19th EWS Airmen tear down final weather tower in RC-South

Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Whitney Houston | U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Scott Tyler (front), Tech Sgt. Thomas Doerner and Staff Sgt. Laura Kent (left), who all serve as battlefield weather forecasters with the 19th Expeditionary Weather Squadron, unload a disassembled TMQ-53 tactical weather tower from a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter on Kandahar Airfield, Aug. 4, 2014. They disassembled the tower on Forward Operating Base Pasab, the last of 15 to be torn down as weather operations draw down in Regional Command-South.  

FORWARD OPERATING BASE PASAB, AFGHANISTAN

08.06.2014

Story by Staff Sgt. Whitney Houston 

ISAF Regional Command South

FORWARD OPERATING BASE PASAB, Afghanistan - As U.S. and coalition forces strive to make their footprint smaller in Afghanistan, troop numbers are drawing down and forward operating bases are closing. FOB deconstruction has many facets, such as demolition, the reuse of material by U.S. and Afghans, and the withdrawal of equipment. A perhaps less-obvious, yet pivotal portion of the drawdown is the extraction of tactical weather towers that have for years provided pivotal information for battlefield decision makers.

The last forward tactical weather tower in Regional Command-South was taken down on Forward Operating Base Pasab, Aug. 4, 2014. The 19th Expeditionary Weather Squadron, U.S. Air Force, sent three battlefield weather forecasters to rapidly disassemble the tower and bring it back to Kandahar Airfield.

“We flew out to the FOB to take down our last forward weather sensors, which is a part of the FOB’s downgrade,” said Staff Sgt. Laura Kent, a San Diego native who serves with the 19th EWS. “It’s significant because these towers are basically our eyes forward. We don’t have weather guys at these isolated locations, and we have to have something that is telling us what’s going on out here.”

The battlefield weather forecasters are constantly training on the systems, which gives them the ability to tactically maintain, troubleshoot and be proficient in the assembly and disassembly of the tower.

“The tower is called the TMQ-53. It’s very tactical and it’s built to be moved very hastily in austere conditions such as here in Afghanistan,” said Staff Sgt. Scott Tyler, a Lexington, S.C., native who serves as a battlefield weather forecaster, 19th EWS.

“We train on it quarterly so that we can be proficient at setting it up and tearing it down. Today we tore this tower down in 10 minutes or less.”

These automated weather towers are equipped with special sensors that read and relay valuable information back to their base of operations on Kandahar Airfield, said Master Sgt. Neel Rodgers, a Tomball, Texas, native who serves as the noncommissioned officer in charge of the 19th.

“The Staff Weather Office has received over 30,000 hours of data from the towers since February. They [SWO] are responsible for briefing commanders, pilots, and others on the weather so they know what to expect downrange, which helps them make intelligent decisions and use their assets in the best way possible to accomplish the mission,” Rodgers said.

“At one point there were 15 of these automated systems that the SWO was responsible for throughout RC-South,” Rodgers said, “but as we’ve gotten closer to the Resolute Support mission, our footprint is getting smaller. With that, all of our weather assets will be collocated where our footprint is, which is here at KAF.”

Although the weather will be more difficult to predict without the towers, the SWO will do their best to predict what they can using other means at their disposal.

“There’s always something changing in weather, so we can’t always be 100 percent accurate all of the time. We rely heavily on computer data as well as what we’re seeing personally out in the environment, so it really is an educated guess,” Kent said.

Kent explained that in the absence of the towers, SWO has a Doppler radar that they’ll get information from, as well as read what automated weather systems are saying in all the other regional commands throughout Afghanistan, so that leaders in RC-South continue to have information on the weather to aid them with operational decisions.

• Date Taken: 08.06.2014
• Date Posted: 08.06.2014 03:24
• Story ID: 138410
• Location: FORWARD OPERATING BASE PASAB, AF
• Hometown: LEXINGTON, SC, US
• Hometown: NEWARK, DE, US
• Hometown: SAN DIEGO, CA, US
• Hometown: SHELTON, WA, US
• Hometown: TOMBALL, TX, US