HAARP reprieve

Just as the US Air Force was about to start dismantling the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program in Gakona, Alaska, in mid-June, the Department of Defense said to hold back. A few weeks later, on 2 July, air force secretary Deborah Lee James wrote to HAARP proponent Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) that the air force “is willing to slow the closure process and defer irreversible dismantling of the transmitter site.”

Now the scientific community has until 15 May 2015 to come up with several million dollars in transition money and a business plan for running the world’s most powerful ionospheric heater (see Physics Today, April 2014, page 22 ). The University of Alaska Fairbanks is leading the effort.

Robert McCoy, director of the university’s Geophysical Institute, says he is talking to other universities, federal agencies, and scientists and funding agencies in other countries about managing the facility, most likely on a pay-per-use basis.

Despite the reprieve, the air force is removing “government property not essential to operations” while retaining “critical hardware to maximize the potential to reactivate the site,” according to James’s letter. HAARP users are scrambling to remove, or produce receipts for, equipment provided by their universities. In particular, researchers worry that the air force may take or damage millions of dollars in diagnostic instruments. If the instruments had to be replaced, says McCoy, taking over HAARP would be a “no-go.” Saving HAARP “is still an uphill battle,” he says, “but at least we bought some time.”