In contrast, the Ilyushin was built to resupply Russian troops in Afghanistan. Heavier than some coastal ships, the 220-ton plane's wide and tremendously strong wing, triple-slotted trailing edge flaps, spoilers and nearly full-span leading edge slats allowed it to come in over mountain peaks and drop quickly onto relatively small, unimproved strips like a huge Super Cub, where its rugged undercarriage and 20 tires absorbed the jolts - before climbing steeply back out “while being shot at with Stingers.”

More than 900 Ilyushin-76s of all models have been built, mostly for the Russian military. But over 300 are in service with Russia's national airline Aeroflot, and other civilian operators. [airliners.net]

Not yet available at your local surplus store after the conflict that spelled the end of the Soviet Union, the IL-76 requires no alteration to fight hurricanes. Like the C-130s deployed to drop desiccant into hurricanes off the U.S. Gulf Coast, “all the tanks go in on railroad tracks,” Robinson explained. But the IL-76 has five-times the capacity of the C-130. And its 18,000 gallons of fire water or hurricane coolant can be loaded in just 15 minutes.

But don't try with this with any other airplane. When150,000 pounds of liquid payload are jettisoned in just seconds, an aircraft's center of balance “gets completely screwy,” Robinson said. It will enter a steep dive or climb, its pilots will over control, and… “You're going to lose the plane.”

That's why the first converted DC-10 refueling tankers “hit the trees,” Robinson went on. They have to fly so slow for firefighting - just 151 knots - a 747 or DC-10 coming in low over a fire right on the edge of a stall can hit a bird or a downdraft, and “go right in."

Plus, these pregnant water bombers carry their payloads in external tanks just six-inches off the runway, making them extremely tricky to take-off and land. The gigantic IL-76 carries its payload safely sequestered inside a massive cargo bay.

In Greece, where prolonged drought linked to global warming caused the worst fires in a century to burn out of control, the Greek ambassador called Tom Robinson for help. Robinson called Moscow. When his Ilyushin landed in Athens, the fires had been raging for a week, despite heroic efforts by 1,000 firefighters using 400 pieces of apparatus. CNN was calling the fires, “unstoppable.” A pair of conventional water bombers and four choppers were still grounded by high winds in mountainous terrain.

But not the Ilyusion. It took just 15 minutes to fill its water tanks for its first run. Using its onboard heat-seeking computers, the giant plane made its initial pass parallel to the biggest blaze to assess the best approach. Then it turned onto its operational run. In just over ten seconds, the one-kilometer-wide fire was… gone.

The four-engine jet landed, reloaded and returned to the remaining fire. Seconds later, it too was completely extinguished.

“In 30 seconds total, the fires were out.” Robinson recalls. The aerial firefighters were hailed as “heroes” and the event a “miracle” by ecstatic Greeks.

Now imagine an IL-76 crammed with super cold nitrogen ranging nearly 4,000 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 420 knots to seek out and destroy a newly forming hurricane. Using its heat-seeking gear to mark the core of the hurricane's forming eye, the plane's five-person crew cinches their harnesses tight. Making a single run, the king-size cargo plane shoots a mile-long swath of pressurized liquid nitrogen nearly the width of a football field into the budding storm.

BYE-BYE HURRICANES
OR BYE-BYE US?

By William Thomas

 

Wouldn't this chill a baby hurricane instantly?

“If you can lower the ambient temperature in a forming hurricane, you can disrupt it,” Robinson says. By delivering 18,000 gallons of super-cool nitrogen mixture into a hurricane's newly-forming eye, “we believe we stop hurricanes.”

Problem is, if the liquid nitrogen leaked inside the aircraft, it would supercool the aircraft's structure. In a flash, the airplane would crack and “fall out of the sky” like a ruptured potato-chip bag.

But if that nitrogen could be mixed with a nontoxic compound that would make it less hazardous to airplane structures…

NOAA wants to try. Robinson revealed that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in cooperation with the US Air force and three Florida universities, is offering a multi-million grant to nitrogen-fix hurricanes

“If we can do this full scale experiment with universities in Florida with funding from NOAA, I think we're going to change the world,” Robinson asserted.

But when it comes to world-changing, what if we start using nitrogen to suppress hurricanes - and accelerate global warming?

While plain nitrogen is harmless, reactive nitrogen compounds called nitrous oxide are much worse than CO2 in impacting climate. Even today, the unprecedented release of millions of tons of nitrogen fertilizer and vehicle exhaust has been dubbed “the biggest global change that nobody has ever heard of.”

When combined with oxygen, a single compound of nitrogen oxide lingers in the atmosphere for a century - and is 300-times more potent a heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide.

“Those of us who are studying it are pretty scared,” says Menlo Park ecologist, Stuart Weisinert.
[Inside Bay Area Aug 12/07; University of Virginia Press Release May 15/08]

Right now, the money offered by NOAA is not enough to buy, fly and maintain a single Ilyushin.
No worries, though. The Bank of China is eager to step in with financing.

Why are you going anywhere else, the Chinese asked Robinson? “We are the masters of weather modification. We guaranteed no rain for the Beijing Olympics - and there was no rain. We can start and stop the weather when we want to.”

“We need an American flag on our planes,” Robinson responded.

The Chinese said they understood. But no American airplane can carry enough payload to cool off a hurricane.

The Russian government, which controls deployments of its Ilyushins, is also keen to use their giant water bomber to erase big oil spills by dropping oil-eating enzymes called surfactants. As a member of a three-man environmental emergency response team, I didn't see surfactants working too well in the oil-flooded Persian Gulf after Desert Storm. But maybe communist bugs are hungrier.

Of course, the Kremlin is also eager to bankroll the efforts of Global Emergency Response to snuff nascent hurricanes.

“It scares the hell out of me,” Robinson wrote to me. “I am hoping to make contact with more benign U.S. sources to keep this technology stateside.”

Should we be messing with hurricanes? Just as some forest fires are needed to replenish soil and nurture new growth, hurricanes act as huge atmospheric air conditioners, shifting large masses of rain-cooled air to where it's needed most.

And that rain can be vital.

“I look at this with a little apprehension,” Robinson admitted. Drying up hurricanes means that a lot of moisture is not going to fall where it might be needed. You could cause droughts, he warned. “You have to be very careful.”

We may never know. At least not in the United States, where HAARP's risky rays are the hurricane-movers of choice.

Ironically, the big Russian planes that might have extinguished Katrina were used instead to bring in portable hospitals and beds during that disaster. [Interview with William Thomas Dec 20/09; waterbomber.org; airliners.net]