Trump’s climate skepticism could hurt military operations

The U.S. military would be weakened by Trump-ally proposals to break up the federal government’s main weather-monitoring agency and roll back efforts to reduce Pentagon dependence on fossil fuel, DOD leaders and former national-security officials say.

“I think it would be a real mistake to pivot,” Brendan Owens, assistant defense secretary for energy, installations, and environment, told reporters on Friday—a mistake, he said, that China or Russia could exploit in wartime.

Project 2025—the Heritage Foundation’s policy plan for a Trump presidency—says the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.” Trump has attempted to distance himself from the document, which was largely produced by his former appointees and staff. But during his first term as president, he lashed out at NOAA after its scientists contradicted a false statement of his, and, more generally, attempted to squelch scientific reporting on climate change.

While Project 2025 calls for privatizing the provision of weather-service data, Owens said, “I don't know any alternative” to the capability NOAA provides. 

The agency operates 18 satellites that track weather patterns and other atmospheric phenomena, including three that are part of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.

Without them, he said, “We would lose the ability to inform our combatant commanders and our installation commanders of risk. As a result of that…We'd be creating a blind spot, which we currently don't have.”

Owens is hardly alone in pointing out the danger to operations from shuttering NOAA. 

It would introduce “a huge risk,” said Erin Sikorsky, a former member of the U.S. National Intelligence Council who now leads the Center for Climate and Security. “We know that China is investing a huge amount in their capabilities for weather prediction, not just in the short term but in the sub-seasonal forecasts. I don't think we want to be in a situation where our adversaries have better information than we do.”

In July, the deputy assistant defense secretary for Arctic and global resilience enumerated the various ways the military works with the weather-monitoring agency.

“We do lean on NOAA pretty heavily right now with our Arctic weather forecasting. We work very closely with our Air Force weather community, but also our naval weather community, works closely with NOAA to detect weather forecasting and for ice forecasting,” Iris Ferguson told reporters.

Scientific weather forecasting has long been a key to battlefield success. In the run-up to D-Day,  the most important beach landing in modern military history, German and allied forces alike sought to divine when favorable weather might allow a successful assault. Enter Norwegian forecaster Sverre Petterssen, serving under Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s head of meteorology. Petterssen was a fan of the new approach that tracked masses of cold and warm air, or “fronts,” colliding miles above the earth’s surface. The fluid dynamics of these fronts, movement, pressure, etc., could provide more information than the customary statistical regressions based on averages. Using that insight, Eisenhower’s team pinpointed a brief weather break that would allow an invasion, information the Germans didn’t have. 

Today, data from NOAA and other sources helps the Pentagon—and U.S. allies—plan operations via the Defense Department Climate Assessment Tool or DCAT.

Said Owens: “Climate wargaming is something that the Defense Department is doing actively, right now. It is changing the way that we look at various different [combatant command] plans. It's informing that and the rate at which we are doing contested logistics assessments and how those are coming into operational planning, how we're looking at extreme weather, and our ability to fight through any of those.”

Would DCAT suffer if deprived of NOAA data?

“Yeah, it would,” Owens said. “It would affect our ability to improve them and make them better decision-making tools.”

Shedding dependence

The Pentagon has increased its efforts in recent years to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, such as moving toward electric vehicles and exploring alternative means for powering installations. Owens framed those efforts as essential to future military operations. 

Owens was confident, or at least optimistic, that some of those efforts, like nuclear power for installations and bases, would survive the Trump administration. 

“Nuclear meets a need and a level of resilience that we have to maintain to be able to deploy in certain circumstances,” he said.

But other initiatives are more vulnerable. Trump has expressed concerns about the military use of electric vehicles,  concerns not always based in fact.

Owens said the practical, operational case for more electric vehicles is clear. The same fuel and supply vulnerabilities incurred by running diesel generators on bases also apply to the fuel to run vehicles. Owens is hoping that military leaders will make that case to keep the department’s electric-vehicle efforts alive. 

“I think the department's going to say, ‘Look, this is our reality. We need this stuff. It makes us better warfighters,’” he said, adding that it happens, “it’s going to help them sustain a lot of the momentum that has been built over the course of the last and not just this administration.”

Sikorsky is less sure. 

“The foot will not be on the gas, right, the same way,” she said.