Can the Military Control the Weather for Warfare?

[Carlos Hernandez]

The following is from http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12342

When the Army Owns the Weather

By Bob Fitrakis, Columbus Alive
February 5, 2002

Humans have long sought to control the weather. Early people learned how to make fire and modify their micro-environments; rain dances and other rituals to alleviate droughts are part of our folklore. So news that the government is engaged in secret experiments to control the weather should come as no surprise – especially after a long history of "cloud seeding," "atom splitting" and cloning revelations.

In fact, a vast majority of people would be shocked to learn that this orphan of the cold war is still in practice. As the U.S. and former Soviet Union spent trillions of dollars on their militaries, their commitment to mutually assured destruction led to extensive experimentation with the use of weather as a weapon. In 1977, the Saturday Review cited a CIA report hinting that the U.S. government already had the power to massively manipulate the weather for war purposes.

Complete article is at http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12342

 

[wasteofo2]

Sure, weather manipulation, such as causing lightning to strike a certian place or manipulating something about a particular storm is doable to some degree, but it's not like the govt will have some miraculous weather control center anytime in the foreseable future.

I saw that lighting strike on demand thing in 6th grade when we were doing weather, just shoot some sort of rocket in the sky and bam, their lightning rod got hit. I don't really see why you'd want to harnass lightning, when we have missiles that are much more accurate and powerful.

And yeah, a plane can drop some stuff into a storm to make it weaker, but it's not like you can have a plane drop something to start a massive hurricane over enemy troops or anything.

 

[russ_watters]

Yeah, the market for all-weather fighters and raincoats for infantry isn't going to dry up (so to speak) any time soon.

And quite frankly, I think a little weather control would be a GOOD thing. In Star Trek, they eliminate hurricanes and tornados.

I've never really understood the fixation with HAARP though.

 

[Jonathan]

Elimination of hurricanes and tornadoes would be a bad thing, they are necessary for the functioning of the environment. The correct thing to do is to rebuild all destroyed buildings, and this time make them more suitable to that weather, instead of the same as they were before they were destroyed.
Unless of course one can artificially induce the same good effects of tornadoes and hurricanes while stopping all natural ones, but then that gets overcomplicated.