Pentagon and U.S. weather officials told lawmakers that the nation’s environmental data supply chain has become a direct operational dependency for “warfighting,” and that disruptions in weather satellite coverage could quickly translate into measurable national security risk.
Testifying before the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee’s Environment Subcommittee, U.S. military, defense, and scientific leaders described an interagency system in which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) weather satellites and global data-sharing network provide the backbone for U.S. military decision-making—supporting flight safety, naval operations, space weather resilience, and forecasting in data-sparse regions.
“The Navy-NOAA partnership is fundamental to the Navy’s warfighting advantage and national security,” said Christopher Ekstrom, Deputy Oceanographer and Navigator of the Navy.
The hearing, titled “From Orbit to Operations: How Weather Satellites Support the National Security Mission,” came last week amid the Trump Administration’s proposed reduction of NOAA’s budget from $6.1 billion in 2025 to $4.5 billion in 2026, a plan that would include canceling instrument contracts tied to ocean color and atmospheric composition observations.
Military Says NOAA Data Is Foundational, Not Optional
Navy leadership framed NOAA as a core enabler of operational superiority.
Ekstrom explained that NOAA data sits inside the Navy’s forecast stack at scale: “Over two thirds of the data ingested into Navy forecast systems originates from external sources and is provided by, or through, NOAA.”
That reliance is not accidental. Ekstrom characterized it as a deliberate budget and policy decision to avoid building duplicative systems, arguing that the Navy’s dependency “is a deliberate policy decision…to leverage civil capabilities rather than duplicate them within the defense budget.”
Ekstrom warned that the consequences of losing NOAA-provided observational data would not be theoretical or gradual. “The loss of NOAA-provided data, information, and infrastructure…would severely and immediately degrade” naval operations globally, he said. The most concrete example he offered was anti-submarine warfare, where a data loss would “drastically reduce the accuracy of undersea acoustic predictions,” a key element of undersea advantage.
Colonel Bryan Mundhenk, Chief of the Air Force Weather Operations Division, said the service does not mirror NOAA’s public mandate, but instead delivers classified, mission-specific environmental support worldwide. That capability “relies on data received from and through NOAA,” he said, describing NOAA’s role as a critical global hub that connects U.S. forces to international observations needed for tailored decision support.
Data Pipeline Fuels Risk Model Pipeline
The hearing repeatedly tied satellite architecture to forecast accuracy and timeliness—an argument familiar to private-market users downstream of the U.S. government.
Private-market risk professionals have warned that cuts or discontinuities in U.S. weather-satellite infrastructure and related NOAA data streams would not stay “inside government,” and could propagate into catastrophe models, pricing, and capital decisions across insurance-linked markets.
Industry representatives and reinsurers have argued that NOAA and adjacent federal datasets underpin the hazard intelligence used to calibrate frequency and severity views and that weakening those inputs could raise model uncertainty and widen pricing dispersion, particularly for “secondary perils” where loss experience is already volatile.
But government officials argued that Congress should prioritize weather satellites’ direct impact on U.S. defense capabilities when weighing reductions.
NOAA Deputy Assistant Administrator Irene Parker described the NOAA–national security relationship as a “force multiplier,” with collaborations that help “avoid duplication of satellite acquisitions worth billions of dollars.”
