The United States has three ionospheric heating facilities: the HAARP, the HIPAS, near Fairbanks, Alaska, and (currently offline for modifications) one at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association (EISCAT) operates an ionospheric heating facility, capable of transmitting over 1 GW (1,000,000,000 watts) effective radiated power (ERP), near Tromsø in Norway. Russia has the Sura ionospheric heating facility, in Vasilsursk near Nizhniy Novgorod, capable of transmitting 190 MW ERP.

Another site, operated by military sub-contractor under unknown arrangement between the US and Canadian government, is located near Cape Race, Newfoundland, Canada, at N46° 38.649′ W53° 9.010′ There is minimal or no grid power available at this site, so this may be a passive listening post for the transmissions emitted by other HAARP sites.

In August 2002, further support for those critical of HAARP technology came from the State Duma (parliament) of Russia. The Duma published a critical report on the HAARP written by the international affairs and defense committees, signed by 90 deputies and presented to then President Vladimir Putin. The report claimed that “the U.S. is creating new integral geophysical weapons that may influence the near-Earth medium with high-frequency radio waves … The significance of this qualitative leap could be compared to the transition from cold steel to firearms, or from conventional weapons to nuclear weapons. This new type of weapons differs from previous types in that the near-Earth medium becomes at once an object of direct influence and its component.” However, given the timing of the Russian intervention, it is possible that it was related to a controversy at the time concerning the US withdrawal in June 2002 from the Russian-American Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. This high level concern is paralleled in the April 1997 statement by the U.S. Secretary of Defense over the power of such electromagnetic weaponry. Russia owns and operates an ionospheric heater system as powerful as the HAARP, called ‘Sura,’ which is located roughly 150 km from the city of Nizhny Novgorod.

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 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.

These concerns were amplified by Bernard Eastlund, a physicist who developed some of the concepts behind the HAARP in the 1980s and proposed using high-frequency radio waves to beam large amounts of power into the ionosphere, energizing its electrons and ions in order to disable incoming missiles and knock out enemy satellite communications. The US military became interested in the idea as an alternative to the laser-based Strategic Defense Initiative. However, Eastlund’s ideas were eventually dropped as SDI itself mutated into the more limited National Missile Defense of today. The contractors selected to build HAARP have denied that any of Eastlund’s patents were used in the development of the project.

After the physicists raised early concerns, the controversy was stoked by local activism. In September 1995, a book entitled Angels Don’t Play This HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology by the former teacher Nick Begich, Jr., son of the late Congressman Nick Begich (D-AK) and brother of U.S. Senator Mark Begich (D-AK), claimed that the project in its present stage could be used for “geophysical warfare.