Trying to reason with hurricane season
Extreme weather in modern strategic planning
In 1958, newspapers speculated on satellites predicting and potentially controlling weather. These fictional scenarios reflect concerns about the strategic implications of the weather. While hurricanes and typhoons cannot be controlled, their increasing severity must be factored into military planning, especially in the Indo-Pacific.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) defines resilience as ‘the capacity to prepare for, resist, respond to and quickly recover from shocks and disruptions.’ While hurricanes and typhoons cannot be controlled, these storms and their effects can be utilised both by nation states and non-state actors for military advantage. These threats must be recognised, and preparations made to counter or mitigate them as part of resilience.
Recent studies have shown that hurricanes are becoming more destructive. In addition to this, the past several years have included predictions of highly active seasons. There has been a noticeable increase in the number and intensity of cyclone storms in both the Pacific and the Caribbean, driven in part by warmer ocean temperatures and changing climate patterns. Since 1950, the United States (US) has seen an average of 15.2 hurricanes making landfall annually, many of them along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast from Florida to Virginia.
These storms and their destructive forces have impacted military preparedness and operations in the past. Early examples include the two typhoons of 1274 and 1281 which saved Japan from the Mongol invasion fleet and protected the home islands. The Japanese saw these storms as proof of divine intervention and protection, and they remain important in Japanese mythology. Military planners saw the effects which typhoons could produce.
While it could be argued that these earlier problems with tropical cyclones were due to the lack of modern weather forecasting and ships which were not constructed to withstand such storms, both the Imperial Japanese Navy and the US Pacific Fleet suffered heavy losses during the Second World War because of large typhoons and the hubris of commanders. Discussing Task Force 38, Admiral Chester Nimitz commented that the ‘total damage to other units of the Third Fleet represented a more crippling blow to that fleet than it might be expected to suffer in anything less than a major action.’ While storms have wreaked havoc with navies in the past, the US Navy is adamant that these types of storms are no longer a major problem.
Other navies have long confronted similar challenges. British forces in the Caribbean during the 18th and 19th centuries frequently suffered ship losses due to hurricanes, complicating colonial defence and logistics. Similarly, Australia’s experience with Cyclone Tracy in 1974, which devastated Darwin, emphasised the importance of integrating tropical cyclone planning into civil and defence infrastructure.
The consequences of these storms on the readiness of armed forces – Britain’s as well as those of its allies and partners – should be explored, alongside how they can be utilised against allied nations, especially as such storms get larger.
The first consequence which needs to be examined is the most obvious one: damage to infrastructure. Many major US naval and air force bases lie in storm-prone areas. The dispersal of aircraft to bases and airfields inland to protect them from storms causes wear and tear and stress on personnel, and it does not protect the infrastructure. In 2018, Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 storm, destroyed Tyndall Air Force Base as well as destroying or damaging 10% of the American F-22 Raptor fleet. Taking such a large amount of the US air arsenal out of service in a single day does remind one of Nimitz’s comments. But these concerns are not unique to American forces. The Australian Defence Force has begun to climate-harden its northern bases in response to cyclone threats. Likewise, the Japan Self-Defence Forces conduct regular typhoon preparedness drills. The Ministry of Defence (MOD), with long-standing garrisons in the Caribbean, also incorporates hurricane resilience into planning for its overseas forces and humanitarian response assets.
An enemy could strike knowing that US air power is weakened. Relocations disrupt war plans and consume stockpiles of parts and resources needed for operations. Repairs also divert funds from training and procurement. If an adversary planned its operations to utilise the effects of a tropical cyclone, it could be facing an American force already bloodied by nature.
A complex weather forecasting system helps to reduce the risks posed by storms. But what happens if this is taken away? One of the primary ways of tracking tropical cyclones is through a satellite network, which is vastly superior to relying solely on weather stations. Of course, cyber attacks on this network could blind weather forecasters at critical moments. Since storms are becoming hurricanes and gaining strength at an alarming pace, an enemy could attack the system at a critical moment, resulting in incorrect weather forecasts, which in turn could cause military installations to be unprepared for storms.
This vulnerability extends to European and Asian weather agencies, such as the European Union’s EUMETSAT and Japan’s Himawari satellites, which are key providers of storm data. A cyber attack could degrade regional storm awareness, complicating civilian evacuations and localised military coordination. Crippling or damaging weather forecasting infrastructure would wreak havoc, just as some forecast would happen if an adversary attacked the Global Positioning System (GPS).
Military planners may need to consider a ‘season of war’, similar to historical winter pauses. Typhoon season could influence operations in the Indo-Pacific. For example, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) might act against Taiwan around storms. A typhoon which damaged Guam or Hawaii could give the PRC an advantage in conducting offensive operations, knowing that American forces would be in a less than desirable place for retaliation. Similarly, India’s Andaman and Nicobar Command – critical to its Indian Ocean strategy – sits in a cyclone-prone zone. Australia’s strategic installations in Darwin and Tindal have also been affected by storm disruptions. The United Kingdom’s (UK) engagement in the Indo-Pacific, notably through Carrier Strike Groups 2021 and 2025, reflects an increasing recognition that climate factors, especially typhoons, must be integrated into long-range maritime planning. Military planners will need to understand the offensive and defensive opportunities which the tropical cyclone season offers.
Likewise, irregular warfare operations might be hampered or assisted by tropical storms. While storms could wreck the operations of Somali pirates and others, they could also allow non-state actors to attack under the cover of storms, with these attacks potentially damaging already vulnerable infrastructure or supply chains.
Lessons learned and recommendations
Storms can cripple transportation and national defence infrastructure. Adversaries such as the PRC and Russia, who treat all disruption as warfare, might exploit such vulnerabilities. Storm resilience and planning should be part of multinational military exercises, especially in the Indo-Pacific. Institutions such as the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Australia’s Defence College or Japan’s National Defence Academy should incorporate tropical cyclone response scenarios into wargaming, fostering interoperability and regional resilience.
Some recommendations to address the challenges posed by storms are as follows:
Develop resilient weather-tracking infrastructure immune to cyberattacks, and train personnel in manual forecasting as backup.
Collaborate with engineers to harden base infrastructure.
Include weather effects in wargaming and professional military education curricula – weather knowledge should be part of every planner’s toolkit.
Improve plans for aircraft dispersal to avoid excessive wear and maintain readiness.
Address misinformation around storm responses – in the past, rumours and disinformation have undermined civil-military trust and slowed recovery.
The armed forces of free and open nations must prepare for hurricane season. Developing resilience to storms is needed. But, just like any scenario which is planned for, there are both opportunities and challenges in the storms. It is worth remembering the two typhoons which saved Japan from the Mongols. Storms crushed one military, but saved another.
Edward Salo, PhD, is Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Arkansas State University. He is a former Fellow of the Modern War Institute at West Point and the Joint Special Operations University, as well as a former Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army. He also served as a member of New America’s Nuclear Security Futures Group.
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To refuse to become resilient and to meet a changing world is sinful.
This is a critical issue and we are so far behind the power curve we're looking up from the ground.
Think of things this way: our planet - the one God gave us to take care of for Him in His name - is, in a mechanistic sense, one big heat engine. Water, that one molecule that gives Life to everything, is the means of heat transport and systems balancing. It makes up most of our bodies, as well. And oceans are massive heat sinks.
The Earth most of us were born onto had a happy and perfect condition that was close to water's triple point - the point at which it can exist in all three of it's forms: liquid, gas, and ice. The Earth uses water to move heat packages around the system - around the globe. Release heat for rain, take up heat for ice, flow the heat around as liquid. Water's tri-phasic nature is what moves everything.
It's miraculous.
The oceans of the world control everything. We think of only the oceans and rivers as liquids, and the atmosphere as a gas, but in actuality - the atmosphere is also a liquid. Just a thinner one.
The oceans create all tropical cyclones we know as typhoons and hurricanes when an area of relatively lower pressure forms up over warm tropical waters. The warm water is food-source. It's the womb and the nursery. Their cores are warm, from the warm water at the surface and to a certain depth. Air begins to rise and takes with it water vapour from the surface of the ocean while at the same time cooler air sinks into the forming depression and warms rapidly. Pretty soon, the dance of these warm and cooler parcels plus the coriolis effect of the Earth causes the whole thing to start spinning. The storm builds a warm column from ocean surface to the skies - this then links Heaven and Earth and when it gets big enough, it drags colder deeper water up to the surface of the oceans, thus connecting what is Below with that which is Above. And then - it follows, in it's spinning dance, the warmest current it can find in the ocean to feed on, to fuel - with HEAT. It turns the Heavens into a giant spinning battering ram.
The oceans control everything.
Now, the oceans have stored so much heat their pH is changing. That's why the weather patterns are doing what they're doing. But the oceans bought us 50 years of Grace.
The oceans and the frozen poles STORED massive amounts of heat and now it's being released like bombs and ramjet artillery rounds.
Water takes to the heavens in its gaseous form when married to heat and then the energy regulating mechanisms of the planet try to rebalance. Storms are born bigger, stronger and with longer trajectories that now are often letting them move from warm waters to cooler regions and transforming themselves into cold-core cyclones which then traverse land with the same forces they had in the warmer seas just in different form - more rain - as it tries to shed that heat. These storms are now hammers. Battering rams. Gronds.
And they eat ships, infrastructure, and people. They disrupt fishing shoals. They drown the mountains. They crack ships like brittle peanuts.
As a young 2Lt in weather school at Texas A&M in the early 80s, I saw the 20 year forecast models which predicted increasingly violent and frequent tropical storms and mesocyclones, vast droughts and heatwaves - it was obvious. It. Was. Obvious.
We knew back then we needed to completely relocate infrastructure and reallocate resources to harden our populations and military operations. Any idiot could have figured that out.
I suspect they probably did.
It would have taken a massive public works project that would have put the Pharaohs, and the Qin/Han/Ming Emperors who built The Great Wall - all them - to shame. It would have provided thriving wage Union and non-Union jobs which produced real, actually good and useful, results of the scale, depth and form, that FDR could only have dreamt of. And it would have led the world into a more resilient future of continuing prosperity.
There has never been anything that the American People could not do when we set our minds to it. Never. Anything. That could have been our legacy to the future. I *should* have been our legacy to the future.
We did none of that.
We had 40 years of Grace.
If you factor in Exxon's knowledge of what was to come which the used their undue influence in the Dept of Commerce to suppress, we had 50 years of Grace.
A half-century of Grace to prepare ourselves and the world.
And we did none of that.
Now the destruction is so egregious and the feed-back loops so souped up on heat-steroids that some deviants are contemplating geo-engineering and tech-bro anti-Life anti-human solutions. It's a totally anti-Life despairful response.
And it's sinful.
What is also sinful - and stupid - is to let bad-actors distract us all with suicidally stupid chicken and egg arguments about is Nature or man doing this.
It. Doesn't. *Matter*
The only thing that matters is pulling our heads out of dark and smell places, standing up straight, fixing ourselves and getting ourselves back on top of the power curve.