Post by Boomer Chick on Aug 1, 2004 23:53:36 GMT -5
Sorry I can't give a URL for this, but it's worth posting.
Celestial Harping
> "They're like boys playing with a sharp stick, finding a sleeping bear
> and poking it in the butt to see what's going to happen" The race is
> on to control the very sky above your head. There are those who would
> control that most fragile of shields which rests over all of our heads
> - the Ionosphere. The military research program you are about to read
> about sounds more like it comes from an episode of Star Trek than
> anything else and does much to confirm that when it comes to the
> military only truth is stranger than fiction.
>
> The Ionosphere
> Life on earth exists against all the odds, given the continual storm
> of deadly radiation which our own sun fires at us. Coming between us
> and this potentially lethal onslaught is an overhead protective
> shield, known as the Ionosphere. The 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.
>
> Military Uses for the Ionosphere
> "That's E.M.P., Electro-Magnetic Pulse, nuclear blast sends it out for
> miles;
> everything electronic shuts down, including choppers and radios. Hell,
> we just shut down Maguire's field communications - that ought to put a
> pretty little dent in their response time". So said John Travolta's
> villainous character, Deakins, in the recent movie "Broken Arrow" - as
> the pulse from a nearby nuclear blast tore a helicopter from the sky
> directly above his head and destroyed it, only seconds after all of
> the chopper's electronic communication and stabilization systems had
> gone haywire, sending it spiraling out of control.
>
> Military forces have for a long time known about the many effects of
> the Electro-Magnetic Pulse given off by nuclear blast. They should -
> they've been experimenting with them since the 1950s. In 1957 an
> American scientist, James Van Allen, discovered new layers of
> radiation even further out from the earth than the Ionosphere. These
> layers included huge amounts of charged particles which had been
> trapped by the earth's magnetic fields. These belts were named after
> their discoverer, as the Van Allen Belts, making Van Allen a household
> name.
>
> At the time of their discovery there was a suspicion that the Van
> Allen Belts were not entirely natural, that they had, perhaps, been
> caused by Russian nuclear explosions - in an attempt by the Russians
> to interfere with, and ultimately take control of, the Ionosphere.
>
> US scientists at that time theorized that disrupting the Ionosphere
> could have two primary effects - complete disruption of radio
> communications and, possibly, establishment of an impenetrable
> force-field of charged particles which would shield against cruise
> missiles - by interfering with their delicate and sophisticated
> guidance systems.
>
> To determine whether there was in fact any Communist intrigue afoot,
> and to test their theories on the effects of Ionospheric disruption,
> the US military decided to undertake their own tests - exploding
> nuclear devices in our upper atmosphere. The largest of these was over
> 1.4 megatons in size - a bomb about 100 times the size of the one
> which obliterated Hiroshima.
>
> That experiment was deemed to be scientific successes, with the
> resultant EMP creating very visible effects on the Ionosphere, such as
> the creation of spectacular atmospheric light effects over Hawaii,
> large-scale disruption of communications, destruction of the solar
> cells in the British satellite Ariel, and the complete knock-out of
> the electrical power system in Hawaii.
>
> These tests proved that the Ionosphere could be used to cause a
> variety of effects with potential military application. But
> upper-atmosphere explosion of nuclear devices was a somewhat blunt
> instrument, and offered no easy way to accurately control the effect
> upon the Ionosphere, and came with a by-product, radioactive fall-out,
> which could harm friend and enemy alike. Despite these shortcomings
> the US military continued to show their interest in EMP as a weapon.
>
> In October 1990 US columnist Jack Anderson reported that US military
> commanders were considering the detonation of a nuclear weapon at high
> altitude over Iraq, to generate an EMP which would damage Iraq's
> electronics and communications.
>
> EMP - Back on the Agenda
> In the late eighties the Atlantic Richfield Co., ARCO, contracted a
> physicist, Bernard Eastlund, to come up with some ideas for making
> productive use of the many billions of cubic meters of gas they were
> producing in Alaskan oil fields, and for which they had no use. They
> had already examined the possibility of piping it into mainland US but
> determined that it would be far too expensive.
>
>
Celestial Harping
> "They're like boys playing with a sharp stick, finding a sleeping bear
> and poking it in the butt to see what's going to happen" The race is
> on to control the very sky above your head. There are those who would
> control that most fragile of shields which rests over all of our heads
> - the Ionosphere. The military research program you are about to read
> about sounds more like it comes from an episode of Star Trek than
> anything else and does much to confirm that when it comes to the
> military only truth is stranger than fiction.
>
> The Ionosphere
> Life on earth exists against all the odds, given the continual storm
> of deadly radiation which our own sun fires at us. Coming between us
> and this potentially lethal onslaught is an overhead protective
> shield, known as the Ionosphere. The 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.
>
> Military Uses for the Ionosphere
> "That's E.M.P., Electro-Magnetic Pulse, nuclear blast sends it out for
> miles;
> everything electronic shuts down, including choppers and radios. Hell,
> we just shut down Maguire's field communications - that ought to put a
> pretty little dent in their response time". So said John Travolta's
> villainous character, Deakins, in the recent movie "Broken Arrow" - as
> the pulse from a nearby nuclear blast tore a helicopter from the sky
> directly above his head and destroyed it, only seconds after all of
> the chopper's electronic communication and stabilization systems had
> gone haywire, sending it spiraling out of control.
>
> Military forces have for a long time known about the many effects of
> the Electro-Magnetic Pulse given off by nuclear blast. They should -
> they've been experimenting with them since the 1950s. In 1957 an
> American scientist, James Van Allen, discovered new layers of
> radiation even further out from the earth than the Ionosphere. These
> layers included huge amounts of charged particles which had been
> trapped by the earth's magnetic fields. These belts were named after
> their discoverer, as the Van Allen Belts, making Van Allen a household
> name.
>
> At the time of their discovery there was a suspicion that the Van
> Allen Belts were not entirely natural, that they had, perhaps, been
> caused by Russian nuclear explosions - in an attempt by the Russians
> to interfere with, and ultimately take control of, the Ionosphere.
>
> US scientists at that time theorized that disrupting the Ionosphere
> could have two primary effects - complete disruption of radio
> communications and, possibly, establishment of an impenetrable
> force-field of charged particles which would shield against cruise
> missiles - by interfering with their delicate and sophisticated
> guidance systems.
>
> To determine whether there was in fact any Communist intrigue afoot,
> and to test their theories on the effects of Ionospheric disruption,
> the US military decided to undertake their own tests - exploding
> nuclear devices in our upper atmosphere. The largest of these was over
> 1.4 megatons in size - a bomb about 100 times the size of the one
> which obliterated Hiroshima.
>
> That experiment was deemed to be scientific successes, with the
> resultant EMP creating very visible effects on the Ionosphere, such as
> the creation of spectacular atmospheric light effects over Hawaii,
> large-scale disruption of communications, destruction of the solar
> cells in the British satellite Ariel, and the complete knock-out of
> the electrical power system in Hawaii.
>
> These tests proved that the Ionosphere could be used to cause a
> variety of effects with potential military application. But
> upper-atmosphere explosion of nuclear devices was a somewhat blunt
> instrument, and offered no easy way to accurately control the effect
> upon the Ionosphere, and came with a by-product, radioactive fall-out,
> which could harm friend and enemy alike. Despite these shortcomings
> the US military continued to show their interest in EMP as a weapon.
>
> In October 1990 US columnist Jack Anderson reported that US military
> commanders were considering the detonation of a nuclear weapon at high
> altitude over Iraq, to generate an EMP which would damage Iraq's
> electronics and communications.
>
> EMP - Back on the Agenda
> In the late eighties the Atlantic Richfield Co., ARCO, contracted a
> physicist, Bernard Eastlund, to come up with some ideas for making
> productive use of the many billions of cubic meters of gas they were
> producing in Alaskan oil fields, and for which they had no use. They
> had already examined the possibility of piping it into mainland US but
> determined that it would be far too expensive.
>
>