by Rosalind Peterson

Starting as early as today, September 15, 2009 [time of writing]

An article in Space.com (1) titled, “NASA Rocket to Create Clouds Tuesday” by Clara Moskowits, Staff Writer – September 14, 2009, was unexpectedly forwarded to me today.

According to the article: “…A rocket experiment set to launch Tuesday aims to create artificial clouds at the outermost layers of Earth’s atmosphere. The project, called the Charged Aerosol Release Experiment (CARE)…”This is really essentially at theboundary of space,” said Wayne Scales, a scientist at Virginia Tech who will…study the physics of the artificial dust cloud as it’s released…CARE is slated to launch Tuesday between 7:30 and 7:57 p.m. EDT (2330 and 2357 GMT) from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia….”

“…CARE will release its (aluminum oxide) (2), dust particles a bit higher than that, then let them settle back down to a lower altitude.”What the CARE experiment hopes to do is to create an artificial dust layer,” Professor Scales told SPACE.com. “Hopefully it’s a creation in a controlled sense, which will allow scientists to study different aspects of it, the turbulence generated on the inside, the distribution of dust particles and such.” CARE is a project of the Naval Research Laboratory and the Department of Defense Space Test Program. The spacecraft will launch aboard a NASA four-stage Black Brant XII suborbital sounding rocket…Researchers will track the CARE dust cloud for days or even months to study its behavior and development over time…If CARE cannot launch Tuesday, the team can try again between Sept. 16 and Sept. 20, 2009…”

The U.S. Navy, NASA, and the U.S. Defense Department have made a decision to conduct one or more an atmospheric tests, in order to create an aluminum oxide dust cloud without the permission and for the most part, the knowledge of the citizens of the United States. These aluminum oxide particles will eventually return to earth polluting our air, water and soils. The tests may damage the various atmospheric boundaries that protect life on earth – no one has any idea what damage this dust cloud and the testing on this dust cloud may do to our climate, agriculture, human health or the amount of infrared and UV radiation reaching the Earth.

It is time to contact elected officials today and protest this action which may begin as early as today, September 14, 2009. The Navy is already conducting warfare testing in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico and has more ranges in the planning and permit stages. Senator Dianne Feinstein and Senator Barbara Boxer noted in a June 19, 2009. Letter to Dr. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA, U.S. Department of Commerce:

“…the Navy plans to increase the number of its exercises or expand the areas in which they may occur, and virtually every coastal state will be affected. Some exercises may occur in the nation’s most biologically sensitive marine habitats, including National Marine Sanctuaries and breeding habitats…” This involves the decimation of more than 11.7 million marine mammals over five years and will increase with each new warfare testing range expansion.

TESTING IN THE PACIFIC, ATLANTIC, GULF OF MEXICO, HAWAII & ALASKA
TESTING INCLUDES, BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO:

* Gunnery Exercises * Bombing Missions * Missile & Torpedo Firing * Underwater Detonations * Research & Testing * Vessel Sinking * Use of hundreds of toxic chemicals, like lead, mercury, tungsten, aluminum coated fiberglass (chaff), Airborne Obscurants like Red & White Phosphorus, fog oils, rocket and jet fuel emissions * Undersea Warfare Training Range Exercises (USWTR) * Mid and High Frequency Sonar Experiments * Both land and ocean exercises will use planes, drones, rockets and sonic booms * Other classified warfare testing experiments will be conducted in these areas.

Now the U.S. Navy has decided that these experiments are not enough and have added atmospheric testing to their test list. Once again the public has been cut out of the debate, given little or no warning, and there are no Congressional hearings planned for any of these warfare and atmospheric tests.

It is now time that we, the people, stand up and stop these tests. The Navy and the Department of Defense have to understand that they are not allowed to go to war on us and our oceans for any reason. It is time to make our elected officials aware that we are going to stand against these policies. Take action today – contact your elected officials and stop these new atmospheric tests and demand Congressional Hearings.

by Crocker, Behind Blue Lines

Aircraft carriers have historically been vulnerable giants that could throw a punch but not take one. Even after SCB-125 modernization in the 1950s, WWII Essex class carriers had wooden flight decks with the first layer of armor at the hanger deck level.

While the generation of supercarriers beginning with the USS Forrestal incorporated many of the design lessons of earlier classes, aircraft carriers have continued to be floating bombs – packed with fuel, aircraft and ordinance that burn and explode merrilywhether by accident or battle casualty.

Even though successive designs have been increasingly robust and survivable – and decommissioned carriers are sometimes used in simulated battle damage tests – in terms of all-important striking power, they are at the very center of the protective battlegroup.

And in response to more survivable and capable carriers, potential adversaries have not been idle in devising weapons in response. With so much striking power concentrated in a single ship, it’s not even necessary to sink the carrier – a ‘mission kill‘ will suffice.

Naturally, the Chinese have been working overtime to acquire the ability either to destroy our carriers or make sure they don’t forward deploy. In an article entitled ‘Naval Supremecy Without Ships‘, the folks at Strategy Page describe a program to modify the Chinese DF-21 ballistic missile into an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM). The newer generation of the DF-21 reportedly incorporates reverse engineered terminal guidance technology from the US Pershing II missile that provided 30 meter targeting accuracy.

The way this weapon works is pretty simple. First you have to detect, and track, an American carrier at sea. This can be done with space or ground based radar, or electronic monitoring equipment. One could also do it with submarines (which would stalk the carriers, at a distance, and use satellite comm to send location updates back to China). Once you know where the carrier is, and where it is heading, you put that data into the navigation system of one or more ASBMs and launch. Less than half an hour later, the warhead is plunging earthward, and using its targeting sensors to detect the carrier below. Unless the carrier turned around and hauled ass at full speed about the time the ASBM was launched, the warhead will detect the carrier and hit it, while travelling at several times faster than a rifle bullet. If that doesn’t sink the carrier, it certainly puts it out of action for months.

Because this is a ballistic missile with re-entry vehicles moving at Mach 5, defense would be very difficult. Presumably, the navy could modify its Aegis system with the Standard SM-3 missile providing shoot down capability. The danger, of course, is that the enemy would saturate the battle group’s defenses in a combined attack.

I trust that our navy is thinking this through. We seem to have most of our offensive eggs in one glass-jawed basket at a time when the Chinese are developing the technology to achieve naval supremacy in the Western Pacific.