{"id":153379,"date":"2025-12-01T17:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T00:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=153379"},"modified":"2025-12-01T17:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T00:41:10","slug":"we-will-bury-you-in-mud-cyclone-ditwar-owning-the-weather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2025\/12\/01\/we-will-bury-you-in-mud-cyclone-ditwar-owning-the-weather\/","title":{"rendered":"We Will Bury You. In Mud. Cyclone Ditwar-Owning the weather"},"content":{"rendered":"

David E. Brown<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Forget Bush\u2019s National Missile Shield. The best military defense is a Russian winter. It got the better of King Charles XII of Sweden, sent Napoleon packing, and eventually shooed Hitler away. A few years after that, though, it was the Germans that were favored by the weather gods\u2014for weeks, Patton\u2019s Third Army was stuck near the edge of Germany, plagued by rain that kept American tanks and trucks and soldiers in place. The general\u2019s solution? A prayer to those gods:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.<\/em>1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patton was certainly not the first military leader to beseech His Great Goodness for favorable conditions. When Hannibal invaded Italy in 217 BC, he waited for the marshes to freeze so his mounted troops could pour in. In 1776, the harsh winter helped George Washington\u2019s army, letting it move quickly across the frozen Delaware River. And in 1941, the Japanese essentially hid their aircraft carriers moving toward Pearl Harbor in a large Pacific storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, everybody prayed about the weather, but nobody did anything about it. That changed in 1946, when General Electric scientists Vincent Schaefer and Irving Langmuir created an artificial cloud by introducing dry ice into a freezer, and then developed a technique for cloud seeding,\u201d still used today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the late 1950s, people began to think about our new ability to alter the weather in military terms. The Cold War was kicking into high gear, and the US intelligence community became aware that the Soviets were experimenting with cloud seeding and other kinds of weather control, such as cloud dissipation. In 1957, Henry Houghton, chair of MIT\u2019s meteorology department, noted, I shudder to think of the consequences of a prior Russian discovery of a feasible method for weather control.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a> That same year, a Presidential Advisory Committee on Weather Control noted (with perfect deadpan sensationalism) that, weather modification could become a more important weapon than the atom bomb.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a> The weather race, though never as fierce or as public as the space race or the arms race, was on. (The Soviets really were working on weather, with the hopes of, among other things, warming its vast northern regions and removing the ice in the Arctic Sea.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That any new technology that could be used as a weapon would be used as a weapon now seems obvious\u2014a kind of first principle of warfare\u2014but it is a relatively recent idea, a product of the total war\u201d strategy of the two world wars, where tactics and weaponry became increasingly more destructive. And there was historical precedent for offensive uses of the environment. During the Franco-Dutch War of 1672\u20131678, for example, the Dutch breached the dikes around Amsterdam, flooding part of the low-lying country and putting the French on the defensive. (The Dutch won.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the political and military stage set, the US got to work on figuring out how to alter the weather, and what to do with that knowledge. Much of the work seems to have been done at the Navy\u2019s China Lake weapons research center. Between 1949 and 1978,\u201d the base\u2019s in-house newspaper, The Rocketeer<\/em>, reported, China Lake developed concepts, techniques, and hardware that were successfully used in hurricane abatement, fog control, and drought relief.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drought relief\u201d is an interesting way to put it. China Lake\u2019s research caught the eye of the CIA in the early 1960s, which saw the potential of weather control in the rapidly expanding conflict in Vietnam. The CIA\u2019s first use of the Navy\u2019s technology was crowd dispersal. The Diem regime was having all that trouble with the Buddhists,\u201d an agent told Seymour Hersh in 1972. They would just stand around during demonstrations when the police threw tear gas at them, but we noticed that when the rains came they wouldn\u2019t stay on. The agency got an Air America Beechcraft and had it rigged up with silver iodide. There was another demonstration and we seeded the area. It rained.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1966, the idea of raining on Vietnam became the top-secret Project Popeye, which ran for some seven years and included more than 2,600 cloud-seeding flights over Vietnam and Laos. The objective was simple: Make rain that would make or keep the Ho Chi Minh Trail\u2014a main supply route for the North Vietnamese\u2014so muddy that it was unusable. (Why Popeye\u201d? The artificially created rain was apparently called Olive Oil.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story of the top-secret project\u2014flown by the Air Force but controlled by the CIA and the White House\u2014was broken in 1971 in Jack Anderson\u2019s national newspaper column, then, to greater fanfare, in July 1972, with Hersh\u2019s front-page story in the New York Times<\/em>. And while there were no rules at the time about weather modification\u2014or any environmental warfare, for that matter\u2014the Nixon administration was not happy with Hersh\u2019s revelations. The White House and the State Department declined comment, and one unnamed official said, This is one of those things where no one is going to say anything.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a> (People said even less about CIA weather modification in Cuba. During 1969 and 1970, planes from China Lake seeded clouds that rained over non-agricultural regions of Cuba, leaving at least some of the country\u2019s sugar cane fields dry.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The eventual response was an international treaty, the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, or ENMOD, which entered into force in 1978. The main tenet of the treaty, which stands today, is this: Each State Party to this Convention undertakes not to engage in military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weather control activities seem to have quieted down after ENMOD, but fortunately for the US military, the treaty has a loophole big enough to drive a truck through: It prohibits only action with widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.\u201d When Air Force intelligence analysts turned their thoughts to the weather in the mid-1990s, they made up their own definition of these limits: widespread means affecting more than several hundred kilometers; long-lasting means for a period of months; and severe involves serious or significant disruption or harm to human life, natural or economic resources, or other assets.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a> Which is to say that, except for the human life part, most military applications, which tend to be short-term and localized, are allowed. These analysts\u2019 conclusions are contained in an extraordinary report, published in 1996, called Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025.\u201d If the US intelligence community did ignore the weather for a while, Owning the Weather\u201d certainly made up for it. Envisioning a world where technology has made control over the local weather phenomena much more precise\u2014and where a global network of sensors has greatly increased available atmospheric data\u2014the writers declare that in three decades time, US aerospace forces can \u2018own the weather,\u2019\u201d and shape the battlespace in ways never before possible.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Owning the Weather\u201d relies primarily on extensions of existing weather modification techniques, the authors strike more boldly into the future with speculation about nanotechnology-based artificial weather.\u201d A cloud, or several clouds, of microscopic computer particles,\u201d they note, all communicating with each other and with a larger control system could provide tremendous capability. Interconnected, atmospherically buoyant, and having navigation capability in three dimensions, such clouds could be designed to have a wide range of properties.\u201d10<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At times, the Air Force report reads like a declaration to violate the ENMOD agreement. The authors even note that the only reason they don\u2019t discuss more serious weather control\u2014made-to-order weather, large-scale climate modification, control of storms, etc.\u2014is that it won\u2019t be technically feasible by 2025. Such applications would have been included in this report as potential military options,\u201d they note, despite their controversial and potentially malevolent nature and their inconsistency with standing UN agreements to which the US is a signatory.\u201d11<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is the United States so interested in the weather that it would violate international treaty? The answer may lie more in the psyche of the government than in specific tactical advantages. The US military has long been used to having a stacked deck. The US Navy once owned the seas; later, the Air Force had the run of the skies. For a while, our sole possession of the atomic and hydrogen bombs gave us the ultimate\u201d weapon. Dominion over the atmosphere might be the next ultimate\u201d weapon, proof not only of military invincibility but perhaps, finally, of Divine Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

To see a page from UN Resolution 3264 (1974) which prohibits military interference with the environment, see <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. 1<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Msgr. James H. O\u2019Neill, The True Story of the Patton Prayer,\u201d The Review of the News, 6 October 1971, available at http:\/\/members.aol.com\/PattonsGHQ\/prayer.html [link defunct\u2014Eds.].<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    1. 2<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      United States House of Representatives Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Subcommittee on Health and Science, Weather Modification Research: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Health and Science. Eighty-fifth Congress, Second Session, 18-19 March 1958 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1958), p. 55, as quoted in Nayef H. Samhat, A Genealogy of Climate Change,\u201d Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution, vol. 1, no. 4 (November 1998), at http:\/\/members.aol.com\/ peacejnl\/1_4samhat.htm [link defunct\u2014Eds.].<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \n
      1. 3<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

        M.S. Venkataramani, To Own The Weather,\u201d Frontline (Chennai, India), 16\u201329 January 1999, www.frontlineonline.com\/ fl1602\/16020790.htm [link defunct\u2014Eds.].<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \n
        1. 4<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

          China Lake Weapons Digest: 50 Years of Providing the Fleet with the Tools of the Trade,\u201d The Rocketeer, 4 November 1993. Reprinted at www.nawcwpns.navy.mil\/~bronkhor\/ clmf\/weapdig.html [link defunct\u2014Eds.].<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \n
          1. 5<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

            Seymour M. Hersh, Rainmaking Is Used As Weapon by U.S.,\u201d The New York Times, 3 July 1972.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              \n
            1. 6<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

              Ibid.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                \n
              1. 7<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques,\u201d 1108 U.N.T.S. 151, entered into force on 5 October 1978. Available at <\/em>www.un-documents.net\/enmod.htm<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  \n
                1. 8<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                  Col. Tamzy J. House, Lt. Col. James B. Near, Jr., et al., Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025,\u201d in Air Force 2025,\u201d Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, 1996, p. 7. Available at <\/em>archive.org\/download\/WeatherAsAForceMultiplier\/WeatherAsAForceMultiplier.pdf<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                    \n
                  1. 9<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                    Ibid., p. vi.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                      \n
                    1. 10<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                      Ibid., p. 27.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        \n
                      1. 11<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                        Ibid., p. 6.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        https:\/\/www.cabinetmagazine.org\/issues\/3\/brown.php<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                        David E. Brown Forget Bush\u2019s National Missile Shield. The best military defense is a Russian winter. It got the better of King Charles XII of Sweden, sent Napoleon packing, and eventually shooed Hitler away. A few years after that, though, it was the Germans that were favored by the weather gods\u2014for weeks, Patton\u2019s Third Army […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153380,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153379\/revisions\/153380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}