Geophysical warfare.

In the summer of 2004, an unprecedented drought hit Cuba. The clouds of dust kicked up by hot winds were reminiscent of tornadoes typical of Cuba's "unkindly northern neighbor"--the United States of America. The dust storms snuffed out many lives. The hot winds blowing at speeds of up to 50 kilometers per hour, with gusts of 100-120 kmh, blocked the nostrils of people and animals making breathing almost impossible. There was not a single salutary rain cloud above the island. Although at times there appeared on the horizon blue-indigo purple rain clouds, they stubbornly skirted Cuba as if bewitched. The nation was threatened with total loss of its crops and its arable lands turning into desert. It was rumored there was an undeclared war on--a geophysical war.

Geophysical warfare (also known as weather or biophysical warfare) is a term meaning deliberate environmental modification for military purposes. (1) First effects of such modification were in stark evidence in the wake of World War I. Resulting from the military operations, artillery shelling, the building of defense installations and lines of communication 100,000 hectares of arable land and 600,000 hectares of forest land were laid waste in France alone. It was possible during four years of the war to procure 100 million cubic meters of lumber, but 18 million cubic meters of lumber was cut down and ruined during the course of military operations; 12 million cubic meters was cut for civilian needs; further 22 million cubic meters was carted away by the German forces of occupation and 11 million cubic meters went for the military needs of the allied forces. (2)

The natural environment of France had barely recovered when World War II broke out and brought more devastation. Direct military operations in the country destroyed 400,000 hectares of woodland and 100,000 hectares more burned owing to guerilla operations. (3) Nearly 60 years after the wounds inflicted on the environment are still smarting. Poland still feels the effects of the war against the guerilla movement waged by Hitlerite forces in the 1940s when the German occupiers cleared entire forests to prevent the Polish patriots from hiding in them.

A fresh impetus to hostile use of environmental modification was given in the latter part of the 20th century. The Pentagon launched, for the first time in human history, a veritable campaign to destroy on a planned basis the natural environment and provoke an ecological disaster in countries of Southeast Asia (Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam). U.S. President Richard Nixon told a White House press conference at the height of the war in Vietnam that Americans would employ chemical weapons only in defense, with the exception of defoliants and tear gas. According to Pentagon chiefs, the so-called humane geophysical warfare, "warfare with no blood," was more effective from the standpoint of disabling and destroying personnel, and contaminating territories than frontal offensives with the use of napalm, heavy tanks and artillery.

Herbicides and defoliants were especially widely used agents in the Vietnam War. The former usually include sodium chlorate and paraquit. They destroy either specified or all plants while the latter makes plants shed their leaves, bear no fruit, inhibit growth and finally kill them. The worst environmental impact in Vietnam was caused by spraying from U.S. Air Force aircraft and helicopters Agent Orange, an extremely toxic defoliant made up of a 50-percent mixture of herbicide 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid and 2,4,5-T. It constituted about 83 percent of all the agents employed to destroy plants.

Defoliants and herbicides were used for two main purposes: one (85 percent)--for defoliating forest areas where the guerillas could hide and move about freely; two (15 percent)--for destroying crops that might feed the enemy. Besides, they were supposed to render unsuitable for human habitation rural areas in South Vietnam and thus channel their population into U.S.-controlled urban areas or the specially built reservations--the "strategic villages."

According to rough estimates, American aircraft sprayed defoliants in Vietnam from 1961 to 1972 over an area of some 5 million hectares. During the course of its "field experiment" the United States used approximately 100,000 metric tons of highly toxic substances made according to special formulas for the destruction of tropical vegetation and more than 7,000 metric tons of CS irritants against Vietnamese guerillas and civilians (a concentration of 40 grams per one cubic meter of air is lethal. (4) As a result, tropical forests were destroyed on 25,000 square kilometers (44 percent of South Vietnam's territory), 12,000 square kilometers of arable land (43 percent of all arable land) was contaminated. Reforestation of land sprayed with defoliants and herbicides is unlikely over the next 100-150 years. Vietnamese ecologists also say that many unique tropical plants had died or would never reappear in the polluted forests of Vietnam.

Of all today's weapons nuclear weapons can do the worst harm to the Earth's biosphere. Following the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, scholars in many countries studied their effects not only on people but also on the environment. In the 1960s they found that such explosions could destroy the ozone layer in the Earth's stratosphere which shields all living things from harmful doses of ultraviolet radiation of the Sun. Excessive intensity of this radiation can increase the incidence of skin cancer, cause sun blindness, as well as reduce the yields of many crops. The destruction of approximately 90 percent of the ozone layer, which is not ruled out in a large-scale nuclear conflict, permit considerable doses of radiation in the farther ultraviolet range of 0.24-0.26 mcm to reach the Earth which may cause significant mutations in most types of living organisms and even their death.

In addition to destroying the ozone layer, the massive employment of nuclear missiles may cause nuclear night that would lead to nuclear winter. Scholarly literature gives a very detailed description of how nuclear night would lead to nuclear winter. Large amounts of smoke in the atmosphere would practically block sunlight from reaching the Earth's surface and its upper crust would cool by dozens of degrees. Changes in the general circulation of the atmosphere would result in areas of especially intense cold. According to the model of the computing center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a month after the start of a nuclear conflict with the use of 1,000 megaton nuclear warheads, temperatures in Europe and on the Arabian Peninsula would plunge 50 degrees; 40 degrees on Kamchatka and the U.S. northeast; 30-35 degrees in Alaska and the U.S northwest; 20 degrees in Central America. (5)

Since fires would continue to burn for several weeks, a dense cloud of minute particles of smoke and dust would cover both the Northern and Southern hemispheres with land, even in the tropics, falling below the freezing point; there would be snowfalls in littoral areas; there would start droughts everywhere to plunge mankind into a long and dreadful winter.

Whereas scientists in many countries have joined hands to very accurately establish the possibility of global climate changes resulting from nuclear war, some developers of ballistic missiles and designers of American nuclear weapons are trying to call into question the scholars' findings. The magazine Nature published in 1984 an article written by Edward Teller entitled "Widespread Aftereffects of Nuclear War." It stresses that radioactive fallout (regarded as catastrophic in the 1960s and 1970s) and depletion of the layer of ozone would prove insignificant compared to purely mechanical damage resulting from nuclear explosions. In Teller's opinion, uncertain data on the amount of smoke resulting from nuclear fires and on the development of weather processes give grounds to doubt the findings about an apocalyptic impact of nuclear winter. The article looks at the results of some calculations and points to possible processes in the atmosphere, which could wash out from it the smoke and thereby mitigate the cooling of the land. (6)

Concurrently with the appearance of the above article, the 9th International Cloud Physics Conference looked at the results of studies by Russian and American scientists that, on the contrary, pointed to the possibility of the smoke rapidly filling the atmosphere. Although a detailed proof of the nuclear winter theory does not exist to date, even opponents of this theory have to admit that such aftereffects of a nuclear war cannot be ruled out. It is therefore necessary that the results of such studies be communicated to the public at large and that there should be no race for strategic arms and development of concepts of various "improved" and "scientifically substantiated" variants of conducting a nuclear war.

Among the other possible methods of conducting a geophysical warfare the most deadly for all mankind are artificial means of inducing earthquakes (induced seismicity). Geophysical catastrophes of this kind have killed more than three million people over the last 300 years and more than one million in the latter part of the 20th century. Damage caused by quakes over the last 50 years alone cost approximately $300 billion. (7)

Quakes for military purposes can be caused a "trigger effect." For example, the pumping of even a small amount of water under pressure into mining tunnels in a number of areas can cause rather substantial quakes in totally different areas on the map. In other words, small causes entail major consequences. A quake can also be triggered by setting off in the depths of the lithosphere a small targeted nuclear device or even a conventional high-explosive charge.

The situation is made even worse because there have been built over recent years many potentially hazardous, in ecological terms, industrial facilities and major engineering facilities: nuclear electric power station, chemical plants, high dams, big water-reservoirs, etc. Practical experience shows that manmade reservoirs, dams and all artificial bodies of water can have tectonic effects capable of triggering not only small quakes but also a series of earthquakes even in natural conditions (without human activities). These quakes are due to the pressures of masses of water. One example are the numerous quakes taking place since 1900 in the Mississippi valley 200 miles or so outside New Madrid, Missouri, reaching magnitude 7 (on the Mercalli scale).

Yet, the investigators point to even a greater risk involved in inducing shifts in the upper part of the lithosphere by building reservoirs and dams. Earthquakes happen when levels of water change rapidly. This mainly takes place when reservoirs get filled with water. Sometimes this happens when reservoirs get drained (when floodwater is released in emergencies). This can be used in geophysical warfare by blowing up dams. It is true that quakes are not always caused by filling or draining water reservoirs because it obviously takes the presence of some other geotectonic conditions as well. Strains can be only released when they are already there, that is to say, there are "seats of strain" that store up colossal energies.

An artificial tidal wave (tsunami) can be a no less dangerous type of geophysical warfare. A tsunami is usually caused by a submarine earthquake occurring less than 50 km beneath the seafloor, with a magnitude greater than 6.5 on the Richter scale. Shifts in the Earth's crust set up high waves that travel over great distances before they crash on the shore and cause catastrophic destruction. One recent (Dec. 26, 2004) sad example is the disastrous tsunami in Southeast Asia that killed around 300,000 people, injured and left homeless millions.

Interaction of tidal waves with the shore follows the rules of mainly the same physical processes that rule the interaction of other types of waves. Since such processes are expressed by nonlinear equations, waves of big height can form in narrow channels, for example in places where submarines are based. Resonance oscillations in bays (not sufficiently well understood) can cause big damage to surface ships based there, especially aircraft carriers and substantially harm the infrastructure of naval bases, including their life-support systems.

The construction in recent years in many regions around the world of many big potentially environment-threatening industrial facilities (nuclear electric power station, chemical plants, high dams etc.) makes it necessary to establish special local seismic networks for speedy notification of possible disastrous consequences of induced local or remote earthquakes.

Today U.S. Navy sonars operate in various parts of the Atlantic and the Pacific, in the area of the Straits of Gibraltar and off the North Cape, Norway. In the late 1960s, then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara for the first time publicly admitted the existence in the world's oceans and seas of a global sonar surveillance system (SSS). Advances in computer technology superannuated the use of hydrophones and the receiving stations in the USA and the Caribbean became part of a joint SSS. All its components and surface ships fitted out with a special surveillance system--SUR-TASS--were included in a single submarine surveillance system. Hydroacoustic data from the receiving stations and regional estimation centers are fed to the command centers of the Atlantic, Pacific and European fleets, to the maritime intelligence center of the Navy at Suitland, Maryland, and central command agencies of the U.S. Armed Forces.

According to Pentagon analysts, the network of sonar networks on the seabed can identify sections where seismic activity reaches the critical threshold. Special expeditions will be sent to such areas to ostensibly build an offshore drilling oil platform necessitating a number of deep-sea operations. Using special vessels equipped with high-precision navigation systems, the expeditions reach the critical fault points in the ocean and, by sounding the lithosphere, identify the zones with pent-up excessive energy. The only thing to be done later is to use methods of nonlinear dynamics to initiate in the fault points avalanche-like processes in desirable directions.

This is in principle possible to do given the present state of technological development. Studies abroad show that it is possible for this purpose to use not only remote controlled targeted blasts but also triggering vibration fields generated right on board ship. The practical result is the phenomenon of heightened sensitivity of a geophysical medium in an unstable pre-bifurcation phase. It is possible to use for initiating a tsunami the energy of oceanic tides because the amplitude of deformations in the submarine lithosphere caused by them is greater than manmade deformations by nearly three orders of magnitude. However, tides have a weaker effect on seismic conditions than manmade impacts. The reason is that the frequencies of these external impacts differ: a manmade triggering signal is more effective than a tidal signal by a factor of 10. True, the induced submarine earthquakes by tidal deformations can manifest themselves right where the effects are applied, whereas manmade signals have to be "repeatedly radiated" with great precision. But this, as they say, is a technical matter--primarily a matter of laser distance measuring equipment fitted out with modern microprocessors.

Similar nonlinear dynamics principles can be employed also to control, for military purposes, such equally formidable phenomena as hurricanes, which is now a matter of controlling hydro-climatic conditions. The possibility to control weather fascinated man from ancient times. Plans of the most varied nature were suggested ranging from correcting atmospheric circulation to creating thermal regimes in targeted areas. Pentagon analysts have been paying special attention of late to insidious control of cloud formation and inducement of atmospheric precipitation. Western media have already reported cloud seeding experiments with the use of granulated dry ice and silver iodide. The objective ordinarily was to only slightly augment precipitation in a bid to increase the yield of crops in arid and semiarid regions, provide for greater supply of water for, among other things, boosting generation of electric power by hydroelectric power stations. But it is an entirely different matter to turn rainfalls into disasters.

The Pentagon was initially enthusiastic about "rain" projects. That optimism waned with the passage of time. It was thought earlier that cloud seeding makes it possible to augment precipitation by as little as 10 percent to 12 percent. It has since transpired that there are many circumstances that can decrease rainfalls, rather than augment them. For example, adding a great number of ice nuclei results in the formation of ice crystals too small to grow to sizes necessary for producing rainfalls. There were also experiments to induce rainfall from warm clouds. Such experiments with the use of wide-body military transport planes in Australia and the Caribbean Sea showed that cumulous clouds can actually yield plentiful rainfalls but only if water with reagents is expertly sprayed at the base of the clouds. Western media, however, report that this technique is very doubtful economically since the planes have to carry prodigious amounts of the reagents.

There were wideranging investigations in the United States into seeding thunderstorm clouds with the view to reduce the possibility of hazardous lightning discharges at the time of combat air operations. The military-related studies produced the spin-offs of use to civilian agencies. We have in mind the fact that the forestry service joined in the investigation because of the massive fires in areas where high-quality lumber was produced in immediate proximity to populated centers (statistics confirm the high probability of lightning striking trees).

It's a short step from there to controlling natural hydro-climatic processes on a big scale. This is helped by getting to know some of the regularities typical of the biosphere. Computer processing of geophysical observations made over many years has made it possible to determine that Sahara's climate, for example, was much more humid, and the boundaries of the Sahel region was hundreds of kilometers to the north. Studies have discovered correlation between severe droughts in the tropics and the abnormally warm periodically occurring oceanic El Nino current. It is not accidental that the Bible mentions the alteration of abundant and hungry years. This sort of periodicity manifests itself far outside the tropical regions. The presence of relatively stable cyclic recurrence of natural processes makes it possible, on the one hand, to use this property for forecasting hydro-climatic characteristics and critical ecological indicators (droughts, inundations, hurricanes) and on the other, disguise deliberate impacts on the natural environment to achieve abnormal hydro-climatic conditions over targeted territories of potential adversaries.

Similar Pentagon experiments were held in countries of Southeast Asia back in the 1960s. They consisted in seeding clouds with chemical agents during periods of monsoon rains. The induced heavy rains attributed to "freaks of nature" were, according to plans of American analysts, caused disastrous floods in the low lands and on the plains in South Vietnam and cut the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail used by the guerillas to infiltrate supplies into South Vietnam. On some occasions heavy deliberately induced rains rendered inoperative air defense radars shipped from the USSR. This was caused by the big concentrations of the chemical agents they used. The resulting rainwater took on the acid rain qualities (operations codenamed Blue Nile, and Pop Eye). In a number of cases, floods were caused by the use of laser-guided air bombs dropped on dams and dykes. It cannot be ruled out that the Pentagon could have used Cuba as an object of its experiment this time around since it is, from the military point of view, an ideal test ground to try out cloud seeding and hurricane inducing techniques, as well as, as facts attest, to induce real manmade epidemics (or to call a spade a spade, an undeclared biological warfare) among the livestock.

Further progress in science and technology will surely lead to new and much more effective means and methods of exerting influence on the environment that could be also used for military purposes. One should, however, realize that indiscriminate meddling with natural processes can result in disrupting the Earth's biosphere. The term "stability of the biosphere" was introduced by a 19th-20th-century Russian mathematician, Aleksandr M. Lyapunov. According to his theory, a system's "trajectory of life" doesn't leave the so-called "corridor of stable development" despite the disturbances affecting the system. Talking of stability we should make absolutely certain that stability (or, in other words, constancy) of precisely which traits of the system is important for us and to which extent. Besides, we should describe the harmful, impeding disturbances the system will be stable against. Clearly, the greater a disturbance is, the less we will be able to preserve the system's desirable traits. (8)

All this has direct bearing upon the global dynamics of the biosphere. The natural corridor of stability is a state of the biosphere (and of society for that matter) which makes it possible to preserve our civilization. We do not have sufficient understanding today of the size of this corridor and how important are the deviation that are already there. Papers dealing with ecology and global dynamics often cite the prophetic words of Vladimir Vernadsky to the effect that man has become a geological-scale power and thus should inevitably assume responsibility for further development of the biosphere. (9)

Special attention in this regard should be paid to designing a system to determine acceptable levels of environmental impacts in combat operations when military conflicts arise. It is all the more important because today we are obliged to protect the technosphere and biosphere not only against "natural" accidents, disasters and catastrophes, but also against terrorism. The most dangerous of them is nuclear terrorism. This radically changes our world and mankind's "stability corridor." Various scenarios of acts of terrorism with global consequences have been discussed with growing frequency over recent years. They now talk not only about the destruction of separate cities but also about serious climate changes. This is technically quite possible to do--setting off several hydrogen bombs planted in submarine mountain ridges is quite sufficient to change the oceanic currents' configuration. This would have a freezing effect (nuclear winter effect) on enormous territories. Another option involves a submarine nuclear explosion in the Black Sea and discharge into the air of great amounts of hydrogen sulfide also resulting in a great number of victims. Millions of lives could be snuffed out by destroying some dams and other modern hydro-engineering systems. The cyberspace offers vast opportunities for terrorism.

Thus, the Earth's biosphere and, by the same token, all mankind have been and will be vulnerable in the foreseeable future to actions of small radical groups prepared to do anything to achieve their goals. If these actions emerge at the international or intergovernmental level, the threat would increase manifold. Therefore, relying on the "sustainable development" concept, it is necessary to make clear decisions on which effects on nature can be regarded as acceptable and which the world community should oppose uncompromisingly by employing all available resources. In this connection it is highly important to conclude and strictly observe international accords on protection of the environment against wideranging, long-term and serious damage.

It was thanks to the initiative of our country that the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques was approved by the world community on 18 May 1977. Its signatories pledged to use no environmental modification techniques that are likely to entail widespread, long-term or serious consequences: destruction, ecological detriment or harm to the environment of any signatory of the Convention; to use for military purposes no induced hazardous phenomena such as earthquakes, tsunamis, disturbing the ecological balance of any region, modification of elements of weather (clouds, precipitation, cyclones and storms), in climates, oceanic currents and the state of the ozone layer and the ionosphere.

It is very important to use a uniform interpretation of the term "environmental modification techniques" contained in Article II of the Convention which refers to any technique for changing--through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes--the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space. Equally important is the provision of Article V of the Convention on cooperation between states to protect the environment. Each state party to the Convention undertakes to provide or support assistance, in accordance with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations, to any state party which so requests, if the Security Council decides that such party has been harmed as a result of violation of the Convention.

Wishing to make more specific the provisions of this document of extreme importance for the entire world community, our delegation put forward its proposals with regard to a uniform interpretation of the term "widespread, long-lasting and severe effects." "Widespread" effects encompass an area on the scale of several hundred square kilometers; "long-lasting" are lasting for a period of months, or approximately a season; "severe" are effects involving serious or significant disruption or harm to human life, natural and economic resources or other assets.

The Convention aims to prevent the threat of geophysical warfare of any type, including the harming of the ozone layer with chemical compounds dispersed from satellites. To implement provisions of the Convention, they set up the Consultative Committee of Experts--a tool of international control procedures within the UN framework.

Debates, however, are still on as to the interpretation of the term "widespread, long-lasting and severe effects." It is also disturbing that the Convention has been signed by slightly more than 25 percent of the UN members. It is also a matter of serious concern that there is a growing probability of unpredictable inhuman actions by international terrorist organizations that are outside the control of any government agencies. Therefore, to completely rule out the use of geophysical forms of warfare there should be further consolidation of efforts of the entire world community in both improving international legal mechanisms and in practical activities to protect the environment.

NOTES:

1. Voennyi entsiklodepdicheskii slovar, Voenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1984, p. 187.

2. Zarubezhnoye voennoe obozreniye, No. 1, 2000, p. 17.

3. Ibidem.

4. G.A. Osipov, Zapretit i unichtozhit khimicheskoye oruzhiye, Moscow, 1987, p. 33.

5. K. Ya. Kondratyev, S.N. Baibakov, G.A. Nikolskiy, "Yadernaya voyna i klimat," Nauka v SSSR, No. 3, 1985, p. 101.

6. E. Teller, "Widespread Aftereffects of a Nuclear War," Nature, 23 August 1984, pp. 621-624.

7. V.M. Yemelyanov, V.N. Kokhanov, P.A. Nekrasov, Zashchita naseleniya i territorii v chrezvychainykh situatsiyakh, ed. by Academician V.V. Tarasov, Moscow, 2003, p. 263.

8. G.G. Malinetsky, Sinergetika, predskazuyemost i determinirovannyi khaos. Predely predskazuyemosti, Moscow, 1997, p. 104.

9. S.P. Kurdyumov, G.G. Malinetsky, Sinergetika i sistemnyi analiz. Novoye v sinergetike. Vzglyad v tretye tysyacheletiye, Moscow, 2002, p. 6.

Col. V.S. FROLOV (Ret.)

Candidate of Technical Sciences