LONOSCATTER

The Second World War had gained for the radio sciences a prodigious volume of information. The rapid deployment of virtually every kind of radio system during the War provided a test field of incredible and prolific extent, one whose resulting acquisition of data required extensive study. Phenomena in which radiowaves behaved strangely in varieties of circumstances, whether man-made or natural, formed the resource from which surprising new radio systems were subsequently devised. Just before the advent of very large RADAR installations across the polar reaches of North America, military briefly employed tremendous arrays which were made to support the requirements of VHF and UHF transmitters.

The use of higher frequencies taught the existence of several natural reflective layers in the atmosphere. The older HF relays were plagued with all kinds of inconsistencies and interference phenomena, but the implementation of higher frequencies in VHF bands gave greater reach and better signal clarity. It was known that VHF signals could be literally guided along the upper boundary layer of the tropopause, using water vapor for the scattering layer. UHF beacons reached into the ionosphere, providing gready increased efficiencies of the same. From the end of the Second World War, and well into the several decades of Cold War, the United States established a great number of “ionospheric backscatter” systems. These, placed all along specific defensive lines, incorporated sufficient VHF cuid UHF power to beam very long range communications signals through equally enormous distances.

Very high carrier frequencies were used to reach across the long distances represented by the required line of defense. The Air Force directed the construction of a huge combination VHF-UHF Ionospheric “backscatter” telemetry system across the Pacific just after World War II. The Pacific Scatter System, consisted of eight radio relay links, connecting Hawaii, Midway, Wake, Ponape, Guam, Palau, the Phillipines, and Okinawa. This system was built to operate at 800 Megacycles. This operating fi-equency nearly matched those first experimental longwave RADAR frequencies of early World War II. Made specifically to implement the ionospheric scatter technique, the system was virtually as large as an early Marconi aerial array. The scatter technique itself required the employment of very powerful beacon energies, usually provided by large Klystron beam tubes. The Pacific Backscatter System used several VHF and UHF sources amounting to some 40 Kilowatt.

In the method employed, two separate antenna bays were rigidly fixed to a vast YAGI structure. The fixed geometry directed either VHF or UHF beacon energies at a fixed specified angle from zenith. UHF permitted greater access to atmospheric and high atmospheric ionization layers. Power was directed into either the tropopause (VHF array) or the ionosphere (UHF array), where signal beams were literally bent, in some cases literally “guided” along portions of the layers, and then reflected down at a specific “scatter angle”. At the general skip distance which had been prearranged, another station could receive the incoming communications, amplify and clean the signal, and then rebeam the messages to the next skip station. Engineers estimated the efficiencies of these stations, relying entirely upon weather and ionospheric conditions for the performance of this relay system. Signals initiated at one end of the relay were automatically dispatched across the system with little delay. These were the days before communications satellites, when ground relays were the only way for sending messages across great distances.

Scattered from such high ciltitude regions, an incredible signal reach was achieved with UHF. Relay transmitters such as these were all necessarily large structures, requiring equally large support facilities for their operation and maintenance. Riggers were constantly braving the winds to climb onto these multiwired structures and effect repairs. In each of these large and bombastic systems, the ineffective methods of Marconi were fully realized. The vast and inefficient power requirements of these monstrosities, coupled with the unwieldy size of the UHF arrays, evidenced yet more reason that Tesla had been absolutely correct in his predictions concerning wave radio and its final consequences as a tool for serving humanity. Despite his many simple and well-experienced admonitions. Military insisted on using the lossy wave energies, spending billions to defy the natural odds and, if it were possible, force nature

To work by their demands.

The Pacific Scatter System joined stations along a 7400 mile route. Itself barely practical for use in the Pacific, such extensive stations would be completely unfeasible in the Arctic; where a new defense line was necessitated against Stalinist Russia. But experiments with UHF scatter techniques were brief, the military preference moving directly into RADAR apphcations. After the Second World War the development of better and more powerful RADAR technology became a singular priority. Now applications technology was being harnessed to serve the military, and power refocused away from the general populace. As military took power from the oligarchy, it selectively privatized technology. In doing this, military removed power from the society from whom the technology came, and for whom the technology was originally planned. Knowledge, tools, access, and systems consolidated military power. Society waited for the “spin-offs”, a polite term for “the crumbs”. But defense was the alert requirement of the day, and military took the lead. This eventually would lead to conditions in the society which did not look upon military with favor, rather looking upon it with clear vision and recognizing an extension of the rulership, now in uniform.

On one research front, the establishment of a RADAR alert system, a veritable line of RADAR beacons, was first on the list. Because of the hardened dictatorial poise of Stalin and his predecessors, American military fully anticipated missile assaults across the polar route from the Soviet heartland. Every possible means of recormaissance was investigated toward these objectives. This would ultimately lead to the development of novel aeronautic and space technologies. Forming the prime national defensive technology, and stretching across the North American continent in Arctic latitudes, RADAR was the best existing means for early missile warning. SHF waves were reflected from deep portions of ionospheric layers normally not accessed vnth ordinary shortwave or VHF systems. They therefore provide defense corps with multiple communications and early-warning surveillance capabilities.

The systems required to scan the skies for aerial nuclear assaults were quickly assembled, being large versions of Second World War RADAR technologies. Upgraded by a vast electronics consortium, installations were amassed all along the north polar borders of North America. Anticipating and alerting aerial attacks of various kinds from the Soviet Union was the arduous responsibility of a new military corps. These necessities provoked an enormous assortment of theories and systems hardware in both weaponry and communications technologies. Several such technological avenues of note are represented by various systems used in RADAR surveillance, ionospheric jamming technology, super pulse RADAR weaponry, VLF and ELF communications, EMP weaponry, special radiation bombs, hybrid nuclear beam weaponry, space reconnaissance, space communications, radiation communication links, stimulated radiation beam weaponry, and a host of yet undisclosed hardware developed for military functions.