Monday, October 31, 2005
U.S. military wants to own the weather
By Leonard David, Space.com
Posted 10/31/2005 7:02 PM
The one-two hurricane punch from Katrina and Wilma along with
predictions of more severe weather in the future has scientists
pondering ways to save lives, protect property and possibly even
control the weather.
While efforts to tame storms have so far been clouded by failure,
some researchers aren't willing to give up the fight. And even if
changing the weather proves overly challenging, residents and
disaster officials can do a better job planning and reacting.
In fact, military officials and weather modification experts could be
on the verge of joining forces to better gauge, react to, and
possibly nullify future hostile forces churned out by Mother Nature.
While some consider the idea farfetched, some military tacticians
have already pondered ways to turn weather into a weapon.
Harbinger of things to come?
The U.S. military reaction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that
slammed the U.S. Gulf coast might be viewed as a harbinger of things
to come. While in this case it was joint air and space operations to
deal with after-the-fact problems, perhaps the foundation for how to
fend off disastrous weather may also be forming.
Numbers of spaceborne assets were tapped, among them:
• Navigation and timing signals from the Global Positioning System
(GPS) of satellites;
• The Global Broadcast Service, a one-way, space-based, high-capacity
broadcast communication system;
• The Army's Spectral Operations Resource Center to exploit
commercial remote sensing satellite imagery and prepare high-
resolution images to civilian and military responders to permit a
better understanding of the devastated terrain;
• U.S. Air Force Space Command's Space and Missile Systems Center
Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites that
compared "lights at night" images before and after the disaster to
provide data on human activity.
Is it far-fetched to see in this response the embryonic stages of an
integrated military/civilian weather reaction and control system?
Mandate to continually improve
The use of space-based equipment to assist in clean-up operations —
with a look toward future prospects — was recently noted by General
Lance Lord, Commander, Air Force Space Command at an October 20th
Pacific Space Leadership Forum in Hawaii.
"We saw first hand the common need for space after the December 2004
tsunami in the Indian Ocean," Lord said. "Natural disasters don't
respect international boundaries. Space capabilities were leveraged
immediately after the tsunami to help in the search and rescue effort…
but what about before the disaster?"
Lord said that an even better situation is to have predicted the
coming disaster and warned those in harm's way. "No matter what your
flag or where you wave it from...the possibility of saving hundreds
of thousands of people is a mandate to continually improve," he
advised.
The U.S. Air Force is also looking at ways to make satellites and
satellite launches cheaper and also reduce the amount of time it
takes to launch into space from months to weeks to days and hours,
Lord said. Having that capability will increase responsiveness to
international needs, he said, such as the ability to send up a
satellite to help collect information and enhance communications when
dealing with international disasters.
Thunderbolts on demand
What would a military strategist gain in having an "on-switch" to the
weather?
Clearly, it offers the ability to degrade the effectiveness of enemy
forces. That could come from flooding an opponent's encampment or
airfield to generating downright downpours that disrupt enemy troop
comfort levels. On the flipside, sparking a drought that cuts off
fresh water can stir up morale problems for warfighting foes.
Even fooling around with fog and clouds can deny or create
concealment — whichever weather manipulation does the needed job.
In this regard, nanotechnology could be utilized to create clouds of
tiny smart particles. Atmospherically buoyant, these ultra-small
computer particles could navigate themselves to block optical
sensors. Alternatively, they might be used to provide an atmospheric
electrical potential difference — a way to precisely aim and time
lightning strikes over the enemy's head — and thereby concoct
thunderbolts on demand.
Perhaps that's too far out for some. But some blue sky thinkers have
already looked into these and other scenarios in "Weather as a Force
Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025" – a research paper written by
a seven-person team of military officers and presented in 1996 as
part of a larger study dubbed Air Force 2025.
Global stresses
That report came with requisite disclaimers, such as the views
expressed were those of the authors and didn't reflect the official
policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of
Defense, or the United States government. Furthermore, the report was
flagged as containing fictional representations of future situations
and scenarios.
On the other hand, Air Force 2025 was a study that complied with a
directive from the chief of staff of the Air Force "to examine the
concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will
require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future."
"Current technologies that will mature over the next 30 years will
offer anyone who has the necessary resources the ability to modify
weather patterns and their corresponding effects, at least on the
local scale," the authors of the report explained. "Current
demographic, economic, and environmental trends will create global
stresses that provide the impetus necessary for many countries or
groups to turn this weather-modification ability into a capability."
Pulling it all together
The report on weather-altering ideas underscored the capacity to
harness such power in the not too distant future.
"Assuming that in 2025 our national security strategy includes
weather-modification, its use in our national military strategy will
naturally follow. Besides the significant benefits an operational
capability would provide, another motivation to pursue weather-
modification is to deter and counter potential adversaries," the
report stated. "The technology is there, waiting for us to pull it
all together," the authors noted.
In 2025, the report summarized, U.S. aerospace forces can "own the
weather" by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing
development of those technologies to war-fighting applications.
"Such a capability offers the war fighter tools to shape the
battlespace in ways never before possible. It provides opportunities
to impact operations across the full spectrum of conflict and is
pertinent to all possible futures," the report concluded.
But if whipping up weather can be part of a warfighter's tool kit,
couldn't those talents be utilized to retarget or neutralize life,
limb and property-destroying storms?
All-weather worries
"It is time to provide funds for application of the scientific method
to weather modification and control," said Bernard Eastlund, chief
technical officer and founder of Eastlund Scientific Enterprises
Corporation in San Diego, California.
Eastlund's background is in plasma physics and commercial
applications of microwave plasmas. At a lecture early this month at
Penn State Lehigh Campus in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania, he outlined
new concepts for electromagnetic wave interactions with the
atmosphere that, among a range of jobs, could be applied to weather
modification research.
"The technology of artificial ionospheric heating could be as
important for weather modification research as accelerators have been
for particle physics," Eastlund explained.
In September, Eastland filed a patent on a way to create artificial
ionized plasma patterns with megawatts of power using inexpensive
microwave power sources. This all-weather technique, he noted, can be
used to heat specific regions of the atmosphere.
Eastlund's research is tuned to artificial generation of acoustic and
gravitational waves in the atmosphere. The heating of steering winds
to help shove around mesocyclones and hurricanes, as well as
controlling electrical conductivity of the atmosphere is also on his
investigative agenda.
Carefully tailored program plan
Eastlund said that the reduction in severity or impact of severe
weather could be demonstrated as part of a carefully tailored program
plan.
"In my opinion, the new technology for use of artificial plasma
layers in the atmosphere: as heater elements to modify steering
winds, as a modifier of electrostatic potential to influence
lightning distribution, and for generation of acoustic and
gravitational waves, could ultimately provide a core technology for a
science of severe weather modification," Eastlund told Space.com.
The first experiments of a program, Eastlund emphasized, would be
very small, and designed for safety. For example, a sample of air in
a jet stream could be heated with a pilot experimental installation.
Such experiments would utilize relatively small amounts of power,
between one and ten megawatts, he pointed out.
Both ground-based and space weather diagnostic instruments could
measure the effect. Computer simulations could compare these results
with predicted effects. This process can be iterated until reliable
information is obtained on the effects of modifying the wind.
Computer simulations of hurricanes, Eastlund continued, are designed
to determine the most important wind fields in hurricane formation.
Computer simulations of mesocyclones use steering wind input data to
predict severe storm development.
After about 5 years of such research, and further development of
weather codes, a pilot experiment to modify the steering winds of a
mesocylone might be safely attempted. Such an experiment would
probably require 50 to 100 megawatts, Eastlund speculated.
"I estimate this new science of weather modification will take 10 to
20 years to mature to the point where it is useful for controlling
the severity and impact of severe weather systems as large as
hurricanes," Eastlund explained.
Inadvertent effects?
Another reason for embarking on this new science could be to make
sure inadvertent effects of existing projects, such as the heating of
the ionosphere and modifications of the polar electrojet, are not
having effects on weather, Eastlund stated.
As example, Eastlund pointed to the High frequency Active Auroral
Research Program (HAARP). This is a major Arctic facility for upper
atmospheric and solar-terrestrial research, being built on a
Department of Defense-owned site near Gakona, Alaska.
Eastlund wonders if HAARP does, in fact, generate gravity waves. If
so, can those waves in turn influence severe weather systems?
Started in 1990, the unclassified HAARP program is jointly managed by
the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval
Research. Researchers at the site make use of a high-power
ionospheric research instrument to temporarily excite a limited area
of the ionosphere for scientific study, observing and measuring the
excited region using a suite of devices.
The fundamental goal of research conducted at the facility is to
study and understand natural phenomena occurring in the Earth's
ionosphere and near-space environment. According to the HAARP
website, those scientific investigations will have major value in the
design of future communication and navigation systems for both
military and civilian use.
Messing with Mother Nature
Who best to have their hands on the weather control switches?
The last large hurricane modification experiments — under Project
Stormfury — were carried out by the U.S. Air Force, Eastlund
said. "It is likely the Department of Defense would be the lead
agency in any new efforts in severe storm modification."
Additionally, federal laboratories with their extensive computational
modeling skills would also play a lead role in the development of a
science of weather modification. NASA and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would find their respective niches
too. The satellite diagnostic capabilities in those agencies would
play a strong role, Eastlund suggested.
It appears that only modest amounts of government dollars have been
spent on weather modification over the last five years.
"Hurricane Katrina could cost $300 billion by itself," Eastlund
said. "In my opinion, it is time for a serious scientific effort in
weather modification."
"Global warming appears to be a reality, and records could continue
to fall in the hurricane severity sweepstakes," Eastlund said. "When
I first suggested the use of space-based assets for the prevention of
tornadoes, many people expressed their displeasure with 'messing with
Mother Nature'. I still remember hiding in the closet of our house in
Houston as a tornado passed overhead. It is time for serious,
controlled research, with the emphasis on safety, for the good of
mankind," he concluded.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2005-10-31-military-
weather_x.htm?csp=34
By Leonard David, Space.com
Posted 10/31/2005 7:02 PM
The one-two hurricane punch from Katrina and Wilma along with
predictions of more severe weather in the future has scientists
pondering ways to save lives, protect property and possibly even
control the weather.
While efforts to tame storms have so far been clouded by failure,
some researchers aren't willing to give up the fight. And even if
changing the weather proves overly challenging, residents and
disaster officials can do a better job planning and reacting.
In fact, military officials and weather modification experts could be
on the verge of joining forces to better gauge, react to, and
possibly nullify future hostile forces churned out by Mother Nature.
While some consider the idea farfetched, some military tacticians
have already pondered ways to turn weather into a weapon.
Harbinger of things to come?
The U.S. military reaction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that
slammed the U.S. Gulf coast might be viewed as a harbinger of things
to come. While in this case it was joint air and space operations to
deal with after-the-fact problems, perhaps the foundation for how to
fend off disastrous weather may also be forming.
Numbers of spaceborne assets were tapped, among them:
• Navigation and timing signals from the Global Positioning System
(GPS) of satellites;
• The Global Broadcast Service, a one-way, space-based, high-capacity
broadcast communication system;
• The Army's Spectral Operations Resource Center to exploit
commercial remote sensing satellite imagery and prepare high-
resolution images to civilian and military responders to permit a
better understanding of the devastated terrain;
• U.S. Air Force Space Command's Space and Missile Systems Center
Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites that
compared "lights at night" images before and after the disaster to
provide data on human activity.
Is it far-fetched to see in this response the embryonic stages of an
integrated military/civilian weather reaction and control system?
Mandate to continually improve
The use of space-based equipment to assist in clean-up operations —
with a look toward future prospects — was recently noted by General
Lance Lord, Commander, Air Force Space Command at an October 20th
Pacific Space Leadership Forum in Hawaii.
"We saw first hand the common need for space after the December 2004
tsunami in the Indian Ocean," Lord said. "Natural disasters don't
respect international boundaries. Space capabilities were leveraged
immediately after the tsunami to help in the search and rescue effort…
but what about before the disaster?"
Lord said that an even better situation is to have predicted the
coming disaster and warned those in harm's way. "No matter what your
flag or where you wave it from...the possibility of saving hundreds
of thousands of people is a mandate to continually improve," he
advised.
The U.S. Air Force is also looking at ways to make satellites and
satellite launches cheaper and also reduce the amount of time it
takes to launch into space from months to weeks to days and hours,
Lord said. Having that capability will increase responsiveness to
international needs, he said, such as the ability to send up a
satellite to help collect information and enhance communications when
dealing with international disasters.
Thunderbolts on demand
What would a military strategist gain in having an "on-switch" to the
weather?
Clearly, it offers the ability to degrade the effectiveness of enemy
forces. That could come from flooding an opponent's encampment or
airfield to generating downright downpours that disrupt enemy troop
comfort levels. On the flipside, sparking a drought that cuts off
fresh water can stir up morale problems for warfighting foes.
Even fooling around with fog and clouds can deny or create
concealment — whichever weather manipulation does the needed job.
In this regard, nanotechnology could be utilized to create clouds of
tiny smart particles. Atmospherically buoyant, these ultra-small
computer particles could navigate themselves to block optical
sensors. Alternatively, they might be used to provide an atmospheric
electrical potential difference — a way to precisely aim and time
lightning strikes over the enemy's head — and thereby concoct
thunderbolts on demand.
Perhaps that's too far out for some. But some blue sky thinkers have
already looked into these and other scenarios in "Weather as a Force
Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025" – a research paper written by
a seven-person team of military officers and presented in 1996 as
part of a larger study dubbed Air Force 2025.
Global stresses
That report came with requisite disclaimers, such as the views
expressed were those of the authors and didn't reflect the official
policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of
Defense, or the United States government. Furthermore, the report was
flagged as containing fictional representations of future situations
and scenarios.
On the other hand, Air Force 2025 was a study that complied with a
directive from the chief of staff of the Air Force "to examine the
concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will
require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future."
"Current technologies that will mature over the next 30 years will
offer anyone who has the necessary resources the ability to modify
weather patterns and their corresponding effects, at least on the
local scale," the authors of the report explained. "Current
demographic, economic, and environmental trends will create global
stresses that provide the impetus necessary for many countries or
groups to turn this weather-modification ability into a capability."
Pulling it all together
The report on weather-altering ideas underscored the capacity to
harness such power in the not too distant future.
"Assuming that in 2025 our national security strategy includes
weather-modification, its use in our national military strategy will
naturally follow. Besides the significant benefits an operational
capability would provide, another motivation to pursue weather-
modification is to deter and counter potential adversaries," the
report stated. "The technology is there, waiting for us to pull it
all together," the authors noted.
In 2025, the report summarized, U.S. aerospace forces can "own the
weather" by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing
development of those technologies to war-fighting applications.
"Such a capability offers the war fighter tools to shape the
battlespace in ways never before possible. It provides opportunities
to impact operations across the full spectrum of conflict and is
pertinent to all possible futures," the report concluded.
But if whipping up weather can be part of a warfighter's tool kit,
couldn't those talents be utilized to retarget or neutralize life,
limb and property-destroying storms?
All-weather worries
"It is time to provide funds for application of the scientific method
to weather modification and control," said Bernard Eastlund, chief
technical officer and founder of Eastlund Scientific Enterprises
Corporation in San Diego, California.
Eastlund's background is in plasma physics and commercial
applications of microwave plasmas. At a lecture early this month at
Penn State Lehigh Campus in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania, he outlined
new concepts for electromagnetic wave interactions with the
atmosphere that, among a range of jobs, could be applied to weather
modification research.
"The technology of artificial ionospheric heating could be as
important for weather modification research as accelerators have been
for particle physics," Eastlund explained.
In September, Eastland filed a patent on a way to create artificial
ionized plasma patterns with megawatts of power using inexpensive
microwave power sources. This all-weather technique, he noted, can be
used to heat specific regions of the atmosphere.
Eastlund's research is tuned to artificial generation of acoustic and
gravitational waves in the atmosphere. The heating of steering winds
to help shove around mesocyclones and hurricanes, as well as
controlling electrical conductivity of the atmosphere is also on his
investigative agenda.
Carefully tailored program plan
Eastlund said that the reduction in severity or impact of severe
weather could be demonstrated as part of a carefully tailored program
plan.
"In my opinion, the new technology for use of artificial plasma
layers in the atmosphere: as heater elements to modify steering
winds, as a modifier of electrostatic potential to influence
lightning distribution, and for generation of acoustic and
gravitational waves, could ultimately provide a core technology for a
science of severe weather modification," Eastlund told Space.com.
The first experiments of a program, Eastlund emphasized, would be
very small, and designed for safety. For example, a sample of air in
a jet stream could be heated with a pilot experimental installation.
Such experiments would utilize relatively small amounts of power,
between one and ten megawatts, he pointed out.
Both ground-based and space weather diagnostic instruments could
measure the effect. Computer simulations could compare these results
with predicted effects. This process can be iterated until reliable
information is obtained on the effects of modifying the wind.
Computer simulations of hurricanes, Eastlund continued, are designed
to determine the most important wind fields in hurricane formation.
Computer simulations of mesocyclones use steering wind input data to
predict severe storm development.
After about 5 years of such research, and further development of
weather codes, a pilot experiment to modify the steering winds of a
mesocylone might be safely attempted. Such an experiment would
probably require 50 to 100 megawatts, Eastlund speculated.
"I estimate this new science of weather modification will take 10 to
20 years to mature to the point where it is useful for controlling
the severity and impact of severe weather systems as large as
hurricanes," Eastlund explained.
Inadvertent effects?
Another reason for embarking on this new science could be to make
sure inadvertent effects of existing projects, such as the heating of
the ionosphere and modifications of the polar electrojet, are not
having effects on weather, Eastlund stated.
As example, Eastlund pointed to the High frequency Active Auroral
Research Program (HAARP). This is a major Arctic facility for upper
atmospheric and solar-terrestrial research, being built on a
Department of Defense-owned site near Gakona, Alaska.
Eastlund wonders if HAARP does, in fact, generate gravity waves. If
so, can those waves in turn influence severe weather systems?
Started in 1990, the unclassified HAARP program is jointly managed by
the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval
Research. Researchers at the site make use of a high-power
ionospheric research instrument to temporarily excite a limited area
of the ionosphere for scientific study, observing and measuring the
excited region using a suite of devices.
The fundamental goal of research conducted at the facility is to
study and understand natural phenomena occurring in the Earth's
ionosphere and near-space environment. According to the HAARP
website, those scientific investigations will have major value in the
design of future communication and navigation systems for both
military and civilian use.
Messing with Mother Nature
Who best to have their hands on the weather control switches?
The last large hurricane modification experiments — under Project
Stormfury — were carried out by the U.S. Air Force, Eastlund
said. "It is likely the Department of Defense would be the lead
agency in any new efforts in severe storm modification."
Additionally, federal laboratories with their extensive computational
modeling skills would also play a lead role in the development of a
science of weather modification. NASA and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would find their respective niches
too. The satellite diagnostic capabilities in those agencies would
play a strong role, Eastlund suggested.
It appears that only modest amounts of government dollars have been
spent on weather modification over the last five years.
"Hurricane Katrina could cost $300 billion by itself," Eastlund
said. "In my opinion, it is time for a serious scientific effort in
weather modification."
"Global warming appears to be a reality, and records could continue
to fall in the hurricane severity sweepstakes," Eastlund said. "When
I first suggested the use of space-based assets for the prevention of
tornadoes, many people expressed their displeasure with 'messing with
Mother Nature'. I still remember hiding in the closet of our house in
Houston as a tornado passed overhead. It is time for serious,
controlled research, with the emphasis on safety, for the good of
mankind," he concluded.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2005-10-31-military-
weather_x.htm?csp=34
// posted by Linda Weissinger Lupowitz @ 8:23 PM 
