1978

Experimental Hepatitis B vaccine trials, conducted by the CDC, begin in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ads for research subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men.

Hungarians presented a state-of-the-art paper on infrasonic weapons to the United Nations, “Working Paper on Infrasound Weapons“, United Nations CD/575, 14 Aug 1978. (From “The Road From Armageddon” by Peter Lewis.)

SPS Military Implications

Early review of the Solar Powered Satellite Project began in around 1978, and I (Rosalie Bertell) was on the review panel. Although this was proposed as an energy program, it had significant military implications. One of the most significant, first pointed out by Michael J. Ozeroff, was the possibility of developing a satellite-borne beam weapon for anti-ballistic missile (ABM) use. The satellites were to be in geosynchronous orbits, each providing an excellent vantage point from which an entire hemisphere can be surveyed continuously. It was speculated that a high-energy laser beam could function as a thermal weapon to disable or destroy enemy missiles. There was some discussion of electron weapon beams, through the use of a laser beam to preheat a path for the following electron beam.

The SPS was also described as a psychological and anti- personnel weapon, which could be directed toward an enemy. If the main microwave beam was redirected away from its rectenna, toward enemy personnel, it could use an infrared radiation wave-length (invisible) as an anti-personnel weapon. It might also be possible to transmit high enough energy to ignite combustible materials. Laser beam power relays could be made from the SPS satellite to other satellites or platforms, for example aircraft, for military purposes. One application might be a laser powered turbofan engine which would receive the laser beam directly in its combustion chamber, producing the required high temperature gas for its cruising operation. This would allow unlimited on-station cruise time. As a psychological weapon, the SPS was capable of causing general panic.

The SPS would be able to transmit power to remote military operations anywhere needed on earth. The manned platform of the SPS would provide surveillance and early warning capability, and ELF linkage to submarines. It would also provide the capability of jamming enemy communications. The potential for jamming and creating communications is significant. The SPS was also capable of causing physical changes in the ionosphere.

President Carter approved the SPS Project and gave it a go- ahead, in spite of the reservation which many reviewers, myself included, expressed. Fortunately, it was so expensive, exceeding the entire Department of Energy budget, that funding was denied by the Congress. I approached the United Nations Committee on Disarmament on this project, but was told that as long as the program was called Solar Energy by the United States, it could not be considered a weapons project. The same project resurfaced in the US under President Reagan. He moved it to the much larger budget of the Department of Defense and called it Star Wars. Since this is more recent history, I will not discuss the debate which raged over this phase of the plan.

By 1978, it was apparent to the US Military that communications in a nuclear hostile environment would not be possible using traditional methods of radio and television technology (Jane’s Military Communications 1978). By 1982, GTE Sylvania (Needham Heights, Massachusetts) had developed a command control electronic sub-system for the US Air Force’s Ground Launch Cruise Missiles (GLCM) that would enable military commanders to monitor and control the missile prior to launch both in hostile and non-hostile environments. The system contains six radio subsystems, created with visible light using a dark beam (not visible) and is resistant to the disruptions experienced by radio and television. Dark beams contribute to the formation of energetic plasma in the atmosphere. This plasma can become visible as smog or fog. Some has a different charge than the sun’s energy, and accumulates in places where the sun’s energy is absent, like the polar regions in the winter. When the polar spring occurs, the sun appears and repels this plasma, contributing to holes in the ozone layer. This military system is called: Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN). (See The SECOMII Communication System, by Wayne Olsen, SAND 78- 0391,Sandia Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 1978.) This innovative emergency radio system was apparently never implemented in Europe, and exists only in North America.