What are "environmental war" and "meteorological warfare"?

The so-called "environmental warfare", also known as "geophysical warfare", is a means of war that artificially changes the state of the natural environment and serves military purposes. Including creating rainstorms, floods, earthquakes, landslides, landslides, tsunamis, magnetic storms, etc., the purpose is to create operational conditions that are beneficial to oneself but not to the enemy, so as to improve the operational situation, change the balance of forces and speed up the operational process. Carrying out environmental warfare requires technical and material forces to change the environment.

In ancient times, water and fire were often used to create conditions for defeating the enemy, which was the embryonic form of environmental warfare. Since the Second World War, there have been changes in environmental conditions to affect the operational process. For example, in April 1945, when the Soviet army was crossing the Oder River, the German army blew up the reservoir dam in the upper reaches of the river, which flooded the starting point of the Soviet army crossing the river and seriously blocked the crossing passage. After World War II, some western countries set up environmental research institutions to explore various technologies to change the environment. For example, try to use the energy of nuclear explosion to stimulate earthquakes and tsunamis; Test the influence of artificial magnetic storm on radio communication, navigation and radar; Conduct experiments to control typhoons; Use storms to attack each other, etc. At present, environmental change technology is still in the research stage, but judging from its development trend, it may become a reality in future wars by using some technology to change the environment to achieve some tactical and strategic goals. Therefore, this issue has attracted the attention of international public opinion.

1974, the UN Disarmament Commission first discussed the issue of "environmental war", which was criticized by many international organizations. They stressed that environmental war will have a wide, far-reaching and serious impact on human survival, and effective measures must be taken to stop actions to change the environmental state for military purposes. 1976 12 10 The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques.

"meteorological warfare" is an integral part of environmental war, which can also be called "weather war" or "climate war". It uses artificial methods to influence the local weather and climate as a weapon to promote the action. The influence on weather and climate can not be separated from certain meteorological conditions, natural geographical conditions and technical conditions. During World War II, the United States developed an atomizing agent. 1September, 943, the 5th Army of the U.S. Army used fogging agent to create a fog layer about 5km long and about 1.6km wide on the Italian Volturno River, which successfully shielded the troops from crossing the river. After World War II, due to the important breakthrough of weather modification science and technology, some countries put forward various meteorological warfare schemes. For example, artificial rainfall causes flooding and traffic jams; Weaken the enemy's economy through man-made drought; Artificially guiding typhoons to attack enemy ports and coastal facilities; Artificially induced lightning causes forest fires; And the influence of man-made disasters on the climate in a certain area. During the Vietnam War, the US military used planes to throw silver iodide bombs into the clouds in an attempt to cause flooding in some areas through artificial rainfall, which hindered the mobility and material transportation of the Vietnamese army.