keith harmon snow
March, 2003
| List of Acronyms & Agencies - 1 | Agency Acronyms: |
| AEC | Atomic Energy Commission (later NRC) |
| AFRL | Air Force Research Laboratory |
| AFOSR | Air Force Office of Scientific Research |
| ARL | Army Research Laboratory |
| ARO | Army Research Office |
| CIA | Central Intelligence Agency |
| DARPA | Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency |
| DIA | Defense Intelligence Agency |
| DOD | U.S. Department of Defense |
| DOE | U.S. Department of Energy |
| FAA | Federal Aviation Administration |
| JPL | Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
| MIRSL | Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory (U-Mass) |
| INEL | Idaho National Engineering Laboratory |
| NASA | National Aeronautics and Space Administration |
| NOAA | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration |
| NRC | Nuclear Regulatory Commission |
| NRL | Naval Research Laboratory |
| NRO | National Reconnaissance Office |
| NSF | National Science Foundation |
| ONI | Office of Naval Intelligence |
| ONR | Office of Naval Research |
| OSS | Office of Strategic Services |
| SPAWAR | Space and Warfare Systems Command |
| USDA | U.S. Department of Agriculture |
| USN | U.S. Navy |
| USAF | U.S. Air Force |
| List of Acronyms & Agencies - 2 | Technologies & Programs Acronyms: |
| ARM | Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (Program) |
| C3 (4) | Command, Communications, Control (Computers) |
| C4IST | C4 + Intelligence, Surveillance and Tracking |
| C4ISR | C4 + Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance |
| COMINT | Communications Intelligence |
| EHF | Extra High Frequency |
| ELINT | Electronics Intelligence |
| ENMOD | Environmental Modification Programs |
| ERAST | Environmental Research Aircraft Sensors and Technology (Program) |
| EW | Electronic Warfare |
| HAARP | High frequency Active Aural Research Program |
| MIUGS | Micro-Internetted Unattended Ground Sensors |
| SERDP | Strategic Environment Research & Development Program |
| SHEBA | Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (Project) |
| SIGINT | Signals Intelligence |
| TUAV | Tactical Unmanned Aerial vehicle |
| UAV | Unmanned Aerospace (or Aerial) Vehicle |
| UCAV | Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle |
| UHF | Ultra High Frequency |
Picture a South American cartel of the mid-2090s. It maintains hundreds of fighter planes, thwarting attacks by launching a dozen Russian- and Chinese-made aircraft for every one of ours. Our sole advantage comes from a piece of military intelligence: Cartel pilots won’t fly in harsh weather. But this doesn’t mean waiting around for the skies to turn - because by then, thunderstorms will be made to order...
First we launch uninhabited aerospace vehicles (UAVs), which, through advanced cloud-generation technology, disseminate cirrus clouds to block enemy surveillance. Next we seed any one of the daily rain showers passing through the region, intensifying it precisely over the target. Then we snuff out our blinded enemy. [1]
Sound like a sci-fi thriller?
The above excerpt from the recent techno-yuppie cult magazine
WIRED is designed to do just that – hence the projection of global insecurity into the distant 2090s and the ubiquitous specter of fear inculcated by reference to hoards of Chinese and Russian warplanes. In reality, however, it’s a waking nightmare: U.S. military offensives in weather warfare have already arrived.
Indeed, they have been here all along.
Adherents of weather warfare prefer to call it “environmental modification” – or ENMOD. The corporate media has reported almost nothing about these aerospace and defense programs, or the technologies involved. Thus do I open the discussion of the ENMOD arena by deconstructing recent “news” stories purportedly offering balanced coverage of an otherwise unreported story.
First note that the Internet abounds with conspiracy theories of all stripes about weather warfare, environmental modification and climatic mayhem. Numerous postings declare the climate instabilities we are already seeing to be the work of the antichrist or the New World Order – indeed in some cases they are one and the same -- and some of these web sites describe people legitimately concerned and vocal about climatic change as the agents of a “left-wing conspiracy” with a “communist agenda” ever “hostile to free enterprise.”
Buried beneath the volumes of imaginative but wholly fictitious conspiracies that gain wide circulation however, are the many legitimate secret programs orchestrated behind the darkness and denial of the military-industrial complex over the past five decades. Call these conspiracies if you like. The heart of this story – weather as a weapon – is certainly not one of them and, depending on how you look at it, this is certainly one of them. No matter the past, there is clearly something happening now.
Back to the future, we can say for certain that anyone who projects hypothetical scenarios as far in to the future as “the mid- 2090s” – as in the above article -- has not the least grasp of reality. The earth’s natural resources are disappearing. We are seeing gross ecological damage and profound industrial and nuclear pollution. Overpopulation in both industrialized and under-developed economies has already exceeded the limits of sustainability. Global climatic mayhem is here, and it is happening now.
On top of all this is the permanent state of war perpetuated by multinational corporations and their agents in western governments. That is the point of this writing, it sets out to articulate this insanity, and, simultaneously, to properly situate the insanity of the organizations, corporations, agencies and individuals responsible for perpetuating the old, new global commodities of despair, terrorism and death.