U.S. Navy Project ELF:
One-way Communications System for Submarine Warfare

The Nuclear War Bell Ringer in the North Woods

Deep in the north woods of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, near Clam Lake, WI and Republic, MI, secluded in a recreational paradise of forest, lakes and sparkling rivers, is “Project ELF,” the Navy’s one-way communications trigger for its nuclear-armed Trident and Fast-Attack submarines.

ELF continues to use the region as a giant antenna, pumping millions of watts of electricity into the earth, in spite of the absence of nuclear-armed adversaries. (China, the UK, France, Russia, India, Israel and Pakistan are all allies, clients or U.S. arms buyers.) ELF waves radiate continuously around the world and they penetrate seawater, reaching U.S. and British submarines deep in the oceans. ELF’s crude signals tell the submarine commanders to bring their “platforms” to shallower depths from which they can receive more detailed commands and fire their missiles.

Short for extremely low frequency, Project ELF uses radio waves for one-way commands, allowing submerged subs to remain undetected while lurking close to the coasts of alleged “enemies”?close enough to shorten their missiles’ flight-to-impact time to 15 minutes. ELF is the culmination of nearly 25 years of cold war planning for a “first-strike” using nuclear weapons. That is, ELF allows submarine-launched missiles to threaten “enemy” missiles and bombers before they are launched, in a pre-emptive first strike. This is exactly what deterrence is supposed to prevent.

ELF and Trident: The Costliest & Deadliest Weapon in History

The Trident submarine fleet and its ELF communi-cation trigger constitute the costliest and deadliest weapon system in history. Total long-term costs for the Trident fleet are estimated at $155 billion, with each of 18 subs costing $1.9 billion. The missiles (without their nuclear warheads) cost $40 million apiece and each submarine carries 24 missiles.

Each submarine carries over 24 megatons of H-bomb explosive power. That’s eight times the total number of explosives used in World War II by all parties, including the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. With the latest multi-targeting techniques, a single Trident can incinerate over 192 separate places. Project ELF gives Trident submarines the ability to conduct “decapitating” sneak attacks on missile silos and command posts, making it a first-strike system.

ELF and its Dangers

Even without the wartime use of the H-bombs it is designed to trigger, ELF and the electromagnetic fields (EMF) it produces have been shown to create a public health hazard.

In 1990, the U.S. EPA was ready to issue a cancer advisory for electromagnetic pollution (EMP), the exact kind that Project ELF generates. More than 40 formal medical studies now point to a link between EMP and cancers?14 to brain tumors alone.

Questions are raised by new Navy-sponsored ecological studies at the Michigan transmitter. Abnormalities have been found in a variety of animal and plant species. Most alarming is the Navy’s refusal to conduct studies involving the impact of EMP on humans. The chief zoologist for the Navy will not make recommendations to this effect because, “I could get in a lot of trouble.” (Isthmus, January 22, 1993, Madison, WI)

A definitive 1992 Swedish study found that children exposed to weak electromagnetic fields from power lines develop leukemia at almost four times the expected rate. This finding prompted Sweden to become the first country to officially acknowledge an EMF-cancer connection and to impose national exposure limits. (Microwave News, Sept/Oct 1992)

Worldwide Demand: Abolition! 

Several encouraging events have recently brought international pressure to bear against the nuclear armed governments: 1) Saying nuclear arms were “fundamentally useless,” the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, on June 18, 1997, called current nuclear war plans “unchanged from the cold war era” and called for drastic cuts in the arsenal; 2) The prestigious Canberra Commission called in 1996 for the abolition of all nuclear arsenals; 3) On Dec. 4, 1996, former commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, Gen. George L. Butler, declared nuclear weapons “morally indefensible” and called for their abolition; 4) On Dec. 5, 1996, 62 retired generals and admirals from around the world called for the elimination of nuclear weapons; and 5) On July 8, 1996, the World Court in the Hague declared that the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons is generally a violation of international law.

Six out of nine members of Wisconsin’s congres-sional delegation have condemned ELF. Several regional newspapers have also called for the shut-down of ELF, including the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, the Wausau Daily Herald, the Ashland Daily Press and the Superior Daily Telegram.

The Navy has never been able to prove that the system is safe for the people or the wildlife living near it.
--U.S. Rep. David Obey, Ashland Daily Press, September 27, 1994.

ELF wasn’t even an effective program when there was a cold war and a nuclear threat. Now it is a program without a justification?and hopefully a program that will soon be without funding.
--U.S. Senator Herbert Kohl, letter to Stop Project ELF, August 8, 1994. 

The [new] Presidential Directive [#60] requires a wide range of nuclear retaliatory options, from a limited strike to a more general nuclear exchange.
--Robert Bell, Clinton National Security Advisor, Mpls. Star-Tribune, December 8, 1997.

ELF + Trident = Mass Destruction

ELF’s encoded messages are extremely slow and can only be heard by submarines. The subs cannot reply to ELF. Sabotage or an attack on the U.S. would destroy the ELF transmitters long before its sluggish signals were heard. ELF is useful only prior to the start of a nuclear war?as a “starter pistol.” Indeed, ELF’s Navy advocates have repeatedly described the system to Congress as a “bell-ringer” for launching a nuclear attack. Call it the Trident Trigger.

Congress has enacted a moratorium on nuclear bomb testing. The Air Force has taken B-52s off runway alert, grounded the “Looking Glass” (flying nuclear command post), stepped-down alert status at Minuteman-3 missile sites and is dismantling the Minuteman-2s. The Army has taken Pershing-2 and nuclear-armed Cruise missiles out of Europe and Korea. Still, the Navy has made no comparable gesture of good will to decrease nuclear tensions in the world. In fact they are increasing their nuclear war-fighting ability.

The Navy’s only pretext for Trident submarines, Trident missiles and ELF?the Soviet Union?has vanished. It’s time for ELF to do the same.

ELF would have to send only a few code letters to… summon a missile sub nearer the surface for firing commands.  
--Captain Daniel Donovan, Deputy Director of Naval Communications, Discover magazine, Jan. 1982.

Indeed [nuclear weapons] are not weapons at all. They’re some species of biological time bombs whose effects transcend time and space, poisoning the earth and its inhabitants for generations to come.
--General George L. Butler, USAF (Ret.), former Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command, March 1999.

Opposition to ELF

Since it was proposed in the early 1950s, ELF has been the object of massive opposition. Residents of Wisconsin and Michigan have repeatedly petitioned and voted against the facility. The State of Wisconsin sued the Navy in 1984; the Navy lost and Federal Judge Barbara Crabb ordered ELF construction halted. Crabb’s injunction was overturned on appeal.

ELF transmitters in Wisconsin and Michigan have been the scenes of dozens of vigils and non-violent resistance actions. Since a resurgence in 1991, more than 44 nonviolent actions at the Wisconsin trans-mitter have resulted in over 545 arrests. Thirty-nine ELF/Trident resisters have spent a total of 43 months in jail and prison for refusing to pay fines. In  1996, an Ashland County jury found two ELF resisters innocent of sabotage (they cut down three ELF poles on Earth Day), after concluding that Trident is not part of the “national defense.” ELF and Trident are strictly offensive weapons.

All this critical public attention has prompted U.S. Senator Russ Feingold to four times introduce legislation that would terminate ELF funding (S. 128). U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is seeking co-sponsors for a similar House version (HR 3265).