Kevin I know very little. Definately there was an attempt to place a missile shield in the ionosphere. Teller was doing that with high altitude bombs. And there were early attempts to have radar bounce off the ionosphere and so go over the horizon and back. Unlike shortwave radio appropriate frequencies, I figure the HF of radar needed some assistance to bounce rather than pass through. So they were using Cesium. Natural cesium 133 is stable. Its not radioactive. I think they used radioactive cesium in Florida to produce an ionised field (which would occur naturally in the ion osphere with even non radioactive cesium) to test close in the response of radar to it before continuing with the high altitude stage. I figure. Ionising radiation is just a crude way of obtaining ions. Which is why its called what it is.kevin.b wrote:Would it not make more sense if they were trying to find a method of revealing any craft that were not showing up on radar?
Given the timeframe involved, both East and West will have been desperate to stay ahead of the other.
If an artificial shield was been tested, then any puncture of that shield would show up on a different detecting device other than radar......
kevin
There are better ways of modifying the ionosphere for a variety of effects in use today.