Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake

The environment is not collateral damage. It is a new frontline of hybrid warfare, and defending it is quite literally defending life itself,” — Ruslan Spirin, a Ukrainian diplomat based in Kyiv.[i]

One military official was quoted in Seymour Hersh’s article as saying What’s worse, dropping bombs or rain?” Operation Popeye in Vietnam. [ii]

In 2004 the Christmas/Boxing Day Indian Ocean tsunami that killed over 230,000 people hit the same countries that were recently affected by un-natural disasters. At the end of November, 2025 destructive twister storms, floods, and landslides reminiscent of ‘Operation Popeye’, Cloud Seeding weather warfare during the Vietnam War, were manifest in South and Southeast Asia.

The coastal areas of Aceh Province, Sumatra in Indonesia were the worst affected during the 2004 earthquake and Indian Ocean Tsunami, and the November 2025 floods and landslides. Sri Lanka was the second worst affected in both disasters, with Thailand, Malaysia and South India also affected during both the 2004 Asian Tsunami and the 2025 Monsoon extending Storms.

Co-incidentally, two days before Cyclone Ditwah arrived in Sri Lanka, a mysterious Ash cloud blew over New Delhi from a Volcanic Explosion in Ethiopia Nov 25, 2025 choking the air seemingly in anticipation of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s State visit to India. The Hayli Gubbi volcano apparently blew in the Afar region of Ethiopia after 12,000 years apparently sending an Ash Cloud targeting New Delhi, India or so the story went!

All’s fair in love and climate change?

The Ash Cloud did not discourage the cementing of the Reciprocal Logistics Support Agreement (RELOS) to enhance military cooperation between the two BRICS nations and other trade agreements. RELOS streamlined military logistics support between India and Russia, making joint operations and long-distance missions more efficient and cost-effective for both.

RELOS marked India’s quiet pivot back to its old Cold War friend and ally, away from Washington. The agreement would facilitate the replenishment of essential supplies (fuel, rations, spare parts), enabling continuous, uninterrupted Russian military presence in crucial regions of the Indian Ocean routes that the US had sought to dominate with its European allies, UK, US, Holland former Imperial powers. RELOS would provide berthing facilities for troops, warships, and aircraft during both wartime and peacetime missions

Meanwhile, the Cyclonic storm Diwah that hit Sri Lanka on November 28 aborted the 75^th anniversary celebrations of the SL Navy in which Russian, Iranian, Indian, Malaysian, Maldivian, Pakistan, and Bangladeshi naval ships were participating, scheduled for November 30.[iii] Instead search and rescue humanitarian operation got under. Sri Lanka had also recently concluded exerceise with Russian military earlier in the month – Wolverine Path at Maduruoya camp which was subsequently flooded.

The dramatic spate of climate disasters” across the Indian Ocean world from –Ethiopia on the western shores to Indonesia in the East targeting Sri Lanka at the center of the IO, unfolded amid escalating geopolitical tension and quiet tectonic shifts — as India prepared to host Russian President Putin in a state visit on December 4. This was despite US attempts to isolate him and threaten India for buying Russian Oil and Gas.

Were the Operation Popeye –like Cyclonic Twisters that hit South and Southeast Asia on November 28, 2025 (Thanks Giving Day in the United States when folks were on holiday as with the Christmas day tsunami), ‘plausibly deniable’ hybrid economic weather warfare a covert warning to stymie Russia’s entry into the Indian Ocean and upend the rise of Asia and RICs (Russia, India, China)? Another tactic to stave off the crash of an empire with 800 military bases around the world as global power and wealth shift from West to East, North to South in what has been termed the Asian 21^st century with the rise of the BRICS?

Co-incidentally, US Special Forces also had intercepted a Chinese ship carrying dual use supplies to Iran off the coast of Sri Lanka in November, much like the apprehending of Oil tankers near Venezuela. It is not clear if Sri Lanka was used for that operation.[iv]

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) South and South East Asia are growth hubs of the world and the twister Ditwah that hit Sri Lanka certainly seemed designed to Make the Economy Scream”.

Like the 2004 Tsunami that crossed the Indian Ocean from East to west with massive destruction, just when the CIA was talking up the threat of China’s String of Pearl habours in the Indian Ocean, the recent pre-monsoon Storm in South and Southeast Asia appeared to present a seamless blend of geoengineering and Geopolitics in an era when the US led NATO war machine aims to ‘Own the Weather’ through Hybrid War masked by empty rhetoric about Human Rights and the ‘rules based order’?

In the wake of the unprecedentedly devastating twister cyclone ‘Ditwah’ that seemed designed to wreck National food security, essential energy and transport infrastructure, and deepen the International Monetary Fund, Eurobond US Dollar debt trap sprung around Sri Lanka that has lost Economic Sovereignty to the Washington Consensus, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Allison Hooker arrived in Sri Lanka December 11, 2025.

During Hooker’s visit US C-301 Hercules Planes that may be used in cloud seeding operations were already in the Sri Lanka’s Air force bases along with 60 US military personnel, purportedly to provide ‘humanitarian aid’.

The presence of US armed forces boots on the ground in Sri Lanka along with experts from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the US Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (NMOC), 5 days before the floods and landslides with US war toys and other equipment were unprecedented and concerning developments to discerning citizens in the historically Non-Aligned nation.

After all, the country had been through a globally networked local ‘ethnic conflict’ that unfold as part of a regional Cold War Proxy that ran for 30 years (1983-2009) between India then allied with Soviet Russia and the Allied powers seeking then as now to control the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean World and military bases in Sri Lanka.

India Pivots to Russia? Weather Warfare as Indian Ocean Countries Unite

Cyclone Ditwah that hit Sri Lanka on November 28 causing massive damage in the country aborted the International Fleet Review (IFR) ceremony to celebrate the 75^th anniversary of the Sri Lanka Navy. The IFR was scheduled for November 30 at South Asia’s busiest port of Colombo.

Naval ships from Iran, India, Russia, Malaysia, Maldives, Bangladesh and Pakistan were participating in a show of strength of Indian Ocean countries in the Seas of Sri Lanka–reclaiming the Indian Ocean sea lanes from Euro-American Imperial and neocolonial dominance. India had sent two aircraft carriers including its newest on its maiden voyage to Colombo.

The United States which seeks to dominate the Indian Ocean world though the so-called ‘Indo-Pacific’ was not however on the guest list for Colombo’s international fleet review which may explain the devastating tornado-like twister storms that unfolded to Make the Economy Scream”. Russian Troops had recently concluded the Wolverine Path joint training with the Sri Lanka military in Maduru Oya.

Plausible Deniability and Hybrid warfare: Unnatural Natural Disasters:

The same countries that were affected by Operation Popeye-like storms last month, were hit in December 2004 by the Christmas/ boxing day earthquake and tsunami disaster. The tsunami struck Indonesia and Malaysia, key countries that control the Malacca Straits Choke points of the Indian Ocean trade route and Sri Lanka and India at the center of the Ocean. That was when the Central Intelligence Agency was talking up the ‘threat’ posed by the China’s String of Pearls” harbors and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the Indian Ocean region.

Weather modification or geoengineering technologies to stage Natural Disasters include the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program on the Ionosphere (HAARP), Directed Energy Weapons (DEW), High Energy Lasers (HEL) Rainmaker drones for cloud seeding operations etc. and are part of the global military business industrial research complex.

As Peter Kaplan[v] noted in at the American Geophysics Union in 1973, there is a new class of environmental weapons having great power, but at the same time, sublety; these are to be the tools of what McDonald refers to as geophysical warfare”. These weapons, which include earthquakes, climate change, altered ocean currents, and tidal waves (or Tsunamis), can be triggered at a great distance from the victim and may be indistin­guishable from natural disasters. one line of research that is being intensely pursued is climate modification. The most important work here is done under project Nile Blue” (now called Climate Dynamics” ) which, the Pentagon asserts is necessary because other major world powers have the ability to create modification of climate that might be seriously detrimental to the security of this country” ³.

As Kaplan notes ‘geophysical warfare may be indistinguishable from Natural Disasters’. This is because they are part of Hybrid War, which is plausibly deniable, often invisible, hard to detect because of the use of heat, lasers, sonar  etc. and appear to be non-kinetic.

However, the strange path and pattern of destruction by Cyclone Diwah in Sri Lanka point to geoengineering reminiscent of Operation Popeye, weather warfare waged by the United States on Vietnam, and dovetail with geopolitical motives.

Weather Warfare the ENMOD Treaty

The Environmental Modification treaty (ENMOD), formally the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques is an international treaty prohibiting use of technologies to induce environmental damage or destruction.

The ENMOD treaty emerged from concerns in the International Community over weather warfare during the Vietnam war. Specifically, it referenced ‘Operation Popeye’ and the use of Cloud Seeding technology to extend the monsoons and generate storms to flood the Ho Chi Minh trail. Award winning journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story ”Rainmaking is used as a Weapon by the US” in the New York Times In 1972 .[vi]

The ENMOD treaty opened for signature on 18 May 1977 in Geneva and entered into force in October 1978. Subsequently, the Convention on Biological Diversity of 2010 would also limit Geoengineering and dual use technologies given significant gaps in understanding of impacts on biodiversity. In simple language the ENMOD treaty prohibits weaponizing the weather, also known as geoengineering, or intentionally manipulating or altering the climateto stage (un)natural disasters.

During the Vietnam war the United States used cloud seeding technics to extend monsoons, flood and ‘drown in mud’ the Viet Cong fighting the American military in South Vietnam to impede their supply chains. This was at the height of the West’s Cold War on Communists and Socialist national independence and de-colonization movements sweeping Indo-China and the Global South.

As the Cold War ran hot in Vietnam and the Indo-China theater, Southeast Asia’s thick tropical forests and inhabitants in were also subject to Chemical and Biological warfare. Agent Orange was used for defoliation and air visibility for US bombing sorties of the Ho Chi Minh trail and have scared generations of Vietnamese. There are high rates of disability cancer and illness in communities along the Ho Chi Minh trail that were subject to Chemical and Bioweapons. Other Cold War operations occurred in Burma.

Before Agent Orange, Napalm or sticky fire”, deoxygenating compound that adheres to and burns on surfaces, creating a conflagration was used during an attack on Berlin in March 1944. It was also widely deployed by the French in the First Indochina War (1946-54), and American forces in the Korean War (1950-53).

Weather as a Force Multiplier: Compounding and Cascading Disasters

Despite the ENMOD treaty banning weather modification for hostile use, research and development in weather modification technologies for Cloud seeding have continued and become increasingly sophisticated. Thus, recently, Rainmaker Technology’s bid to deploy cloud-seeding flares on small drones was met by resistance from the airline pilots union, which has urged the Federal Aviation Administration to consider denying the startup’s request unless it meets stricter safety guidelines. [vii]

Sophisticated Rain Maker drones are also developed and available in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Middle East. Meanwhile, Gaza has been flooded after the Fake Peace accords as the de-population agenda continues.

An important Report Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025” produced in the US Department of Defense that was recently renamed the Department of War, provides extensive and detailed analysis of  new weather modification and warfare technologies–with 2025 scenario planning[viii] The report was 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” produced in the Department of Defense”. It provides extensive and detailed analysis of weather modification technologies for Over the Horizon (OTH) Full Spectrum Dominance” developed back in 1996 with 2025 scenario planning.

Key Concepts from the Paper include Strategic Advantage: “Owning the weather” means controlling localized weather to create advantages, like fog for cover, rain for disrupting electronics, or clear skies for air ops. Enabling Technologies: The paper highlighted Advanced nonlinear modeling, Computational power, Global sensor networks which no doubt include Elon Musk’s Starlink that recently became operational in Sri Lanka.

It included Weather intervention methods (e.g., carbon dust for precipitation and Stealth Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs, Drones) for dispersal and envisioned manipulating weather for a full spectrum of military needs, from tactical support to strategic communication control while acknowledging the Controversial Nature of weather modification as a high-risk/high-reward endeavor, comparing its potential impact to nuclear power. 

The report also refers to the High Altitude Auroral Research Program (HAARP), in Alaska Directed Energy Weapons (DEW), High Altitude Lazar Weapons (HEL), drone use. An operational capabilities matrix lists Precipitation Enhancement, Storm Enhancement, flooding lines of operation, as well as, Precipitation denial, fog and cloud removal to deny concealment, deny fresh water, induce drought etc. By 2025, aerospace forces could use emerging technologies (like advanced modeling, sensors, and weather modification techniques) to shape battlefields by disrupting enemies, offering strategic military dominance through localized weather control. The report outlines a strategy for integrating weather control into military objectives, anticipating potential societal concerns but stressing the strategic necessity of pursuing such capabilities for future warfare, even touching on futuristic ideas like “artificial weather” via nanotechnology. In other words, the use of weather warfare for Global Over the Horizon,-Full Spectrum Dominance.

Geopolitics and Geoengineering: Un-Natural Disasters across the Indian Ocean

While technologies such as cloud seeding date to the 1960s, generating earthquakes and tsunamis  with nuclear and hydrogen bomb explosions and experiments were conducted by the US Department of Defense in the Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Islands in the late 1940s to the mid-1950s. Bikini Atoll remains contaminated and uninhabitable to date.[ix]

It is possible to discern a pattern of Unnatural climate disasters that dovetail with the use of new technologies for weather warfare at this time across the Indian Ocean sea lanes of communication. An unnatural pattern of Rainmaking disasters across strategic choke points of Indian Ocean trade, energy and submarine data cable routes was apparent when Rainmaking Technologies reminiscent of Operation Popeye seemed to be coordinated.

The November 2025 monsoon Rainmaker storms echoed the December 2004 Christmas/ Boxing day earthquake off the coast of Aceh in North Sumatra, Indonesia that trigged a giant Indian Ocean Tsunami. The same geostrategic countries at choke points of the Indian Ocean maritime trade, energy and submarine data cable routes were hit with unprecedented unnatural disasters:  Parts of Sri Lanka, Aceh Province in Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, Malaysia and Thailand were devastated by Twister storms reminiscent of Operation Popeye. There was unprecedented damage to food security, energy and transport infrastructure.

Remarkably, less than a week before the Cyclone Ditwah disaster experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) had arrived in the geostrategic island. And, less than two weeks before Ditwah, on November 14, the US embassy in Colombo had announced that, the United States and Sri Lanka had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) formalizing and deepening a defense partnership between the Montana National Guard and the Sri Lanka Armed Forces under the Department of War’s State Partnership Program (SPP).

U.S. Ambassador Julie Chung highlighted the significance of the new chapter in U.S.–Sri Lanka defense cooperation with great prescience: From wildfire response and flood relief in Montana to peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts overseas, the Montana National Guard has a proud record of service and professionalism. This partnership with Sri Lanka, reaffirmed through today’s MOU, strengthens our shared resolve for a secure Indo-Pacific—building trust, readiness, and lasting peace through partnership.” 

A week after the cyclone Ditwah, C-103 Hercules planes tested in Cloud Seeding landed with US boots on the ground in the Sri Lanka Air force base in a show of force to purportedly provide humanitarian relief”.

Global-Scale Gaslighting: Climate Crisis Narrative Masks Hybrid warfare and Climate Crimes

Increasingly, we live in a world of Unnatural Natural Disasters, staged Climate crises and Climate Disaster Capitalism, which enable profiting from stricken populations and countries. It is increasingly clear that despite the ENMOD treaty, geoengineering and weather modification also as a Force Multiplier” continues to this date, cascading and compounding economic crises.

Despite mounting evidence of geoengineering and the use of weather warfare technologies the unprecedented damage caused by cyclonic storms named ‘Ditwah’ on November 28 in Sri Lanka was blamed on climate change”, rather than military business industrial complex which is the most environment polluting industry on the planet.

Increasingly, the United Nation’s CoP climate summits have become a front for many distortions and plausibly deniable climate crimes. Indeed, the Anthropocene climate crisis narrative although rejected by the Experts’ Panel of Geologists, seems to provide a perfect alibi for geo-engineered climate crimes, which are part of a new generation of hybrid cyber and weather warfare systems that violate the ENMOD Treaty.

It is puzzling that the various climate activists and NGOs who incessantly target fossil fuel lobbies never call for closure of environment polluting US military bases of which there are 800 around the world and draw down of the single most polluting industry – the military business industrial and research complex.

Like the Caribbean Seas, were the US Monroe Doctrine is at play, the vast Indian Ocean which is the main artery of global energy, trade and submarine data cable flows appears increasingly to be an epicenter of maritime hybrid warfare and geoengineering.

The Caribbean Seas and the islands of Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica and Puerto Rico have been incessantly subject to deadly storms, earthquakes, and weather warfare in recent decades, and are currently an epicenter of US maritime piracy, including the illegal sinking of so-called drug boats’ as war drums beat for regime change against Venezuela’s President Maduro.

Ever since the Indian Ocean was renamed the American Indo-Pacific” amid Obama’s pivot to Asia to target China, there have been unnatural natural disasters, dramatic geo-engineered environmental crises in geostrategic countries along the Indian Ocean trade, energy and submarine date cable routes.

With the wisdom of hindsight, a pattern of unnatural disasters with geopolitical overtones across the Indian Ocean world are apparent: There is also considerable anecdotal evidence of a high number of apparently geo-engineered disasters occurring in countries and regions with US/NATO military bases/ installations or troops on the ground (e.g. Philippines, Japan). Remarkably and tragically, Palestine’s Gaza strip which is subject to forced migration and ethnic cleansing at this time was also flooded with storms reminiscent of Operation Popeye.

It is to be hoped that peoples of the Indian Ocean trade routes who have been subject to climate crimes may find redress and reparations under the ENMOD treaty for the loss and damage they have suffered.

TO BE CONTINUED: There is no Anthropocene; we are still in the Holocene.

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[i] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/nov/28/weaponized-weather-emerges-new-hybrid-warfare-tool/

[ii] https://owlcation.com/humanities/hidden-history-of-the-united-states-of-america-when-weather-was-a-weapon

[iii] https://island.lk/foreign-warships-arrive-in-sri-lanka-to-take-part-in-international-fleet-review-2025/

[iv] https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-forces-raid-ship-seize-cargo-headed-to-iran-from-china-35a1e2ac

[v] https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/online/weather-modification-and-war/

[vi] https://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/03/archives/rainmaking-is-used-as-weapon-by-us-cloudseeding-in-indochina-is.html

[vii] https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/13/pilot-union-urges-faa-to-reject-rainmakers-drone-cloud-seeding-plan/

[viii] https://ia801605.us.archive.org/35/items/WeatherAsAForceMultiplier/WeatherAsAForceMultiplier.pdf

[ix] https://www.history.com/articles/nuclear-bomb-tests-bikini-atoll-facts