From charles.vorosmarty at unh.edu Fri Jun 15 06:06:58 2007 From: charles.vorosmarty at unh.edu (Charles Vorosmarty) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:06:58 -0400 Subject: [Nhpcrc] DARPA and POLAR Message-ID: CRREL folks may already be aware of this....others not. An interesting FYI attended to climate change. Charlie V. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. Readies for Polar Warfare (Updated) By Sharon Weinberger June 13, 2007 | 9:10:35 AMCategories: DarpaWatch Desert warfare may be today's concern, but the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is already looking to an entirely new area of military conflict: polar warfare. That's correct, DARPA wants technologies that could be used to ensure U.S. dominance in the polar regions. According to a new Broad Agency Announcement called Technologies for Persistent Operations in High LAtitude Regions (POLAR), "DARPA is interested in new high-risk/high-payoff technologies and operating concepts that would give U.S. military forces revolutionary capabilities that address operational challenges specific to polar environments." That includes weapons, navigations equipment, and way to make sure ships and planes can work in the harsh polar environment. Why polar warfare? Well, some decades ago, people thought space and space warfare would be the final frontier. They may still be right, but it turns out that thanks to global warming and melting ice, the polar regions may figure into future conflict as well. This absolutely fascinating report, "Naval Operations in an Ice Free Arctic," gives an idea of what the military is thinking. It turns out the U.S. is worried that as global warming melts polar ice, suddenly there's a whole new area of potential enemies, "comprised of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), terrorists and environmental activists." Maybe they're worried about Al Gore, too. Future scenarios include situations like this: "Environmental terrorists seize a research station in the Svalbard Archipelago being used by a U.S. based multi-national corporation for mineral and oil exploration in the Arctic. The terrorists have been using explosives to destroy equipment at the station, and are threatening personnel if the corporation does not cease all activities in the Arctic Ocean." Concerns about other countries figure in as well, naturally. This isn't the first time the people have worried about possible polar warfare. We wrote some time back in the DANGER ROOM about persistent rumors (although now debunked) that the Nazis had a secret base in Antarctica. I also remember polar warfare showing up in at least one techno-thriller (and I suspect more). In either case, it's clearly an area to keep an eye on. -- Charles J. V?r?smarty Director, Water Systems Analysis Group Morse Hall Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space University of New Hampshire Durham, NH 03824 Tel: 603-862-0850 FAX: 603-862-0587 Web site: http://www.wsag.unh.edu/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.sr.unh.edu/pipermail/nhpcrc/attachments/20070615/9776d73f/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001 40.gif Type: image/gif Size: 83 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.sr.unh.edu/pipermail/nhpcrc/attachments/20070615/9776d73f/attachment-0001.gif -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002 14.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 16734 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.sr.unh.edu/pipermail/nhpcrc/attachments/20070615/9776d73f/attachment-0001.jpg