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U.S. Air Force Developing Microwave Weapon
Makarand writes "A weapon that uses an intense microwave pulse to fry electronics in computers
and communication systems is being developed by the US Air Force
according to this BBC News article. This weapon is totally harmless to people and could be used in
situations where hitting targets could result in civilian casualties.
This weapon could be carried by an unmanned drone or a cruise missile." EMP weapons have, in general, been under discussion and research for a very long time.
In the second place, how "harmless" do you suppose these things are if they land next to a hospital full of electronic monitoring equipment? Or if an EMP was set off in the middle of Wall Street?
In the third place, given that the USA has one of the most automated militaries in the world, they'd better hope that Saddam isn't working on the same things!! Ever wonder what a close-range EMP would do to an F-16 at 10000 ft? (yes, I know they're shielded from EMPs, but it's a lot easier to make a 10x stronger EMP than to put 10x the shielding in place)
Finally, keep in mind that these things won't affect any plain old mechanical or chemical reactions, so an AK-47 will keep firing even if an EMP weapon lands right next to the firer. These things can't do everything, and they sure as heck can't win a battle for you.
This not quite an EMP weapon which usually destroys by causing induction and other similar effects. It's more of a maser (m(icrowave) a(mplification by) s(timulated) e(mission of) r(adiation)) which is tuned to silicon instead of water (microwave oven at home). The implied precision that is needed again indicate more in the nature of a uni-directional energy weapon (laser, pulse laser and ilk) rather than a pulse surge weapon system (HERF gun, e bomb, nuclear EMP warheads, dazzlers).
Even if you fry the electronics at 300M out, that doesn't guarantee the missile will miss... A balistic weapon traveling at 4,600 MPH can't change direction much in 300M... for that matter, a cruise missle traveling at 560MPH can't turn much either. BTW - the millitary has had microwave weapons for some time... Since the '50s - I can't remember the name of the weapon system, but they used to have a device that used microwaves to explode artillery in the air. The shrapnel generated was a problem, but it was better than taking a direct hit...
$G
-- $G
Even if the electronics are destroyed that missiles will still be coming on. If it's already on a flightpath to it's target it'll still land pretty close. Lots of nukes also carry shock or altimeter based detonators which may be still operational. Even if the missile is rendered dud you'll still have 12 Kg or so of plutonium or some bio/chemical agent(not to mention the possibility or unexpended fuel) landing somewhere. Blowing them up with another missile still has it's advantages.
EMP "rifle"
http://www.plans-kits.com/
Know all those speed cameras? Congestion charging cameras? CCTV cameras? Whap, they don't work anymore.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
all nukes are detonated in the air, in stead of on the ground, to maximize the damage. this was done with the relatively small (~15-20kt) bombs dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki, and would also be true for larger bombs.
so, except for maybe tactical nukes for very specific purposes (targetting some structure directly, maybe) all nukes are detonated in the air above their target. a 50Mt bomb would have to be dropped a little higher than a 20kt one, but it's still the same...and it'd CERTAINLY be "useable against ground targest", it just isn't detonated on the ground.
maximizing EMP damage is something different. to this the bomb would be detonated at *very* high altitudes (above 30,000 m). then the ground damage will of course be minimized, but it's not because the bomb can't be used against a ground target in a "normal" way.
check out this link for a good explanation of nuke effects, including EMP (section 5.5)
Taken from a useful set of articles over at CBC News, including one on new weapons which mentions the microwave bomb. CBC's reporting tends to be less enthusiastic about things military.
If the weapon is not dangerous for people, it would also mean that it is unusable to cook food with...
The microwaves in microwaveovens has a frequency that energizes water-molecules. And it has the same effect in live tissue as it has on dead. So if it is unharmfull to people, it should not energize watermolecules...
- "Every demand is a prison, and wisdom is only free when it asks nothing." Sir Betrand Russell
The Electromagnetic Bomb
Basically in both cases the default configuration is to be nonlethal, but it wouldn't take a whole lot to change that in a hurry.
A balistic weapon traveling at 4,600 MPH can't change direction much in 300M
No, a ballistic weapon can't change direction at all once it's fired. That's what separates a ballistic weapon (bullet, shell, dumb bomb) from a 'smart' weapon (guided missile, smart bomb); the guided weapons are just that, while a ballistic weapon relies soley on it's own momentum from firing and gravity to put it on target (remember projectile motion from Phys101?). 'ballistic missiles' aren't technically truly ballistic, with final-stage guidance on the MIRVs, but the launch to suborbit is.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Actually according to this article in the Daily Standard.
"After watching dozens of such slam-cam clips, most observers thought precision munitions were the go-to weapon during the Gulf War, but during Operation Desert Storm, of all the bombs dropped over Iraq, only 20 percent were "smart." And in fact many of those missed their targets because of weather problems or malfunctions. Saddam's destruction of Kuwaiti oil fields late in the war foiled the laser guidance systems of many because the smoke deflected the laser energy the bombs homed in on.
But if America goes to war again in Iraq, close to 100 percent of its bombing sorties will be conducted using smart bombs. And this time, they'll be smarter. Advances in laser technology, targeting systems, and the now ubiquitous global positioning satellite system have revolutionized how America conducts war from the air--and, in many cases, the ground.
During the Gulf War, pilots had to calmly keep a laser trained on their target and wait for another plane's bombs to follow the beam to the bull's eye. Today, targeting pods attached to an aircraft's wings can keep their eyes on the target while a pilot zigs and zags his way out of trouble. A laser-guided bomb dropped on Baghdad during this war will reach its target even during the most severe defensive maneuverings.
However, it's the GPS-guided bomb that has truly changed the face of air-to-ground warfare. An inexpensive retrofit to existing "dumb" bombs, the Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, literally screws onto the tail and around the belly of a conventional 1,000 or 2,000 pound unguided bomb, making it in many cases more precise than a laser-guided bomb. The pilot simply programs in the GPS coordinates of a target, sometimes broadcast to air crews from ground forces by radio, and the bomb glides its way to the target, day or night, in clear skies and stormy weather. There are no laser beams to bend or bounce, just the steady signals of America's GPS constellation beaming their coordinates from space.
So apparently we will be using smart tails strapped to dumb bombs, it works for me.
FACT: During the weapons inspections iin the mid 90s enough Antrax and chemical weapons were found to kill the worlds population 3 times over.
FACT: At the time this was found, Iraq said that it had NONE.
FACT: Iraq is the only country to have used Nerve agents/gas in combat. (vs Iran) The effects are still being seen today.
FACT: Saddam ordered the gassing of his own citizens in Northern Iraq.
FACT: Iraq consisently denied a Nuclear weapons program throughout the 90s until the former head of said program defected and laid the evidence before the world.
FACT: During the inspections in the mid 90s, inspectors caught Iraqi officials in the act of driving parts of a Calutron out the back entrance of a facility as the inspectors came in the front. Calutrons are used to refine materials for nuclear reactions.
Also, see the following link Cdi.org for more information.
If you have information that contradicts that posted above then please provide it. If not, then please accept the fact that Saddam is not the cuddly teddy bear some would make him out to be.
WoodSmoke
The Iraqis surrendered to the drones because the drones were being used as spotters for the artilery (or ship guns). They knew that when they saw/heard a drone they would soon get shelled.
There is a one megaton threshold of "usefulness" for nuclear weapons. In a surface detonation, the blast from a thermonuclear is powerful enough to send some of the atmosphere above ground zero into space. Once 1MT is crossed it seems that most of the excess force powers this effect leaving less energy for the blast wave and radiation to destroy things OUTWARD of the blast. It isn't as counterintuitive as it seems. Most of the energy output of a bomb is X-rays and gamma radiation. A bomb going off in space is little more than a bright flash and a little puff of gas from vaporized bomb components (It still sucks to be anywhere in the vicinity.).
The devasting effects we associate with nukes comes from the effects this radiation flux has on the atmosphere. It's like a vastly oversized thunderclap. The radiation instantly heats up a large amount of atmosphere and this is what creates the blast wave and starts a lot of the fires. Of course, there's lots of radiation left over to flash fry things further out. Heat a quantity of atmosphere up enough and it's going straight up in a hurry.
That isn't to say that there are NO noticable effects of making the bomb bigger but from a military point of view the law of diminishing returns kicks in with a vengence. There is another threshold around a gigaton or so that makes a bomb a planetary threat with some different effects involved (similar to a large asteroid collision) but who wants to set a Backyard Bomb off? It's called a Backyard Bomb because it doesn't NEED a delivery system. You set it off in your backyard and it fries your enemies anyway.
The 50MT Soviet bomb was the biggest public relations stunt in history. Khruschev literally told Sakarov to make something to "scare the ^$#@ out of the Americans" in time for a conference. It also came from a touch of Texas in the Russian mentality. The worlds biggest church bell sits on the ground somewhere in Russia because no one wanted to build the matching bell tower. It is Tsar Bell (the King of Bells). It is an impressive gesture that is practically useless. Tsar Bomba is same thing: a militarily useless ridiculously oversized weapon intended only as a gesture.
it's not very difficult to shield against the effects of this weapon.
Just for a rough sanity check...
Decent rigid coaxial cable offers about 100dB of shielding
. One-million watts = 90dBm, so that would drop it down to -10dBm interference in a shielded signal. Not enough to damage anything, but definately enough to interfere. Bluetooth and 802.11b run at a max of 20dBm and no cars crash outside when I key up the old bit blaster.
The absorbtion of the radiated power is also an issue. Different circuits absorb different frequencies better than others. If this was a fairly narrowband emission, it would wreak havoc on some things (soft tissue maybe) but not others. If it is very wide band, then you have to jack up your total power so that many different freuquencies have a potent allotment of power.
It would just be a lot easier to interfere (jam) with guidance systems and radar. And GPS is easy jam. At least that was the FCC's standpoint with respect to UWB. But that's another thread...
A microwave oven is tuned to the resonant frequency of water molecules. This government weapon will be tuned to the frequency of silicon atoms. It'll burn people up close I suppose but be mostly harmless to flesh further out while still frying transistors.
You obviously haven't heard about the Hearts and Minds campaings. The idea is to win the local population on your side, so that winning the war would be a lot easier. British SAS showed in their 1952 Malayan campaign that the local support is an important factor. By avoiding civilian casualties, using minimum force and improving the living conditions of the locals the victory came a lot easier than it would have by just blowing things up.
The latest opposite example of this is Chezenya, where Russians have only sucseeded to convert more civilians into rebels by terrorizing the region.
-pigeon
How is disabling electronics completely safe for civillians?
Just imagine this being used near a busy traffic intersection, or near a hospital.
You've obviously never driven or been to a hospital in the third world. In the first case nobody pays much attention to the lights (if they exist or work) in the second electricity is unreliable even without the occasional attack by an EMP weapon.
However, I'll grant it's not *completely* safe but it certainly beats the alternative. Take the example of a battery of SAMS in downtown Bagdad. In the not-so-distant past we would bombed the neighborhood killing hundreds of innocent civilians*, With current technology we would try to take it out with a "smart" bomb maybe killing two or three innocent civilians, unless we miss in which case we may kill a few dozen innocent civillians. With this new technology we blast it with an EMP pulse and everybody's lights go out - not a big deal in most of the third world.
* in the example of bombing the neighborhood to get at those SAMS and killing hundreds (or even thousands) of innocent civilians. It's quit possible that there would be a war crime involved in this scenario, but NOT on the part of the USA. Putting military assets in civilian areas to sheild them from attack is a war crime. Legally the existance of the military assets removes any immunity that target would otherwise have had. A Mosque, church, hospital, orphanage, etc with a SAM battery or Radar installation on the roof is a legitimate target and legally (and morally IMO) the guilt for those innocent deaths is on the heads of the person that made it a legitimate target. The attacker in this situation does still have a general responsiblity to minimise civilian deaths - now that we have precision bombs it would be a war crime to use dumb ones in such a situation but prior to their invention such bombings did occur.
No, I think that the idea is to use the magnetic component of the electromagnetic wave to produce eddy currents electric circuits. The short duration of the pulse means that the voltage spike is too brief to produce heating, but is big enough to blow transistors etc.
Just my 2c of freshman college physics.
I take it that you either forget or don't know about the US government putting nuclear missle launch sites hidden in rather urban areas? In fact, from where I sit right now (Auburn Hills, MI, a fairly commercial area) there are old launch silos in the wooded parts of the campus of Oakland University, right next door. (See http://members.tripod.com/nikehercules/d-97.html for more information.
So while I believe you are correct in theory, in practice sometimes the public isn't quite aware.
Most military hardware (at least the stuff produced by the US, Europe, and Russia) is already built to withstand EMPs. No one will ever use a weapon like this to knock planes out of the sky, or stop tanks in their tracks.
What it can be used for is for frying radar systems that are switched on, and for frying passive tracking systems that are switched on. For obvious reasons these cannot be shielded against EMPs (ok - if it's not obvious then reason is that a radar system must be sensitive to electromagnetic radiation in order to work).
Why is this a big deal? Several reasons:
(1) Ground based anti-aircraft systems have become very small, mobile, and relatively cheap.
(2) Iraq has taken to placing such systems right next to things that the US does not want to blow up (hospitals, schools, chemical weapons facilities, etc).
(3) Even stealth aircraft are not entirely invisible to radar. Yes they can slip through a traditional perimiter radar network (i.e. the kind of line of radars that many nations have watching their borders), but they cannot remain undetected if they have to fly right over a radar system, as they would have to do if there is a radar system either at or near to their target.
So now the US has a method of blinding anti-aircraft defenses without destroying the stuff around them. Given US methods of conducting war (i.e. heavy reliance on air power), and the obvious synergy between stealth and EMP technology, these weapons are a big deal, and I might add there is no obvious or easy way of defending against them.
Farley, like the dog on "Fraggle Rock", or Farley as in Chris Farley the dead fat guy, or Farley as in Farley Mowat?
:)
You could imprison any of them in a bamboo cage fer chrissakes.
OTOH, a device remarkably like the one you described exists. It's called a "Faraday Cage", and is named for British Physicist Michael Faraday, the God Father of Electromagnetism.
You can even buy "instant cages" made of mu-copper foil -- the Army has a bunch. These cages are slowly replacing the Aluminium Foil Deflector Beanies that the crazy nutbags out there are wearing as countermeasure for the government's mind control rays. Do a google for HAARP if you're in for a good laugh.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Actually, have you read Time magazine lately? Every article reporting back on the Israel situation (another suicide bombing, another army incursion, etc) is peppered with images of destroyed homes, dead bodies, body parts, etc. Not pretty stuff.
Sigh, yes you did deploy a system. It was called Safeguard, started in 1969 at two sites, one in Montana one at Grand Forks in North Dakota. Additional sites were planned in Wyoming and to protect Washington DC.
The signing of the ABM agreement in 1972 limited the USSR and USA to two sites for ABM systems and a total of 100 missiles. The US abandoned plans for Safeguard in Wyoming and Washington DC. Shortly afterwards, the USSR and the USA agreed a further codex to the ABM Treaty limiting themselves to a single site, either around the nation's capital or around a ICBM site.
The Soviet Union chose to protect Moscow with the GALOSH system. The US chose Grand Rapids and abandoned all work on other sites.
Safeguard was declared operational in early 1975 and reached its full deployment of 100 missiles later that year.
In October 1975, Congress declined to continue to pay for the upkeep of Safeguard and the project was dismantled from 1976 onwards.
Your argument about MAD is weak in that you seem to assume that all of the nuclear powers out there, with the exception of the United States are much more willing to use these weapons, whilst on historical grounds it has been the United States military which has countenanced the use of nuclear weapons in a series of conflicts. Richard Rhodes' 'Dark Sun' gives a whole series of deliberately provocative actions by American forces during the Cold War that very nearly ended in disaster.
All of the countries out there know what the use of nuclear weapons means. None of them are so stupid as to threaten the United States with the handful of weapons that they possess. Any American retaliation would mean annihilation. Yes North Korea is run by an evil man - but he's not insane enough to fire a missile at America.
Those countries faced with any ABM system have one easy remedy. Assuming that few, if any countries out there can defeat America technologically, the only solution is to build more nuclear missiles with multiple warheads. History will repeat itself, except it won't be the US versus the Soviet Union, it will be dozens of countries proliferating advanced weapons like crazy.
Then I'd argue with your claim that the system would decrease the chance of nuclear conflict. The US and UK have already said that they would use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear opponent that they believed was going to use chemical or biological weapons. We have already lowered the threshold for our countries exploding nuclear warheads. President Bush has approved money to the Department of Defense and Department of Energy for the development of 'bunker buster' nuclear warheads - to be used to destroy hardened underground bunkers in an otherwise non-nuclear war. We are already foreseeing new uses for nuclear weapons, they are no longer being seen as the ultimate protection against attack.
And as the Devil's Advocate in Chief here, I have to ask - why shouldn't other countries have the right to the ultimate protection? We seem to need it to uphold our national interests, why should Iran and Iraq be denied the same choice. Its quite clear that North Korea can feel completely justified in its development of nuclear weapons - the West has excluded any attack on the country and chooses a diplomatic solution. Saddam Hussein must be kicking himself that he didn't wait a couple of years before invading Kuwait under the protection of a nuclear bomb.
Finally, we have to consider the (hopefully remote) possibility of an American government that is belligerant, that chooses to threaten other countries with nuclear conflict in the knowledge that it has a working ABM system. Let's hope it never happens, but ABM can be seen as part of an offensive capability.
But let's be honest, NMD is just a Bush pork-barrel pay-back to the defence contractors who poured so much money into his election campaign. At the end of the day I doubt they care very much whether it works on not, just as long as the money keeps pouring in.
Best wishes,
Mike.
But then, water and power plants are protected under Article 54 of the Fourth Protocol of the Geneva Conventions [deoxy.org]. Britain and America are both signatories of the protocol, yet they bombed Iraqi water, sewerage and power systems during the last Gulf War. Neither party has been charged with war crimes.
But then Article 56 has the 'military necessity' clause:
Article 56.
2. The special protection against attack provided by paragraph I shall cease:
a. for a dam or a dike only if it is used for other than its normal function and in regular, significant and direct support of military operations and if such attack is the only feasible way to terminate such support;
b. for a nuclear electrical generating station only if it provides electric power in regular, significant and direct support of military operations and if such attack is the only feasible way to terminate such support;
c. for other military objectives located at or in the vicinity of these works or installations only if they are used in regular, significant and direct support of military operations and if such attack is the only feasible way to terminate such support.
Let's deslant this liberal addition. Nike-Ajax (Nike-Hercules, et al) were purely DEFENSIVE, anti-aircraft systems, and were mostly non-nuclear tipped, especially later deployments as use of nuclear warheads for antiaircraft purposes was discouraged. As for being 'hidden,' well, only if you call hiding in plain sight hidden. Their locations were both very easily located and observable. Their placement close to urban/metropolitan areas was a necessity given their primary role: air defense.
Hiding chemical production plants in downtown hospitals is a far cry from this. I hate liberal hate-spewing.
According to Cybershock (winn schwartau) an EMP payload was used against an Iraqi Air Defense Radar Installation. It was shot from a navy deestroyer in the Red Sea, travelled 450 miles and wiped out the radar center's electronic capabilities.
schwartau testified to congress in june 1991 about HERF guns and EMP/T bombs, mentioning how cheap it would be to build one and take out Wall Street.