Pentagon prepares for sea level rise

Although there are still many who continue to deny climate change, especially in the USA, Pentagon officials are clear that it is going to happen and are already preparing for the worst.

The U.S. military has about 1,700 military bases around the world that are close to the sea, and are very sensitive to rising sea levels and the impact of hurricanes. Hurricanes close to the sea are much more damaging.

That is why DARPA (the U.S. defense research center) has launched a program called  Reefence Program  , to develop means and structures that allow them to better resist and if possible counteract the rise in sea level in their military bases.

Within this program, they are going to investigate how to try to defend themselves in the most natural possible way from rising sea levels in the coming years.

They are thinking of promoting the creation of reefs and other more or less natural structures to slow down the onslaught of the waves. Because a coral reef structure cushions the waves and storms against the coasts, as well as flooding, erosion, etc...

Just to give you a figure, Hurricane Michael caused enormous damage to Tyndall Air Force Base, which was close to the sea, at a cost of almost 5 billion dollars to repair it. So once again, prevention costs less than cure.

But developing natural walls (such as reefs and others) costs several tens of years, and that is why DARPA is going to investigate and test different solutions that can be useful in a shorter period of time.

They plan to use special non-polluting concretes that favor the growth of oysters or reefs of certain types of coral, and to test them in three different places in the sea, in order to be able to compare results.

In short, what the Pentagon wants to do is to anticipate the events that are going to occur and minimize their consequences, and that is important because the results they obtain will be directly applicable to civilian cases for the protection of the seashore.

I wish the best to the folks at DARPA, and may they get results as soon as possible. We all need them.