A New Case Study Explores the Many Breakthroughs of the Revolutionary Micro Weather Station
A new case study from Intellisense Systems looks at the development history of an autonomous, cost-efficient, all-in-one weather station that could tackle the many challenges of deep battlespace.
In the early morning hours of October 26th, 2009, a team of U.S. service members, drug enforcement agents, and Afghan soldiers had successfully completed a mission combating narcotics traffickers in the Badghis province of Afghanistan. They boarded a CH-47, a twin-rotor helicopter that is invaluable in transporting troops and cargo into denied areas. At the time, there were no weather observations to assist the helicopter’s two pilots. Visibility worsened during takeoff, and the helicopter struck a nearby cell tower and crashed. 10 American soldiers perished in the accident, and 26 passengers were injured.
Just a few hours later, two military helicopters collided before sunrise over the southern province of Helmand, killing four Americans. The two accidents made October 26th the largest single-day loss of life for the United States Armed Forces in nearly four years. Investigators determined that poor visibility as a result of bad weather played a factor in both crashes.
To prevent these kinds of incidents in the future, the U.S. military resolved to provide near-surface weather observations to pilots and personnel via an advanced, all-in-one environmental sensor. They needed a novel unattended ground sensor that was low-profile, easily transportable, rapidly deployable, and capable of measuring at least eight key weather parameters with aviation-grade accuracy. Those weather parameters included visibility, wind speed/direction, cloud height, temperature, barometric pressure, and precipitation.
At that time, their weather-sensing tools did not meet all those requirements. While their legacy remote weather station achieved aviation-grade accuracy for essential weather measurements, it was far too heavy and unwieldy to quickly deploy in denied areas. Another solution was smaller and consisted of only four components, but it did not attain the levels of accuracy needed for aviation operations. Additionally, both of these solutions costed more than $100,000 per unit, so the U.S. Armed Forces could ill-afford to lose such expensive equipment in the field. In 2010, a request for proposals was released under the U.S. Department of Defense’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program to address this need and fund the development of a next generation all-in-one weather station.
The latest case study from Intellisense Systems details the development history of a cost-effective, all-in-one, autonomous Micro Weather Station (MWS®) for deep battlespace intelligence and reconnaissance. It examines how the engineers at Intellisense developed a new solution to address five needs in the War in Afghanistan. Those needs were:
Smaller size
Rapid deployment
Aviation-grade sensing
Reliable communications
Lower lifecycle cost
This study details the many breakthroughs of the MWS, like the development of the world’s smallest lidar ceilometer and the integration of cellular communications. It also looks at this all-in-one weather station today and what future enhancements Intellisense engineers are making to ensure it fulfills every customer need.
Download the full case study by completing the form on the right.
In the early morning hours of October 26th, 2009, a team of U.S. service members, drug enforcement agents, and Afghan soldiers had successfully completed a mission combating narcotics traffickers in the Badghis province of Afghanistan. They boarded a CH-47, a twin-rotor helicopter that is invaluable in transporting troops and cargo into denied areas. At the time, there were no weather observations to assist the helicopter’s two pilots. Visibility worsened during takeoff, and the helicopter struck a nearby cell tower and crashed. 10 American soldiers perished in the accident, and 26 passengers were injured.
Just a few hours later, two military helicopters collided before sunrise over the southern province of Helmand, killing four Americans. The two accidents made October 26th the largest single-day loss of life for the United States Armed Forces in nearly four years. Investigators determined that poor visibility as a result of bad weather played a factor in both crashes.
To prevent these kinds of incidents in the future, the U.S. military resolved to provide near-surface weather observations to pilots and personnel via an advanced, all-in-one environmental sensor. They needed a novel unattended ground sensor that was low-profile, easily transportable, rapidly deployable, and capable of measuring at least eight key weather parameters with aviation-grade accuracy. Those weather parameters included visibility, wind speed/direction, cloud height, temperature, barometric pressure, and precipitation.
At that time, their weather-sensing tools did not meet all those requirements. While their legacy remote weather station achieved aviation-grade accuracy for essential weather measurements, it was far too heavy and unwieldy to quickly deploy in denied areas. Another solution was smaller and consisted of only four components, but it did not attain the levels of accuracy needed for aviation operations. Additionally, both of these solutions costed more than $100,000 per unit, so the U.S. Armed Forces could ill-afford to lose such expensive equipment in the field. In 2010, a request for proposals was released under the U.S. Department of Defense’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program to address this need and fund the development of a next generation all-in-one weather station.
The latest case study from Intellisense Systems details the development history of a cost-effective, all-in-one, autonomous Micro Weather Station (MWS®) for deep battlespace intelligence and reconnaissance. It examines how the engineers at Intellisense developed a new solution to address five needs in the War in Afghanistan. Those needs were:
