An old mystery, still bugs me.

[Scott Olson]

I love a good mystery. It's clear from digging that it's the same Siemens international as:

http://w1.siemens.com/entry/cc/en/

Which is Simenes AG (exactly as it appears on the track). Siemens AG International is a massive international consortium of many smaller companies and produces all sorts of electrical and automation equipment. Siemens AG is also AVERA NP which is:

World leader in the design and construction of nuclear power plants, and the supply of fuel, maintenance and modernization services.

It's also clear that Siemens has a large research division in the field of energy as shown by it's participation in numerous panels and research papers. More importantly Siemens has a dedicated corporate research division.

Siemens Corporate Research (SCR) is a subsidiary of Siemens Corporation, New York, N.Y., and part of the Siemens worldwide conglomerate headquartered in Munich, Germany. Siemens Corporate, of which SCR is a part, has a number of research locations worldwide, employing almost 2000 researchers.

Siemens actively has a University research coloboration program and previously had been invited to participate in programs at UNM (Los Alamos). So It's likely this project was in coloboration with UNM. It's not clear the affliation past or present with any WESTAR, so it's possibly colobrative. Siemens appears to operate some sort of lightning detection network in Germany:

Lightning detection data from the BLIDS network operated by Siemens in Germany

So my guess it's some joint project between UNM, Westar (the defense contractor) and Siemens research. Westar Energy was never owned by Siemens and I can't find any indication of the defense contractor ever being a subsidary of Siemens AG. Given the equipment on board, I have a hard time seeing how it's releated to air quality. It appears it seems like the 'Wild Fire High Energy Pulsed Mangetic Radar' is the primary research instrument. Pretty crazy that this thing acts as an EMP. Sure seems like the energy needed to run such a thing would certainly take quite the generator. Anyone care to explain a bit about magnetic radar?

-Scott.

 

[Wayne Hlinicky]

Just like Area 51 this truck does not exist!! Therefore your photo does not exist!!! LOL LOL. I have seen trucks like this running back and forth along I 40 between AMA and Los Alamos. They have 18 wheelers which are also armed to the hilt and very heavily constructed. I got on the CB and talked to one of the drivers and he told me it was none of my business and he could get lots of help in a heart beat and I would regret it. Following the 18 wheelers I have also noticed pick ups and SUV which are clearly gov vehicles with about 4 people in them. What they are hauling I have no idea.

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

"Wild Fire High Energy Pulsed Madnetic Radar"

About all we can learn from this is that the radar is pulsed (like most weather radars) unlike continuous wave radars (police radar guns for example).

Specifying "Magnetic" radar doesn't make sense considering radars emit electromagnetic (EM) radiation. This radiation has electric/magnetic fields that oscillate at the frequency of radiation and are induced by each other in an endless loop.

 

[Doug_Kiesling]

Ok, I will step out of the WX box on this topic.

What if their doing something else and just using storm chasing as a cover?

When I was in flight school we heard a lot about certain aircraft that did not exist.

No, I'm not talking about spy planes and area 51 alien anal probe stuff.

This was a topic about the fact that their are airplanes and certain outfits that detect radioactive material to help prevent a Jack Bauer like episode of 24 from really happening. You may see something you should not see that is for your own protection so it's best to just look, wonder, and then forget about it.

Anyone know of a better cover for testing new equipment around the cap rock in May then storm chasing?

 

[Jim Saueressig]

*on topic* Well Doug when I was in So Cal for a while about 11 years ago I stayed in the desert South of Ridgecrest at a camping / mining claim sorta thing and I do know they had special radar trucks for tracking the stealth aircraft as they trained and such when they were not being escorted by a non stealth fighter because I would often run across them in remote desert areas so it is possible it's something like that. We knew a few of the 117 pilots and they told us what they were but they were much larger trucks than the pickup.

*Off topic related humor* Some of them were real smart asses too, they would come into the valley over the camp at dusk or dawn and get at brush top level and do a flyby. The first time that happened to me I nearly had to clean my drawers. It was pretty much dark and and I was sitting in the camper playing cards and heard some kind of massive suction noise from the East that in a matter of 3-5 seconds got louder than hell, as I stood up to open the door my 5th wheel camper leaned to the east and then near flipped over to the West and as it reseated it self on the wheels it threw me out the door to the ground as it was sounding like the world was ending. I was told the next day by a few others who were out walking South of my camper that it was probably a B1B or B2 bomber since all that was visible was a huge dark fast moving shadow to them (they had seen and heard plenty of 117's at dark) and it had probably come from Edwards. I was parked up further North than the rest of the campers so usually no one was up north as far as where I was at from the main camp area. I did often see the B1's in the area after that and they were pretty loud down close so maybe.

 

[JIM SELLARS]

The most likely scenario's are is that this vehicle contained one of the numerous weather/security teams that accompany "fissionable" materials to and from the PANTEX facility in Amarillo to the Nuclear testing/recovery facilities at Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, The Y12 National Security Complex in Tennessee or one of the other spooky classified Nuclear facilities...These guys mean business!!..More than likely you encountered a "team" before or after a hand off of a Nuclear Convoy...Or it could have been a test bed vehicle for a Homeland Security initiative....and BTW that is not a "RADAR DOME" on the truck...It is a receiver for a Field Radiation detector called VLAND (Very Large Area Neutron Detector)...It is used to check for Neutron and Gamma particle emissions at a long range...Just a theory...Hee Hee...BTW...Hi to all my friends at the NSA monitoring via ECHELON!!!!

 

[Bill Tabor]

Very interesting. Keep in mind if this is any thing Top Secret or above then likely the stickers on the items of the truck are misleading. It may not be a high energy magnetic radar. Perhaps it is a high energy particle beam weapon system as part of SDI or the old 'Star Wars' defense initiative - anti-missile etc? Alternatively perhaps it is some type of weather modification field test vehicle as we have heard scientists were going to experiment with this type of thing.

 

[David Wolfson]

I saw the mystery vehicle once on the plains back at that time. I think Jim Sellars probably has it right with respect to what I read and understand about VLAND research and its theory of operation. Google turns up plenty of interesting information about VLAND. However I don't think the vehicle has anything to do with the routine transport of nuclear materials between Pantex and Wherever, which is kept very low key.

The way I understand it, basically you need an energetic focused neutron emitter and a detector tank. The reflective piping to the tank in the vehicle is quite likely for cryogenic fluid. I'd place my bet that the "Wildfire radar" may be the emitter. The other domes are perhaps for more standard nuclear emission detectors. I'd bet it was a prototype test vehicle.

I'd also suspect it turned out to be too short range and too much of a pain-in-the-butt to be useful.

 

[scott r currens]

FWIW, the vehicle did have some significant hail dents. I'd guess that it had been in tennisball to baseball sized hail. So whatever they were doing was likely weather related.

 

[Graham Butler]

FWIW, the vehicle did have some significant hail dents. I'd guess that it had been in tennisball to baseball sized hail. So whatever they were doing was likely weather related.

I agree, we saw the vehicle after chasing a southward moving supercell south of Ft.Stockton in 2003. Spent the night at the same hotel as us in the booming town of Sanderson Tx. Never seen it since. I kinda doubt that it is some "24" style b.s. If the government doesn't want you to know then you won't.....and driving a vehicle with stickers and equipment such as this around storm chasing, where cameras out number people, is just silly.

Graham Butler

 

[Robert Butler]

I doubt very much it would be SDI or Star Wars related. To get the resolution required to track an incoming warhead, you'd want a much wider dish. The current test bed vehicle for a laser based system for shooting down warheads is a 747. A truck that size just won't have the power available to take the offensive.

As a wild guess, lightning might be as good a source of electro magnetic pulse as you'll get in the wild. One of the final above ground nuclear tests was detonated in the high atmosphere over the South Pacific. It took down telephone systems in Hawaii. The air is so thin up high that the energy can't go into heat or shock. The energy has to go somewhere, so takes the form of radio waves. There are concerns that a big H bomb detonated in the high atmosphere could take out electrical and phone systems on a continent wide scale, while frying electronics and crashing most every modern plane in the air not specially shielded. (Air Force One and a few airborne command posts are so shielded. The shielding is so expensive that few others craft are.)

Putting various sensor equipments or sensitive electronics behind various forms of shielding (Faraday cages) in the proximity of lighting might be a valid form of research. Color me dubious. If that is what they were trying, I'm not surprised the truck wasn't in the field for long. It might have sounded like a good idea when they applied for a research grant...

 

[Jason Foster]

Very good information, much more to learn

I love all the responses, and I'm glad a few others saw this thing on the road especially the next year.

I was sure that it was a weather related research vehicle, not a cover up for something else. All the stuff seemed appropiate enough, just a little scary with the certain warnings on it. The government agency and associated contractors involved in this project may have been really pushing the boundries of research, and rather than what we're more familiar with (just learning the storm structure and behavior) and could see this vehicle being a test bed for altering a storms behavior, kinda like the old cloud seeding stuff years and years ago.

Now that some folks have given some good sources I'll have to read up on more, and perhaps make a seperate page on my website about this vehicle. I'm sure it won't be the last "mystery" vehicle we see out there.