HAARPing on HAARP

Big Alaskan Antenna Attracts Suspicious Minds


Since I'm on fringe science today, let's think about the fringe that claims HAARP  - High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program - is a secret mind control/weather control device.  In fact, it was built under Air Force contract to "advance our knowledge of the physical and electrical properties of the Earth's ionosphere which can affect our military and civilian communication and navigation systems."
Those who see a dark hand in every unusual government project are not so easily mollified.  It's weather control, it's mind control, etc.  But the fact is, nothing about the facility is even classified. Anyone can go look at it (although tours are limited by availability of staff, there are Open House events for the public to visit.)
So as to its being a superweapon: in a word, nope. As big and science fictiony-looking (I can't think of a properly grammatical term) as this thing may be, the power is orders of magnitude lower than what you would need to make major changes to the ionosphere. It's a handy way for the USAF to do something very important: understand how radio communications propagate through the ionosphere and how disturbances in that layer (which it can create on a local ,temporary scale) affect those communications. Think about it: if we had a weapon that could change weather, human brainwave patterns, etc at a distance, don't you think the US would be doing rather better in its wars and other affairs?  Wouldn't we be DOING something with it?

While I'm in the neighborhood, I think the same logic applies to those who think the government has all kinds of superweapons based on the work of the electrical genius Tesla.   If some of his really nasty ideas, like death rays, were practical, why are we still building fighter planes and artillery? Because the man was a genius doesn't mean all his ideas were good ones.