Operation Popeye: Weather Warfare Was Once a Real Secret Campaign

On September 15, 1966, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara sent President Lyndon Johnson a memorandum about Project Pop Eye. The memorandum called the program a secret, highly classified experiment in the Laotian panhandle. The objective was written plainly: make more rain so the roads turned soft, break the supply routes, and make North Vietnamese trucks hard to move.

Popeye left a real paper trail. The program had a name, aircraft, target areas, and government documents. This is not a story about one person creating a storm anywhere at will. The program later became known as Operation Popeye. It used cloud seeding, meaning it released small particles into clouds that already held enough moisture to make the rain fall sooner.