The US military was not the only investigator of "ionospheric heaters." The Russians conducted their own research with similar systems, based on Eastlund's technology. Other heaters also conducted research in Norway, Brazil and Puerto Rico. Russian "bigger is better" programs, however, beamed huge amounts of electromagnetic power at the ionosphere, successfully bouncing volleys of electromagnetic energy back to the Earth's surface. At these higher power levels, the heated ionosphere acted like a powerful battery, storing, amplifying and discharging destructive beams of energy that could devastate a distant target on demand, in seconds. At that time, the Russians (USSR) lacked the powerful computing facilities that were required to direct and control this energy beam.

To be precise, calculations for bouncing these energy beams must take into account the rotation of the Earth, the angle of reflectance, and a variety of complex, dynamic factors. The US had the power of CRAY and EMASS computer systems, but lacked the power output capabilities of the Russian heaters. HAARP would change that.

In 1995, the US military sought congressional funding for a "super-heater," a world class HAARP installation that would be capable of exceeding the Russian power outputs many times over. But there was a snag. The American public had been told that the Star Wars program was a "defensive" weapon. President Regan had even offered to share this technology with other countries to establish a "shield of peace" that would forever inhibit nuclear proliferation. But would the American public fund a "death ray" which could deliver "first strike" capabilities to any point on the globe within seconds? Even the military doubted that this would be an easy sale.

At first, the military attempted to describe the HAARP as a substitute for the controversial ELF (low frequency) transmitters. Eastlund's research had demonstrated that the heated "lens" could generate and reflect ELF radio signals if the applied HF power source was pulsed. The large ELF antenna systems in Wisconsin and Michigan could be replaced by the smaller, more efficient HAARP arrays.

Since their installation in America's dairyland, ELF signals were becoming a sensitive topic. Research was showing that ELF radiation was extremely harmful. Dr. Cletus Kanavy, chief of the biological effects group of the Phillips Laboratory's Electromagnetic Effects Division at Kirkland Air Force Base in New Mexico, stated that "the entire issue of human interaction with electromagnetic (RF & microwave) radiation is... a major national population health concern." (Biological Effects of Microwave Radiation: A White Paper, Microwave News at 12, September/October 1993).

Dr. Kanavy noted the "large amount of data, both animal experimental and human clinical, to support the existence of chronic, non-thermal effects." These effects include behavioral aberrations, neural network perturbations, fetal (embryonic) tissue damage (inducing birth defects), cataractogenesis (cataracts), altered blood chemistry, metabolic changes and suppression of the endocrine and immune systems. There were also cases of sudden and unexplained mutations in frogs and wildlife in the radiation paths of ELF installations. It was only a matter of time before the public outcry would prohibit ELF transmitters.

(see Superimposing Spatially Coherent Electromagnetic Noise Inhibits Field Induced Abnormalities In Chick Embryos, Journal Bioelectromagnetics, Vol. 15, No.2 at 105-113, 1994; Adey, Whispering Between Cells: Electromagnetic Fields And Regulatory Mechanisms In Tissue, Frontier Perspectives, Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1993; Smith, Best, Electromagnetic Man, Chapter 10, St. Martin's Press, N.Y. 1989; "Effects of Electromagnetic Fields" in Journal of Cellular Biochemistry, 51:140 at 410-411, 1993))

Someone in Congress realized the public safety implications of ELF waves-- even if they were to be generated by HAARP. The funding for HAARP was delayed while the Pentagon quickly assured the congressional committees that the ELF programs would be scuttled and replaced by HAARP's "high frequencies" which were, after all, "harmless." Congress thereby appropriated 16 million dollars for HAARP's initial expansion. But was the HAARP really doing away with ELF radiation? Not at all.(see 104th Congress, 1st session, Report 104-24 at 190, July 28, 1995)

The military's own Executive Summary of the HAARP program clearly states their reliance on ELF waves. Instead of transmitting these waves from ground based transmitters, HAARP created these waves through the use of "pulse" transmissions of their HF energy beams. Or, to put it another way, HAARP duplicated the ELF signals by turning their signal on and off at rates (30 to 3000 cycles per second) within the ELF range. The result was that ELF radiation could be directed to a specific area on the surface of the planet, at will.

"The potential exists for generating such waves by ground-based heating of the ionosphere. The heater is used to modulate the conductivity of the lower ionosphere, which in turn modulates ionospheric currents. This modulated current, in effect, produces a virtual antenna in the ionosphere for the radiation of radio waves. The technique has already been used to generate ELF/VLF signals at a number of vertical HF heating facilities in the West and the Soviet Union. To date, however, these efforts have been confined to essentially basic research studies, and few attempts have been made to investigate ways to increase the efficiency of such ELF/VLF generation to make it attractive for communications applications. In this regard, heater generated ELF would be attractive if it could provide significantly stronger signals than those available from the Navy's existing antenna systems in Wisconsin and Michigan."

"Recent theoretical research suggests that this may be possible, provided the appropriate HF heating facility was available. Because this area of research appears especially promising, and because of existing Department of Defense requirements for ELF and VLF, it is already a primary driver of the proposed research program."

(Executive Summary, Section 2.2)

All of these potentially harmful effects clearly violate the US government's own Environmental Protection Agency's doctrine. Congress established, through NEPA, that it is the policy of the federal government to "create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony." 42 U.S.C. Sec. 4331(a).