Modern Battles Will Be Won By Controlling The Weather *POPULAR MECHANICS*

[seemslikeadream]

I believe Popular Mechanics has a following here?

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1281146.html



The study, titled "Weather As A Force Multiplier: Owning The Weather In 2025," envisions future generals having at their disposal an impressive weather-control arsenal for tactical operations. These weapons would include unmanned stealth aircraft that could seed clouds above massing troops with fine particles of heat-absorbing carbon. This next-generation cloud-seeding technique would, in turn, produce localized flooding and create mud, which has been the bane of all of history's armies. Airborne lasers would cause lightning to discharge over the airframes of attack and surveillance aircraft. Other lasers would fire at fog banks, clearing a temporary flight path to high-value targets, such as command posts. In addition, still more powerful microwave transmitters would heat the ionosphere, altering its reflective properties in ways that would disrupt communications among enemy field commanders.

To reach this future battlefield, the military is planning to piggyback on weather-prediction and weather-modification technologies being developed by the private sector. They estimate that by 2015 supercomputer and atmosphere-monitoring technologies will have advanced to the point where military planners will know exactly what sort of weather to expect over an operations area throughout the course of a campaign lasting several weeks.

The great leap forward, however, is expected to occur between 2015 and 2025, spurred on largely by a growing global population that will put increasing pressure on the worldwide food and drinkable water supplies. "These pressures prompt governments and/or other organizations who are able to capitalize on the technological advances of the previous 20 years to pursue a highly accurate and reasonably precise weather-modification capability," the report states.

"Our vision is that by 2025 the military could influence the weather on a mesoscale or microscale to achieve operational capabilities."

The report makes the limitations of the military's current weather-predicting abilities disturbingly clear: "During Operation Desert Storm, Gen. Buster C. Glosson asked his weather officer to tell him which targets would be clear in 48 hours for inclusion in the air tasking order (ATO). But current forecasting capability is only 85% accurate for no more than 24 hours, which doesn't adequately meet the needs of the ATO planning cycle. Over 50% of the F-117 sorties weather aborted over their targets and A-10s only flew 75 of 200 scheduled close air support missions due to low cloud cover during the first two days of the campaign."

If weather modification can actually turn the tide of battle remains an open question. The American military's only acknowledged recent experience in using weather as a weapon occurred with Project Popeye, which began in 1966. The experiment's objective was to extend the monsoon season, thereby increasing the amount of mud that formed on the Ho Chi Minh trail, a supply route that wound from what was then North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam. To produce the rain, a silver iodide rainmaking agent--dubbed "Olive Oil"--was dispersed from WC-130, F4 and A-1E aircraft into the clouds over the trail.

[SidDithers]

1. Just in time for the Beijing Olympics...

oh, wait.

Sid

[seemslikeadream]

2. I thought you guys liked Popular Mechanics

[Anarcho-Socialist]

3. Interesting article

and an interesting speculation about a potential future technology.

[CGowen]

4. I don't know, it wasn't that great in Vietnam.

...

Livingston, 77, moved to Midland with his parents during the Depression. He earned his master's degree in cloud physics from the Naval Weapons Center and Navy Post Graduate School in California, a degree he would use in the battlefields. He seeded clouds and dramatically increased rainfall in his theater of war, creating impassably muddy roads, slowing down the Vietnamese and Korean troops, and saving lives and entire towns from occupation.


He is proudest of his award from the secretary of Navy, which says, "Lt. Livingston directly participated in project flights in a combat zone, in program planning, scientific data collection and evaluation ... his unwavering devotion to duty were major factors in the outstanding success of the project and were instrumental in the development of a unique, major combat capability for the United States."


Before receiving the citation, Livingston was invited to the White House where he briefed President Lyndon B. Johnson on the effectiveness of weather control activities and the resulting slowing of traffic by the military support trucks bringing supplies to Southeast Asian troops.


Livingston's findings deal with hurricanes and what scientists call weather modifications. His research includes 265 missions into the eyes of hurricanes and he calls himself maybe the "most disgusted" person in the country about Hurricane Katrina.

...

http://www.mywesttexas.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15274636&BRD=2288&PAG=461&dept_id=475591&rfi=6