Scott Franklin Issues His Concerns About Pentagon Plan To Stop Some Hurricane Data Sharing With NOAA

Forbes Breaking News

During a House Science, Space and Tech Committee hearing in July, Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL) spoke about a plan the Pentagon floated, but later retracted, that would stop hurricane data sharing with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Transcript

00:00I thank the witnesses for their testimony, and I now recognize myself for five minutes for questions.

00:05As I mentioned previously, my home state of Florida is no stranger to hurricanes.

00:09We all know that.

00:10My hometown, as I said, has the Hurricane Hunters based at Lakeland Airport.

00:14Miami is the home of the National Hurricane Center.

00:16They even named the University of Miami after the hurricane.

00:19So we're very versed in hurricanes.

00:22Unfortunately, we have way too much practice, and we have had a lot of practice in preparation and resilience,

00:27and we've gotten better at that over the years.

00:29And a lot of that's been driven by the forecast and the better and better forecasts we're getting.

00:33As we've experienced the last few years, we're seeing a lot of these hurricanes intensify rapidly,

00:38sometimes from a Cat 1 or a Cat 2 to a 4 or 5 even overnight.

00:42So timing is critical, and best predictions of where they're going to make landfall are important.

00:47When you have basically a thumb sticking out in the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of America,

00:51that's got 24 million people, where that storm makes landfall is critical on how we determine

00:56how we evacuate millions of people away from the coast.

01:00So on that, originally planned for 2026, but moved up to July of 2025,

01:05DOD announced that it's going to discontinue the ingestion, processing, and distribution

01:10of all Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, DMSP data to NOAA, citing security concerns.

01:17And there are some valid security concerns there, and national security is important,

01:21but these sensors have been critical to determining storm centers, especially at night.

01:26To all of our witnesses, and if we could, since there's four of you and I've got five minutes,

01:30if you could try to limit it to maybe 30 seconds,

01:31what can be done to best supplement this DMSP data moving forward as the program is phased out?

01:37And then also, in your opinion, is DOD living up to its commitments after the cancellation of NPO's

01:43to gather and provide early morning orbit coverage to complement NOAA's joint polar satellite system?

01:50Mr. Cavett, if you could lead off.

01:53Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

01:54Well, let me first start by saying that microwave imagers and microwave sounders,

01:59microwave imagers is the type of sensor that's on DMSP,

02:01are critically important for hurricane forecasting,

02:04but also just the backbone of our numerical weather prediction,

02:06kind of medium-range forecasting capabilities.

02:09So the loss of that system is significant.

02:12If you couple that with the shutdown of the POSE systems from NOAA in June of this year,

02:17we've lost about 60% of our capacity as a nation for microwave imagers and sounders,

02:23which is quite a high number.

02:26Tomorrow.io actually has seven microwave sounders on orbit today,

02:29providing that operational data.

02:31And while the imagers and the sounders, there's some nuances to the sort of differences in them,

02:35they both really provide that early detection of intensification that you mentioned,

02:40being able to see the eye formation, the curve band before that,

02:44and at night as well, as you said,

02:46because the geostationary sensors can only see the cloud tops

02:50and sort of infer what's happening within the storm.

02:53In terms of whether DOD is meeting its mission to provide that early morning orbit,

02:57WSFM, which is the weather system follow-on microwave,

03:00which they launched in 2024, is in that orbit,

03:04but it's not the exact copy of SSMIS on DMSP.

03:08It's a slightly different frequency range.

03:10NOAA is also launching their quick sounder program potentially in 2026,

03:15and together those would fill that early morning gap for the most part.

03:19But I'll also say that this concept of kind of early morning,

03:23early afternoon architecture is a bit outdated.

03:27If you compare what our constellation is capable of today,

03:30because we fly in both polar and mid-latitude orbits,

03:33we actually achieve two-hour revisit globally throughout the day.

03:38So this idea of kind of spacing your sensing throughout the day is irrelevant

03:42when you can meet a sub-hourly revisit,

03:45which is what we'll achieve by the end of this year.

03:47So I think it's important in terms of filling these gaps to your question

03:51that NOAA be able to access these data sets,

03:54particularly as we're entering this severe hurricane season this year.

03:59Dr. Nielsen-Gammon.

04:00I'll just comment that having a smooth transition of observing system

04:03is critical for being able to optimize the technology and how we use it.

04:07I'll let the satellite experts talk in more detail.

04:10Dr. Abdellabi.

04:12I'll reiterate that comment.

04:14There are some capabilities.

04:16We use these in the Arctic for monitoring sea ice evolution as well.

04:22I'm not as familiar with the meteorological applications,

04:26but what is critical with satellite capabilities is overlap.

04:30And my understanding is the end of life of DMSP is about a year away,

04:35so it isn't clear to me why there –

04:37well, if there are security concerns, I defer to those experts.

04:40But it comes at a great cost because that overlap and cross-calibration,

04:46time is needed for that,

04:48and we're losing that time for reasons I don't understand.

04:52All right.

04:52Dr. Gupta.

04:53I will reiterate, like, long horizon archives are fairly important,

04:58and as we change observational systems,

05:01you need to have them overlapping for ideally at least a year

05:04to complete the full season.

05:07Great.

05:07All right.

05:08I now recognize the ranking member from Rhode Island

05:11for five minutes of questions.

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