Not coincidentally, UAVs are amongst the platforms consistently used to deploy and test some of the ongoing weather sensors and weapons pursued in unclassified technology research and development programs geared toward the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Virtually all of these programs, on their face, are described as weather analysis, data collection and research, and, to be fair, those applications certainly exist. However, it is disingenuous to dismiss the military applications, given the funding sources and the many aerospace and defense programs already using these technologies in one way or another. Indeed, this area revolves around highly lethal and offensive military capabilities.
UAV’s will operate as sensors, scientific data and image collectors transmitting climate and weather data to ground stations, satellites and airborne platforms. They might also be deployed as the vehicles to deliver seeding agents, to facilitate or distribute other ENNOD inputs at the precise place and time. One thing is certain: UAV’s are expected to be integral components for the facilitation of remote sensing, weather collection, climate and atmospheric data collection and analyses, and rapid information transfer – all crucial to offensive military ENMOD capabilities.
The Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory (MIRSL) at the University of Massachusetts has for seventeen years pioneered the research and development of sophisticated sensors, radars, receivers, transmitters, antennas and systems for the most egregiously hostile military weapons systems and weapons platforms applications, for weather characterization and investigation, and ultimately -- whether MIRSL researchers admit this or not -- to enable weather modification and control.
Virtually all of the technologies were developed under funding by the military industrial complex, and it is quite possible that intelligence operatives work within the U-Mass “community;” they are certainly monitoring the academic “community” in any case. [123] Until the late 1980s, at least, significant classified research occurred at U-Mass. MIRSL personnel regularly staff flights and tests deploying weather monitoring (clouds, ocean waves, hurricanes, atmospheric) and measuring equipment.
The MIRSL expertise focuses on microwave and millimeter wave technologies for RADAR, communications and EW applications. These MIRSL enabled technologies are also deployed for SIGINT, COMMINT, C4ISR and C4IST capabilities. These technologies have seen direct applications, in repeated tests and experiments, and they are the technologies of current choice in use in the armed forces, and of future choice for an array of offensive capabilities identified in the unclassified Air Force 2025 document.
The U-Mass MIRSL research is aligned with the U.S. Department of Defense ARM-UAV (Atmospheric Radiation Measurement -- Unmanned Aerospace Vehicle) Program – another program euphemistically dedicated to “atmospheric measuring and monitoring” for benign purposes.
One of the companies involved in the ARM program is Atmospheric and Environmental Research Inc. (AER), in Lexington Massachusetts. AER offers satellite-borne sensors “providing a unique, multispectral perspective for monitoring environmental processes over the Earth.” Providing remote sensing technologies and data “for diverse scientific, military and commercial applications” AER’s clients include Boeing Satellite Systems; Lockheed Martin; ITT Industries (Aerospace Division); Ball Aerospace; JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory); NSF; NASA; NOAH; DOE and DOD. AER is also teamed on some ENMOD related projects with the Desert Research Institute. As previously noted, the Desert Research Institute was involved in major ENMOD projects, including the National Hail Research Experiment (1971-1976). [124]
Another key ARM program participant is SeaSpace Corporation, a major vendor of satellite “weather and climate” ground stations for defense customers: the SeaSpace connection leads us on a wild goose chase of powerful interlocking defense and intelligence corporations and interests.
SeaSpace Corporation was recently acquired by major defense and intelligence corporation Allied Defense Group, Inc, (formerly Allied Research Corporation). ADG sits at the pinnacle of defense and intelligence power, peddling weapons, intelligence and security all over the world. According to company literature, ADG is “a diversified defense and security firm, developing and producing conventional weaponry, sophisticated security systems, innovative training and simulation products, and mission-critical safety and environmental products, for markets in Europe, Asia, Africa, Antarctica, North America and South America.”
The ADG Chairman of the board is General (Ret.) J.H. Binford Peay, III, former Allied Research Corporation Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO, previously Commander-in-Chief, and Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Army. Current directors include: Dr. Jay R. Sculley, former Assistant Secretary for Research and Development, U.S. Army; ADG director Gilbert F. Decker was the former Assistant Secretary for Research, Development and Acquisition, U.S. Army. General Peay is a private consultant to Boeing Corporation, and, as mentioned previously, he is a private consultant to Walt Disney Imagineering, a major subsidiary business of Walt Disney Company.
ADG director Ronald H. Griffith is a former General (Ret.), and Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, and he remains the Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer of an elite, and somewhat exceptional, private military company called Military Professional resources Inc. (MPRI). MPRI is a private mercenary firm based in Alexandra, VA, responsible for egregious private military terrorism all over the world. [125] MPRI’s terrorist activities take place with full diplomatic cover of the US, and they are rarely if ever mentioned in the media.
MPRI principals include: General (Ret.) Carl E. Vuono, former Army Chief of Staff who oversaw the invasion of Panama and the Gulf War; General (Ret.) Ronald H. Griffith; Colonel (Ret.) Stephen E. Inman; General (Ret.) Crosbie Saint; and Lieutenant General (Ret.) Jared L. Bates; Admiral Wesley McDonald, the former Supreme Allied Commander of Atlantic Forces; General (Ret.) Frederick Kroesen, the former Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe; and retired U.S. Army General Harry Ed Soyster, former director of the DIA. [126] Soyster arranged the MPRI mercenary program in Croatia with the help of CIA director John Deutch. [127] Two more MPRI executive warmakers are Mr. Hardisty, who served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, headed the U.S. Pacific Command, and serves on the CIA’s military advisory panel; and Mr. Trefry, executive vice-president, who served as a military assistant to the White House under President Bush (I). It has also been reported that MPRI counts General Alexander Haig as a principal executive, (this remains unverified).
Returning to the ARM-UAV program, this aerospace and defense initiative was made visible in the mid-1990s with millions of dollars in funding from the DOD Strategic Environment Research and Development Program (SERDP). SERDP continues to fund UAV and satellite platform technology developments for the ARM-UAV program of the U.S. Department of Energy. The U.S. DOE in turn has funded the University of Massachusetts MIRSL program. [128] Further ENMOD related research and development at MIRSL has been sponsored through NASA (ERAST) programs. [129] The NASA Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) program awarded major contracts to General Atomics Corporation to develop/adapt the GAC Predator-B UAV platform “to operate in a variety of weather conditions to support a broad range of potential science missions...” [130]
Taking place on a remote ice floe in the Arctic Ocean is another major ARM scientific spin-off effort, the SHEBA program. The Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean Project (SHEBA) continues under the omnipresent and all-encompassing U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) sponsored by the DOD, DOE, NOAA, NASA, NSF and ONR, and initiated in 1997.
SHEBA scientists are applying their extensive field data to improve computer models of the earth’s climate, and thus enhance the capability of researchers to predict global change… DOD participates in USGCRP through sponsored research that concurrently satisfies national security requirements and stated goals of USGCRP. [131]
Now let’s ask a few questions about the above statements. How much climate change research is needed? Is it reasonable to believe that the billions of dollars that have been devoted to “global climate change research” in the recent past have been dedicated to that? Given the extent to which the defense scientific and intelligence community has gone to destroy the environment, and the policies, programs and regulations put in place to maintain entrenched nuclear and petroleum industries, and to destroy emerging solar technologies in the 1980s, should we not assume without question that some major proportion of this funding has been allocated to ENMOD weaponry?
What are the “national security requirements” of the U.S. Global Climate Research Program? Why is the DOD involved, if not to secure their broad and ubiquitous warmaking interests?
While it is certainly true that “more research needed” has become the mantra behind which action to mitigate global climate change is stalled or suspended, it is also true that data collection, remote sensing, computer modeling, and platforms (for deployment) research and development for ENMOD purposes has been taking place.
Funding for U-Mass MIRSL research has come from virtually all the major advanced weapons systems and programs research and development agencies: NASA; ARO; USA; ONR; DOE; NOAA; USDA; DARPA; NSF; AFOSR; and AFRL. From FY 1990 to FY 1994, less than four MIRSL principal investigators received approximately $ 8,155,117 from these agencies for remote sensing research or experimentation on:
Air-sea interface
Earth (terrestrial)
Cloud profiling
Measurements of cloud water and ice
Measurements of hurricanes
Measurements of natural surfaces
Ocean Surface Wind Speed
Sea characterization
Sea ice and glacial ice characterization
Snow covered terrain
Soil moisture
Turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer
Tornadoes.
Working with the U-Mass MIRSL scientists on their various programs are also: General Electric, Ball Brothers, Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard, Hughes, Lockheed-Martin, Sun Microsystems and United Technologies. Massachusetts’s contractors involved at various levels include Raytheon, Kollmorgen, Quadrant Engineering, Danaher Corp., Millitech and Yankee Environmental Systems. [132] Danaher Corporation -- the parent company of Kollmorgen -- is a major contractor, with over 30 subsidiaries, involved in key aerospace, defense and SDI programs. (Danaher director Alan G. Spoon is President of the Washington Post.) [133]
Yankee Environmental Systems (YES), Turners Falls, MA, is an R&D firm with decades of involvement in ENMOD military thrusts. In the 1960s, while at Cambridge Systems Inc., YES founders designed the TMQ/22 Tactical Measuring set for the U.S. Army; TMQ systems have been used for years; YES collaborates with the White Sands Missile Range on this project today. In October 2001, two retired U.S. DOD insiders -- Lieutenant Colonels Dave Sautter and Bill Bauman -- both former USAF officers, joined YES after 20-year careers as “meteorologists” with Air Force Weather.
Major YES customers, partners and programs relating to ENMOD technologies include:
U.S. Dept. of Energy: ARM-UAV Program
U.S. Dept of Agriculture
U.S. Department of Defense
Space and Warfare Systems Command
Army Research Labs
Air Force Research Labs
Office of Naval Research
U.S. Department of Commerce
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Science Foundation
Argonne National Laboratory
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Boeing Corporation
Note that almost all the U.S. National Laboratories are involved as customers, and these are the same National Labs responsible for some of the most secretive military programs in the history of the United States. They are also responsible for major nuclear (plutonium) contamination to the environment, for radiation testing on humans, and numerous other billion-dollar boondoggles. [134]
U-Mass MIRSL Labs work in partnership with the National Center for Atmospheric Research at the University of Colorado. It should not come as a surprise that the most extensive hydroscopic [cloud-seeding] test to date, run in Mexico by scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, for the past few years (1999-200?), has conducted some 99 seeding missions, showing rainfall increases of as much as 40 percent. [135]
SPAWAR “provides line management staffing of the National Reconnaissance Office; coordinates naval space research, development and acquisition activities between NRO and other space programs; provides naval space and warfare experience to develop superior and affordable space systems in support of national missions and joint, combined and naval operations.” [136]
The Air Force Research Laboratory is entrenched in UAV and UAV payload, sensors and weapons research. A subdivision of the Air Force Material Command (AFMC), AFRL’s UAV efforts were outlined in a recent (2002) AFMC publication. A feature titled “Turning Science Fiction Into Science Fact” reported, for example, that the next-generation X-45A Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) was successfully test flown at NASA’s Dreyden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base (CA) on May 22, 2002. The X-45A is a DARPA, AFRL collaboration with Boeing’s highly classified Phantom Works research and development facility.
Another insider space and ENMOD warfare operator is Mission Research Corporation, involved in weather and climate simulation; environmental modeling; image and information processing; sensors and sensor systems; ionospheric manipulation; and advanced high energy beam technologies. Major Mission Research Corporation clients and partners include all the standard ENMOD participants funding the U-Mass MIRSL labs: NASA; all national labs; Naval Research Laboratory; DARPA; U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory; and other corporations.
Note that AFRL funding and programs direction comes from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). Both AFRL and AFOSR were identified above as funding sources for U-Mass MIRSL labs research and development, and both are sponsors of the private MIRSL spin-off companies Prosensing and Quadrant Engineering, and Yankee Environmental Systems (YES). The AFOSR director of some $60 million in annual physics and electronics programs is Dr. Forrest J. Agee, also a former manager of strategic [black] C3 programs at BDM Corporation (1979-1982). [137]
Another BDM corporate insider from 1978 to 1992 is former USAF Colonel William P. Schneider, a Soviet area studies expert who went on to found the private Technical Research Corporation (located on Langley Drive, VA), which specializes in stealth, missile and electromagnetic energy and laser technologies for aerospace applications. [138]
BDM Corporation is another of those shadowy national security apparatus insider corporations that has been involved in questionable [read: highly illegal] activities, including mercenary operations abroad. One BDM International acquisition was Vinnell, an old mercenary firm that had been around since the Vietnam War days. [139]
The Carlyle Group recently acquired 26 percent of BDM stock. Carlyle counts amongst its principals former Secretary of State (1989-1992) James Baker, and former Defense Secretary (1987-1989) and CIA Africa hand Frank Carlucci. A defense and intelligence deep insider, Carlucci formerly served as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs under President Reagan; Deputy Secretary of Defense (1980-1982); and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (1978-80). James Baker was White House Chief of Staff for President Bush (1992-1993) and President Reagan (1981-1985); he was also Secretary of Treasury under Reagan (1985-1988); and he was President Ford’s Under Secretary of Commerce.
Carlyle’s international advisors include former British Prime Minister John Major (Chairman of Carlyle Europe) and former German Central Bank President, Karl Otto Pohl. Current Carlyle Chairman Louis V. Gerstner recently served on the board of directors of the New York Times Corporation, and remains a director of Bristol Myers Squibb, a pharmaceutical giant which retains deep ties to the New York Times Corporation.
Unsurprisingly, Karl Otto Pohl has also served on the advisory board of Barrick Gold -- with former CIA Director and U.S. President George Bush (I), former prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney, and former U.S. Senator Howard Baker. With the likes of Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller, Mulroney sits on the Advisory Council for Chase Manhattan Corporation. It is no accident that Barrick Gold’s devastating mining operations, with military support at the highest levels, remain off the media agenda. [140]
Another Barrick director is Edward N. Neys, also a director of the highly secretive public relations and perception management firm Burston-Marstellar. In true perception management form, Brian Mulroney is a trustee for the right-wing Freedom Forum media think-tank (publisher of the influential academic Media Studies Journal). [141]
As noted by intelligence investigator Wayne Madsen, “Interestingly, Philip Odeen, the president of BDM, was in charge of a Defense Department task force on restructuring the military to face 21rst century threats.” [142] In 1998, BDM – entrenched in ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems -- was acquired by TRW, a major DOD intelligence, satellite and space warfare insider corporation, charged with violations about BMD monopoly by the Federal Trade Commission. [143] (Note that TRW was itself absorbed by Northrup Grumman amidst major Securities and Exchange Commission violations charges in December of 2002.)
BDM was just one of the corporations under contract in 1998 to the DIA and CIA “to procure various weapons from dubious international sources under the covert “foreign material acquisition” program.” [144] Under this program, authorized in the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 1991, the U.S. congress permitted the DIA to establish private “businesses” as cover for military intelligence-gathering operations. [145] Licensed for export by the U.S. government, BDM shipped over $80,000 worth of computers and computer-assisted design equipment to Iraq for utilization in Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs between 1985 and 1990. [146] One of the most notable points about BDM, is that the AFOSR director of some $60 million in annual physics and electronics programs is Dr. Forrest J. Agee, was a former manager of strategic [black] C3 programs at BDM Corporation (1979-1982).
With the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and U.S. Navy, Boeing Phantom Works is developing the UCAV-N (Naval Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle). Notably, Boeing Phantom Works plans deployment of their “Advanced System-of-Systems” Future Combat System by 2012. With a “network-centric set of satellites and unmanned and manned air and ground systems to provide a highly deployable, effective and survivable advanced force structure,” the Future Combat System capabilities include “precision all-weather surveillance and targeting systems.” Such systems almost certainly revolve around weather warfare capabilities cloaked by euphemisms like “precision all-weather” surveillance and targeting for C4IST/R.
Figure Two:
Two UAV and/or UCAV Technologies Under Development through AFRL.
Says Major Gen Paul Nielsen, AFRL Commander: “Eventually UCAVs will fly in packs [swarms] seeking enemy anti-aircraft missile launchers, and work together to destroy them, with a human operator who could be anywhere in the world. The next-stage of this next-gen deployment is the X-45B, a larger and more robust and capable UCAV.” AFRL is developing UAV (and manned vehicle) hypersonic propulsion technologies allowing speeds over Mach 6 (4500 mph). [147]
Another partner working with the U.S. Navy, DARPA and Boeing Phantom Works on UAV technologies and their related C4ISR/T is BAE Systems, a U.S./U.K. multinational corporation flagged in 2002 by the United Nations’ Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). BAE Systems violated international sanctions by illegally shipping spare parts to the Zimbabwe Air Force for ZIM Mark 60 Hawk Fighters. Intermediaries in the deal included John Bredenkamp and Liberian President Charles Taylor, both widely known for international criminal operations in arms and diamonds smuggling amidst massive loss of human life in Liberia, Sierra Leone and DRC. [148]
BAE Systems recently demonstrated their “Micro-Internetted Unattended Ground Sensors” (MIUGS). These hand-deployed MIUGS provided coverage of more than two square kilometers of the China Lake Superior Valley test range, and sent back target reports to a command and control center 30 miles away. The sensor nodes successfully detected “high-value targets” (such as mobile missile launchers) and cued a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to verify the target. BAE’s Information & Electronic Warfare Systems (IEWS) business received a $10 million development contract in July 2001 to develop rapidly deployable, networked sensors, to fight the “war on terror.” Note that BAE Systems executive Curtis Gray has a long history of employment with Boeing (Phantom Works) and Rockwell International. [149] BAE Systems is reportedly involved with the blackest of black programs: the development of anti-gravity technologies, including an advanced anti-gravity fighter-interceptor. [150]
The USAF COROLIS weather satellite (delayed from launch in December 2002) provides another recent example of sophisticated ongoing ENMOD research where stated objectives of “data collection and analyses for meteorology and weather forecasting” most likely cloaks the hidden ENMOD agenda. As noted in the promotional materials of Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc.(AER): “sensors aboard civilian and military satellite platforms measure down-looking microwave and infrared data which are used to determine properties of the atmosphere and earths surface for defense applications, weather prediction, and global change studies.” [151]
The COROLIS satellite will carry a U.S. Navy WINDSAT polarimetric microwave radiometer to measure the ocean surface wind vector on a global scale. “This technology demonstration is an important pathfinder for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS).” [152] The NPOESS Program is described as “the country’s combined military and civilian weather satellite programs that enable more precise monitoring of weather patterns around the Earth.” [153]
Other satellites recently launched for classified -- or ill-defined, at the very least -- ENMOD pursuits are the two NASA “research” satellites launched by a Boeing Delta 2 rocket on January 12, 2003 at Vandenburg Air Force Base. This $298 million dollar NASA mission launched their ICESat (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite) and CHIPSat (Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer) spacecraft duo. According to NASA, “ICESat is a NASA Earth Science Enterprise spacecraft whose key purpose is contributing to understanding the impacts of global climate change” by measuring the thickness of polar ice sheets. Assembled by Ball Aerospace, ICESat will be controlled through the University of Colorado in Boulder. Both Ball and U-Colorado are clients of, or partners with, U-Mass MIRSL labs. The Ball ICESat is specifically designed for remote sensing missions and onboard technology was previously used for QuikSCAT and QuickBird missions. But like the NPOESS mission above, the true objectives of these satellite programs and missions remain shrouded in the scientific euphemisms of global climate change research and climatological assessment.
The importance of satellite platforms to environmental warfare cannot be understated. Guidelines on “weather control by space means” have already been developed, though they purport to accent the concern of scientists about the adoption of “weather mitigation technologies” for military purposes. “There is fear that such [ENMOD] technologies will be developed for military purposes notes,” Dr. Eastlund notes. “Fear may be justified, however, such fear should not stop responsible scientists from pursuing areas of research that could save lives and property.” [154]
How do we delineate the responsible scientists from the irresponsible scientists? Which category does Dr. Eastlund himself fall into? One is reminded of the statement by the environmentalist David Brower, about the preponderance of those around him to be ‘stark raving mad.” Fear of military expropriation is no reason to stop, in any case, according to Eastlund, no matter that that is the near certain outcome, and – I suggest – that Dr. Bernard J. Eastlund knows perfectly well what hidden agenda – military expropriation -- he is furthering.
The DMSP satellite constellation employs microwave imagers for weather sensoring, and like the Tropical rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), it carries ‘some of the most advanced space based precipitation radar and microwave imaging systems.” [155] These are the kinds of futuristic-here-and-now systems enabled by U-Mass MIRSL military-funded research and development programs.
It is interesting to note that solar powered satellites were operational by 1979 – even as emerging solar technologies for public and environmental benefit were being expropriated by big oil, gas and nuclear interests. [156] These satellites have the capacity to generate extremely high power energy beams. By placing these satellites in geosynchronous or lower orbits, “we could extend the range of applicability of weather modification ideas” offering great “potential for severe weather modification,” wrote Dr. Bernard J. Eastlund. [157]
Eastlund’s Thunderstorm Solar Powered Satellite (TSPS) would use WRS-88D Doppler radar imaging systems to remotely sense and modify severe storms (with special interest in tornadoes) by zapping them with high-power beams of electromagnetic radiation. “Even though these beams would be carefully controlled,” Eastlund notes in passing, “a miss could still be dangerous biologically.” Missing the storm center, dangerous, “high-level electromagnetic radiation could strike a populated area.” [158]
Eastlund notes that the “U.N. Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Use of Environmental Modification” went into effect on October 5, 1978. To get around this minor obstacle, attention is focused on the civilian benefits of localized storm mitigation. Nonetheless, “it is our recommendation,” he wrote, “that the TSPS concept be reviewed by the U.N. and other appropriate international organizations from its inception.” [159]
It is precisely through such ostensible gate-keeper institutions (U.N., World Bank, IMF, ITTO) that the Euro-American military industrial complex has circumvented international treaties in the past. The suggestion is disingenuous, cosmetic, and irrelevant, in any case, as military ENMOD pursuits for hostile applications have proceeded unchecked since the late 1940s -- with complete impunity -- and in total violation of the 1977 ENMOD Treaty. The continuing ENMOD research of Dr. Bernard J. Eastlund offers indisputable testimony to that.