Background of the HAARP Project

Dr. Sister Rosalie Bertell

Early review of the Solar Powered Satellite Project began in around 1978, and I was on the review panel. Although this was proposed as an energy program, with significant military implications. One of the most significant, first pointed out by Michael J. Ozeroff, was the possibility of developing a satellite-borne beam weapon for anti-ballistic missile (ABM) use. The satellites were to be in geosynchronous orbits, each providing an excellent vantage point from which an entire hemisphere can be surveyed continuously. It was speculated that a high-energy laser beam could function as a thermal weapon to disable or destroy enemy missiles. There was some discussion of electron weapon beams, through the use of a laser beam to preheat a path for the following electron beam.

The SPS was also described as a psychological and anti- personnel weapon, which could be directed toward an enemy. If the main microwave beam was redirected away from its rectenna, toward enemy personnel, it could use an infrared radiation wave- length (invisible) as an anti-personnel weapon. It might also be possible to transmit high enough energy to ignite combustible materials. Laser beam power relays could be made from the SPS satellite to other satellites or platforms, for example aircraft, for military purposes. One application might be a laser powered turbofan engine which would receive the laser beam directly in its combustion chamber, producing the required high temperature gas for its cruising operation. This would allow unlimited on-station cruise time. As a psychological weapon, the SPS was capable of causing general panic

The SPS would be able to transmit power to remote military operations anywhere needed on earth. The manned platform of the SPS would provide surveillance and early warning capability, and ELF linkage to submarines. It would also provide the capability of jamming enemy communications. The potential for jamming and creating communications is significant. The SPS was also capable of causing physical changes in the ionosphere

President Carter approved the SPS Project and gave it a go- ahead, in spite of the reservation which many reviewers, myself included, expressed. Fortunately, it was so expensive, exceeding the entire Department of Energy budget, that funding was denied by the Congress. I approached the United Nations Committee on Disarmament on this project, but was told that as long as the program was called Solar Energy by the United States, it could not be considered a weapons project. The same project resurfaced in the US under President Reagan. He moved it to the much larger budget of the Department of Defense and called it Star Wars. Since this is more recent history, I will not discuss the debate which raged over this phase of the plan.

By 1978, it was apparent to the US Military that communications in a nuclear hostile environment would not be possible using traditional methods of radio and television technology (Jane's Military Communications 1978). By 1982, GTE Sylvania (Needham Heights, Massachusetts) had developed a command control electronic sub-system for the US Air Force's Ground Launch Cruise Missiles (GLCM) that would enable military commanders to monitor and control the missile prior to launch both in hostile and non-hostile environments. The system contains six radio subsystems, created with visible light using a dark beam (not visible) and is resistant to the disruptions experienced by radio and television. Dark beams contribute to the formation of energetic plasma in the atmosphere. This plasma can become visible as smog or fog. Some has a different charge than the sun's energy, and accumulates in places where the sun's energy is absent, like the polar regions in the winter. When the polar spring occurs, the sun appears and repels this plasma, contributing to holes in the ozone layer. This military system is called: Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN). (See The SECOMII Communication System, by Wayne Olsen, SAND 78- 0391,Sandia Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 1978.) This innovative emergency radio system was apparently never implemented in Europe, and exists only in North America.

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Desert Storm (1991)

According to Defense News, April 13 - 19, 1992, the US deployed an electromagnetic pulse weapon (EMP) in Desert Storm, designed to mimic the flash of electricity from a nuclear bomb. The Sandia National Laboratory had built a 23,000 square meter laboratory on the Kirkland Air Force Base, 1989, to house the Hermes II electron beam generator capable of producing 20 Trillion Watt pulses lasting 20 billionths to 25 billionths of a second. This X-ray simulator is called a Particle Beam Fusion Accelerator. A stream of electrons hitting a metal plate can produce a pulsed X-ray or gamma ray. Hermes II had produced electron beams since 1974. These devises were apparently tested during the Gulf War, although detailed information on them is sparse.

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The US Navy has also been carrying on High Power Auroral Stimulation (HIPAS) research in Alaska. Through a series of wires and a 15 meter antenna, they have beamed high intensity signals into the upper atmosphere, generating a controlled disturbance in the ionosphere. As early as 1992, the Navy talked of creating 10 kilometer long antennas in the sky to generate extremely low frequency (ELF) waves needed for communicating with submarines. Another purpose of these experiments is to study the Aurora Borealis, called by some an outdoor plasma lab for studying the principles of fusion. Shuttle flights are now able to generate auroras with an electron beam. On November 10, 1991, and aurora borealis appeared in the Texas sky for the first time ever recorded, and it was seen by people as far away as Ohio and Utah, Nebraska and Missouri. The sky contained "Christmas colors" and various scientists were quick to blame it on solar activity. However, when pressed most would admit that the ionosphere must have been weakened at the time, so that the electrically charged particle hitting the earth's atmosphere created the highly visible light called airglow. These charged particles are normally pulled northwards by the earth's magnetic forces, to the magnetic north pole. The Northern Lights, as the aurora borealis is called, normally occurs in the vortex at the pole where the energetic particles, directed by the magnetic force lines, are directed.

Conclusions

It would be rash to assume that HAARP is an isolated experiment which would not be expanded. It is related to fifty years of intensive and increasingly destructive programs to understand and control the upper atmosphere.

It would be rash not to associate HAARP with the space laboratory construction which is separately being planned by the United States. HAARP is an integral part of a long history of space research and development of a deliberate military nature.

The military implications of combining these projects is alarming.

Basic to this project is control of communications, both disruption and reliability in hostile environments. The power wielded by such control is obvious.

The ability of the HAARP / Spacelab/ rocket combination to deliver very large amount of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle beams, are frightening.

The project is likely to be "sold" to the public as a space shield against incoming weapons, or, for the more gullible, a devise for repairing the ozone layer.

Further References:

C.L. Herzenberg, Physics and Society, April 1994.

R. Williams, Physics and Society, April 1988.

B. Eastlund, Microwave News, May/June 1994.

W. Kofinan and C. Lathuillere, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol 14, No. 11, pp 1158-1161, November 1987 (Includes French experiments at EISCAT).

G. Metz and F.W. Perkins. Ionospheric Modification Theory: Past Present and Future, Radio Science, Vo1.9, No. 11, pp 885 -888, November 1974