Dennis Papadopoulos

For people with virtually no sense of fashion when it comes to clothing, Washington “defense intellectuals” are suprisingly adept at picking up on the latest fashions when it comes to ideas.

One of the biggest intellectual fads in recent years has been the threat to satellites from a high altitude nuclear detonation (HAND).

And no one was a bigger trend setter in this regard than Dr. Konstantinos ‘Dennis’ Papadopoulos at the University of Maryland.

His presentation regarding the danger from high altitude nuclear detonations or HAND was widely cited for the artful manner that it distilled two reports:

• A DTRA study that concluded a high altitude nuclear detonation would result in the “loss of civilian and military communications, imaging, weather forecasting, scientific infrastructure in space” and
• The Tether Panel, which recommended using the “HAARP facility in Alaska as a ‘wind tunnel’ to determine the feasibility and engineering specifications of a mitigation system” to protect against high altitude nuclear detonations.

The Federation of American Scientists report on space weaponization questions many of the conclusions reached by the DTRA study, as well as the way those conclusions were represented by Papadopoulos.

Rather that quarrel with the science, let me add something that Papadopoulos never mentioned in the briefing that I attended: He was Vice President of Advanced Power Technologies (APTI), which built and operated HAARP.

Look at this list of political donors from the 2000-2004 electoral cycles:

I suppose there is a small chance that there are two fellows named “Dennis Papadopoulos” living in the 20815 zip code both working on the high altitude nuclear detonations. (Although there is only one in the phone book.)

BAE Systems purchased APTI in 2003 for $ 27 million. That was a good deal—BAE was recently awarded a $35.4 million contract related to HAARP.

I guess we know why Dennis wears those high-heeled boots.