and we have now the contracts in place for
the spacecraft, for all the instruments so that we can
accurately project and deliver those instruments.
But the system evolves, and the system then brings other
capabilities in addition to the JPSS. So the overall capability
of observing is going to increase and improve over time, but
this portion of it is going to be stable, and the funding and
the requirements will be well defined and well characterized.
Mr. Grayson. I'm out of time. Thank you all.
Chairman Bridenstine. I'd like to thank the gentleman from
Florida for his, quite frankly, great questions. I think you're
hitting on a critical thing that we need to be talking about on
this committee, and that is technology insertion plans. One of
the reasons I think commercial is so important--and I want to
be really clear. I support JPSS. I want to make sure JPSS is
fully funded, but I do believe commercial is important because
commercial satellites are being launched with miniaturization
of technology, miniaturization of electronics. We're going to
be able to launch a lot more satellites in more distributed
architectures that again complicate the targeting solution for
the enemies but also with smaller satellites you can launch
more of them, you can launch them more frequently. When you
have new technologies that arise, you can put them in orbit
very rapidly.
I would also say one of the areas that I've been pushing on
is the hosted payload concept where every time a commercial
communications satellite launches, we could test a new sensor
on that commercial communications satellite, and those
satellites are launching quite frequently these days. And not
only in geostationary orbit but now in the future we're going
to be launching them into low-Earth orbit as well.
I'd like to recognize the gentleman from Texas, Dr. Babin,
for the final five minutes.
Mr. Babin. You bet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just had one
question for Mr. Powner concerning the fly-out charts and
schedules annually published by NOAA. Do they accurately depict
the state of our satellites in orbit, these fly-out charts?
Mr. Powner. Yes, I think the fly-out charts, there's
improvements that could be made. So for--I'll just point to
NPP. The NPP, the amount of fuel that's on there, that's not
what's really important. What's important is how long is the
spacecraft and the sensors going to last? And we think those
fly-out charts should reflect that.
I think Dr. Volz brought up some good things with their
availability assessments. They have the data. That data, when
you look at the 2015 analysis, basically says that I think--I
think the life span using their data is somewhere in the 2018
time frame, not 2020. However, that's dated.
And I do want to bring up this point on ATMS again because
I think Dr. Volz is right. His answer was absolutely correct
that all this data plays into the short-term forecast. But
let's not downplay the importance of ATMS and CrIS and the
importance of using those two instruments together for
forecasts. If you don't have ATMS working well, there is an
effect on our forecasts, so it's very important that we keep
that thing going on NPP until we get J-1 up there.
Mr. Babin. Okay. Thank you. Why is NOAA fiddling with the
estimated life span? Is it to make it appear that we are not
facing a data gap?
Mr. Powner. We've had great debates over this data gap over
the years, Congressman, and, you know, in our--we put it on our
high-risk list, the gap--potential gap in the data here is
something that is critical. We need to acknowledge it. We need
to have appropriate contingency plans in place. I think NOAA
has done a good job on that, but I think there needs to be even
better transparency with these fly-out charts and everything,
not only this committee, but we get the same questions from the
appropriators, too. It's not always clear.
Mr. Babin. Yes.
Mr. Powner. And we just need better transparency. And I
think we're moving in that direction, and I think there's been
an acknowledgment of that.
Mr. Babin. Okay. Mr. Chairman, that's all I had this
morning. And thank you, witnesses, too. Thank you. I yield
back.
Chairman Bridenstine. Well, thank you. I'd like to thank
the witnesses for their valuable testimony today and the
Members for their great questions. The record will remain open
for the next two weeks for additional comments and written
questions from Members. This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:38 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Dr. Stephen Volz
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Ms. Cristina Chaplain
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]