The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is an investigation project to "provide a research facility to conduct pioneering experiments in ionospheric phenomena... used to analyze basic ionospheric properties and to assess the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for communications and surveillance purposes.
The project site is north of Gakona, Alaska, just West of the Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park. An environmental impact statement led to permission for an array of up to 180 antennas to be erected. The HAARP has been constructed at the previous site of an over-the-horizon radar installation.
The objectives of the HAARP project became the subject of controversy in the mid-1990s, following claims that the antennas could be used as a weapon. A small group of American physicists aired complaints in scientific journals such as Physics and Society, charging that the HAARP could be seeking ways to destroy or disable enemy spacecraft[citation needed] or disrupt communications over large portions of the planet.
The physicist critics of the HAARP have had little complaint about the project's current stage, but have expressed fears that it could in the future be expanded into an experimental weapon, especially given that its funding comes from the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Research Laboratory.
There are a diversity of popular theories surrounding HAARP, crediting it with being a secret missile tracking/defense system, earthquake tracking or causing system, weather control, mind control, or having some other secret function.
