NEWS AND ANALYSIS:
The Chinese military is developing weather modification weapons, based on civilian meteorological controls, for future use on the battlefield, according to a think tank report.
Beijing for decades has been developing infrastructure to control local weather and the People’s Liberation Army is now discussing the weaponization of civilian capabilities, the report by the CCP Biothreats Initiative states.
A 2023 report produced by China’s National University of Defense Technology said that civilian meteorological tools are being mobilized for warfare, the report stated.
China’s military asserted that modern warfare requires moving beyond weather forecasting to “meteorological environment shaping capabilities,” the report said.
Environment shaping by the People’s Liberation Army is aimed at providing an operational advantage for PLA forces.
The development is not limited to theoretical terminology, according to the study.
L.J. Eads, a former Air Force intelligence officer and author of the report, said one of the more troubling elements of the weather weapons work is that China is a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, known as ENMOD.
“Yet the PLA continues to pursue and study the military potential of weather modification and meteorological environment shaping, raising serious questions about where the Chinese Communist Party draws the line between legitimate weather-modification capabilities and the hostile environmental manipulation ENMOD was designed to prohibit,” said Mr. Eads, with Parallax Advanced Research.
The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) defines “weather warfare” as warfare that artificially influences weather or climate for military purposes, creating meteorological conditions unfavorable to an adversary while advantageous to friendly forces.
Methods for the PLA could include producing heavy rains to produce flooding and transportation disruption, artificial fog to hide forces and degrade electro-optical reconnaissance and precision-guided weapons.
Other weather weapons will seek to remove fog in support of Chinese air and naval forces, manipulate lightning strikes, produce droughts and flooding, create temperature modification and influence typhoon movements.
“Chinese authors characterize the development trajectory of such capabilities as moving toward ’systematization, diversification, concealment and precise quantification,’” the report said.
The official military outlet, the PLA Daily, reported in 2019 that weather weapons technology will artificially “interfere with, damage or directly destroy” enemy weapons.
The PLA now believes weather control is attractive for warfare since atmospheric conditions provide enormous energy and artificial effects can be concealed as part of normal weather.
The PLA article identified artificial floods, droughts, fog and fog removal, temperature alteration, lightning control, and typhoon modification as potential military applications.
Other Chinese military writings state that natural weather changes can conceal weather weapons and allow the PLA to achieve attack surprise without the enemy knowing the environmental changes were imposed, the report said.
According to the report, China in 2020 published a paper by the Ordnance Industry Automation discussing self-destructing fragments for “meteorological ammunition” and a “meteorological weapon.” The ammunition was described as rocket-launched material sent 1.8 miles into the air.
“Taken together, these developments suggest that China’s most important pathway toward a future weather-warfare capability is unlikely to involve a discrete, exotic weapon system,” the report said.
“Effective environmental manipulation instead requires an integrated architecture combining meteorological satellites, radar and ground observations, atmospheric models, communications networks, forecasting systems, command-and-control, delivery platforms, and modification agents,” it said.
The report concludes that China does not appear to possess an operational strategic weapon that can create hurricanes, redirect typhoons, produce global droughts or otherwise control climate systems.
Evidence instead reveals China is working on an extensive national capability to manipulate certain localized atmospheric conditions, possesses specialized aircraft, rockets, meteorological ammunition, sensing networks, and command infrastructure to support weather modification — capabilities linked to military requirements.
“Chinese military researchers are simultaneously moving conceptually from merely forecasting the meteorological environment toward actively shaping it,” the report said.
Chinese weather warfare appear to be tactical — localized rain enhancement or suppression, artificial fog creation or removal, cloud removal, and other effects that would influence enemy mobility, surveillance, targeting, aviation, or logistics.
Strategic-scale climate warfare, while mainly speculative, will be boosted by advances in atmospheric sensing, high-resolution numerical modeling, artificial intelligence, and autonomous delivery systems, the report said.
PACOM commander ready for war with China
United States military forces in the Pacific are ready for conflict with China and have ample supplies of advanced anti-ship missiles and torpedoes needed for battling an invasion of Taiwan, according to the admiral in charge of the U.S. Pacific Command.
Adm. Sam Paparo, the PACOM commander, said his forces are ready to respond to an invasion but any decision to intervene in the Taiwan Strait would be made by the president.
Asked if weapons shortages from the conflict in Iran have altered his calculus for a Taiwan Strait conflict, Adm. Paparo said the U.S. is “expending some weapons” and learning from the use of the weapons.
The Iran conflict has not depleted the stocks of high-end anti-ship missiles that would be needed to thwart a Chinese invasion. Also, torpedo supplies have not been drawn down in the Iran war. Those weapons would be critical in any conflict with China.
“But we can’t walk away from the fact that we have employed some of these [anti-missile] interceptors,” he said. “We have to increase our rates of production of those interceptors,” Adm. Paparo told Honolulu’s multimedia outlet Hawaii News Now.
The conflict against Iran also is providing lessons for 21st century warfare, including artificial intelligence-enabled combat, he said.
“And on the back end of that we’re going to have to get healthy in some of those weapons,” he said.
Adm. Paparo said he is not an advocate for conflict in the region and he is the “ready commander” for any future combat.
“It’s not my job to sign America up for conflict. And it’s not my job to shrink from it. It’s my job to make sure that the commander in chief has the options that he’s ready to prevail,” he said.
Much of the current defense funding now in Congress will for missiles that are needed to deter China.
China is building 800 or more missiles per year, Adm. Paparo said, and thus defensive missiles are needed while offensive missiles are necessary to “impose costs” on China if needed, he said.
Warfare currently is changing with the addition of information warfare, drone warfare and deep precision strike weapons.
Those weapons represent much more important element of national power than in the past, he said. As a result, deterrence required demonstrating to adversaries that the risk of war far outweighs the benefits.
Deterring China requires both imposing costs and defense against Chinese threats, he said.
China’s announced goal of being ready for an invasion of China next year coincides with the 100th anniversary of the PLA’s founding is Aug. 1, 2027, is not a deadline for action.
“It just means that they’ve set that as a marker to be ready and we have to be readier every day so that we can continue to support America’s policy on Taiwan,” he said.
Congress urged to bolster counterintelligence
U.S. counterintelligence agencies are ill-suited to confronting new and increased foreign threats from China, Russia and other adversaries, a panel of experts told the House intelligence oversight panel on Wednesday.
Frank Cilluffo, director of Auburn University’s McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure, testified that national security threats, especially from China, have expanded beyond the current capabilities of the FBI, CIA and other counterintelligence agencies.
Traditional counterspy missions of protecting secrets and neutralizing foreign spies and penetration agents remain important. But renewed efforts are needed to protect against Chinese exploitation of American engineers, researchers, startup companies, venture capital firms and supply chains, Mr. Cilluffo told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Beijing spends years targeting industries, institutions, and technologies with cyberattacks, investment, research, talent recruitment, supply chains and intermediaries, he said.
U.S. intelligence defenses however are spread across multiple agencies and departments and lack the ability to understand the full picture of Chinese intelligence gathering.
“The threat has changed. Our counterintelligence model must change with it,” he said.
Douglas Feith, a national security expert with the Hudson Institute, warned that China is buying up areas near U.S. military bases and could conduct covert drone attacks similar to the 2025 drone raid by Ukraine inside Russia on strategic bomber bases known as Operation Spiderweb.
U.S. intelligence agencies must leverage AI to better confront and counter Chinese and other adversary threats, he said. “The United States needs a new counterintelligence approach for the AI age,” Mr. Feith said.
Seth Jones, head of defense and security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, testified that the U.S. is more vulnerable to threats from adversaries than ever before.
“In my view we are not set up to deal with the evolving threat as it stands today and as it is likely to evolve in the foreseeable future,” Mr. Jones said.
Mr. Jones warned that the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in subversion inside the U.S. and is bolstering disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks with AI. “The U.S. needs to understand it is essentially in a wartime environment and I think there needs to be a fundamental shift in mindset to help make the U.S. population more resilient,” he said.
Rep. Rick Crawford, committee chairman, said the current threat environment is severe and includes whole-of-society subversion campaigns in the U.S. by Russia and China.
“Is it possible the counterintelligence equivalent of 9/11 waits undetected because we are failing to adapt a decentralized system where parochial agency interests, not national interests, determine strategy?” the Arkansas Republican asked.
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