Project HAARP: The Military's Plan
to Alter the Ionosphere Source: EcoNews Service - Copyright 1998 Earth Island Journal Clare Zickuhr, a former ARCO employee and ham radio
operator based in Anchorage, is a founder of the NO HAARP campaign.
Gar Smith is editor of the editor of Earth Island Journal.
The Pentagon's mysterious HAARP project, now under
construction at an isolated Air Force facility near Gakona, Alaska,
marks the first step toward creating the world's most powerful
"ionospheric heater." Scientists, environmentalists and native peoples
are concerned that HAARP's electronic transmitters -- capable of
beaming "in excess of 1 gigawatts" (one billion watts) of radiated
power into the Earth's ionosphere -- could harm people, endanger
wildlife and trigger
unforeseen environmental impacts.
The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project
(HAARP), a joint effort of the Air Force and the Navy, is the latest
in a series of a little-known Department of Defense (DoD) "active
ionospheric experiments" with code-names like EXCEDE, RED AIR and
CHARGE IV.
"From a DoD point of view," internal HAARP documents
state, "the most exciting and challenging" part of the experiment is
"its potential to control ionospheric processes" for military
objectives [emphasis in the original]. According to these documents,
the scientists pulling HAARP's strings envision using the system's
powerful 2.8-10 megahertz (MHz) beam to burn "holes" in the ionosphere
and "create an artificial lens" in the sky that could focus large
bursts of electromagnetic
energy "to higher altitudes... than is presently possible." The
minimum area to be heated would be 50 km (31 miles) in diameter.
The initial $26 million, 320 kW HAARP project will
employ 360 72-foot-tall antennas spread over four acres to direct an
intense beam of focused electromagnetic energy upwards to strike the
ionosphere. The Earth's ionosphere is composed of a layer of
negatively and positively charged particles (electrons and ions) lying
between 35 and 500 miles above the planet's surface. The next stage of
the project would expand HAARP's power to 1.7 gigawatts (1.7 billion
watts), making it the most powerful such transmitter on Earth. While
the project's acronym implies experimentation with the Earth's aurora,
HAARP's public documents make no mention of this aspect. For a project
whose backers hail it as a major scientific feat, HAARP has remained
extremely low-profile -- almost unknown to most Alaskans, and the rest
of the country.
A November 1993 "HAARP Fact Sheet" released to the
public by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) stated that the
Department of Defense (DoD)-backed project would "enhance present
civilian capabilities" in communications and "provide significant
scientific advancements." However, while previous DoD experiments with
smaller high frequency (HF) heaters in Puerto Rico, Norway and Alaska
were conducted to "gain [a] better understanding" of the ionosphere,
internal HAARP documents
obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal that the
project's goal is to "perturb" the ionosphere with extremely powerful
beams of energy and study "how it responds to the disturbance and how
it ultimately recovers...."
The public fact sheet describes HAARP as "purely a
scientific research facility which represents no threat to potential
adversaries and would therefore have no value as a military target."
However, while ionospheric experiments at the government's Puerto Rico
transmitter site are managed by the civilian National Science
Foundation, the Journal has learned that proposals for experiments on
HAARP are to be routed through the Pentagon's Office of Naval
Research.
A February 1990 Air Force-Navy document acquired by the
Journal lists only military experiments for the HAARP project,
including: "Generation of ionospheric lenses to focus large amounts of
HF energy at high altitudes... providing a means for triggering
ionospheric processes that potentially could be exploited for DoD
purposes...; Generation of ionization layers below 90 km [56 miles] to
provide radio wave reflectors ("mirrors") which can be exploited for
long range, over-the-horizon, HF/VHF/UHF surveillance purposes,
including the detection of cruise missiles and other low observables."
The
document concluded that "the potential for significantly altering
regions of the ionosphere at relatively great distances (1000 km or
more ) [621 miles] from a heater is very desirable" from a military
perspective.
One of HAARP's less-publicized goals is to find ways to
disrupt the global communications capabilities of adversaries while
preserving US defense communications. The Pentagon also wants to know
if HAARP could bounce signals to deeply submerged nuclear subs by
heating the ionosphere to trigger bursts of Extremely Long Frequency
(ELF) radio waves.
Patents held by ARCO Power Technologies, Inc. (APTI),
the ARCO subsidiary that was contracted to build HAARP, describe a
similar ionospheric heater invented by Bernard Eastlund that claimed
the ability to disrupt global communications, destroy enemy missiles
and change weather (see sidebar). One of ARCO's patents identifies
Alaska as a perfect site for a transmitter because "magnetic field
lines... which extend to desirable altitudes for this invention,
intersect the
Earth in Alaska."
While HAARP officials deny any link to Eastlund's
inventions, Eastlund has told National Public Radio that a secret
military project was begun in the late-1980s to study and implement
his work and, in the May/June 1994 issue of Microwave News, Eastlund
claimed that "The HAARP project obviously looks a lot like the first
step" toward his vision of surrounding the entire planet with a "full,
global shield" of charged particles that could explode incoming enemy
missiles.
The military implications of HAARP were further
underscored in June, when ARCO sold APTI to E-Systems, a defense
contractor noted for its work in counter-surveillance.
Electromagnetic Guinea Pigs
HAARP surfaced publicly in Alaska in the spring of 1993,
when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began advising
commercial pilots on how to avoid the large amounts of intentional
(and some unintentional) electromagnetic radition that HAARP would
generate. Despite the protests of FAA engineers and Alaska bush pilots
(for whom reliable communications can be a matter of life or death)
the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) gave HAARP the green
light. Ironically, the FEIS also concluded that the project's radio
interference would be too intense to allow HAARP to be located near
any military facilities.
On November 11, 1993, Inupiat tribal advisor Charles
Etok Edwarden, Jr., wrote to the White House on behalf of the Inupiat
Community of the Arctic Slope and the Kasigluk Elders Conference.
"Many of us are not happy with the prospect of ARCO altering the
Earth's neutral atmospheric properties," Edwardsen wrote. "We do not
wish to be anyone's testing grounds, as the Bikini Islanders have
been...." referring to Pacific Islanders subjected to radiation
exposure from US atomic bomb testing. Edwardsen has appealed to
President Clinton to deny further funding to HAARP.
In the past, the EPA has accused the USAF of
"sidestepping" the nonthermal hazards of electromagnetic pollution
from powerful radar transmitters. Over the past three decades,
numerous US and European studies have linked electromagnetic exposure
to a range of health problems including fatigue, irritability,
sleepiness, memory loss, cataracts, leukemia, birth defects and
cancer. Electromagnetic radiation can also alter blood sugar and
cholesterol levels, heart-rate and blood pressure, brain waves and
brain chemistry.
HAARP'S Environmental Dangers
Wildlife advocates also have cause to be concerned. The
HAARP site lies 140 miles north of the town of Cordova on Prince
William Sound, on the northwest tip of Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias
National Park. Since ordinary radar is known to be deadly to
low-flying birds, HAARP's powerful radiation beam could pose a problem
for migratory birds because the transmitter stands in the path of the
critical Pacific Flyway. In addition, HAARP's ability to generate
strong magnetic fields could conceivably interfere with the migration
of birds, marine life and Arctic animals that are now known to rely on
the Earth's magnetic fields to navigate over long distances.
The HAARP fact sheet states that "most of the energy of
the high-power beam would be emitted upward rather than toward the
horizon." Later on, however, the fact sheet notes that care will have
to be taken "to reduce the percentage of time large signal levels
would be transmitted toward large cities." The closest large cities
are Fairbanks and Anchorage.
Even if HAARP's beam were to be directed primarily at
the ionosphere, people on the ground would still have reason to be
concerned. According to DoD consultant Robert Windsor, clear damp
nights, downdrafts and temperature inversions can cause "ducting" and
"super-refracting" that can send energy beams streaming back to Earth
with "a significant -- up to tenfold-- increase in field intensity."
In addition to their main beams, all electromagnetic
transmitters produce large swaths of "sidelobe" radiation along their
flanks. US-based PAVE PAWS over-the-horizon radars, for example, use
approximately one megawatt of power to send a 420-430-megahertz (MHz)
beam on a 3000-mile-long sweep. At the same time, the "incidental"
sidelobe radiation from these Pentagon radars can disable TVs, radios,
radar altimeters and satellite communications over a 250-mile range.
PAVE PAWS radiation can also disrupt cardiac pacemakers seven miles
away and cause the "inadvertent detonation" of electrically triggered
flares and bombs in passing aircraft. At peak power, the energy
driving HAARP could be more than a thousand times stronger than the
most powerful PAVE PAWS transmitter.
HAARP's High-Level Hazards
HAARP project manager John Heckscher, a scientist at the
Department of the Air Force's Phillips Laboratory, has called concerns
about the transmitter's impact "unfounded." "It's not unreasonable to
expect that something three times more powerful than anything that's
previously been built might have unforeseen effects," Heckscher told
Microwave News. "But that's why we do environmental impact
statements."
The July 1993 EIS does, in fact, admit that HAARP is
expected to cause "measurable changes in the ionosphere's electron
density, temperature and structure," but argues that these disruptions
are insignificant "when compared to changes induced by naturally
occurring processes."
Subjecting the ionosphere to HF bombardment can ionize
the neutral particles in the upper atmosphere. The HAARP Fact Sheet
notes that "ionospheric disturbances at high altitudes also can act to
induce large currents in electric power grids" on the ground, causing
massive power blackouts. According to the 1990 Air Force-Navy
document, power levels of one gigawatt and above "can drastically
alter [the ionosphere's] thermal, refractive, scattering and emission
character." While the ionosphere over the government's smaller HF
transmitter in
Puerto Rico is relatively "stable," the document notes that the
ionosphere above Alaska is "a dynamic entity" where added bursts of
electromagnetic energy could trigger exaggerated effects.
Writing in Physics and Society (the quarterly newsletter
of the American Physical Society), Dr. Richard Williams, a consultant
to Princeton University's David Sarnoff Laboratory, denounced
ionospheric heating tests as irresponsible and potentially dangerous.
"Trace [chemical] constituents in the upper atmosphere
can have a profound effect" on the formation of ozone molecules,
Williams stated. It is known that altering the temperature of the
ionosphere can affect the chemical reactions that produce ozone.
Referring to the Montreal Protocol (the international agreement to
protect the ozone layer from ozone-depleting chemicals), Williams
warned that activating HAARP's
ionospheric heater "might undo all that we have accomplished with this
treaty."
"Look at the power levels that will be used -- 10**9 to
10**11 watts!" Williams told the Journal in a recent interview. "This
is equivalent to the output of ten to 100 large power-generating
stations. A ten-billion-watt generator, running continuously for one
hour, would deliver a quantity of energy equal to that of a
Hiroshima-sized atomic bomb."
"Of course," Williams added, "they will operate in a
pulsed mode [producing a series of short, powerful bursts], rather
than continuously." The HAARP fact sheet states that the HF beam,
which operates in the 2.8-10 MHz band, will only be used 4-5 times a
year for several weeks at a time over a 20-year period. Nonetheless,
Williams argued, to proceed without a full public discussion of
HAARP's potential impacts runs the risk of committing "an
irresponsible act of global vandalism. With experiments on this
scale," Williams concluded, "irreparable damage could be done in a
short time. The immediate need is for open discussion."
Dr. Daniel N. Baker, director of the University of
Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, offered a
less-alarming assessment. "The natural input of energy to the
magnetosphere from the sun is very commonly 10**11 - 10**12 watts,"
Baker told the Journal. "Thus, HAARP may be a small fraction of the
energy that flows into the region." Baker added that the ionosphere
is, by nature, a "highly dynamic and fluctuating" environment that is
able to "flush" away energy disturbances in a matter of hours or days.
Of course, in nature, one cannot simply "flush"
something away without anticipating potential "downstream"
consequences. Caroline L. Herzenberg, an environmental systems
engineer at the Argonne National Laboratory, has suggested that, by
"changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere; [and]
transporting plumes of particulates or plasma within the atmosphere,"
HAARP may violate the 1977 Environmental Modification Convention,
which bans all "military or any other hostile use of environmental
modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting, or severe
effects...." The US ratified the convention in 1979.
"X-Raying" the Earth?
On June 14, a Senate committee report noted that the
Deputy Secretary of Defense had called for increasing HAARP funding
from $5 million to $75 million in the 1996 defense budget. The sudden
increase would be used to promote a disturbing new mission for HAARP.
Instead of just pouring its vast energy into the skies,
the transmitter's power would be aimed back at the planet to "allow
earth-penetrating tomography over most of the northern hemisphere" --
in effect, turning HAARP into the world's most powerful "X-ray
machine" capable of scanning regions hidden deep beneath the planet's
surface. According to the Senate report, this would "permit the
detection and precise location of tunnels... and other underground
shelters. The absence of such a capability has been... a serious
weakness for [DoD] plans for precision attacks on hardened
targets...."
"Visibility is a crude criterion for assessing
environmental damage.... An unprecedented amount of energy can produce
an unprecedented reaction. Experimenting with [the ionosphere] is a
very delicate thing. A localized event can spread around the Earth
fairly quickly." -- Prof. Dick Williams
Meanwhile, construction on the larger HAARP facility --
with a potential effective radiated power of 1.7 GW (1.7 billion
watts) - [was begun] in 1995. This expanded version would require
additional funding from Congress. According to the 1990 project
document: "The desired world-class facility... will cost on the order
of $25-30 million." The Senate Committee's April report, however,
predict[ed] that the cost "could be as much as $90 million."
Copyright 1995, Earth Island Journal.
VANCOUVER - Not even the requirements of National
Environmental Policy Act have been able to penetrate the armor of
secrecy, deception, and evasion regarding HAARP's environmental impact
on the ionosphere, the magnetic bands surrounding the earth, and
ultimately on the tectonic plate system that makes up the earth's
surface.
Presumably a federal Environmental Impact Statement of
HAARP's potential impact would allow the earth sciences to evaluate
the impacts of this electromagnetic weapons system. Such has not been
the case, however. Important issues regarding the effect of HAARP
operations on the ionosphere and on the ozone layer were dismissed in
less than a one-page treatment in the HAARP environmental impact
statement drafted by the military.
The Earth Island article continues. "The Federal
Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) reports that "the government
commissioned a special study" to determine the "bioeffects" of HAARP's
radio frequency radiation (RFR). The report concluded that "chronic
exposure to RFR..did not result in demonstrable, detrimental health
effects" to humans. The FEIS admitted that RFR exposure could cause
the human body to heat up, but that this unwanted heat "can be easily
accommodated
within the thermoregulatory capabilities of an individual [and] may
not necessarily be harmful."
"The FEIS corroborated the Journal's concern that
"potentially affected systems.[would] include cardiac pacemakers,
electro-explosive devices [EEDs], and fuel handling systems." EEDs,
including flares carried by individuals or in vehicles, could be
exploded 1300 feet from HAARP's Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI)
transmitter - a quarter mile away.
"Radio frequency radiation could be a problem since, as
FEIS notes, Gakona lies "within a major commercial air traffic
corridor that links Anchorage with the eastern and midwestern US. It
is also within the path of flights to and from the Orient and Canada.
Twelve to 20 commercial flights a day utilize the airspace above the
Gakona site."
"The IRI's 8.0 MHz and 10.0 MHz beams "could potentially
pose a hazard to occupants of aircraft flying nearby.in the unlikely
event they remain in the main beam for an extended period of time." At
aircraft cruising altitude of 30,000 feet (5.7 miles) the inverted
cone formed by the sweep of the IRI beam is 6.8 miles wide.
"Countering assumptions that most of HAARP's energy
would be "lost" in space, the FEIS reveals that "80-90 percent of the
experiments would employ the IRI in modes that refract fundamental
radio frequency energy Earthward from the ionosphere.
"The 440-page FEIS states flatly that "The ozone layer
would not be affected and ozone would not be depleted" as a result of
HAARP operations, but devotes less than a page to this critical topic.
The only study cited is a single 13 page "draft assessment" by the
Mission Research Corporation (MRC).
"The FEIS spends less than three pages on HAARP's
ionospheric effects and bases its conclusions solely on "personal
communications" between officials at MRC and the consulting firm of
Metcalf and Eddy. The FEIS reports that IRI transmissions will cause
the temperature of free electrons in the Earth's ionosphere to rise by
80 degrees F. Below 120
miles, the IRI would trigger a 20 percent increase in "electron
density;" above 124 miles, electron densities would decrease 10-15
percent. The effect could last "an entire polar night."
"A second study, "Independent Assessment of HAARP's
effects on the Upper Atmosphere" by R. Roble, also concluded that
"there are no measurable effects to the Earth's ozone layer." The FEIS
identified this study as having been provided by MRC. The study was
described as consisting of "one-page."
"The authors of the Journal's HAARP story remain
convinced that the potential impacts of Project HAARP deserve a
thorough scientific and public hearing."
by Clare Zickuhr and Gar Smith
http://www.ecologynews.com/
Copyright 1995