The United States needs to incorporate the defense against directed energy weapons with the same intensity used developing anti-ballistic missile defenses. One of the major drawbacks to optical or directed energy systems is the inability to penetrate... Read more

The United States needs to incorporate the defense against directed energy weapons with the same intensity used developing anti-ballistic missile defenses. One of the major drawbacks to optical or directed energy systems is the inability to penetrate clouds or dense fog. Advances in technology are beginning to bring weather phenomena under our control. Greatly increased computing power and micronized delivery systems will allow us to create specific perturbations in local atmospheric conditions. These perturbations allow for the immediate and lasting ability to create localized fog or stratus cloud formations shielding critical assets against attack from energy based weapons. The future of nanotechnology will enable creation of stratus cloud formations to defeat DEW and optically targeted attacks on United Sates assets. The solution the weather control problem involves networked miniature balloons feeding and receiving data from a four-dimensional variation (4d-Var) computer model through a sensor and actor network. A network of diamond-walled balloons enters the area to be changed and then both measures and affects localized temperature and vapor content. This system effectively shortens the control loop of an atmospheric system to the point it can be managed. The capabilities in the diamond-walled balloons are based on the future of nanotechnology. Less