Reply #44: To answer your question in an unclassified manner... [View All]

[haele]

No. (If I go into the classified manner, I'll have ta kill ya!) :hi:

The test at that time was for a conventional shipboard missile firing or fire control system, not countermeasures or jamming, or any other possible system that might use unconventional warfare. In any range area, during the firing test scenario, all other units in the area are in "EMCON" or "Emitter Control", so the missile won't mistake them for the target and home in on a false signal. Should a remote tracking site use something as high powered as the supposed HAARP or ELF technology in the area, even to surreptitiously track the exercises, it would cause enough havoc on the range as to literally waste the entire test. I know for a fact that in this budget, the Navy refuses wasting that much money (approximately $10 - $12 million total per test when you include all the components used) of it's normal operational budget just to satisfy some spook's experiment; especially since this particular round of testing that has been mentioned was funded through regular R & D channels.

In itself - for those who are interested, AEGIS is an coordinated air search/air defense radar system - any testing that is categorized as "AEGIS" testing will have to do with controlling or tracking solid items flying in the sky. Not with the science fictionish testing of super-duper secret "high powered lasers that can slice through metal, high orbit satellite killers, or other UHF frequency beam emitters that supposedly fry electronics and/or destroy cities a hundred miles away".
The other issue is that the AEGIS cruiser or destroyer is not nuclear powered, so it can't even possibly create enough power to sustain such systems onboard.
As a side, I could possibly see an AEGIS ship participating in a top secret HAARP or ELF testing - should the researchers into these systems require testing their experimental systems against that class ship - but not in the type of testing that was brought up in this thread.

If anyone is really interested in the unclassified (or minimally classified) AEGIS information and updates, check on the NAVSEA or NWSC PHD web sites, or better yet, in Janes.

I'd trust what Janes has to say about any weapons systems or weapons research, they've been pretty up to date and have accurate evaluations of almost everything - even "top secret" research - that's been going on over the years.

It's not that I'm discounting all of the tinfoil over HAARP, ELF, and other such "projects" - I'm just reminding people that there's a big difference between all the Area 51 type speculation that's been going around over the past couple decades and reality. The amount of "discretionary" military research funding that's been "lost" over the past 20 years does not add up to even half the equivalent spending necessary for all the speculative super-Sci-Fi/X-Files-type projects that have been rumored to be going on over the same amount of time, even if "they" are recycling test beds and components.

Haele