Military wants the weather on its side

Thunderbolts on demand
What would a military strategist gain by having an "on switch" for 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, or even generating downright downpours that disrupt enemy troop comfort levels. On the flip side, 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 precise way to 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 the requisite disclaimers — including language station that the views expressed were those of the authors and didn’t reflect the official policy or position of the U.S Air Force, Department of Defense or the U.S. 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 warfighting applications.

"Such a capability offers the warfighter 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 Corp. in San Diego.

Eastlund’s background is in plasma physics and commercial applications of microwave plasmas. At a lecture this month at Penn State Lehigh Campus in Fogelsville, Pa., 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. Also on his investigative agenda: the heating of steering winds to help shove around mesocyclones and hurricanes, as well as controlling electrical conductivity of the atmosphere.

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