The United States has several meteorological, oceanographic, and satellite operational processing centers (OPCs) in the military and civilian sectors. Separate cooperative and complementary military and civilian OPCs provide sufficient redundancy for backup purposes; permit the development of state-of-the-art forecasting schemes, such as the ensemble technique; and ensure the diverse environmental needs of military and civilian users are met with the most efficient use of resources. The effective collaboration of the military and civilian OPCs has resulted in the development of a truly national meteorological and oceanographic resource not attainable within any single agency.