Tell the Defense Department not to shut off these critical weather satellites

Do we really have to explain why this is a terrible idea?

"On Monday, June 23rd, the Department of Defense announced that it would "stop ingesting, processing, and transmitting data essential to most hurricane forecasts," from three satellites. The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellites to be turned off are F-16, F-17 and F-18. They know the data is essential, but the DoD is doing it anyway." (source)

These are satellites that help warn us of hurricanes.  Forecasters rely on this data to make help make predictions and to determine when warnings need to be issued.

It's not entirely clear why this is being done, as conflicting reasons have been given.  It's possible there are security concerns (cited by one official), but it seems like the logical approach would be to fix that, not shut the whole thing down. 

Bottom line, we need this data to protect us, and suddenly shutting it off without a clear and compelling reason is not an option.

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