Officials at Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom AFB, Mass., say they have replaced almost all 111 fixed-base weather sensing systems—the FMQ-19—at USAF installations around the world under a $60 million contract. These sensors, which reside at the end of runways, provide critical takeoff and landing weather data. The legacy systems being replaced required manual integration of data, but the new technology, says ESC’s Lt. Col. Andrew Terzakis, not only will provide “more accurate and reliable” data but have the potential to automatically integrate with other weather systems.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine said the U.S. needs to prepared for future conflicts in which its adversaries will be able to closely track the location of American forces and attack with autonomous systems that use artificial intelligence.
