Editor's note: Jerry Smith's last feature work was to be part of a top-secret book, to be published by Defender Publishing LLC. Given Jerry's passing, we are providing his chapter (below) to the public at this time. Wikipedia's entry also notes: Jerry E. Smith (8 April 1950, Pomona, California — 8 March 2010) was an author, lecturer, poet, and editor. His bibliography of published works includes three books from Adventures Unlimited Press (AUP), scores of non-fiction articles and reviews, and more than a dozen ghost-written books. He was a close friend and literary partner of author Jim Keith. They worked together on magazines and books, and co-hosted a radio show broadcast from the campus of the Oregon Institute of Technology.
HAARP: Weaponizing the Atmosphere and Beyond By Jerry E. Smith, RaidersNewsNetwork.com, March 25, 2010, 11:00 am Eastern
A lot of things spooked folks at the end of the last millennium—as this book attests, some of them turned out to be real threats that need to be dealt with now. One of those very real things that went bump on the Internet was the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP).
HAARP is a field of antennas on the ground in Southeastern Alaska linked together to work as one giant antenna. Today, it is the world’s largest radio frequency (RF) broadcaster, with an effective radiated power (ERP) of three to four billion watts. It uses a unique patented ability to focus the RF energy generated by the antenna field, injecting it into a spot at the very top of the atmosphere in a region called the ionosphere.
As you can imagine, injecting that much RF energy into a spot about twelve miles across by about two and a half miles deep (by about ninety miles up), heats the thin atmosphere of the ionospheric region by several thousand degrees. HAARP, then, is a type of device called an ionospheric heater.
HAARP is one of about twenty ionospheric heaters scattered around the planet and in use today–but it is the largest and most powerful, and the only one that can focus its output. This heating of the ionosphere allows scientists to do a number of things. Controlling and directing the processes and forces of the ionosphere by intentionally modifying it is called “ionospheric enhancement.”
An early HAARP document stated: "The heart of the program will be the development of a unique ionospheric heating capability to conduct the pioneering experiments required to adequately assess the potential for exploiting ionospheric enhancement technology for Department of Defense (DOD) purposes."[1]
What might those DOD purposes be? Something about winning wars, eh? HAARP proponents[2] claim it is nothing more than a simple civilian research station—which may be true, but what is it researching? It is not about understanding how the atmosphere works. That research was largely completed decades ago. The Executive Summary of “Applications and Research Opportunities Using HAARP” says:
"The HAARP facility, currently under development in Alaska, is the outgrowth of more than 30 years of ionospheric heating research. A wealth of experimental studies conducted at ionospheric heating installations, such as the ones in Arecibo, Puerto Rico; Tromso, Norway; Fairbanks, Alaska; and several installations in the former USSR brought the understanding of the physics and the phenomenology of the HF [High-frequency]
HAARP is about applying what we know to achieving military objectives. It is, in simplest terms, looking for ways to weaponize the atmosphere. It is but one of many programs seeking to control and direct natural processes—such as the weather, earthquakes, and tidal waves—to achieve military objectives; in effect, it seeks to draft Mother Nature.
The research at HAARP is being conducted without adequate multidisciplinary oversight. The research itself, much less any application or technology developed from the research, has tremendous potential for environmental and human disaster. While there are a multitude of concerns, the general public’s interest has centered on the possibilities of HAARP affecting the weather, setting off earthquakes, or being used for covert mind control. How this might be, I’ll outline in this chapter.
These concerns, although outlandish sounding, are real. Scientific American noted that a dogleg in the jet stream over HAARP in 2000 resulted in a swarm of out-of-season tornadoes in Florida.[4] HAARP is operating in frequencies known to have serious impacts on humans, yet no biological scientists are involved. The European[5] and Russian[6] parliaments have both demanded international oversight, and the U.S. has simply ignored their demands.
This is not like testing a new gun in a lab. This research is being done in the real world in real time with real natural systems and real potential for disaster—possibly irreversible disaster! The whole planet is the HAARP lab, and that makes every living thing an unwitting subject of the experiment, which is a violation of the Nuremberg Code.[7] None of us has given informed consent.
If this is civilian science as claimed, then the international scientific community should oversee it, as the entire planet is affected. If it is military, as is obvious despite official claims otherwise, then it should at least have a proper multidisciplinary review panel and personnel on the ground. Right now, neither of those conditions is being met.
On March, 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan called upon "… the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."
This quest for the creation of a technology, of a weapon or weapons systems that would make atomic war impossible, was officially named the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The press lost no time in dubbing it "Star Wars" after the George Lucas movie. That initiative sent the United States’ military-industrial
Officially, "The HAARP Interactive Ionospheric Research Observatory is a major Arctic facility for the study of upper atmospheric and solar-terrestrial physics and for Radio Science and Communications research. Among the instruments included at the facility are a high power, high-frequency (HF) phased array radio transmitter, numerous radio frequency and optical research instruments capable of observing and monitoring the complex auroral ionosphere, and site infrastructure to support research activities."[8]
The above is from the University of Alaska at Anchorage original HAARP website (that page has been slightly rewritten now). The Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI) is the high-frequency-
Today, the IRI is a field of 180 towers, each 72 feet tall with two crossed, dipole antennas at the top of each tower. These antennas are for broadcasting in the High Frequency (HF) range, which is an audible range below the lowest ranges currently used for radio communications (below shortwave). Slung beneath the towers is a wire grid for reflecting upward any radio emissions from the antennas that heads toward the ground. Beneath the mesh are small buildings called shelters for the radio transmitters. All of these elements are linked together to act as one giant transmitting antenna. The 360 antenna elements of the field collectively output some 3.6 million watts. Injecting that output into the electrically charged ionospheric region magnifies the signal strength up to a thousand times, giving HAARP an effective radiated power (ERP) of three to four billion watts!
Alaska has two ionospheric heaters, HAARP and the HIPAS (HIgh Power Auroral Stimulation) Observatory, operated by the University of California at Los Angeles Plasma Physics Laboratory. Work there proved that ionospheric heaters could generate Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) radio waves to successfully find underground targets. In the late 1980s, sensors in Fairbanks picked up ELF waves generated in the ionosphere by HIPAS as they returned from deep underground. After interpretation, they clearly revealed an old mining tunnel below the surface. The success of this experiment was later used to convince the U.S. Senate to fund HAARP.[9]
HAARP has been successfully using the ionosphere to generate ELF since 1995, bathing most of the world in its signal, of which the wavelengths are so long that they circle the earth and penetrate deep into the earth and sea. The possibility of seeing deep into the earth led the Senate to fund HAARP, insisting that its primary mission would be to develop the capacity to conduct deep earth scans for nuclear counterproliferatio
ELF/VLF radio waves penetrate deeply beneath the surface of the earth and interact with the geologic structure of the earth…Proper understanding of the physics of the generation and propagation of ELF/VLF waves and their interactions with earth materials will allow these waves to be used for applications such as sub-surface communications and exploration of the subsurface geological structure…to detect and image subterranean features such as tunnels, bunkers, and other potential military targets.
In 1994, the Senate Armed Services Committee noted the promising results of the high frequency active auroral research program (HAARP). This transmitter in Alaska, besides providing a world class research facility for ionospheric physics, could allow earth- penetrating tomography over most of the northern hemisphere. Such a capability would permit the detection and precise location of tunnels, shelters, and other underground shelters. The absence of such a capability has been noted as a serious weakness in the Department of Defense plans for precision attacks on hardened targets and for counterproliferatio
Curiously, there is no official confirmation of HAARP ever having been used to target or monitor enemy underground bases. But HAARP officials do admit they have been using the same, deep-sea-penetratin
Mind Control and Mental Dysfunction
What about fears that HAARP could have a negative impact on the mental health of people populating entire regions of the globe, or could even be used to mind control or brainwash whole populations? HAARP’s ionospherically generated ELF is at exactly the same frequency at which the human brain works. Could we be picking up some part of those signals?
In a seminal article on HAARP in Nexus Magazine,[11] Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning describe how HAARP could be used to induce mental dysfunction, quoting from presidential security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski[12] on a proposal from UCLA’s Dr. MacDonald, saying: “Political strategists are tempted to exploit research on the brain and human behavior. Geophysicist Gordon J. F. MacDonald—specialist in problems of warfare—says [an] accurately-timed, artificially-
There has been concern that HAARP and other “sky busters” could be covertly used to mess with our minds for decades. One of the first projects to raise such concerns was the so-called "Russian Woodpecker."
The bicentennial of the American Revolution was celebrated on July 4, 1976. The Soviets made some "fireworks" of their own by beginning a series of broadcasts that became known to ham radio operators around the world as the "Russian Woodpecker" in that same year. The official Defense Department explanation of the Woodpecker signal was that it was an over-the-horizon radar system designed to detect enemy missile launches. This is essentially what the Over The Horizon Backscatter (OTH-B) program, the original occupier of the HAARP site, was intended to be. These broadcast-interferi
In The Zapping of America, Paul Brodeur wrote: "A report published in the New York Times on October 30, 1976, revealed that in recent months a mysterious broadband, short-wave radio signal had been broadcast intermittently from the Soviet Union. The signal was so powerful that it disrupted radio and telecommunications throughout the world.… Dr. Zaret is concerned about the Russian signal…because of its potential hazard to human beings…it was very clear that such an encoding impressed onto carrier wavelengths could have a central-nervous-
In the early 1950s, the Soviets began directing a microwave beam at the United States embassy in Moscow. They spent the next four decades using our embassy workers as guinea pigs for their electromagnetic radiation (EMR) experiments. Washington, D.C. was oddly silent regarding the Moscow embassy bombardment when it was discovered in 1962. It was investigated by the CIA, who brought in an outside consultant, Dr. Milton Zaret, giving his investigation the code name "Project Pandora."[14] Zaret was startled to discover that the beam was focused precisely upon the ambassador's office. The intensity of the bombardment was not made public, but when the State Department finally admitted to the existence of the Moscow signal over a decade later, it was announced that it was "fairly low."
The Moscow signal finally became public knowledge in the mid-seventies. It then became the subject of heated debate in the media. In 1976, The Los Angeles Times reported that the United States ambassador to the USSR had informed his Moscow staff that the microwaves that the Soviets were beaming at the United States embassy in Moscow could cause emotional and behavioral problems, as well as leukemia, cancer, and cataracts. At least one of our ambassadors died as a result of exposure to the signal.
The Russian Woodpecker would appear to be an expansion of the Moscow signal, upping the ante from one building, the U. S. Embassy, to the whole United States. In the fall of 1976, after just a few months of operation, the Soviets completed the first of several expansions of their ELF Woodpecker grid. That expansion was accompanied by a major piece of curiosity, if not an outright criminal act. In 1977, the United States government sold the Soviets a supermagnet they knew was going to become part of the Woodpecker program. This magnet was a forty-ton monster capable of generating a magnetic field 250,000 times more powerful than that of the earth's magnetic field. Its purpose was to override, blank out, and/or interfere with the earth's natural magnetic field to permit the Soviet Woodpecker signals to penetrate to the United States. The United States not only knew what it was for, they sent a team of scientists to help the Russians install it! This supermagnet was installed at the Gomel site, powered by the Chernobyl reactor. Eleven years later, in 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor outside of Kiev, Ukraine exploded, ending these signals.
Following the 1977 upgrade, a series of mysterious sonic booms were heard off the eastern coast of the United States. Some researchers believe these were the result of the newly enhanced Woodpecker being calibrated. A United Press International (UPI) wire story of December, 22, 1977, reported that "a series of mysterious atmospheric explosions were reported along the New Jersey shore last night for the third time this month.… Police said the explosions were preceded by a series of rumblings. On December 2, there were two similar incidents, but the Federal Aviation Administration, the Civil Aeronautics Board and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have been unable to offer any explanation for the blasts."
The following month, the Associated Press (AP) reported that a White House spokesman had informed the press that the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) would conduct a "measured and prudent" inquiry into the "mysterious atmospheric booms off the East Coast." The NRL never released its findings, but a little over a decade later it became a member of the HAARP project. Coincidence?
David Brinkley, on the TV show "NBC Magazine,"[15] spoke of the Woodpecker signal. He revealed to his audience that the northwestern United States had been continuously bombarded by the USSR with low-frequency waves set at the approximate level of biological frequencies. Brinkley said: "As I say I find it hard to believe, it is crazy and none of us here knows what to make of it: the Russian Government is known to be trying to change human behavior by external electronic influences. We do know that much. And we know that some kind of Russian transmitter is bombarding this country with extreme low frequency radio waves."
Hypnotists have long known that when a subject is given a post-hypnotic command to perform some act in the waking state, the subject will do it and rationalize the act as his or her own idea. In one such example, hypnotists put Robert Kennedy's convicted killer, Sirhan Sirhan, under, then told him to swing from the bars of his cell like a monkey when he was awakened. Sirhan carried out the instruction. When told he had been hypnotized and shown a video of himself acting like a monkey, he insisted that it had been entirely his own idea; he said he needed the exercise! Instructions, thoughts, or beliefs transmitted to a target subject could similarly be accepted by the subject as his or her own thoughts. This is the essence of research into mind control effected through the use of electromagnetic broadcasts.
In HAARP’s use of the ionosphere to rebroadcast in the ELF and/or microwave ranges, we can clearly see an area where there is a great potential for danger in the project. Could HAARP rebroadcasting in the ELF band via the aurora, as it was funded to do by the Senate to conduct earth-penetrating tomography studies, produce the same unhealthy effects ascribed to the Russian Woodpecker? Many people today are convinced that they are the target of ELF behavior modification operations. Some suspect HAARP is a part of these attacks on their minds.
Even if HAARP is not a CIA/DOD black project, if it really is just a scientific experiment, it is no less dangerous. Medical researchers have generated a literal mountain of documentation in the last two decades showing unmistakable health hazards associated with EMR exposure. How dare they ignore the health risks to the people (and other life forms) living above the underground targets they plan to irradiate? What about all those who will receive the fallout of this radiation meant to penetrate to submarines? Even if they are not deliberately trying to fry our brains, they might still succeed in turning our grey matter into three-minute meals.
Other Concerns
Nor is health, physical or mental, the only area of concern with HAARP rebroadcasting from the aurora. As noted in a HAARP fact sheet, "Since the sun's radiation creates and maintains the ionosphere, sudden variations in this radiation such as those caused by solar flares can affect the performance of radio systems. Sometimes the changes are sufficient to induce large transient currents in electric power transmission grids, causing widespread power outages."[16] HAARP is designed to duplicate solar phenomena. It is certainly not inconceivable that it too will cause similar power outages.
For some, a power outage is merely an inconvenience. For others, it can mean damaged electronic equipment, particularly computers; doctors forced to operate by flashlight; and, as in the infamous blackouts of New York City, it often means rape, burglary, and murder. Are you prepared to let some scientist tinkering with the aurora turn out your lights?
Another area for concern is this possibility of creating earthquakes. In the 1890s, Nicola Tesla demonstrated the potential for causing earthquakes through either creation of artificial standing waves or through inducing sympathetic resonance.[17] The United States Department of Energy successfully caused a massive earthquake in the Nevada desert by detonating a high-yield nuclear device that had been intentionally placed on a fault line in Project Faultless.[18] Additionally, United States scientists have discovered that earthquakes cause changes in the ionosphere and in the magnetosphere; and there is some reason for concern that the reverse, causing changes in the ionosphere and/or magnetosphere, could trigger earthquakes.[19]
Dr. Rosalie Bertell has written extensively about the use of nuclear weapons, in particular depleted uranium, and has written two books: No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth and Planet Earth, The Latest Weapon of War. The latter includes a lengthy section on HAARP. In it, Dr. Bertell noted several potential dangers from the HAARP signal, including mental disruption to both humans and migratory species as well as earthquakes and weather/climate change:
Ionospheric heaters such as HAARP create extremely low frequency (ELF) waves which are reflected back to the Earth by the ionosphere. These rays can be directed though the Earth in a method called deep earth tomography. Since the beamed radiation used to convert the direct electrical current of the electrojet into alternating current must be pulsed, it is reasonable to assume that the ELF radiation it generates will also be pulsed. Pulsed ELF waves can be used to convey mechanical effects, vibrations, at great distances through the Earth. By studying their “shadow”—that is, where the vibrations are interrupted—it is possible to understand and reconstruct the dimensions of underground structures.
The 10-Hertz ELF wave can easily pass through people, and there is concern that since it corresponds to brain wave frequency it can disrupt human thought…such waves may also have a profound effect on migration patterns of fish and wild animals as they rely on undisturbed energy fields to find their way. Moreover, the wider effects of deep-earth tomography are unknown. Certainly, it has the capability to cause disturbance of volcanoes and tectonic plates, which in turn have an effect on the weather. Earthquakes, for example, are known to interact with the ionosphere.
Deep Earth probes appear to be an integral part of the military’s aim to control and manipulate natural Earth processes. Whilst the potential of ELF waves to generate Earth movements, with associated freak weather, is frightening enough, it is also clear that the interaction between the earth and ionosphere that takes place during ELF generation and transmission may be capable of inducing more direct weather effects.[20]
What about birds flying through HAARP's intense RF beam? The HAARP site was nearly half wetlands, in a vast stretch of nearly flat, wet "bush." HAARP is located in the heart of a prime waterfowl migratory path! HAARP’s Final Environmental Impact Statement acknowledges this. It states that HAARP "lies within the Copper River Basin, which is one of Alaska's more important migration corridors." And yet it insists that "no significant impacts to birds would result from the construction of the HAARP facility." The most they did was to propose putting some colored streamers on the antenna masts to help reduce the number of birds flying into them!
Salmon, caribou, and other migratory species may be affected by HAARP as well. That is because altering the electrojet might cause alterations of the earth's magnetic field. This little-noted side effect of modulating the electrojet might have profound and unseen consequences for "spaceship" earth and its passengers. The magnetically sensitive material magnetite has been found in salmon and caribou brains. It has also been found in the human brain.
The Alaskan monthly, Bush Blade, carried comments by the late geomagnetic researcher Lloyd Zirbes, who strongly opposed HAARP. He wrote, "…disruption of the Earth's magnetic field will complete damages done by the nuclear bomb blasts in the natural radiation belts. Earth's magnetic field keeps the planet in balance. Projected results of the HAARP project may include disturbance of the circadian rhythms of human beings and increased exposure to radiation as the magnetic field is attenuated."[21]
Discovery Magazine discussed the possibility that disruption of the earth's internal dynamo and the alteration of the upper atmosphere's magnetic belts could "create a premature reversal of the magnetic poles, worsen the newly discovered wobble of the Earth, and possibly create a total polar reversal or Earth shift. During at least one [previous] reversal, magnetic north may have changed direction by as much as 4 to 8 degrees in a single day."[22]
In 1988, scientists at the U.S. Naval Observatory and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that the earth had developed a wobble in its spin. The cause of that wobble is still unknown. Some suspect that it was caused by the Russian Woodpecker signal. The 2004 Asian tsunami not only added a new wobble to the earth’s spin, it also changed the rate of spin, changing the length of a day by a fraction of a second. What effect, if any, HAARP may have on the magnetic pole or these wobbles is equally unknown. Do we want the DOD to get the answer the hard way?
During a reversal of the magnetic pole, the strength of the earth's magnet field would collapse, then rebuild in the opposite polarity. During the period of collapse and rebirth of the field, the earth would be without the protection of the magnetosphere. The only living things to survive would be deep in the earth or the sea. The flood of hard radiation from the sun and space would wipe out humanity, and virtually all species that live exposed to the sky. We know that changes in the earth's interior affect the magnetosphere. If the reverse is also the case, the magnetosphere affecting the interior, then ignorant or intentional misuse of HAARP has the potential to virtually wipe out life on earth.
HAARP Timeline
Dr. Bernard J. Eastlund received his patent for a “Method And Apparatus For Altering A Region In The Earth’s Atmosphere, Ionosphere, And/Or Magnetosphere” on August 11, 1987, while working for the Atlantic Richfield Co. subsidiary ARCO Power Technologies, Inc. (APTI).[23] It was but the first of a dozen related patents that scientists on APTI's payroll would take out over the next few years. These were for an antenna field forty miles on a side intended to create a shield in the upper atmosphere that no intercontinental ballistics missile (ICBM) could penetrate. This suite of patents was explicitly for a ground-based SDI system that would realize President Reagan’s dream. They would eventually form the intellectual property that the HAARP program is based on—or not, depending on who you listen to. Another reason for HAARP researchers to be concerned about HAARP having an effect on the weather is because an ability to modify the weather is laid out in those patents.
Officially, HAARP was conceived over two years later, on the morning of December 13, 1989, when a joint Navy-Air Force meeting was held at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Washington, D.C. It has since been described as a discussion of their mutual interest in carrying out a DOD program in the area of ionospheric modification. Military and HAARP documents insist that it was at this meeting that the need for a unique heating facility to conduct "critical experiments" relating to potential DOD applications was “identified.” Other meetings and a number of symposia soon followed.
The Appropriation Act for Fiscal Year (FY) 1990 provided funds for the creation of HAARP, jointly managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research. Three contracts were awarded to ARCO Power Technologies (APTI, Eastlund’s boss) to begin feasibility studies in FY1991. In FY1992, the principal contract to begin construction was awarded, also to APTI.
In FY1992, the environmental impact process began, ending a year later with the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) being filed on October 18, 1993. The problem with these assessments is that they only addressed the effects on the ground of the energy coming directly from the towers and completely ignored what would happen in and to the ionosphere, much less what the re-radiated energy from the ionosphere would do. Several activists, including the group Trustees for Alaska,[24] have demanded a new FEIS.
In early November 1993, the United States Air Force announced, via press release, that the prime contractor on the HAARP program was APTI. Initial prototype construction began at the Gakona, Alaska, site in late 1993 and was completed a year later in late '94. During that time, ARCO divested itself of APTI selling the firm to a major defense contractor, E-Systems of Dallas, Texas.
In 1995, Raytheon bought E-Systems and all the APTI patents it held. Congress budgeted $10 million for HAARP for 1996 under "Counterproliferati
After Raytheon acquired HAARP and the Eastlund patents, the program received full funding, but only after agreeing to make earth penetrating tomography (EPT) the project's top priority. Amazingly, now—more than a decade later—not a single word appears on the official HAARP website about what they have done on this. It would appear that they have done nothing! Are they thumbing their collective nose at the U.S. Senate, or have they been developing this technology and don't want to let the world know about it?
While the HAARP final ionospheric research instrument (FIRI) was planned to be a field of 180 antennas, a smaller set of elements was initially constructed so that the predicted performance could be verified before the entire facility was built. That initial phase of the program was called the Developmental Prototype (DP). By April of 1995, the DP array of 48 antenna towers arranged as eight columns by six rows had been completed and the first round of tests performed. And there the program sat, with no further progress, at least officially, for many years. The 960-kilowatt transmitter, however, was powerful enough to produce ionospherically generated ELF, which was used for communication with the submarine fleet.
Things went from bad to worse for the folks at HAARP after the turn of the century. They wanted to finish erecting the final ionospheric research instrument (FIRI) by 2002 but got their budget slashed instead. Adding insult to injury, in August of 2002, Russia's Interfax news agency reported that the Russian state Duma (their version of Congress or Parliament) expressed concern about HAARP, calling it a program to develop "a qualitatively new type of weapon.” A joint commission of the state Duma's International Affairs and Defense Committees issued a report that said: "Under the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) the USA is creating new integral geophysical weapons that may influence the near-Earth medium with high-frequency radio waves. The significance of this qualitative leap could be compared to the transition from cold steel to firearms, or from conventional weapons to nuclear weapons. This new type of weapon differs from previous types in that the near-Earth medium becomes at once an object of direct influence and its component."
The report further claimed that the USA's plan to carry out large-scale scientific experiments under the HAARP program, and not controlled by the global community, would create weapons capable of jamming radio communications, disrupting equipment installed on spaceships and rockets, provoke serious accidents in electricity networks and in oil and gas pipelines and have a negative impact on the mental health of people populating entire regions. An appeal, signed by ninety deputies, demanding that an international ban be put on such large-scale geophysical experiments was sent to President Vladimir Putin, the United Nations (UN) and other international organizations, the parliaments and leaders of the UN member countries, the scientific public, and mass media outlets.
The project got moving again when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the Air Force and Navy to run HAARP for them in November, 2002.
What is DARPA? Per one of its old fact sheets: "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). It manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions."
Note that “high risk” element. Here we may be talking about several kinds of risk, including political and environmental. Back before the breakup of the Soviet Union, when HAARP began, many were concerned that the Star Wars weapons program would upset the global balance in that it might give the U.S. “first strike” capability and at the same time negate Russia’s ability to retaliate, thus destroying Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), the foundation of Cold War détente—possibly leading to a preemptive Russian first strike and the outbreak of World War III. On the other hand, some researchers suggested that HAARP was capable of severe disruptions of natural systems, from weather out of control to a magnetic pole shift or reversal, to other bits of environmental mayhem too horrible to contemplate—up to and including destroying all life on earth! Talk about high risk!
There are eight technical offices in DARPA. HAARP was placed under the Tactical Technology Office (TTO). According to its fact sheet, "The Tactical Technology Office engages in high-risk, high-payoff advanced technology development of military systems, emphasizing the ‘system’ and ‘subsystem’ approach to the development of Unmanned Systems, Space Systems and Tactical Multipliers.
Note that "tactical multipliers"—
Ionospheric Enhancement, what HAARP is officially built to do, was a tactical multiplier mentioned in "Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025,"[26] a study conducted by the Air University “to examine the concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future."[27] It states, “A high-risk, high-reward endeavor, weather-modificatio
Dr. Sheldon Z. Meth was the project manager of HAARP at DARPA. Not only was Dr. Meth in charge of HAARP; he also managed programs called Air Laser and MAgneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM)! Does it seem odd to you that a guy running a laser development program and designing some kind of bomb would also be tinkering with how the top of the atmosphere reacts to radio waves?
On April 23, 2007, System Planning Corporation (SPC) announced that Dr. Sheldon Z. Meth would join the company as chief technology officer.[28] A company press release described him as coming to SPC “… from duties as a program manager in the Tactical Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where he was responsible for the development of new generations of advanced strategic and tactical warfare and military space technologies to enhance U.S. defense capabilities against emerging national security challenges.” Prior to his DARPA experience, Dr. Meth held chief scientist positions at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) for nearly fifteen years. SAIC (CIAs spelled backward) is one of the nation’s top ten defense contractors, with its primary clientele being the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and various alphabet agencies within the intelligence community, in particular the National Security Agency (NSA, “no such agency”). I think Dr. Meth’s connections to SAIC is significant, revealing a connection between HAARP and Intel.
The official DARPA web page for HAARP (now taken down) listed four things they’ve done with HAARP, but only used three numbered bullets:
(1) the generation of extremely low frequency/very low frequency radio waves for submarine and other subsurface communication, and the reduction of charged particle populations in the radiation belts to ensure safe spacecraft systems operations;
(2) the control of electron density gradients and the refractive properties in selected regions of the ionosphere to create radio wave propagation channels; and
(3) the generation of optical and infrared emissions in space to calibrate space sensors.
Dr. Meth does not have trouble counting—using the antenna field produces ELF and affects the radiation belts! Heating the ionosphere by several thousand degrees heats the molecules of the air to the point that they literally blow apart. Breaking the bonds of the molecule gives off a package of energy, including a "scream" of ELF. It also converts the air into plasma, the fourth state of matter. Plasma is electrically conductive, so it responds strongly to electromagnetic fields. HAARP converts a chunk of the atmosphere into plasma, which then goes out into space. It keeps going until it runs into something to stop it—the lines of force of the earth's magnetic field. There, the plasma is trapped between the lines of force, spreading out, possibly forming the shield that President Reagan asked for.
As you may know, the earth is surrounded by the Van Allen Radiation Belts, named after James Van Allen (September 7, 1914–August 9, 2006), who proved they were there by setting off atom bombs in them in 1958. These belts are areas where the earth’s magnetic field traps radiation.
Space shuttles, the International Space Station, and spy satellites all fly well below the Van Allen belts. But to get satellites up into geosynchronous orbit, much less to go to the moon, Mars, or elsewhere in the solar system or beyond, craft have to pass through the Van Allen belts. One of the arguments used by those who say we never went to the moon is that it was impossible to get there because the radiation would have killed or incapacitated any astronaut who made the trip. Van Allen dismissed these claims. He was also a strong supporter of HAARP, by the way.
If HAARP can reduce the hard radiation in these fields, it could be a very good thing for those trying to get into outer space. But there are substantial possible downsides to this. Weakening of the belts could harm electronics and organisms on earth. According to the Wikipedia article,[29] dissipating the belts might even influence the behavior of earth's magnetic poles!
Exactly how this reduction of the radiation in the belts is accomplished is not well described in the available literature. It seems to involve inducing the belts to precipitate out (rain radiation to earth) by injecting either radio waves or excess particles into them. So what happens when this hard radiation falls into the upper atmosphere? Could it create a cascade effect, with effects reaching all the way to the ground? What if the attempt to overburden the belt fails and instead of causing it to shed excess radiation, it just beefs it up?
DARPA’s including “the reduction of charged particle populations in the radiation belts to ensure safe spacecraft systems operations” in the same bullet with “the generation of extremely low frequency/very low frequency radio waves for submarine and other subsurface communication” is clear evidence that doing one also accomplishes the other—that is, the HAARP antenna array generates radio emissions that do both at the same time.
As repeatedly stated—and admitted to by everyone, although downplayed by the civilians at the University of Alaska—one of the prime purposes of the project was to communicate with deeply submerged submarines. This is certainly a valid military use for this technology, although finding a “dual use” civilian side might be a bit of a stretch. Every time HAARP talks with the sub fleet it also sends plumes of plasma out into space, throwing away a piece of our atmosphere!
Dr. Bernard Eastlund’s second APTI patent was for a "Method for producing a shell of relativistic particles at an altitude above the Earth's surface.”[30] This patent described a method for creating a "death zone" for anything electronic flying through this “shell of relativistic particles,” similar to the effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).
An EMP is a burst of radiation released immediately after a nuclear explosion. The EMP is essentially an electric field and a magnetic field moving away from the blast. The electromagnetic pulse burns out electronic circuitry, destroying communications systems, computers, and other sophisticated electronic instruments. The implications of the EMP are uncertain, but some experts assert that the EMP released by one large nuclear explosion over the central United States could cause an electrical blackout affecting the entire country. Further, it is possible that the EMP would damage the circuitry in missiles so that they would be unable to reach their targets. The EMP was first detected during a nuclear test at Johnston Island in 1962.[31]
Early HAARP documents discussed how the facility could be used to create artificial EMPs. After Eastlund went public, all such mentions disappeared from official sources. Many researchers are convinced that HAARP can cause EMP-like effects in the upper atmosphere. HAARP transmissions excite beta particles or electrons in the magnetosphere making them move very fast, nearly to speed of light—Eastlund called these relativistic particles. HAARP may be ready, right this minute, to bring down enemy missiles or spy satellites–or friendly ones! Some researchers are convinced that the space shuttle Columbia was brought down by HAARP![32]
On February 17, 2003, a press release went out announcing that BAE Systems North America had reached a definitive agreement with Advanced Power Technologies, Inc. (APTI) to purchase the corporation for $27 million in cash (note that somewhere along the line, the “A” in APTI changed from “ARCO” to “Advanced”). One year and two months after purchasing APTI, BAE Systems announced that it had received a contract from the Navy for $35 million to complete the HAARP FIRI. After purchasing APTI, BAE Systems became the owners of the intellectual property, the patents that make HAARP possible.
The contract was awarded to BAE Systems Information & Electronic Warfare Systems (IEWS) division. Just the sound of “Information & Electronic Warfare” should have been ringing alarm bells. Perhaps it did, as that division has since changed its name to the “kinder and gentler” sounding Electronics and Integrated Solutions Operating Group[33], which is defined by the company as “a major defense electronics component of BAE Systems, Inc.,” a U.S. corporation and wholly owned subsidiary of BAE Systems PLC, a multinational corporation headquartered in the United Kingdom. BAE Systems PLC is the result of over one hundred years of mergers and acquisitions, with the former British Aerospace at its core.
BAE Systems lost no time in farming out the HAARP contract. Five days after getting the job from the Navy, it subcontracted the transmitter portion of the project to DRS Technologies[34], and twelve days later, the subcontractor who would put up the remaining antennas, Phazar Corporation,[35] sent out its own press release. DARPA announced the completion of this phase of HAARP’s history via its website on March 9, 2006. BAE Systems held a grand ribbon cutting ceremony the following year, in June of 2007.
HAARP is today a multi-million-
From an environmental point of view, there is no end to the potential horrors of HAARP and similar technologies. Oddly enough, my greatest fear now is that HAARP might be exactly what it says it is—an experimental base from which clueless civilian scientists are manipulated into performing questionable experiments on vast planetary systems with unknown potential outcomes—even if it doesn’t say that in quite those words.
HAARP's primary avowed purpose, stated most simply, is to find out if the ionosphere can be "tweaked" so as to advance military objectives. Common sense tells us that "weaponizing the atmosphere" could be a serious mistake—even if it works. If we achieve this technology, how long will it be before our enemies gain it, too? What happens when we and they go head to head in a war using geophysical weapons? Nukes are nice in comparison to the hell that could be unleashed.
Unfortunately, there is little the average citizen can do about HAARP directly. Activists have had little impact on the project despite nearly two decades of activism. The solution, broadly, has to be in educating the public and our leaders about HAARP and this technology, and in using politics to force our leaders to alter the way we fund and conduct science.
Jerry E. Smith is a freelance writer and lecturer currently working for Adventures Unlimited Press. His latest book is Weather Warfare:The Military's Plan to Draft Mother Nature?—a follow up to HAARP: The Ultimate Weapon. He also co-authored Secrets of the Holy Lance with George Piccard. Visit his website at www.jerryesmith.
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