The news is meant to keep you ignorant and complacent regarding the true nature of military experimental developments in its pursuit of space based electromagnetic weapons.  Star Wars isn't dead; it's hiding under a suffocating blanket of national security.

Weather weapons are one aspect of the capabilities. (copy to browser)
http://weatherwarfare.worldatwar.info/docs/weatherweapons.pdf

DARPA learned how to control the Ionosphere in Gakona, but now has new facilities and methods.  (See the video posted by AL13.)  Gakona wasn't the optimal site.  It seems Poker Flats is better.  There are others that work in concert, i.e., Christochina, Dot Lake, Healy, Homer, Juneau, Ketchikan, Kodiak, Valdez and Yakutat.  Microwaving the upper atmosphere with 3.6 Billion Watts up to 1600 degrees isn't just to study the Aurora.  But it does threaten life in the biosphere, the protective atmospheric veils, magnetosphere and electrojet. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu0_lTXHICs