The U.S. government’s effort to develop a new generation of civil-military weather satellites is facing financial and technical problems so severe that a complete overhaul of the program may be required, according to U.S. government officials closely following the troubled program.

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Brian Berger is editor in chief of SpaceNews.com and the SpaceNews magazine. He joined SpaceNews.com in 1998, spending his first decade with the publication covering NASA. He was named senior staff writer in 2004, a position he held until being named...