HAARP Amping It Up

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."

Comments

From TFA (and other materials on the subject)

[Senes]

HAARP is a United States defense project, one of the many defense measures against nuclear warfare. For more information, see this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAARP (Wikipedia.org)

Re:From TFA (and other materials on the subject)

[deglr6328]

HAARP is being upgraded by the DOD as a "defense measure against nuclear warfare", but not in the sense that you or the other hundred odd Art Bell quoting posters here seem to think. Specifically, it is not being used to "jam" or "shoot down" any ICBMs or some such nonsense because that is impossible and is well...what's the phrase here that I'm looking for...oh right...fucking retardedly impossible.

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 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, and THAT is why the Pentagon is interested in this thing, not for some kooky mind control/weather control/ray gun type kookery.

Jamming missiles, don't be silly...

[mkraft]

It's obviously a time travel experiment.
4 Gigawatts is enough to power 3 DeLoreans with power to spare.

Re:This only works at night?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, to be more specific, the D-region is formed by solar Lyman alpha photoionization of nitric oxide (NO), with a smaller and more variable contribution from soft X-rays ionizing N2 and O2.

HF radio waves are absorbed mostly in the D-region, and at times can be completely blacked out by elevated electron densities caused by various ionospheric disturbances, including solar X-ray flares and "Polar Cap Absorption" events caused by solar proton events.

The solar (extreme ultraviolet, shortwards of Lyman alpha) flux photoionizes the neutral atmosphere (mostly N2 and O2) creating ions by ejecting photoelectrons from the neutral molecules. These photoelectrons have energies typically up to about 100 eV (electron Volts). The "hot" photoelectrons collide with the cold ambient ionospheric electrons through the Coulomb interaction thereby heating the ionospheric electrons.

The radar heats ionospheric electrons to only a fraction of an eV. However, there are enough electrons in the tail of the heated Maxwellian distribution to excite the atomic oxygen auroral "red line" emission at 6300 Angstroms (630 nm), which has an excitation threshold of 1.96 eV. This red glow produced by radar heating is visible from the ground (with instruments).

I'm one of the "experts" quoted on the HAARP site, although I have absolutely nothing to do with it. However, I find the conspiracy theories regarding HAARP quite amusing. Why? because I can calculate exactly what the radar is doing - that's how I make my living.