The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center has bought a supercomputer system to aid the military branch’s weather prediction activities.
Thor is currently installed at the Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts and designed to observe global weather patterns as well as provide individual air bases and U.S. Army units with specific forecasts on areas as small as six square miles, the Air Force said Wednesday.
“We’re running the same modeling program as our allies in [England], Australia, South Korea and New Zealand,” said Robert Born, Thor program manager.
“That way, when we’re in joint operations, we can all be working off the same forecast and aligning our plans to the same base assumptions,” Born added.
The Thor system consists of an estimated 1,000 individual blade servers built to help users predict various weather scenarios that may affect military operations.
The Air Force also uses the platform to generate customized forecasts, aeronautical forecasts and narrow forecasts that cover data on the atmosphere and areas with active military units.