Out of the Blue:

Space Drones, Black Programs, the Unveiling of U.S. Military Offensives in Weather as a Weapon, and the Coming Permanent State of Emergency.

keith harmon snow

Index (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (afterword) (reference)

1. The Fog Watch (Propaganda): [2]

Throughout April, 2002, Amherst College (MA) radio (WAMH) ran a series of public service announcements (PSAs) sponsored by a Christian church organization declaring the existence of weather modification technologies, and advocating that listeners contact the U.S. government to demand that these technologies be deployed to moderate the extreme weather and drought we are seeing. According to these PSAs, the government use of these existing technologies to mitigate hostile weather “is a fundamental right” of every U.S. citizen. [3]

On February 17, 2002, ABC News ran a very brief  “news” clip titled “Weather As A Weapon?” The inquisitive title infers that this is some not-yet-certain possibility, contributing to the democratic ideal that supposes weather warfare might be something we – the public – ought to at least be thinking about, and possibly debating. ABC would never have run the story without some greater purpose than simply “to keep the public informed.” That is the expected role of ABC, in the “democratic” and “free” press that ABC purports to be part of. [4]

If not to serve as a news vehicle for genuine public service and education, as suggested, what then is the true purpose of the ABC news brief? This introduction focuses on the ABC article first, precisely because the purpose of this article (and others like it) is to help pave the way for public acceptance of military objectives by shaping the public mind a priori.

The ABC article describes the potential advantages of weather modification: seeding clouds, creating rain or tornadoes over hostiles forces, burning through fog to expose enemy aircraft:

Consider what might happen on some battlefield of the future where the U.S. military could gain a tactical advantage by changing the weather. There are several ways they might try to do that. One way would be to create rain that turns battlefields into mud baths in order to immobilize enemy troops and enemies. Another is by triggering lightning storms over airfields to keep hostile aircraft on the ground. Yet another possibility would be to burn through a heavy fog by firing lasers to give U.S. fighter pilots a better view of enemy targets. An Air Force research paper called “Owning the Weather in 2025” predicts that weather modification could reshape battlefields. [5]  

Weather warfare, of course, is set in some amorphous future battlespace. There is ABC’s first deception. ABC draws attention to the Air Force document Owning the Weather in 2025. This is an unclassified document, accessible to the public, and this USAFdocument suggests that ENMOD research and development is all mere theory and speculation, indeed, science fiction.

Owning the Weather in 2025 appears on its face to reveal significant details about the nature of U.S. national security and defense capabilities. However, in the age of international terrorism, with the U.S. military and its multinational corporations and their media minions whipping up a frenzy about terrorists of all stripes, about anthrax scares and world trade massacres -- and with rapid information access and electronic exchange making such reports Internet available to the hoards of uncivilized information-seeking barbarians feared by the Pentagon -- we can be sure that this document shows us only what we are intended to see.

Owning the Weather in 2025 serves the greater purpose of exposing only what is efficacious to the military, to the intelligence apparatus, to the companies they are in league with, and to the compromised policymakers seeking public support – by any means -- for the military programs they are paid to peddle. That is ABC’s second deception: steering the news-consuming public toward an inversion of reality, a public relations document, officially sanctioned, released and posted by the military. ABC does not question the origins of this document, or why it has suddenly come into vogue.

ABC confirms that weather warfare is, at the very least, under development: in its closing paragraph, the article noted that substantial ongoing investments in research and development of ENMOD technologies have continued.

In the U.S. and in many other countries, the private sector continues to work on weather modification technology — work that could also be used on the battlefield. And as this research continues on, for example, cloud seeding techniques that produce heavy rain to help farmers in time of drought or laser technology that could clear heavy fog for passenger jets, the military is watching. [6]

To say that the military is “watching” is to lie outright. There is ABC’s third deception: as I will imminently show, the military has funded and sponsored these weather warfare technologies for over fifty years. ABC’s fourth deception is the suggestion that the private sector and the government defense sector are independent, that one does not wash the hands, or wipe the ass, of the other. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The fifth deception by ABC News is the suggestion that these life and earth destroying technologies – pursued with a scientific hubris that is psychotic and obscene -- will also serve peaceful uses. Indeed, given the industrial acceleration of climatic mayhem we can be sure that the public will be clamoring for these weather modification technologies -- to mitigate the domestic and regional cataclysms of climate instabilities. The further suggestion is that the transition of these technologies from commercial to military uses is an afterthought, rather than their raison d”etre. That is ABC’s sixth deception.

Naturally – or, rather, quite unnaturally -- weather modification tools will revive gardens of sunflowers and fields of wheat stricken by drought, and they will guide passenger jets full of innocent people (!) to safety. By implication, these weather modification technologies are essential to a functioning human society, they will never be used unjustly, and they are as [ostensibly] benign as atoms for peace [civilian nuclear weapons]. Such arguments about the ENMOD arena will increasingly proliferate, with great media fanfare, serving the intended purpose of manipulating the public mind, as information about ENMOD technologies is slowly and strategically transitioned out of the [classified] closet.

Indeed, the public has already paid billions of dollars to develop these technologies – a fact that ABC does not share -- so we might as well see them put to good use. Hiding the proliferation of public subsidies for weather warfare, or failing to question or investigate the DOD budget, at the very least, is ABC’s seventh deception.

The main purpose of the ABC article – and the WAMH public service announcement – is to introduce a new subject heretofore forbidden by the military and, its extension, the corporate media. These articles signal the beginnings of a propaganda campaign to habituate citizens to a happy, un-dissenting coexistence with weather warfare technology. That is ABC’s eighth deception.

The deeper purpose of the ABC “news” clip – the ninth deception -- is to garner support from U.S. citizens to withdraw from – to denounce, evade or trample on – an international treaty prohibiting ENMOD research and environmental warfare, signed by the U.S. in the 1970s. Thus does the bold and colorful subtitle, and the paragraph that follows, elucidate the central theme of the ABC article: “AGREEMENT BARS WEATHER MANIPULATION.”

But there is a problem turning theory into fact. Using weather as a weapon is a clear violation of international agreements. In 1977, the United Nations passed, and the U.S. signed, a resolution that prohibits changing the weather for hostile purposes on the grounds that too many civilians could be harmed. So the U.S. military, which once seeded clouds in Vietnam to produce heavy rains along the Ho Chi Minh trail, can now only concentrate on better weather forecasting. “We want to anticipate and exploit the weather, not modify it,” says U.S. Air Force Director of Weather Brig. Gen. Fred Lewis.

There may be a “problem turning theory into fact,” but there is certainly no problem turning fact into propaganda: some ENMOD technologies have been tested and, as reported elsewhere, used in battle already. It has been reported for example that weather warfare technologies cleared the skies to enable NATO carpet-bombing of Serbia – causing unprecedented, widespread, long-lasting droughts. [7] So there is ABC’s tenth deception.

In contradistinction to the suggestions by ABC News, we are not talking about merely seeding a few clouds. Here are the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth deceptions: ABC News hides the scale, magnitude and lethal capabilities of ENMOD weaponry – technologies that may already be operational, but are certainly under development.

The United States is party to an arms control treaty known as the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD Treaty), ratified in 1978. [8] We do not know why the U.S. signed this treaty in 1977, but we can be at least 95 % certain that the Nixon/Ford administrations did not do so out of concern that “too many civilians could be harmed,” as reported in this ABC article. There is ABC’s fourteenth deception: ABC dutifully peddles the myth that the U.S. defense and intelligence apparatus is concerned about public health and welfare.

In the wake of the 1970s U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee hearings on covert actions (known as the Church Committee hearings), the broad spectrum of political assassinations, bloody coups, secret operations and technology developments deemed essential to the U.S. national security apparatus were driven underground in highly classified programs. [9]

Similarly, under a wave of devastating exposures about un-democratic US intelligence activities, and the Church Committee hearings, the U.S. DOD and the intelligence apparatus recognized that their secret programs and covert operations could only prevail given major but cosmetic changes promoting the “appearance” of termination, for one example, or promoting the independence of private sector laboratories and corporations, for another. Hence “front” companies were established, and, like numerous corporations already active in the various arenas, they were funded and tasked with maintaining the otherwise illegal, forbidden or secret programs and/or operations and/or activities. Just as the assassinations, coups and covert operations never stopped, the programs to develop weather warfare continued. This thesis is developed in details to follow.

Undoubtedly, the U.S. signed the 1977 ENMOD Treaty – in part -- for cosmetic purposes, and to further the disingenuous U.S. government posturing that pretends to care about truth, liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness, at home and abroad. It is all smoke and mirrors. In fact, the United States resisted the ENMOD treaty to the bitter end, and refused to sign unless major provisions were deleted, or watered down, at the very least. (Such U.S. establishment behavior is commonplace today.) ABC’s fifteenth deception, then, comes in failing to investigate, or even mildly question, the disingenuous behavior of U.S. officials. 

ABC quotes Air Force Director of Weather Brig. Gen. Fred Lewis. Choosing this person as the sole authority allowed to speak on the U.S. military’s weather warfare capabilities is ABC’s sixteenth deception. Brigadier Generals are credible enough, and this one utters some truth, and ABC does not question this truth. “We want to anticipate and exploit the weather, not modify it,” says U.S. Air Force Director of Weather Brig. Gen. Fred Lewis.

It is a curious statement, in the context it is in, because it is defensive at its core. It is a direct lie. Significant evidence suggests that somewhere in the national security apparatus – DOD (Department of Defense), DOE (Department of Energy), NSA (National Security Agency), CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) or deeper – there are ongoing, intensive programs in ENMOD (read: weather warfare) technologies.

And then there are all the corporate programs “fronting” for the military.

Indeed, the highly invisible U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) – a phantom agency born in the 1950s, declassified in 1992 – enmeshed with the National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency -- might be the culprit: the NRO plans, builds and operates America’s spy satellites, and they specialize in intelligence-gathering and information warfare. A DOD agency, the NRO is staffed by DOD and CIA personnel; it is funded through the National Reconnaissance Program, part of the National Foreign Intelligence Program. [10] According to CIA operative Victor Marchetti and state department official John Marks, “The NRO works in such intense secrecy that its very existence is classified. Its director for many years was a mysterious Air Force colonel (and later brigadier general) named Ralph Steakley, who retired in the early 1970’s to take a position with Westinghouse Corporation, a defense contractor which sells considerable equipment to the NRO.” The NRO budget in 1974 was more than $1.5 billion. [11]    

As I will show, the entire subject of weather warfare revolves around “plausible deniability” and the capacity of elite decision makers to “plausibly deny” that such technologies exist (just as assassinations were not committed, coups were not fomented, massacres were not perpetrated, “disappeared” people were not disappeared). Because proof of secret operations is highly classified, hence invisible, the unverifiable accusations are answered with plausible denials and we are left to depend on the (ostensible) basic goodness and integrity of leaders.

The statement by Brig. General Fred Lewis is contradicted, in its most simple form, by the obvious fact that all branches of the U.S. military and security apparatus rely on sophisticated SIGINT (SIGnals INTelligence), COMINT (COMmunications INTelligence), EW (Electronic Warfare), C4ISR/T (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance / Tracking) technologies whose entire mission and purpose can be, and often has been, compromised, neutralized or entirely defeated by hostile (but natural) weather conditions in the battlespace environment. [12]

Question:  Would the defense establishment ignore technologies with the potential to decisively defeat the “no-win” military compromises and losses due to an unpredictable and cranky old mother nature?  

Answer: They would not.

The statement by Brig. General Fred Lewis is further contradicted by the obvious military thrusts to develop capabilities that maximize stealth and, simultaneously, minimize risk to U.S. troops, and the propensity, again, well documented, to use clandestine operations premised, again, on “plausible denial.” In light of these major policy and field objectives, the existence of an entire spectrum or portfolio of ENMOD technologies is both plausible and certain. Said differently, it is irrational and unlikely and naïve and unreasonable to suppose the absence of these technologies given the grossly offensive actions that have been consistently demonstrated by the U.S. military, scientific and intelligence establishment over the past five decades.

Owning the Weather in 2025, advertised by ABC News, confirms the offensive interests the U.S. Air Force has in “owning and controlling” weather -- as a weapon. Numerous citations and references from the report itself reveal that military analysts and scientists have been working on weather modification issues in some capacities. (Projected ENMOD capabilities from the report are delineated in Table One .)

Owning The Weather in 2025 is but one chapter of the much larger report Air Force 2025, but ABC News did not report on that, nor did they explore the obvious evidence of the military’s comprehensive embracement of ENMOD technologies. That is ABC’s seventeenth deception. Air Force 2025 is a significant document. It outlines diverse technologies and strategies that the Air Force feels it must adopt to prevent the Air Force from ushering in its own extinction by 2025. The following excerpts from the Air Force 2025 shed some light on the intentions of the Air Force, and call into question the credibility of the statement -- “We want to anticipate and exploit the weather, not modify it” – by Air Force Director of Weather Brig. Gen. Fred Lewis:

2025 is a study designed to comply with a directive from the chief of staff of the Air Force to examine the concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future. [13]

In 2025, uninhabited aerospace vehicles (UAV) are routinely used for weather modification operations… Prior to the attack, which is coordinated with forecasted weather conditions, the UAVs begin cloud generation and seeding operations. UAVs disperse a cirrus shield to deny enemy visual and infrared surveillance.

It [weather modification] would also include specific intervention tools and technologies, some of which already exist and others which must be developed. Some of these proposed tools are described in the following chapter titled Concept of Operations. The total weather-modification process would be a real-time loop of continuous, appropriate, measured interventions, and feedback capable of producing desired weather behavior.

If precipitation enhancement techniques are successfully developed and the right natural conditions also exist, we must also be able to disperse carbon dust into the desired location… Numerous dispersal techniques have already been studied, but the most convenient, safe, and cost-effective method discussed is the use of afterburner-type jet engines to generate carbon particles while flying through the targeted air. If this UAV technology were combined with stealth and carbon dust technologies, the result could be a UAV aircraft invisible to radar while en route to the targeted area, which could spontaneously create carbon dust in any location.

Recent army research lab experiments have demonstrated the feasibility of generating fog. [14]

It is important to note that many techniques to modify the upper atmosphere have been successfully demonstrated experimentally. Ground-based modification techniques employed [by the former Soviet Union] include vertical HF heating, oblique HF heating, microwave heating, and magnetospheric modification. Significant military applications of such operations include low frequency (LF) communication production, HF ducted communications, and creation of an artificial ionosphere. Moreover, developing countries also recognize the benefit of ionospheric modification: in the early 1980s, Brazil conducted an experiment to modify the ionosphere by chemical injection.

First note that this latter paragraph admits that both the U.S.S.R. and Brazil – the latter as recent as the 1980s – have performed ENMOD experiments on the earth’s ionosphere. This curious admission raises at least two questions to ponder prior to exploring the true U.S. involvement in the ENMOD arena: [1] Would the U.S. DOD stand idly by and twiddle their missiles while other nations develop potentially revolutionary lethal technologies that might be then used against the U.S.? And [2]: Were not the U.S.S.R. and Brazil’s ENMOD experiments in contravention of the International ENMOD treaty of 1977?

Air Force 2025, in theory, is a roadmap to the future. It closes with a passionate and glowingly patriotic section outlining the coming extinction of the Air Force, and, indeed, the entire United States itself, if critical technologies, environments, personnel and capabilities outlined in Air Force 2025 are not exploited absolutely. According to this summary, every freedom-loving American -- by default -- should enthusiastically and unquestioningly support the USAFagenda.

Of course, without any further qualification or investigation by ABC News, and fed by ABC only the simplest of ideas to ensure that they are digested by the public, the casual reader is unable to separate the truth from the lie. ABC’s eighteenth deception comes in allowing the lie to pass. Neither does ABC News balance the newly enshrined truth with any alternative views, or counter quotes, or dissenting opinions -- as if dissenters and their rationales did not exist at all. ABC has not reported on the proliferation of, or the dissenting scientific views on, or the risks of, these technologies – military or civilian. That is ABC News’ nineteenth deception.  

Table One: 

The ABC News “news” clip -- sympathetic to a military establishment ostensibly plagued by budget cuts and federal oversights and shackled by international legal treaties -- helps further the misinformation that the military, “which once seeded clouds in Vietnam to produce heavy rains along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, can now only concentrate on better weather forecasting.” There is ABC’s twentieth deception – the unfortunate U.S. military, its hands tied, “can now only concentrate on better weather forecasting.” Here we find a common media ploy: to help generate sympathy for a military and intelligence apparatus ostensibly shackled by its own government and people – in sharp contradistinction to egregious, brutal, comprehensive U.S. military force and violence wielded with secrecy and impunity, around the globe, with a budget that is obscene. 

For their twenty-first deception, ABC News has casually introduced the idea that, well, by the way, weather warfare has been used before, in Vietnam. This occurred under a top secret national security pilot program called Project Popeye, and it was just one of many covert and overt ENMOD programs pursued in the 1960s and 1970s by the United States. [15]

However, the U.S. ENMOD operations in Vietnam are totally unappreciated, and unheard of, primarily because they have been little reported – if reported at all -- by the corporate U.S. media. The CIA, FBI and other “national security” institutions regularly utilize this same propaganda ruse to deflect attention from secret operations, torture and state-legitimized terrorism. The method is simple: begin circulating previously unreported facts to lay the groundwork for public acceptance, and then, if and when challenged, shrug the information off as “old news” that is “common public knowledge.” In any event -- we are always assured -- the institution in question (CIA) has long since reformed. [16]

To close this deconstruction of the ABC News article, and assess as accurately as possible the state of the art in weather weaponry, consider that in the interest of deploying weather warfare capabilities – under the same Nixon/Ford administration which signed the ENMOD treaty in 1977 -- unspecified substances were introduced into the troposphere over enemy territory during the Vietnam era, in order to render enemy radars inoperable. The results of those efforts were never made public. [17]

“What is the possibility of developing this capability [enhancing or suppressing precipitation] and applying it to tactical operations by 2025?” asks the Air Force 2025 document.

“Closer than you might think,” the document answers.

It is a very auspicious admission.

Next: Who Will Stop the Rain?