I can upgrade the shelter-Chapter 531 - 429: Weather Controller

Meteorological weapons are not a new concept, nor are they science fiction. Even as far back as World War II, humans have had initial applications of meteorological weapons.

By removing fog at airports to ensure aircraft takeoff and landing, and creating dense fog to cover troops crossing rivers, these were all early applications of meteorological weapons.

The technology for truly artificial weather intervention emerged in the 1940s when the Federation’s scientists successfully conducted freezing nuclei formation experiments, laying the foundation for the development of artificial weather modification.

Since then, the Federation began experiments applying artificial weather intervention technology in the military field.

Starting in 1966, the Federation secretly carried out artificial rainfall for seven years on the Vietnam battlefield to disrupt traffic, making it difficult for the Vietnam People’s Army to mobilize and transport supplies.

The entire process was divided into two phases: the experimental phase in Laos in 1966, and the actual operations phase during the rainy seasons of 1967 to 1972 in the narrow strip of land at the borders of Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

The method mainly involved using WC-130E weather reconnaissance planes and RF-4C reconnaissance planes to shoot smoke bombs filled with silver iodide or lead iodide into cumulus clouds in the operational area. These smoke bombs would ignite while falling, creating artificial nuclei to induce rain.

The Federation’s artificial rainfall operation is considered a precedent for using meteorological weapons for weather warfare, marking the beginning of applying meteorological weapons on the battlefield.

The term "meteorological weapon" emerged in the 1970s and is characterized by its strong concealment.

Sometimes the consequences of artificially influencing the weather mix with natural weather changes, and the effects of artificial intervention at a certain time and place may only be evident hours, days, or even weeks later, far from the target area.

People find it hard to identify the link between these consequences and artificial intervention operations, making it easy for attackers to evade the responsibility of initiating war.

Although as early as 1977, the United Nations issued the "Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques," and in the 1992 "United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change," it reaffirmed the ban on developing meteorological weapons, the research on weather control technology led by the Federation and other Western military powers never ceased.

Meteorological weapons embody the concept of total warfare as strategic weapons, possessing destructive capabilities comparable to nuclear and biochemical weapons. Moreover, their use is covert, complicating accountability pursuit by victim nations.

Thus, during the bipolar rivalry era, how could Suyia willingly fall behind and be threatened by the Federation’s meteorological weapons?

Therefore, during the most intense years of the bipolar rivalry in the last century, Suyia also heavily invested in its meteorological weapons research and achieved quite remarkable results, even completing a weather controller reminiscent of something out of a science fiction novel.

However, this weather controller had technical flaws, as it could only affect the weather within a certain range centered around the instrument, not allowing for long-distance influence or control, and the cost per use was exceedingly high, requiring extensive preparation work.

This rendered the weather controller somewhat of a white elephant for Suyia at the time—marginally useful yet regrettable to discard.

Suyia had activated the machine a few times, managing only to adjust the weather around its capital, merely avoiding two droughts.

Of course, for the Suyians of that era, this level of weather controller was already an impressive achievement, at least capable of defending the capital from the Federation’s meteorological weapon attacks.

Moreover, the Suyians did not hesitate to continue investing, intending to further the research.

However, as the economic situation in the later Suyia era worsened, and with Suyia’s eventual disintegration, the successor, Lucia, lacked the capability to continue these studies.

The Suyia-era space program was forcibly terminated, even completed space shuttles were abandoned to rot, and many research institutions disbanded due to a lack of support, just like the meteorological weapons research.

The entire weather controller, along with the associated base, was sealed off. Although Lucia’s officials tried several times to restart research, they were too impoverished to fund the revival of this research, let alone manage to maintain the sealed base.

When Chen Xin and others arrived here, it resulted in a situation where the base gates, like those they had seen in Siberia, hadn’t been opened in decades.

Gazing at the dust stirred up as the gates opened, and the thick layer of dust covering the surrounding equipment and various items, Chen Xin couldn’t help but say, "Even without funds for maintenance, you haven’t gone decades without even cleaning?"

"The confidentiality level here is very high; no one has come in since it was sealed," said the accompanying Lucia official, who was evidently used to this sort of situation. After all, when Suyia disintegrated, they inherited an overly rich legacy, had become accustomed to these matters, and hardly paid them any mind.

In fact, this research base and the Siberian weapons test site previously seen by Chen Xin and others belong to the type of being sealed, with archives left in warehouses for decades without attention.

If it weren’t for the fact that Lucia’s leader had once been from Suyia’s intelligence department and had some understanding of these matters, having taken an inventory of Suyia’s era legacy after coming to power, these items might very well have been forgotten, with no one remembering Suyia ever conducted these studies.

Chen Xin could only shake his head helplessly, stepping through the thick dust on the ground into the research base’s interior, curious to see what Suyia’s weather controller looked like at that time.

However, when Chen Xin entered the base, he only understood through the accompanying Lucia official’s introduction that the so-called weather controller was actually the entire base.

The weather controller manufactured by the Suyians in those days extended the consistent approach and style of Suyia’s military weapons: impractically large and crude, considering only achieving functionality then directly relying on brute force to enhance performance.

As a result, the entire weather controller became extremely large. Although its core component wasn’t particularly enormous, its ancillary equipment required the entire base to accommodate it.

Additionally, attempting to use this weather controller once required a dedicated nuclear power plant for its power supply, alongside pre-deployed aircraft spraying specific chemical agents in the relevant airspace to enhance its effects, making the process quite cumbersome.

If only the cumbersome steps and significant investment were deemed acceptable costs by Suyia, then its limitation to affect only weather around its vicinity made the Lucia officials see it as a white elephant post-Suyia.

This led to their willingness to use what appeared to be an important strategic weapon in trade with the Flame Country.