We are dealing with Star Wars. It involves the combination of chemtrails for creating an atmosphere that will support electromagnetic waves, ground-based, electromagnetic field oscillators called gyrotrons, and ionospheric heaters.

Particulates make directed energy weapons work better. It has to do with "steady state" and particle density for plasma beam propagation.

They spray barium powders and let it photo-ionize from the ultraviolet light of the sun. Then, they make an aluminum-plasma generated by "zapping" the metal cations that are in the spray with either electromagnetics from HAARP, the gyrotron system on the ground [Ground Wave Emergency Network], or space-based lasers.

The barium makes the aluminum-plasma more particulate dense. This means they can make a denser plasma than they normally could from just ionizing the atmosphere or the air.

More density [more particles] means that these particles which are colliding into each other will become more charged because there are more of them present to collide.