Ballistic weather

Vaisala radiosounding systems are used by defense forces to acquire ballistic weather information. We have 25 years of experience in deploying defense weather systems around the world.

Atmospheric conditions directly affect the accuracy of artillery fire. Availability of proper meteorological data is one of the prerequisites for accurate predicted fire and helps to:

• Conserve ammunition
• Decrease time in adjustment
• Obtain a greater surprise effect
• Reduce the potential for friendly or collateral damages

There are three primary meteorological factors significantly affecting trajectories:

• Horizontal wind – cross wind and range (tail or head) wind components
• Air density – calculated from pressure, temperature and relative humidity
• Elasticity – sonic speed, calculated from pressure, temperature and relative humidity

Source: FM 3-09.15. Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Field Artillery Meteorology

Vaisala provides two different ballistic wind measurement technologies for radiosoundings:

• 1680 MHz band RDF (Radio Direction Finding) system for tracking the radiosonde ascending with balloon, and
• 403 MHz band system using GPS (Global Positioning System) RNSS (Radio Navigation Satellite Service) for wind finding.

Both types of systems are mobile and quick to be deployed. They code data messages into ballistic weather data (e.g. NATO STANAGS) and general WMO formats, and distribute them using either dedicated serial communication lines or TCP/IP FTP server.