The Navy will continue sharing data with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from satellites that the service had planned to start phasing out on July 31.
The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, or DMSP, satellites used by the Navy’s Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center will now provide data to NOAA until fall 2026, a Navy spokesperson said Thursday.
“The Navy’s Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center will continue processing and disseminating Defense Meteorological Satellite Program data through July 31, 2025,” the spokesperson told Military Times.
“The center had planned to phase out the data as part of a Defense Department modernization effort. But after feedback from government partners, officials found a way to meet modernization goals while keeping the data flowing until the sensor fails or the program formally ends in September 2026.”
The DMSP satellites have been in use for over five decades, with the first launched in 1962. They detect developing weather patterns and track cloud formations as they capture global imagery from space twice per day.
The Pentagon had previously aimed to substitute the use of these satellites quickly with the newly fielded Weather System Follow-On Microwave, or WSF-M. First launched in 2024, the WSF-M can provide more detailed analysis of weather patterns than the DMSP, and can even analyze sea ice and measure the depth of snow.
In an effort to replace the DMSP rapidly, NOAA had announced July 1 that it would rely on data provided by WSF-M, as well as the Electro-Optical Weather System, or EWS.
“DMSP satellites remain operational today but are more than a decade past their expected end of life,” NOAA stated in a release at the time.
The Pentagon previously extended the deadline for stopping NOAA’s use of this satellite data twice.
The latest extension to the fall of 2026, first reported by The Washington Post this week, will see the DMSP satellites continue to be used by NOAA for the duration of this year’s hurricane season.
Although the DMSP satellite program will eventually be phased out completely, NOAA will not lose access to all global weather analysis data and will still continue to rely on its Joint Polar Satellite System, as well as other weather instruments, including buoys and ground-based radar, to make accurate weather forecasts.
Zita Ballinger Fletcher previously served as editor of Military History Quarterly and Vietnam magazines and as the historian of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. She holds an M.A. with distinction in military history.
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