Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025 (1996 flashback)

Weather has been dangerous lately, most notably in the hurricane events Stateside, but less well spotlighted by Western media are events in the East. Naturally there have been mutterings about “weather wars”. Now would be a suitable time for a reminder about things spoken of in the 1990s about military weaponization of the weather in the mid 2020s (ie now). MH

Some brief excerpts:

2025 is a study 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. Presented on 17 June 1996, this report was produced in the Department of Defense school environment of academic freedom and in the interest of advancing concepts related to national defense. The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or the United States government.
This report contains fictional representations offuture situations/scenarios. Any similarities to real people or events, other than those specifically cited, are unintentional and are for purposes of illustration only.
This publication has been reviewed by security and policy review authorities, is unclassified, and is cleared
for public release

Executive Summary
In 2025, US aerospace forces can “own the weather” by capitalizing on emerging technologies and
focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications. Such a capability offers the war
fighter tools to shape the battlespace in ways never before possible. It provides opportunities to impact
operations across the full spectrum of conflict and is pertinent to all possible futures. The purpose of this
paper is to outline a strategy for the use of a future weather-modification system to achieve military
objectives rather than to provide a detailed technical road map.
A high-risk, high-reward endeavor, weather-modification offers a dilemma not unlike the splitting of the
atom While some segments of society will always be reluctant to examine controversial issues such as
weather-modification, the tremendous military capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our own peril. From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of natural weather patterns to complete dominance of global communications and counterspace control,
weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an
adversary. Some of the potential capabilities a weather-modification system could provide to a war-fighting commander in chief (CINC) are listed in table 1. Technology advancements in five major areas are necessary for an integrated weather-modification capability:

(1) advanced nonlinear modeling techniques, (2) computational capability, (3) information
gathering and transmission, (4) a global sensor array, and (5) weather intervention techniques. Some
intervention tools exist today and others may be developed and refined in the future.

Why Would We Want to Mess with the Weather?
According to Gen Gordon Sullivan, former Army chief of staff, “As we leap technology into the 21st
century, we will be able to see the enemy day or night, in any weather— and go after him relentlessly.” A
global, precise, real-time, robust, systematic weather-modification capability would provide war-fighting
CINCs with a powerful force multiplier to achieve military objectives. Since weather will be common to all
possible futures, a weather-modification capability would be universally applicable and have utility across
the entire spectrum of conflict. The capability of influencing the weather even on a small scale could change it from a force degrader to a force multiplier.

People have always wanted to be able to do something about the weather. In the US, as early as 1839, newspaper archives tell of people with serious and creative ideas on how to make rain. In 1957, the president’s advisory committee on weather control explicitly recognized the military potential of weather modification, warning in their report that it could become a more important weapon than the atom bomb.

FULL PAPER PDF: /tardir/mig/a333462.tiff (dtic.mil)

dtic.mil library listing: Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025 (dtic.mil)

“A global sensor array”. Starlink?

Historic clip of Micho Kaku discussing weather modification (Courtesy Ed at Outer Light YT channel)