HAARP Amping It Up 292
n6kuy writes "HAARP (the High frequency Active Auroral Research Program) will be adding 132 more transmitters to bring their total number of transmitters to 180.
"When the massive planar array for ionospheric research is completed in 2007, it will include a total of 180 Continental Electronics D616G 10-kW combined transmitters, which the company is upgrading specifically for HAARP," the supplier (Continental) stated. The facility is near Gakona, Alaska.
The installation began in 1993 with 18 transmitters, expanded to 48 in 1998 and will grow to 180 transmitters. The final expansion will bring the HAARP array to full power, with ERP increasing from 84 dBW to about 96 dBW.
96dBW is about 4 billion Watts.
There is speculation that the project is really an "effort to develop ways to jam the electronics of incoming missiles from Russia and/or China".
4 billion Watts oughtta do it."
From TFA (and other materials on the subject) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I have no idea... (Score:5, Informative)
It's not actually 4GW. It's only 3.6MW peak envelope power. 4GW is the max ERP, or effective radiated power, under optimal conditions. ERP accounts for antenna gain. In other words, the field strength is the same as that from a 4GW transmitter with an isotropically radiating antenna.
See the HAARP site's technical info on phases of completion at: http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/phases.html
Re:I have no idea... (Score:3, Informative)
All modern warheads use precision timed, placed and shaped explosives to turn a subcritical amount of uranium/plutonium into a supercritical nuclear explosion. If any part is damaged sufficiently, you will (at worst) not have a nuclear explosion but a dirty bomb. If the electronic controls are damaged sufficiently, there would be no explosion at all. All modern warheads use electronically controled explosives.
There are two types of bombs where there would be no electronics in it. Even in this, there is the possibility of an RF weapon causing enough damage. The first is where, instead of using explosives to cause an explosion, the two pieces of nuclear material are jammed together upon impact with the ground. A sufficient ammount of RF would still be able to distort the material of the warhead enough so they do not jam together properly and go supercritical.
The second part, involves a critical ammount of Plutonium. Take 16kg of plutonium, put it together, and you get a nuclear explosion. During flight, the halves would have to be kept seperate. I'm not sure if there is a way that does not involve electronics that would move the pieces together that is not similar to the way above. Either way, if you warp/melt the material enough it won't explode.
Two final things. A lot (if not all) of ICBMs make course corrections mid flight. If the guidance electronics are messed up prior to the final corrections, it will fly off targe. Second, MIRVs would also be messed up in a similar way. I'm not sure there is a type of nuclear missle/warhead that would not be messed up by a sufficient ammount of RF.
Listen to HAARP (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I have no idea... (Score:3, Informative)
So I worked a few numbers, assuming that the radio transmitters had a wavelength of 100 meters (shortwave), which puts a limit on how tightly you could focus the radio beam. If tightly focused, this array could create an electromagnetic wave with an intensity orders of magnitude more powerful than sunlight, and the electric fields associated with the radio waves would amount to millions of volts per meter. With this kind of power, your goal isn't to zap sensitive microchips: you're thinking about vaporizing thick copper wiring in milliseconds. Maybe even damaging the exterior structure of the warhead.
fifteen megawatts. Where does the extra power come from? Capacitors?
Duty cycle. Charge up capacitors at 15 MW for a couple seconds, zap at 10GW for a couple milliseconds, cook one missile, find another one, recharge another couple seconds, zap again. You might not have time to take out an entire World War III strike this way, but a handful of North Korean nukes? Not a problem.
And anyway, it's possible that the generators are just local redundant backups. Wouldn't be too hard to hook this thing up to a civilian power grid and have access to gigawatts of electrical power. (Okay, Alaska doesn't exactly have gigawatts lying around on street corners, but still, delivering power a few hundred miles from Anchorage is probably doable.)
Re:Wow big suprise US spending billions on defense (Score:4, Informative)
IN the last few decades the US has been involved in more wars then any other country on the planet. The problem we have with George is that he is waging war for profit, fun, and because "god told him to" (his words not mine).
What is the real Power? (Score:4, Informative)
Megawatts of RF power is big, but not big enough to knock down ICBMs. The Idea with HAARP is to use the RF power to heat the Ionosphere in the northern latitudes where there are enormous currents induced by the Aurora. The power sloshing around in the upper Ionosphere is of the order of Terawatts. They hope to modulate these rivers of currents by locally heating small spots in the ionosphere plasma, thus radiating gigawatts of power at ultra low frequencies ( 1 to 100 Hz)... a very cool Mad scientist Idea... Very evil..
DR. Null
Re:Negative Effects (Score:1, Informative)
Re:From TFA (and other materials on the subject) (Score:5, Informative)
So why is the Pentagon interested in upgrading HAARP to ~4 GW? Well, if you do some research on HANEs (high altitude nuclear explosions) you will find that a nuclear explosion of even modest energy (100 KTons) is sufficient, when detonated at an altitude of greater than a couple 100 Km, of flooding the Van Allen belts with high energy electrons. (the native electron population of the radiation belts is "heated" via inverse bremsstrahlung from the hard X-rays emitted by the nuclear detonation) It is even capapble of creating NEW radiation belts at lower altitudes than normally found and it is thus estimated, extrapolating from experiments such as starfish prime [wikipedia.org] in the 50's, that virtually ALL sattelites in LEO would be destroyed within days by ESD and radiation damage if an event like this were to occur.
HOWEVER! HAARP is capable of irradiating the ionosphere with VLF EM radiation of quite high intensity and thus can alter the so called "auroral electrojet", creating a ginormous "virtual VLF antenna" in it by altering its temperature (and thus its conductance). The HAARP is thereby capable of depopulating the radiation belts of high energy charged particles in a fraction of the time it would ordinarilly take for them to calm down on thier own and thus potentially saving the many sattelites in LEO. Sound crazy? Well, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction [apc.org], and THAT is why the Pentagon is interested in this thing, not for some kooky mind control/weather control/ray gun type kookery.
Re:More conspiracy theories (Score:0, Informative)
Re:This only works at night? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ah conspiracy... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This only works at night? (Score:3, Informative)
"The IRI would transmit radio waves over the frequency range 2.8 to 10 MHz." from "Effects in the Ionosphere" http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/ion5.html [alaska.edu]
This is NOT a radar! It must be difficult to make a living calculate exactly what the radar is doing if you don't know the difference between radar frequencies (in the gigihertz region) and HF in the range 2.8 to 10 MHz.
Actually radar [wikipedia.org] stands for RAdio Detection And Ranging. It is not specific to a frequency range. While most current radar systems may be in the microwave range, many early radar systems were, in fact, in the HF portion of the spectrum. (Scroll down to the "Frequency Bands"section of the above wikipedia article for more info.)
Re:This only works at night? (Score:1, Informative)
Here's some EISCAT results:
Leicester [eiscat.uit.no] Scary, isn't it?
HF RADARs [Re:This only works at night?] (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More conspiracy theories (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, that is mustard gas. It is a chemical weapon by definition. See the UN definition of chemical weapons.
"Chemical weapons, as defined by the 1969 United Nations report entitled "Chemical and Bacteriological Weapons, and the Effect of Their Possible Use," are chemical agents of warfare taken to be chemical substances, whether gaseous, liquid, or solid, which might be employed because of their direct toxic effect on man, animals, and plants."
While I hate the use of phosphorus bombs on humans, it's not a chemical weapon. And I think the UN should ban it, just like they banned napalm.