[Nhpcrc] DARPA and POLAR

[Charles Vorosmarty]

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 
<mailto:sharonweinberger at hotmail.com> June 13, 
2007 | 9:10:35 AMCategories: 
<http://blog.wired.com/defense/darpa_watch/index.html>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.
<http://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/BAA07-40/SynopsisP.html>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.
<http://blog.wired.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/06/13/ice.jpg> 
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, 
<http://www.natice.noaa.gov/icefree/FinalArcticReport.pdf>"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 
<http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/04/scientists_debu.html>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. Vörösmarty
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