text:
Aerobot

An aerobot is an aerial robot, usually used in the context of an unmanned space probe or unmanned aerial vehicle.

While work has been done since the 1960s on robot "rovers" to explore the Moon and other worlds in the Solar System, such machines have limitations. They tend to be expensive and have limited range, and due to the communications time lags over interplanetary distances, they have to be smart enough to navigate without disabling themselves.

For planets with atmospheres of any substance, however, there is an alternative: an autonomous flying robot, or "aerobot". Most aerobot concepts are based on aerostats, primarily balloons, but occasionally airships. Flying above obstructions in the winds, a balloon could explore large regions of a planet in detail for relatively low cost. Airplanes for planetary exploration have also been proposed.

Basics of balloons
While the notion of sending a balloon to another planet sounds strange at first, balloons have a number of advantages for planetary exploration. They can be made light in weight and are potentially relatively inexpensive. They can cover a great deal of ground, and their view from a height gives them the ability to examine wide swathes of terrain with far more detail than would be available from an orbiting satellite. For exploratory missions, their relative lack of directional control is not a major obstacle as there is generally no need to direct them to a specific location.

Balloon designs for possible planetary missions have involved a few unusual concepts. One is the solar, or infrared (IR) Montgolfiere. This is a hot-air balloon where the envelope is made from a material that traps heat from sunlight, or from heat radiated from a planetary surface. Black is the best color for absorbing heat, but other factors are involved and the material may not necessarily be black.

Solar Montgolfieres have several advantages for planetary exploration, as they can be easier to deploy than a light gas balloon, do not necessarily require a tank of light gas for inflation, and are relatively forgiving of small leaks. They do have the disadvantage that they are only aloft during daylight hours.

The other is a "reversible fluid" balloon. This type of balloon consists of an envelope connected to a reservoir, with the reservoir containing a fluid that is easily vaporized. The balloon can be made to rise by vaporizing the fluid into gas, and can be made to sink by condensing the gas back into fluid. There are a number of different ways of implementing this scheme, but the physical principle is the same in all cases.

A balloon designed for planetary exploration will carry a small gondola containing an instrument payload. The gondola will also carry power, control, and communications subsystems. Due to weight and power supply constraints, the communications subsystem will generally be small and low power, and interplanetary communications will be performed through an orbiting planetary probe acting as a relay.

A solar Montgolfiere will sink at night, and will have a guide rope attached to the bottom of the gondola that will curl up on the ground and anchor the balloon during the darkness hours. The guide rope will be made of low friction materials to keep it from catching or tangling on ground features.

Alternatively, a balloon may carry a thicker instrumented "snake" in place of the gondola and guiderope, combining the functions of the two. This is a convenient scheme for making direct surface measurements.

A balloon could also be anchored to stay in one place to make atmospheric observations. Such a static balloon is known as an "aerostat".

One of the trickier aspects of planetary balloon operations is inserting them into operation. Typically, the balloon enters the planetary atmosphere in an "aeroshell", a heat shield in the shape of a flattened cone. After atmospheric entry, a parachute will extract the balloon assembly from the aeroshell, which falls away. The balloon assembly then deploys and inflates.

Once operational, the aerobot will be largely on its own and will have to conduct its mission autonomously, accepting only general commands over its long link to Earth. The aerobot will have to navigate in three dimensions, acquire and store science data, perform flight control by varying its altitude, and possibly make landings at specific sites to provide close-up investigation.

The Venus Vega balloons

The first, and so far only, planetary balloon mission was performed by the Space Research Institute of Soviet Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the French space agency CNES in 1985. A small balloon, similar in appearance to terrestrial weather balloons, was carried on each of the two Soviet Vega Venus probes, launched in 1984.

The first balloon was inserted into the atmosphere of Venus on 11 June 1985, followed by the second balloon on 15 June 1985. The first balloon failed after only 56 minutes, but the second operated for a little under two Earth days until its batteries ran down.

The Venus Vega balloons were the idea of Jacques Blamont, chief scientist for CNES and the father of planetary balloon exploration. He energetically promoted the concept and enlisted international support for the small project.

The scientific results of the Venus VEGA probes were modest. More importantly, the clever and simple experiment demonstrated the validity of using balloons for planetary exploration.

The Mars aerobot effort
After the success of the Venus VEGA balloons, Blamont focused on a more ambitious balloon mission to Mars, to be carried on a Soviet space probe.

The atmospheric pressure on Mars is about 150 times less than that of Earth. In such a thin atmosphere, a balloon with a volume of 5,000 to 10,000 m3 could carry a payload of 20 kg, while a balloon with a volume of 100,000 m3 could carry 200 kg.

The French had already conducted extensive experiments with solar Montgolfieres, performing over 30 flights from the late 1970s into the early 1990s. The Montgolfieres flew at an altitude of 35 kilometers, where the atmosphere was as thin and cold as it would be on Mars, and one spent 69 days aloft, circling the Earth twice.

Early concepts for the Mars balloon featured a "dual balloon" system, with a sealed hydrogen or helium-filled balloon tethered to a solar Montgolfiere. The light-gas balloon was designed to keep the Montgolfiere off the ground at night. During the day, the Sun would heat up the Montgolfiere, causing the balloon assembly to rise.

Eventually, the group decided on a cylindrical sealed helium balloon made of aluminized PET film, and with a volume of 5,500 m3. The balloon would rise when heated during the day and sink as it cooled at night.

Total mass of the balloon assembly was 65 kg, with a 15 kg gondola and a 13.5 kg instrumented guiderope. The balloon was expected to operate for ten days. Unfortunately, although considerable development work was performed on the balloon and its subsystems, Russian financial difficulties pushed the Mars probe out from 1992, then to 1994, and then to 1996. The Mars balloon was dropped from the project due to cost.

JPL aerobot experiments
By this time, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had become interested in the idea of planetary aerobots, and in fact a team under Jim Cutts of JPL had been working on concepts for planetary aerobots for several years, as well as performing experiments to validate aerobot technology.

The first such experiments focused on a series of reversible-fluid balloons, under the project name ALICE, for "Altitude Control Experiment". The first such balloon, ALICE 1, flew in 1993, with other flights through ALICE 8 in 1997.

Related work included the characterization of materials for a Venus balloon envelope, and two balloon flights in 1996 to test instrument payloads under the name BARBE, for "Balloon Assisted Radiation Budget Equipment".

By 1996, JPL was working on a full-fledged aerobot experiment named PAT, for "Planetary Aerobot Testbed", which was intended to demonstrate a complete planetary aerobot through flights into Earth's atmosphere. PAT concepts envisioned a reversible-fluid balloon with a 10-kilogram payload that would include navigation and camera systems, and eventually would operate under autonomous control. The project turned out to be too ambitious, and was cancelled in 1997. JPL continued to work on a more focused, low-cost experiments to lead to a Mars aerobot, under the name MABVAP, for "Mars Aerobot Validation Program". MABVAP experiments included drops of balloon systems from hot-air balloons and helicopters to validate the tricky deployment phase of a planetary aerobot mission, and development of envelopes for superpressure balloons with materials and structures suited to a long-duration Mars mission.

JPL also provided a set of atmospheric and navigation sensors for the Solo Spirit round-the-world manned balloon flights, both to support the balloon missions and to validate technologies for planetary aerobots.

While these tests and experiments were going on, JPL performed a number of speculative studies for planetary aerobot missions to Mars, Venus, Saturn's moon Titan, and the outer planets.

Mars
JPL's MABVAP technology experiments were intended to lead to an actual Mars aerobot mission, named MABTEX, for "Mars Aerobot Technology Experiment". As its name implies, MABTEX was primarily intended to be an operational technology experiment as a precursor to a more ambitious efforts. MABTEX was envisioned as a small superpressure balloon, carried to Mars on a "microprobe" weighing no more than 40 kg. Once inserted, the operational balloon would have a total mass of no more than 10 kg and would remain operational for a week. The small gondola would have navigational and control electronics, along with a stereo imaging system, as well as a spectrometer and magnetometer.

Plans envisioned a follow-on to MABTEX as a much more sophisticated aerobot named MGA, for "Mars Geoscience Aerobot". Design concepts for MGA envisioned a superpressure balloon system very much like that of MABTEX, but much larger. MGA would carry a payload ten times larger than that of MABTEX, and would remain aloft for up to three months, circling Mars more than 25 times and covering over 500000 km. The payload would include sophisticated equipment, such as an ultrahigh resolution stereo imager, along with oblique imaging capabilities; a radar sounder to search for subsurface water; an infrared spectroscopy system to search for important minerals; a magnetometer; and weather and atmospheric instruments. MABTEX might be followed in turn by a small solar-powered blimp named MASEPA, for "Mars Solar Electric Propelled Aerobot".

Venus
JPL has also pursued similar studies on Venus aerobots. A Venus Aerobot Technology Experiment (VEBTEX) has been considered as a technology validation experiment, but the focus appears to have been more on full operational missions. One mission concept, the Venus Aerobot Multisonde (VAMS), envisions an aerobot operating at altitudes above 50 km that would drop surface probes, or "sondes", onto specific surface targets. The balloon would then relay information from the sondes directly to Earth, and would also collect planetary magnetic field data and other information. VAMS would require no fundamentally new technology, and may be appropriate for a NASA low-cost Discovery planetary science mission. Significant work has been performed on a more ambitious concept, the Venus Geoscience Aerobot (VGA). Designs for the VGA envision a relatively large reversible-fluid balloon, filled with helium and water, that could descend to the surface of Venus to sample surface sites, and then rise again to high altitudes and cool off.

Developing an aerobot that can withstand the high pressures and temperatures (up to 480 degrees Celsius, or almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit) on the surface of Venus, as well as passage through sulfuric acid clouds, will require new technologies. As of 2002, VGA was not expected to be ready until late in the following decade. Prototype balloon envelopes have been fabricated from polybenzoxazole, a polymer that exhibits high strength, resistance to heat, and low leakage for light gases. A gold coating is applied to allow the polymer film to resist corrosion from acid clouds.

Work has also been done on a VGA gondola weighing about 30 kg. In this design, most instruments are contained in a spherical pressure vessel with an outer shell of titanium and an inner shell of stainless steel. The vessel contains a solid-state camera and other instruments, as well as communications and flight control systems. The vessel is designed to tolerate pressures of up to a hundred atmospheres and maintain internal temperatures below 30 C even on the surface of Venus. The vessel is set at the bottom of a hexagonal "basket" of solar panels that in turn provide tether connections to the balloon system above, and is surrounded by a ring of pipes acting as a heat exchanger. An S-band communications antenna is mounted on the rim of the basket, and a radar antenna for surface studies extends out of the vessel on a mast.

The Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform (VAMP) is a mission concept by the aerospace companies Northrop Grumman and LGarde for a powered, long endurance, semi-buoyant inflatable aircraft that would explore the upper atmosphere of Venus for biosignatures as well as perform atmospheric measurements.

In April 2021 it was reported that NASA allocated work to design and test robotic balloons for future exploration of Venus.

Titan
Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is an attractive target for aerobot exploration, as it has a nitrogen atmosphere five times as dense as that of Earth's that contains a smog of organic photochemicals, hiding the moon's surface from view by visual sensors. An aerobot would be able to penetrate this haze to study the moon's mysterious surface and search for complex organic molecules. NASA has outlined a number of different aerobot mission concepts for Titan, under the general name of Titan Biologic Explorer.

One concept, known as the Titan Aerobot Multisite mission, involves a reversible-fluid balloon filled with argon that could descend from high altitude to the surface of the moon, perform measurements, and then rise again to high altitude to perform measurements and move to a different site. Another concept, the Titan Aerobot Singlesite mission, would use a superpressure balloon that would select a single site, vent much of its gas, and then survey that site in detail.

An ingenious variation on this scheme, the Titan Aerover, combines aerobot and rover. This vehicle features a triangular frame that connects three balloons, each about 2 m in diameter. After entry into Titan's atmosphere, the aerover would float until it found an interesting site, then vent helium to descend to the surface. The three balloons would then serve as floats or wheels as necessary. JPL has built a simple prototype that looks like three beachballs on a tubular frame.

No matter what form the Titan Biologic Explorer mission takes, the system would likely require an atomic-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator module for power. Solar power would not be possible at Saturn's distance and under Titan's smog, and batteries would not give adequate mission endurance. The aerobot would also carry a miniaturized chemical lab to search for complicated organic chemicals.

Outside of JPL, other mission studies of Titan aerobot concepts have included studies of airships by MIT and NASA Glenn, and a proposed Titan airplane proposed by NASA Ames.

Jupiter
Finally, aerobots might be used to explore the atmosphere of Jupiter and possibly the other gaseous outer planets. As the atmospheres of these planets are largely composed of hydrogen, and since there is no lighter gas than hydrogen, such an aerobot would have to be a Montgolfiere. As sunlight is weak at such distances, the aerobot would obtain most of its heating from infrared energy radiated by the planet below.

A Jupiter aerobot might operate at altitudes where the air pressure ranges from one to ten atmospheres, occasionally dropping lower for detailed studies. It would make atmospheric measurements and return imagery and remote sensing of weather phenomena, such as Jupiter's Great Red Spot. A Jupiter aerobot might also drop sondes deep into the atmosphere and relay their data back to an orbiter until the sondes are destroyed by temperature and pressure.

Planetary aircraft

Winged airplane concepts have been proposed for robotic exploration in the atmosphere of Mars, Venus, Titan, and even Jupiter.

The main technical challenges of flying on Mars include:
 * 1) Understanding and modeling the low Reynolds number, high subsonic Mach Number aerodynamics
 * 2) Building appropriate, often unconventional airframe designs and aerostructures
 * 3) Mastering the dynamics of deployment from a descending entry vehicle aeroshell
 * 4) Integrating a non-air-breathing propulsion subsystem into the system.

An aircraft concept, ARES was selected for a detailed design study as one of the four finalists for the 2007 Mars Scout Program opportunity, but was eventually not selected in favor of the Phoenix mission. In the design study, both half-scale and full-scale aircraft were tested under Mars-atmospheric conditions. (See also Mars airplane.)

Planetary rotorcraft
In 2002, a paper was published suggesting autonomous robotic helicopters for Mars exploration, possible for the Mars Scout Program. A number of advantages of a viable rotorcraft design were noted, including the ability to pass over difficult Mars terrain yet still visit multiple sites in situ. The short hop made by Lunar Surveyor 6 in 1967 was noted as example of hopping to visit another site.

Ingenuity, part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission, is a defunct robotic helicopter that demonstrated the first rotorcraft flight in the atmosphere of Mars. The aircraft was deployed from the Perseverance rover, and initially flew five times during its 30-day test campaign early in the mission. Each flight took no more than 110 seconds, at altitudes ranging from 3 to 10 m off the ground, and covered a maximum distance of up to 266 m per flight. It used autonomous control and communicated with Perseverance directly after each landing. It achieved the first powered flight on another planet. Ingenuity had been operating on Mars for sols (1071 days total days;  ) before retirement, when all four of its rotor blades were likely damaged, causing NASA to retire the craft.

NASA's Dragonfly mission, planned for 2027, will feature a rotorcraft which will explore Titan.

title: Aerobot


text:
Fu-Go balloon bomb

Fu-Go (ふ号[兵器]) was an incendiary balloon weapon (風船爆弾) deployed by Japan against the United States during World War II. It consisted of a hydrogen-filled paper balloon 33 ft in diameter, with a payload of four 11 lb incendiary devices and one 33 lb high-explosive anti-personnel bomb. The uncontrolled balloons were carried over the Pacific Ocean from Japan to North America by fast, high-altitude air currents, today known as the jet stream, and used a sophisticated sandbag ballast system to maintain their altitude. The bombs were intended to ignite large-scale forest fires and spread panic.

Between November 1944 and April 1945, the Imperial Japanese Army launched about 9,300 balloons from sites on coastal Honshu, of which about 300 were found or observed in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The bombs were ineffective as fire starters due to damp seasonal conditions, with no forest fires being attributed to the offensive. A U.S. media censorship campaign prevented the Imperial Army from learning of the offensive's results. On May 5, 1945, six civilians were killed by one of the bombs near Bly, Oregon, becoming the war's only fatalities in the contiguous U.S. The Fu-Go balloon bomb was the first weapon system with intercontinental range, predating the intercontinental ballistic missile.

Background
The balloon bomb concept was developed by the Imperial Japanese Army's Ninth Technical Research Institute (also known as the Noborito Research Institute), tasked with creating special weapons. In 1933, Lieutenant General Reikichi Tada started a balloon bomb program at Noborito designated Fu-Go, which proposed a hydrogen-filled balloon 13 ft in diameter with a time fuse, capable of delivering bombs up to 70 mi. The project was not completed and stopped by 1935.

After the Doolittle Raid in April 1942, in which American planes bombed the Japanese mainland, the Imperial General Headquarters directed Noborito to develop a retaliatory bombing capability against the U.S. In mid-1942, Noborito investigated several proposals, including long-range bombers that could make one-way sorties from Japan to cities on the U.S. West Coast, and small bomb-laden seaplanes which could be launched from submarines. On September 9, 1942, the latter was tested in the Lookout Air Raid, in which a Yokosuka E14Y seaplane was launched from a submarine off the Oregon coast. Warrant Officer Nobuo Fujita dropped two large incendiary bombs in Siskiyou National Forest in the hopes of starting a forest fire and safely returned to the submarine. Response crews spotted the plane and contained the small blazes. The program was cancelled by the Imperial Navy.

Also in September 1942, Major General Sueki Kusaba, who had served under Tada in the original balloon bomb program in the 1930s, was assigned to the laboratory and revived the Fu-Go project with a focus on longer flights. The Oregon air raid, while not achieving its strategic objective, had demonstrated the potential of using unmanned balloons at a low cost to ignite large-scale forest fires. According to U.S. interviews with Japanese officials after the war, the balloon bomb campaign was undertaken "almost exclusively for home propaganda purposes", and the Army had little expectation of its effectiveness.

Design and development
By March 1943, Kusaba's team developed a 20 ft design capable of floating at 25,000 ft for up to 30 hours. The balloons were constructed from four to five thin layers of washi, a durable paper derived from the paper mulberry (kōzo) bush, which were glued together with konnyaku (Japanese potato) paste. The Army mobilized thousands of teenage girls at high schools across the country to laminate and glue the sheets together, with final assembly and inflation tests at large indoor arenas including the Nichigeki Music Hall and Ryōgoku Kokugikan sumo hall in Tokyo. The original proposal called for night launches from submarines located 600 mi off of the U.S. coast, a distance the balloons could cover in 10 hours. A calibrated timer would release a 11 lb incendiary bomb at the end of the flight. Two submarines (I-34 and I-35) were prepared and two hundred balloons were produced by August 1943, but attack missions were postponed due to the need for submarines as weapons and food transports.

Engineers next investigated the feasibility of balloon launches against the United States from the Japanese mainland, a distance of at least 6,000 mi. Engineers sought to make use of strong seasonal air currents discovered flowing from west to east at high altitude and speed over Japan, today known as the jet stream. The currents had been investigated by Japanese scientist Wasaburo Oishi in the 1920s. In late 1943, the Army consulted Hidetoshi Arakawa of the Central Meteorological Observatory, who used Oishi's data to extrapolate the air currents across the Pacific Ocean and estimate that a balloon released in winter and that maintained an altitude of 30,000 to 35,000 ft could reach the North American continent in 30 to 100 hours. Arakawa further found that the strongest winds blew from November to March at speeds approaching 200 mph.

Changing pressure levels in a fixed-volume balloon posed technical challenges. During the day, heat from the sun increased pressure, risking the balloon rising above the air currents or bursting. A relief valve was added to allow gas to escape when the envelope's internal pressure rose above a set level. At night, cool temperatures risked the balloon falling below the currents, an issue that worsened as gas was released. To resolve this, engineers developed a sophisticated ballast system with 32 sandbags mounted around a cast aluminum wheel, with each sandbag connected to gunpowder blowout plugs. The plugs were connected to three redundant aneroid barometers calibrated for an altitude between 25,000 and 27,000 ft, below which one sandbag was released; the next plug was armed two minutes after the previous plug was blown. A separate altimeter set between 13,000 and 20,000 ft controlled the later release of the bombs. A one-hour activating fuse for the altimeters was ignited at launch, allowing the balloon time to ascend above these two thresholds. Tests of the design in August 1944 indicated success, with several balloons releasing radiosonde signals for up to 80 hours (the maximum time allowed by the batteries). A self-destruct system was added; a three-minute fuse triggered by the release of the last bomb would detonate a block of picric acid and destroy the carriage, followed by an 82-minute fuse that would ignite the hydrogen and destroy the envelope.

In late 1942, the Imperial General Headquarters had directed the Navy to begin its own balloon bomb program in parallel with the Army project. Lieutenant Commander Kiyoshi Tanaka headed a group which developed a 30 ft rubberized silk balloon, designated the B-Type (in contrast to the Army's A-Type). The silk material was an effort to create a flexible envelope that could withstand pressure changes. The design was tested in August 1944, but the balloons burst immediately after reaching altitude, determined to be the result of faulty rubberized seams. The Navy program was subsequently consolidated under Army control, due in part to the declining availability of rubber as the war continued. The B-Type balloons were later equipped with a version of the A-Type's ballast system and tested on November 2, 1944; one of these balloons, which was not loaded with bombs, became the first to be recovered by Americans after being spotted in the water off San Pedro, California, on November 4.

The final A-Type design was 33 ft in diameter, and had a gas volume of 19,000 cuft and a lifting capacity of 300 lb at operating altitude. The bomb payload most commonly carried was:

 * four 11 lb thermite incendiary devices, consisting of a steel tube 16 in long and 4 in in diameter with a mechanical impact fuse;
 * one Type 92 33 lb high-explosive anti-personnel bomb, containing a block of picric acid or TNT surrounded by shrapnel rings;
 * or alternatively to the anti-personnel bomb, one Type 97 26 lb incendiary bomb, containing three magnesium containers of thermite.

Offensive and defenses

A balloon launch organization of three battalions was formed. The first battalion included headquarters and three squadrons, totaling 1,500 men, at nine launch stations at Otsu in Ibaraki Prefecture. The second battalion of 700 men in three squadrons operated six launch stations at Ichinomiya, Chiba, and the third battalion of 600 men in two squadrons operated six launch stations at Nakoso, Fukushima. The Otsu site featured its own hydrogen plant, while the second and third battalions used hydrogen gas transported from factories around Tokyo. The combined launching capacity of the sites was about 200 balloons per day, with 15,000 launches planned through March. The Army estimated that only 10 percent of the balloons would survive the journey across the Pacific Ocean.

Each launch pad consisted of anchor screws drilled into the ground in a circle the same diameter as the balloons. After anchoring an envelope, hoses were used to fill it with 8,100 cuft of hydrogen while it was tied down with guide ropes and detached from the anchors. The carriage was attached with shroud lines, and the guide ropes were untied. Each launch required a crew of 30 men and took between 30 minutes and one hour, depending on the presence of surface winds. The best time for launches was after a high-pressure front had passed, and wind conditions were best before the onshore breezes at sunrise. Suitable wind conditions were only expected for three to five days a week, for a total of about fifty days during the winter period of maximum jet stream velocity.

The first balloons were launched on November 3, 1944. Some balloons in each of the launches carried radiosonde equipment instead of bombs, and were tracked by direction finding stations to follow their progress. Two weeks after the discovery of the B-Type balloon off San Pedro, an A-Type balloon was found in the ocean off Kailua, Hawaii, on November 14. More were found near Thermopolis, Wyoming, on December 6 (with an explosion heard by witnesses, and a crater later located) and near Kalispell, Montana, on December 11, followed by finds near Marshall and Holy Cross, Alaska, and Estacada, Oregon, later in the month. Authorities were placed on heightened alert, and forest rangers were ordered to report landings and recoveries. The balloons continued to be discovered across North America, with sightings and partial or full recoveries in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan (where an incendiary bomb was found at Farmington in the easternmost incident), Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming; in Canada in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest and Yukon Territories; in Mexico in Baja California Norte and Sonora; and at sea. By August 1945, the U.S. Army had recorded 285 balloon incidents (28 by January, 54 in February, 114 in March, 42 in April, 16 in May, 17 in June, and 14 in July).

Most U.S. defense plans were only fully implemented after the offensive ended in April 1945. In response to the threat of wildfires in the Pacific Northwest during the summer months, the Army's Western Defense Command (WDC), Fourth Air Force, and Ninth Service Command organized the "Firefly Project" with Stinson L-5 Sentinel and Douglas C-47 Skytrain aircraft and 2,700 troops, including 200 paratroopers from the all-black 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, who were deployed in 36 firefighting missions between May and October 1945. The Army used the U.S. Forest Service as a proxy agency, unifying fire suppression communications between federal and state agencies and modernizing the service through an influx of military personnel, equipment, and tactics. In the WDC's "Lightning Project", health and agricultural officers, veterinarians, and 4-H clubs were instructed to report any new diseases of crops or livestock caused by potential biological warfare. Stocks of decontamination chemicals, ultimately unused, were shipped to key points in the western states. Although biological warfare had been a concern for months, the WDC's plan was not formalized and fully implemented until July 1945. A sub-section of the project, "Arrow", provided for rapid air transportation of all balloon remains to the Technical Air Intelligence Center laboratory in Washington, D.C., for biological analysis. A U.S. investigation after the war concluded there had not been plans for chemical or biological payloads.

Army Air Forces and Navy fighter planes were scrambled on several occasions to intercept balloons, but they had little success due to inaccurate sighting reports, bad weather, and the very high altitude at which they traveled. In all, only about 20 balloons were shot down by U.S. and Canadian pilots. Attempts to track the radiosonde balloons produced 95 suspected signals, but they were of little use due to the very low proportion of balloons with transmitters, and observed fading of signals as they approached. Experiments on recovered balloons in February 1945 to determine their radar reflectivity were unsuccessful. In the "Sunset Project", initiated in early April and fully operational by June, the Fourth Air Force attempted to detect balloons with search radars at ground-controlled interception sites in coastal Washington, but the project detected nothing and was cancelled in early August.

Few American officials believed at first that the balloons could have come directly from Japan. Early U.S. theories speculated that they were launched from German prisoner of war camps or from Japanese-American internment centers. After bombs of Japanese origin were found, it was believed that the balloons were launched from coastal submarines. Statistical analysis of valve serial numbers suggested that tens of thousands of balloons had been produced. The mineral and diatom composition of sand from the sandbags was studied by the Military Geology Unit of the United States Geological Survey, which assessed its origin as Shiogama, Miyagi, or less likely, Ichinomiya, Chiba, only the latter being correct. Aerial reconnaissance of Shiogama in May 1945 showed what was mistakenly interpreted as inflated balloons and a possible launch area at the beach.

Censorship campaign
On January 4, 1945, the U.S. Office of Censorship sent a confidential memo to newspaper editors and radio broadcasters asking that they give no publicity to balloon incidents; this proved highly effective, with the agency sending another memo three months later stating that cooperation had been "excellent" and that "there is no question that your refusal to publish or broadcast information about these balloons has baffled the Japanese, annoyed and hindered them, and has been an important contribution to security." The Imperial Army only ever learned of the balloon at Kalispell from an article in the Chinese newspaper Ta Kung Pao on December 18, 1944. The Kalispell find was originally reported on December 14 by the Western News, a weekly published in Libby, Montana; the story later appeared in articles in the January 1, 1945, editions of Time and Newsweek magazines, as well as on the front page of the January 2 edition of The Oregonian of Portland, Oregon, before the Office of Censorship sent the memo. Starting in mid-February 1945, Japanese propaganda broadcasts falsely announced numerous fires and a panicked American public, further claiming casualties in the hundreds or thousands.

One breach occurred in late February, when Representative Arthur L. Miller mentioned the balloons in a weekly column he sent to all 91 newspapers in his Nebraska district, which stated in part: "As a final act of desperation, it is believed that the Japs may release fire balloons aimed at our great forests in the northwest". In response, intelligence officers at the Seventh Service Command in Omaha contacted the editors at all 91 papers, requesting censorship; this was largely successful, with only two papers printing the column. In late March, the United Press (UP) wrote a detailed article on the balloons intended for its national distributors; the Army officer who reported the breach commented that it included "a lot of mechanical detail on the thing, in addition to being a hell of a scare story". Censors contacted the UP, which replied that the article had not yet been teletyped; all five copies were retrieved and destroyed. Investigators determined the information originated from a briefing to Colorado state legislators, which had been leaked in an open session.

In late April, censors investigated the nationally-syndicated comic strip Tim Tyler's Luck by Lyman Young, which depicted a Japanese balloon recovered by the crew of an U.S. submarine. In subsequent weeks, its protagonists fought monster vines which sprang from seeds the balloon was carrying, created by an evil Japanese horticulturalist. A few weeks later, the comic strip Smilin' Jack by Zack Mosley depicted a plane crashing into a Japanese balloon, which exploded and started a fire upon falling to the ground. In both cases, the Office of Censorship deemed it unnecessary to censor the Sunday comics.

Abandonment and results
By mid-April 1945, Japan lacked the resources to continue manufacturing balloons, with both paper and hydrogen in short supply. Furthermore, the Army had little evidence that the balloons were reaching North America, let alone causing damage. The campaign was halted, with no intention to revive it when the jet stream regained strength in fall 1945. The last balloon was launched on April 20. In total, about 9,300 were launched in the campaign (about 700 in November 1944, 1,200 in December, 2,000 in January 1945, 2,500 in February, 2,500 in March, and 400 in April), of which about 300 were found or observed in North America. The Fu-Go balloon bomb is considered to be the first weapon system in history with intercontinental range, a significant development in warfare which was followed by the advent of the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Soviet Union's R-7, in 1957.

Only "one or two" small grass fires were attributed to the balloon bombs. As predicted by Imperial Army officials, the winter and spring launch dates had limited the chances of the incendiaries starting fires due to the high levels of precipitation in the Pacific Northwest; forests were generally snow-covered or too damp to catch fire easily. Furthermore, much of the western U.S. received disproportionately more precipitation in 1945 than in any other year in the decade, with some areas receiving 4 to 10 inches of precipitation more than other years. The most damaging attack occurred on March 10, 1945, when a balloon descended near Toppenish, Washington, and collided with electric transmission lines, causing a short circuit which cut off power to the Manhattan Project's production facility at the state's Hanford Engineer Works. Backup devices restored power to the site, but it took three days for its plutonium-producing nuclear reactors to be restored to full capacity; the plutonium was later used in Fat Man, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

Single lethal attack

On May 5, 1945, six civilians were killed near Bly, Oregon, when they discovered one of the balloon bombs in Fremont National Forest, becoming the only fatalities from Axis action in the continental U.S. during the war. Reverend Archie Mitchell and his pregnant wife Elsie (age 26) drove up Gearhart Mountain that day with five of their Sunday school students for a picnic. While Archie was parking the car, Elsie and the children discovered a balloon and carriage, loaded with an anti-personnel bomb, on the ground. A large explosion occurred; the four boys (Edward Engen, 13; Jay Gifford, 13; Dick Patzke, 14; and Sherman Shoemaker, 11) were killed instantly, while Elsie and Joan Patzke (13) died from their wounds shortly afterwards. An Army investigation concluded that the bomb had likely been kicked or dropped, and that it had lain undisturbed for about one month before the incident. The U.S. press blackout was lifted on May 22 so the public could be warned of the balloon threat.

A memorial, the Mitchell Monument, was built in 1950 at the site of the explosion, and the surrounding Mitchell Recreation Area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. A ponderosa pine near the site bears scars on its trunk from the bomb's shrapnel. In 1987, a group of Japanese women involved in Fu-Go production as schoolgirls delivered 1,000 paper cranes to the victims' families as a symbol of peace and healing, and six cherry trees were planted at the site on the incident's 50th anniversary in 1995.

After World War II

All Japanese records on the Fu-Go program were destroyed in compliance with a directive issued on August 15, 1945, the day Japan announced its surrender. Thus, a single interview with Lieutenant Colonel Terato Kunitake of the Army General Staff and a Major Inouye became the source of nearly all information on the project's objectives for U.S. investigators. A five-volume report, prepared by a team led by Karl T. Compton of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and Edward L. Moreland of MIT, was later submitted to President Harry S. Truman.

The remains of balloons have continued to be discovered after the war. At least eight were found in the 1940s, three in the 1950s, two in the 1960s, and one in the 1970s. A carriage with a live bomb was found near Lumby, British Columbia, in 2014 and detonated by a Royal Canadian Navy ordnance disposal team. Remains of another balloon were found near McBride, British Columbia, in 2019. Many war museums in the U.S. and Canada hold Fu-Go fragments, including the National Air and Space Museum and the Canadian War Museum.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Fu-Go balloon bomb


text:
Frodo (disambiguation)

Frodo may mean:

Given name or nickname

 * Frodo Baggins, a character in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
 * Fróði, the name of a number of Danish kings, Latinized as Frodo
 * Frodo (chimpanzee)
 * Frodo, nickname of Magomedrasul Khasbulaev, Russian mixed martial artist

Software

 * Frodo, a Commodore 64 emulator
 * Frodo, a bare-bones version of the Slax Linux distribution
 * FRODO (Federated Repositories of Online Digital Objects) projects, part of the Australian government's Systemic Infrastructure Initiative
 * Frodo, codename of the XBMC Media Center software version 12

Other uses

 * "Frodo", a song by New Zealand folk-duo Flight of the Conchords
 * Frodo, Kakao Friends characters

title: Frodo (disambiguation)


text:
Clash of Civilizations

The "Clash of Civilizations" is a thesis that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post–Cold War world. The American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures. It was proposed in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", in response to his former student Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man. Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

The phrase itself was earlier used by Albert Camus in 1946, by Girilal Jain in his analysis of the Ayodhya dispute in 1988, by Bernard Lewis in an article in the September 1990 issue of The Atlantic Monthly titled "The Roots of Muslim Rage" and by Mahdi El Mandjra in his book "La première guerre civilisationnelle" published in 1992. Even earlier, the phrase appears in a 1926 book regarding the Middle East by Basil Mathews: Young Islam on Trek: A Study in the Clash of Civilizations (p. 196). This expression derives from "clash of cultures", already used during the colonial period and the Belle Époque.

Huntington began his thinking by surveying the diverse theories about the nature of global politics in the post–Cold War period. Some theorists and writers argued that human rights, liberal democracy, and the capitalist free market economy had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post–Cold War world. Specifically, Francis Fukuyama argued that the world had reached the 'end of history' in a Hegelian sense.

Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had only reverted to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural lines. As an extension, he posits that the concept of different civilizations, as the highest category of cultural identity, will become increasingly useful in analyzing the potential for conflict. At the end of his 1993 Foreign Affairs article, "The Clash of Civilizations?", Huntington writes, "This is not to advocate the desirability of conflicts between civilizations. It is to set forth descriptive hypothesis as to what the future may be like."

In addition, the clash of civilizations, for Huntington, represents a development of history. In the past, world history was mainly about the struggles between monarchs, nations and ideologies, such as that seen within Western civilization. However, after the end of the Cold War, world politics moved into a new phase, in which non-Western civilizations are no longer the exploited recipients of Western civilization but have become additional important actors joining the West to shape and move world history.

Major civilizations according to Huntington
Huntington divided the world into the "major civilizations" in his thesis as such:
 * Western civilization, comprising the United States and Canada, Western and Central Europe, Australia, Oceania and most of the Philippines. Whether Latin America and the former member states of the Soviet Union are included, or are instead their own separate civilizations, will be an important future consideration for those regions, according to Huntington. The traditional Western viewpoint identified Western Civilization with the Western Christian (Catholic-Protestant) countries and culture.
 * Latin American civilization, including South America (excluding Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana), Central America, Mexico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic may be considered a part of Western civilization. Many people in South America, Central America and Mexico regard themselves as full members of Western civilization.
 * Orthodox civilization, comprising Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Romania, great parts of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.
 * Countries with a non-Orthodox majority are usually excluded e.g. Muslim Azerbaijan and Muslim Albania and most of Central Asia, as well as majority Muslim regions in the Balkans, Caucasus and central Russian regions such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, Roman Catholic Slovenia and Croatia, Protestant and Catholic Baltic states. However, Armenia is included, despite its dominant faith, the Armenian Apostolic Church, being a part of Oriental Orthodoxy rather than the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Kazakhstan is also included, despite its dominant faith being Sunni Islam.
 * The Eastern world is the mix of the Buddhist, Islamic, Chinese, Hindu, and Japonic civilizations.
 * The Sinic civilization of China, the Koreas, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam. This group also includes the Chinese diaspora, especially in relation to Southeast Asia.
 * Japan, considered a hybrid of Chinese civilization and older Altaic patterns.
 * The Buddhist areas of Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand are identified as separate from other civilizations, but Huntington believes that they do not constitute a major civilization in the sense of international affairs.
 * Hindu civilization, located chiefly in India and Nepal, and culturally adhered to by the global Indian diaspora.
 * Part of Islamic, located in Muslim-Majority countries which icludes South Asian countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. South East Asian countries of Indonesia and Malaysia
 * The Muslim world of the Greater Middle East (excluding Armenia, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Georgia, Israel, Malta and South Sudan), northern West Africa, Albania, Pakistan, Bangladesh, parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Comoros, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives and parts of south-western Philippines.
 * The civilization of Sub-Saharan Africa located in southern Africa, Middle Africa (excluding Chad), East Africa (excluding Ethiopia, the Comoros, Mauritius, and the Swahili coast of Kenya and Tanzania), Cape Verde, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Considered as a possible eighth civilization by Huntington.
 * Instead of belonging to one of the "major" civilizations, Ethiopia and Haiti are labeled as "Lone" countries. Israel could be considered a unique state with its own civilization, Huntington writes, but one which is extremely similar to the West. Huntington also believes that the Anglophone Caribbean, former British colonies in the Caribbean, constitutes a distinct entity.
 * There are also others which are considered "cleft countries" because they contain very large groups of people identifying with separate civilizations. Examples include Ukraine ("cleft" between its Eastern Rite Catholic-dominated western section and its Orthodox-dominated east), French Guiana (cleft between Latin America, and the West), Benin, Chad, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Togo (all cleft between Islam and Sub-Saharan Africa), Guyana and Suriname (cleft between Hindu and Sub-Saharan African), Sri Lanka (cleft between Hindu and Buddhist), and the Philippines (cleft between Islam, in the case of south western Mindanao; Sinic, in the case of Cordillera; and the Westernized Christian Majority). Sudan was also included as "cleft" between Islam and Sub-Saharan Africa; this division became a formal split in July 2011 following an overwhelming vote for independence by South Sudan in a January 2011 referendum.

Huntington's thesis of civilizational clash

Huntington argues that the trends of global conflict after the end of the Cold War are increasingly appearing at these civilizational divisions. Wars such as those following the break up of Yugoslavia, in Chechnya, and between India and Pakistan were cited as evidence of inter-civilizational conflict. He also argues that the widespread Western belief in the universality of the West's values and political systems is naïve and that continued insistence on democratization and such "universal" norms will only further antagonize other civilizations. Huntington sees the West as reluctant to accept this because it built the international system, wrote its laws, and gave it substance in the form of the United Nations.

Huntington identifies a major shift of economic, military, and political power from the West to the other civilizations of the world, most significantly to what he identifies as the two "challenger civilizations", Sinic and Islam.

In Huntington's view, East Asian Sinic civilization is culturally asserting itself and its values relative to the West due to its rapid economic growth. Specifically, he believes that China's goals are to reassert itself as the regional hegemon, and that other countries in the region will 'bandwagon' with China due to the history of hierarchical command structures implicit in the Confucian Sinic civilization, as opposed to the individualism and pluralism valued in the West. Regional powers such as the two Koreas and Vietnam will acquiesce to Chinese demands and become more supportive of China rather than attempting to oppose it. Huntington therefore believes that the rise of China poses one of the most significant problems and the most powerful long-term threat to the West, as Chinese cultural assertion clashes with the American desire for the lack of a regional hegemony in East Asia.

Huntington argues that the Islamic civilization has experienced a massive population explosion which is fueling instability both on the borders of Islam and in its interior, where fundamentalist movements are becoming increasingly popular. Manifestations of what he terms the "Islamic Resurgence" include the 1979 Iranian revolution and the first Gulf War. Perhaps the most controversial statement Huntington made in the Foreign Affairs article was that "Islam has bloody borders". Huntington believes this to be a real consequence of several factors, including the previously mentioned Muslim youth bulge and population growth and Islamic proximity to many civilizations including Sinic, Orthodox, Western, and African.

Huntington sees Islamic civilization as a potential ally to China, both having more revisionist goals and sharing common conflicts with other civilizations, especially the West. Specifically, he identifies common Chinese and Islamic interests in the areas of weapons proliferation, human rights, and democracy that conflict with those of the West, and feels that these are areas in which the two civilizations will cooperate.

Russia, Japan, and India are what Huntington terms 'swing civilizations' and may favor either side. Russia, for example, clashes with the many Muslim ethnic groups on its southern border (such as Chechnya) but—according to Huntington—cooperates with Iran to avoid further Muslim-Orthodox violence in Southern Russia, and to help continue the flow of oil. Huntington argues that a "Sino-Islamic connection" is emerging in which China will cooperate more closely with Iran, Pakistan, and other states to augment its international position.

Huntington also argues that civilizational conflicts are "particularly prevalent between Muslims and non-Muslims", identifying the "bloody borders" between Islamic and non-Islamic civilizations. This conflict dates back as far as the initial thrust of Islam into Europe, its eventual expulsion in the Iberian reconquest, the attacks of the Ottoman Turks on Eastern Europe and Vienna, and the European imperial division of the Islamic nations in the 1800s and 1900s.

Huntington also believes that some of the factors contributing to this conflict are that both Christianity (upon which Western civilization is based) and Islam are:
 * Missionary religions, seeking conversion of others
 * Universal, "all-or-nothing" religions, in the sense that it is believed by both sides that only their faith is the correct one
 * Teleological religions, that is, that their values and beliefs represent the goals of existence and purpose in human existence.

More recent factors contributing to a Western–Islamic clash, Huntington wrote, are the Islamic Resurgence and demographic explosion in Islam, coupled with the values of Western universalism—that is, the view that all civilizations should adopt Western values—that infuriate Islamic fundamentalists. All these historical and modern factors combined, Huntington wrote briefly in his Foreign Affairs article and in much more detail in his 1996 book, would lead to a bloody clash between the Islamic and Western civilizations.

Why civilizations will clash
Huntington offers six explanations for why civilizations will clash:
 * 1) Differences among civilizations are too basic in that civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition, and, most importantly, religion. These fundamental differences are the product of centuries and the foundations of different civilizations, meaning they will not be gone soon.
 * 2) The world is becoming a smaller place. As a result, interactions across the world are increasing, which intensify "civilization consciousness" and the awareness of differences between civilizations and commonalities within civilizations.
 * 3) Due to economic modernization and social change, people are separated from longstanding local identities. Instead, religion has replaced this gap, which provides a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national boundaries and unites civilizations.
 * 4) The growth of civilization-consciousness is enhanced by the dual role of the West. On the one hand, the West is at a peak of power. At the same time, a return-to-the-roots phenomenon is occurring among non-Western civilizations. A West at the peak of its power confronts non-Western countries that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-Western ways.
 * 5) Cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones.
 * 6) Economic regionalism is increasing. Successful economic regionalism will reinforce civilization-consciousness. Economic regionalism may succeed only when it is rooted in a common civilization.

The West versus the Rest
Huntington suggests that in the future the central axis of world politics tends to be the conflict between Western and non-Western civilizations, in Stuart Hall's phrase, the conflict between "the West and the Rest". He offers three forms of general and fundamental actions that non-Western civilization can take in response to Western countries.
 * 1) Non-Western countries can attempt to achieve isolation in order to preserve their own values and protect themselves from Western invasion. However, Huntington argues that the costs of this action are high and only a few states can pursue it.
 * 2) According to the theory of "band-wagoning", non-Western countries can join and accept Western values.
 * 3) Non-Western countries can make an effort to balance Western power through modernization. They can develop economic/military power and cooperate with other non-Western countries against the West while still preserving their own values and institutions. Huntington believes that the increasing power of non-Western civilizations in international society will make the West begin to develop a better understanding of the cultural fundamentals underlying other civilizations. Therefore, Western civilization will cease to be regarded as "universal" but different civilizations will learn to coexist and join to shape the future world.

Core state and fault line conflicts
In Huntington's view, intercivilizational conflict manifests itself in two forms: fault line conflicts and core state conflicts.

Fault line conflicts are on a local level and occur between adjacent states belonging to different civilizations or within states that are home to populations from different civilizations.

Core state conflicts are on a global level between the major states of different civilizations. Core state conflicts can arise out of fault line conflicts when core states become involved.

These conflicts may result from a number of causes, such as: relative influence or power (military or economic), discrimination against people from a different civilization, intervention to protect kinsmen in a different civilization, or different values and culture, particularly when one civilization attempts to impose its values on people of a different civilization.

Modernization, Westernization, and "torn countries"
Japan, China and the Four Asian Tigers have modernized in many respects while maintaining traditional or authoritarian societies which distinguish them from the West. Some of these countries have clashed with the West and some have not.

Perhaps the ultimate example of non-Western modernization is Russia, the core state of the Orthodox civilization. Huntington argues that Russia is primarily a non-Western state although he seems to agree that it shares a considerable amount of cultural ancestry with the modern West. According to Huntington, the West is distinguished from Orthodox Christian countries by its experience of the Renaissance, Reformation, the Enlightenment; by overseas colonialism rather than contiguous expansion and colonialism; and by the infusion of Classical culture through ancient Greece rather than through the continuous trajectory of the Byzantine Empire.

Huntington refers to countries that are seeking to affiliate with another civilization as "torn countries". Turkey, whose political leadership has systematically tried to Westernize the country since the 1920s, is his chief example. Turkey's history, culture, and traditions are derived from Islamic civilization, but Turkey's elite, beginning with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who took power as first President in 1923, imposed Western institutions and dress, embraced the Latin alphabet, joined NATO, and has sought to join the European Union.

Mexico and Russia are also considered to be torn by Huntington. He also gives the example of Australia as a country torn between its Western civilizational heritage and its growing economic engagement with Asia.

According to Huntington, a torn country must meet three requirements to redefine its civilizational identity. Its political and economic elite must support the move. Second, the public must be willing to accept the redefinition. Third, the elites of the civilization that the torn country is trying to join must accept the country.

The book claims that to date no torn country has successfully redefined its civilizational identity, this mostly due to the elites of the 'host' civilization refusing to accept the torn country, though if Turkey gained membership in the European Union, it has been noted that many of its people would support Westernization, as in the following quote by EU Minister Egemen Bağış: "This is what Europe needs to do: they need to say that when Turkey fulfills all requirements, Turkey will become a member of the EU on date X. Then, we will regain the Turkish public opinion support in one day." If this were to happen, it would, according to Huntington, be the first to redefine its civilizational identity.

Criticism
The book has been criticized by various academic writers, who have empirically, historically, logically, or ideologically challenged its claims. Political scientist Paul Musgrave writes that Clash of Civilization "enjoys great cachet among the sort of policymaker who enjoys name-dropping Sun Tzu, but few specialists in international relations rely on it or even cite it approvingly. Bluntly, Clash has not proven to be a useful or accurate guide to understanding the world."

In an article explicitly referring to Huntington, scholar Amartya Sen (1999) argues that "diversity is a feature of most cultures in the world. Western civilization is no exception. The practice of democracy that has won out in the modern West is largely a result of a consensus that has emerged since the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and particularly in the last century or so. To read in this a historical commitment of the West—over the millennia—to democracy, and then to contrast it with non-Western traditions (treating each as monolithic) would be a great mistake."

In his 2003 book Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman argues that distinct cultural boundaries do not exist in the present day. He argues there is no "Islamic civilization" nor a "Western civilization", and that the evidence for a civilization clash is not convincing, especially when considering relationships such as that between the United States and Saudi Arabia. In addition, he cites the fact that many Islamic extremists spent a significant amount of time living or studying in the Western world. According to Berman, conflict arises because of philosophical beliefs various groups share (or do not share), regardless of cultural or religious identity.

Timothy Garton Ash objects to the 'extreme cultural determinism... crude to the point of parody' of Huntington's idea that Catholic and Protestant Europe is headed for democracy, but that Orthodox Christian and Islamic Europe must accept dictatorship.

Edward Said issued a response to Huntington's thesis in his 2001 article, "The Clash of Ignorance". Said argues that Huntington's categorization of the world's fixed "civilizations" omits the dynamic interdependency and interaction of culture. A longtime critic of the Huntingtonian paradigm, and an outspoken proponent of Arab issues, Said (2004) also argues that the clash of civilizations thesis is an example of "the purest invidious racism, a sort of parody of Hitlerian science directed today against Arabs and Muslims" (p. 293).

Noam Chomsky has criticized the concept of the clash of civilizations as just being a new justification for the United States "for any atrocities that they wanted to carry out", which was required after the Cold War as the Soviet Union was no longer a viable threat.

In 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari called the clash of civilizations a misleading thesis. He wrote that Islamic fundamentalism is more of a threat to a global civilization, rather than a confrontation with the West. He also argued that talking about civilizations using analogies from evolutionary biology is wrong.

Intermediate Region
Huntington's geopolitical model, especially the structures for North Africa and Eurasia, is largely derived from the "Intermediate Region" geopolitical model first formulated by Dimitri Kitsikis and published in 1978. The Intermediate Region, which spans the Adriatic Sea and the Indus River, is neither Western nor Eastern (at least, with respect to the Far East) but is considered distinct. Concerning this region, Huntington departs from Kitsikis contending that a civilizational fault line exists between the two dominant yet differing religions (Eastern Orthodoxy and Sunni Islam), hence a dynamic of external conflict. However, Kitsikis establishes an integrated civilization comprising these two peoples along with those belonging to the less dominant religions of Shia Islam, Alevism, and Judaism. They have a set of mutual cultural, social, economic and political views and norms which radically differ from those in the West and the Far East. In the Intermediate Region, therefore, one cannot speak of a civilizational clash or external conflict, but rather an internal conflict, not for cultural domination, but for political succession. This has been successfully demonstrated by documenting the rise of Christianity from the Hellenized Roman Empire, the rise of the Islamic caliphates from the Christianized Roman Empire and the rise of Ottoman rule from the Islamic caliphates and the Christianized Roman Empire.

Opposing concepts
In recent years, the theory of Dialogue Among Civilizations, a response to Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, has become the center of some international attention. The concept was originally coined by Austrian philosopher Hans Köchler in an essay on cultural identity (1972). In a letter to UNESCO, Köchler had earlier proposed that the cultural organization of the United Nations should take up the issue of a "dialogue between different civilizations" (dialogue entre les différentes civilisations). In 2001, Iranian president Mohammad Khatami introduced the concept at the global level. At his initiative, the United Nations proclaimed the year 2001 as the "United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations".

The Alliance of Civilizations (AOC) initiative was proposed at the 59th General Assembly of the United Nations in 2005 by the Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and co-sponsored by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The initiative is intended to galvanize collective action across diverse societies to combat extremism, to overcome cultural and social barriers between mainly the Western and predominantly Muslim worlds, and to reduce the tensions and polarization between societies which differ in religious and cultural values.

Other civilizational models

 * Eurasianism, a Russian geopolitical concept based on the civilization of Eurasia
 * Intermediate Region
 * Islamo-Christian Civilization
 * Pan-Turkism

Individuals

 * Richard Bulliet
 * Jacob Burckhardt
 * Niall Ferguson
 * Dimitri Kitsikis
 * Feliks Koneczny
 * Carroll Quigley
 * Oswald Spengler

title: Clash of Civilizations


text:
Malabo

Malabo (, ; formerly Santa Isabel ) is the capital of Equatorial Guinea and the province of Bioko Norte. It is located on the north coast of the island of Bioko (Etulá, and as Fernando Pó by the Europeans). In 2018, the city had a population of approximately 297,000 inhabitants.

Spanish is the official language of the city and of the country as well, but Pichinglis is used as a language of wider communication across Bioko island, including Malabo.

Malabo is the oldest city in Equatorial Guinea. Ciudad de la Paz is a planned community under construction in mainland Equatorial Guinea which was designed to replace Malabo as the capital. The institutions of governance of Equatorial Guinea began the process of locating to Ciudad de la Paz in February 2017.

European discovery and Portuguese occupation
In 1472, in an attempt to find a new route to India, the Portuguese navigator Fernão do Pó, encountered the island of Bioko, which he called Formosa. Later, the island was named after its discoverer, Fernando Pó. At the beginning of the 16th century, specifically in 1507, the Portuguese Ramos de Esquivel made a first attempt at colonization on the island of Fernando Pó. He established a factory in Concepción (now Riaba) and developed plantations of sugarcane.

With the treaties of San Ildefonso in 1777 and El Pardo in 1778, during the reign of the Spanish King Charles III, the Portuguese gave to the Spanish the islands of Fernando Pó, Annobón, and the right to conduct trade in the mainland, an area of influence of approximately 800 000 km2 in Africa, in exchange for the Colonia del Sacramento in Río de la Plata and the Santa Catarina Island off the Brazilian coast (occupied by the Spaniards) during a recent war trying to stop Portuguese expansion in the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. The area stretched from the Niger Delta to the mouth of Ogooué River — in current Gabon — and included, besides the islands of Fernando Pó and Annobón, the islets of Corisco and Elobeyes. Spain wasn't interested in these lands because already had vast colonies in other parts of the world, Spain lost interest in Spanish Guinea in 1827 and authorized the British to use the island as a base for suppressing the slave trade.

British presence
In 1821, the Nelly approached the island of Fernando Pó. He found it abandoned and founded the establishments of Melville Bay (now Riaba) and San Carlos (now Luba). Some years later, another British captain, William Fitzwilliam Owen, decided to colonize the island and in the north of it — on the site of the present capital — erected a base for British ships hunting slave traders. Thus, on 25 December 1827, Port Clarence was founded on the ruins of a previous Portuguese settlement. The name was chosen in honor of the Duke of Clarence, who later became King William IV. The Bubis indigenous to the island called it Ripotó (place of the foreigners). The population of the capital was increased by the arrival of slaves freed by the British. These freedmen were settled in Port Clarence before the establishment of Sierra Leone as a colony for freed slaves. The descendants of these freed slaves remained on the island. They joined other migrants who arrived as free workers from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon, and became the population group called Creole or fernandinos, whose language was Pichinglis, a Bantu-English Creole with some Spanish elements.

During the British period, the British consul automatically became the governor of the colony, including Governor John Beecroft, a British mulatto who modernized the capital, and whose work was later recognized by Spain with a monument in Punta Fernanda.

Spanish definitive control and new capital
In 1844, when Queen Isabella II of Spain ruled after the regency of her mother Maria Cristina and Baldomero Espartero, in an attempt to modernize Spain and rescue its heritage, Spain let the UK know its desire to regain control of the colony and thus the island. It took another decade to implement this direct control. The capital already had more dynamic and Protestant religious missions which were very successful. Both factors helped to change the attitude of Spain, in addition to internal reasons already alluded.

Spain again took control of the island in 1855 and the capital, Port Clarence, was renamed Santa Isabel, in honor of Queen Isabella II. The capital of the island of Fernando Pó became the capital of Equatorial Guinea.

Its present name was given to the town in 1973 as part of the campaign of President Francisco Macías Nguema to replace place names of European origin with African names, in this case honoring Malabo Löpèlo Mëlaka, the last Bubi king. Malabo, the son of King Moka, surrendered to the Spaniards. His uncle Sas Ebuera, head of the Bubi warriors, claimed to represent legitimate Bubi rule and continued resisting, confronting the Spanish openly in 1898. After the Spanish killed Sas Ebuera, Malabo became the king unopposed, but with no authority. Bubi clans and settlements were slow to accept Spanish sovereignty over the island, and the full conquest and pacification of the island was not achieved until 1912.

Reign of Terror
During the so-called Reign of Terror of Macías Nguema, the dictator suppressed much of the intelligentsia of the country, initiating the process of taking over the positions of the public administration by part of the natives of Mongomo and clan Esangui.

The infamous Black Beach prison, also known as Blay Beach prison (or Playa Negra prison), sits at the mouth of the Cónsul River, beside the black beach and behind the Governor's Palace and barracks. Several people have been jailed there during the 35 years of dictatorship. Among those imprisoned and tortured are many political leaders such as Rafael Upiñalo (Movimiento), Fabián Nsue (UP), Felipe Ondo Obiang (FDR), Martín Puye of Movement for the Self-Determination of Bioko Island (MAIB) or Plácido Micó Abogo of the Social Democratic Convergence for Social Democracy (CPDS). A group of mercenaries were jailed at Black Beach for the 2004 coup d'état attempt against President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

Geography
Malabo is situated in the north of the island of Bioko, at coordinates 3° 45' 7.43" North and 8° 46' 25.32" East. The south of Malabo is limited by the Cónsul River and just across the river, south-west, is the hospital. West of the city, located about 9 km from the center of Malabo, is renewed Malabo International Airport. In the coastal region north of the city are the bays and capes. The elder is the punta de la Unidad Africana located just behind the Malabo Government Building and which occupies the entire eastern part of the Bay of Malabo. Another cape of importance is punta Europa located in the west of the city near to the airport.

Climate
Malabo features a tropical monsoon climate (Köppen Am). Malabo receives on average 1,850 mm of rain per year. The city has a pronounced, albeit short, sunnier (but still cloudy) dry season from December through February. January is normally its driest month with 29 mm of rain falling on average. It also has a very long cloudy wet season that covers the remaining nine months from March to November. On average, the months hit hardest by the wet season are September and October, which receive 500 mm of rain and showers between them.

Daytime temperatures do not vary at all day to day, and vary only a few degrees throughout the entire year. At night, the average low temperature is 20 to 21 °C in every month of the year but January to April have a slightly higher diurnal range because it is clearer. Nonetheless, with only 1,020 hours of sunshine per year, Malabo is one of the cloudiest, wettest and most lightning-prone capitals of the world, and experiences much fog and haze even when it is not raining in the driest months.

Administration
The mayor is María Coloma Edjang Mbengono who establishes the municipal services prescribed by law, which are the responsibility of the municipality. These include drinking water and others public sources, lighting, paving of roads, cemeteries, cleaning and sanitation, the sanitary waste treatment and waste, disinfecting, emergency first aid, health inspections and drinks, health inspection of poor housing, public banks, slaughterhouses, markets and the elimination of stagnant water.

Cultural centres
Through the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AECID), are made several development projects at both regional and national level. Headquartered in the Technical Cooperation Office in Malabo (created in 1984), carried out actions for the development of the culture, health, education and institutional strengthening. Stressing the Cultural Center of Spain in Malabo (CCEM), founded in 2003, where young people are encouraged to feel a cultural space where they can unleash their creative freedom. It also has three geographical axes, in order to capture the largest number of people in the region and contribute to its development. Activities include the training, art, film, theater, music and games, with the two main festivals: Traveling Film Festival of Equatorial Guinea (FECIGE) and the International Festival of Hip Hop in Malabo.

Another important center is the Hispano-Guinean Cultural Center, from 2012 Equatorial Guinean Cultural Center began as headquarters of Institute Cardinal Cisneros, and then archive, museum and library. It was built in the 1950s.

The Museum of Modern Art Equatorial Guinea has traditional and contemporary art of the country and the continent. The city also hosts the National Library, built in 1916.

Tourism
The tourism sector is seeing significant expansion. Since the discovery of oil, numerous infrastructural developments have been made. The city of Malabo is a focal point for tourism in Equatorial Guinea, due to its direct connections with major tourist attractions on the island of Bioko. Nearby tourist attractions include the following:

 * San Antonio de Ureca: A small town located in the south of the island rich in primates, birds, beaches, and waterfalls. During the months of November to February, it is possible to observe the spawning of leatherback sea turtles during the night.
 * Ilachi or Iladyi Waterfalls: They are the largest waterfalls in the country with more than 250 meters of fall. They are approximately a 45-minute walk from the city of Moka.
 * Pico Basilé: The highest mountain in Equatorial Guinea, it belongs to the volcanic shield next to Mount Cameroon and to the great caldera of Luba. The mountain is more than 3000 m high, and is visible from all over the city of Malabo. A church and statue of Mother Bisila is located atop the mountain. The sculpture was created by the Spanish sculptor Modesto Gené Roig in 1968.
 * The luxury resort of Sipopo, which was first built for the 2011 African Union Summit.

Demographics

Malabo has a relatively young population. Approximately 45% of the population is under 15. Only about 4% of the population is more than 65 years old. Most of the population lives in rural areas of the island.

Economy
Malabo is the commercial and financial center. Malabo's economy is based on the administration and other services. Trade is also one of the most prominent and important economic activities, especially since the arrival of US companies which exploit oil wells close to the coast. This trade also comes from the presence of Americans, Mexicans, Nigerians, Cameroonians, Spanish and other Central Africans; The building that was originally built by the Banco Popular Español, but after independence became the seat of Banco de Guinea Ecuatorial.

The main industry in the city is fishing, while cacao and coffee are the main products of export.

Malabo has a high-tonnage port, connected mainly with the ports of Douala, (Cameroon) and Bata, and an air link via an international airport.

There are about 300 hotel beds in the city.

Education
The National University of Equatorial Guinea (UNGE) and the National Distance Education University (UNED), the latter Spanish-language, have headquarters in the city. The Colegio Nacional Enrique Nvó Okenve, another of the country's universities, has one of its two campuses in the city.

International schools:
 * Colegio Español Don Bosco
 * Lycée Français de Malabo
 * Equatorial Guinea Turkish International College
 * Royal International College

Attractions

Malabo has preserved buildings from the colonial era, such as the Presidential Palace and the Palace of Justice of Malabo. Other colonial buildings are also found downtown, although they are worn; for example the wooden 19th-century buildings on Nigeria and Rey Boncoro streets.

Notable buildings include the Cathedral of Santa Isabel, of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Malabo. It is a church in the Gothic Revival style, built between 1897 and 1916. Its architect was Luis Segarra Llairadó, paid by contributions from the government of Spain and the donations of the faithful. It has two spires 40 meters high. In January 2020 a fire due to an electrical failure caused the calcination of part of its structure, currently there are work ongoing for an early restoration in November 2021.

Other points of interest are La Gaditana, known as Finca Amilivia prior to 1918, the casa Teodolita, built in 1902 and one of the oldest homes in the city, the City Hall building in Malabo, the Church of Elá Nguema, Independence Square, Parque Nacional de Malabo, the Casa de España and the bay of the harbor.

Public transport system
Public buses make the journey between downtown Malabo and the neighborhood of Ela Nguema. Taxis circulate in the city and outlying areas, and there is car hire from Avis and Europcar.

Maritime transport
The port of Malabo can theoretically reach a treatment capacity of 200,000 tons/year. The main maritime links are with national destination to Bata and international to Spain and Douala in Cameroon.

Aviation
The Malabo International Airport serves the city. It is located 7 km from the centre in Punta Europa, Bioko. It serves long-distance direct flights to Europe and some African capitals as per the list below:

 * Madrid (Spain): Ceiba Intercontinental (4 flights per week)
 * Paris (France): Air France (3 flights per week)
 * Frankfurt (Germany): Lufthansa (3 flights per week)
 * Casablanca (Morocco): Royal Air Maroc (2 flights per week)
 * Istanbul (Turkey): Turkish Airlines (1 flight per week)
 * Cotonou (Benin): Cronos Airlines (2 flights per week)
 * Abidjan (Ivory Coast): Ceiba Intercontinental (3 flights per week)
 * Accra (Ghana): Ceiba Intercontinental (3 flights per week);
 * São Tomé (São Tomé and Príncipe): Ceiba Intercontinental (3 flights per week);
 * Douala (Cameroon): Ethiopian Airline (3 flights per week); Cronos Airlines (3 flights per week)
 * Libreville (Gabon): Royal Air Marroc (2 flights per week)
 * Port Harcourt (Nigeria): Cronos Airlines (2 flights per week)
 * Addis Ababa (Ethiopia): Ethiopian Airlines (3 flights per week)

From Malabo airport, one can fly to any of the other airports in the country. These airports are located in the region of Annobón, Bata, Mongomoyen, and Corisco.

Places of worship
Among the places of worship, they are predominantly Christian churches and temples (Catholic: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Malabo, Protestant, Evangelical Christian: Assemblies of God). Malabo Mosque was established in 2015.

Sports
The main sports facility of Malabo, and the country, is the Estadio de Malabo, with a capacity of 15,250 spectators. The stadium is home to the Equatorial Guinea national football team and hosted matches during the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations. Notably, the Spain national football team, at the time World Champions, played a friendly at this stadium. The stadium also is home to the CD Elá Nguema, the main club of the country. Also located in Malabo is the Estadio Internacional. The Estadio Internacional has a 6,000 seat capacity. The Equatorial Guinea national football team played here until the Estadio de Malabo was opened.

The 2012 Africa Cup of Nations was organized jointly by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. One of the four venues for the tournament was the Estadio de Malabo, the main stadium of the country, constructed in 2007. In Malabo were disputed six matches of the group stage (one match of Group A and five of group B), and one cross of quarterfinals

The 16 November 2013, the Spain national football team played a friendly match against the Equatorial Guinea national football team. It was the first visit of a European team in the country, and the match was criticized by several organizations, including the president of the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional, Javier Tebas, due to the political situation of the country and the government of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

Some of the top clubs in the country, who have won several times the Equatoguinean Primera División are from the city of Malabo. The club with the most league titles is the CD Elá Nguema with 14. Other clubs from the city that have been proclaimed league champions are the Renacimiento FC, the Atlético Malabo or Cafe Bank Sportif. Another club of the city is the Atlético Semu, once champion of Equatoguinean Cup.

Another important club from the city is the Malabo Kings of basketball, which was champion of the country, and in 2013 was proclaimed champion Central Zone of Africa Basketball Championship, winning in Kinshasa at Talia from Gabon. The Malabo Kings had already finished second in 2011, Yaoundé (Cameroon). In 2013 held in Malabo on I Campus of Basketball Ciudad de Malabo organized by the Equatorial Guinea Basketball Federation and Club de Baloncesto Conejero from Spain.

Malabo was originally to host the 2019 African Games but due to economic problems they decide to withdraw its hosting rights and was replaced by Casablanca, Morocco.

Discovery of oil
Malabo has been significantly affected by Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo's growing co-operation with the petroleum industry. The country's production has reached 360000 oilbbl/d, an increase which led to a doubling of the city's population, but for the vast majority, very little of that wealth has been invested in development.

Twin towns – sister cities

 * 🇲🇽 Guadalajara, Mexico
 * 🇲🇽 Celaya, Mexico
 * 🇲🇽 Acayucan, Mexico

Notable people

 * Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, Equatoguinean author and activist
 * John Batchelor, British rugby player
 * Rita Bosaho, Equatoguinean-Spanish politician and activist
 * Elsa López, Spanish writer and poet

title: Malabo