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.

Comments

Missile Shield

[nick255]

I was thinking. Wouldn't it make alot of sense to use these things in the defence shield the US is building? They seem to be having a lot of problems hitting the incoming missile with a convential exploding warheads, but something which could kill the electronics in the missile from within 300m could work better. (I must admit I don't know what sort of radius the convential warheads can destroy missiles over)

Re:Missile Shield

[creepery2kplus]

Up to date there hasn't been a successful test of an energy weapon interception of incoming missiles. Pretty much this is what Bush wants to push research on despite the fact that the US has signed treaties to prevent such research cause if someone believed that they can indeed survive a MAD scenario they may actually push the button.

Oh goody, no civillian collateral damage (!)

[RMH101]

Anyone want to bet how high a percentage of ordinance dropped on Iraq is going to be good old-fashioned, dumb heavy lumps of metal filled with explosives? This and other media fluff about smart weaponry seems to be designed to present war as a videogame...

Soviet EMP Devices

[fuzzybunny]

I seem to remember reading about a Soviet 50 megaton nuke. A warhead of that size wouldn't be usable against ground targets, as the force of the blast would cause it to bury itself and reduce the actual damage--or something. I'm no physicist.

Anyway, the upshot was that these things would be far less economical in terms of distributed damage than lots of small MIRV'ed warheads.

Instead, supposedly, a Soviet nuclear attack would have been designed to blanket the US with a nationwide series of mega-EMP pulses prior to actual ground target attacks.

I couldn't find a good link, but a description of some Russian/Soviet delivery vehicles is here

And in WWI

[MosesJones]

Thousands of people died in a day.

In ONE battle (the Somme) 60,000 Allied forces died on the first day. This doesn't include the numbers that the Axis lost.

Part of the point of weapons such as this is to disable the military and reduce the number of dead, this leads to a less pissed off defeated nation than one that has just seen a large portion of its population killed.

Of course given that Iraq use Scuds which have bugger all electronics in them, and North Korea still appear to be point and fire propulsion rockets this would be really effective against the British and the French should they decide to attack the US.

Sort of like the Stealth Fighter, Iraq has bugger all radar that is any good but Stealth Fighters and Bombers still fly at 30,000 feet because Iraqi air defences don't reach that high. But to the British Navy's Radar a golf ball flying at 30,000 feet and 500mph is still at target that can be blown out of the sky.

Scary Threat

[tourettes]

For about 55 to 60 years now, one of the biggest threats in the world was the threat of a nuclear attact. One bomb that could wipe out a city in one shot. Just imagine the impact of a wide-spread EMP attack. Obviously it doesn't come close to the devestation of a nuclear weapon, but how much would our lives change? I'm not up much on the technicals of EMPs, but, would this basically wipe out almost any magnetic storage medium we use for computers? Imagine an entire city, like Washington for example, wiped clean of all it's data, this could set back a country during war-time a lot.

Microwave aircraft HAVE cooked people

[Anonymous Coward]

My father repaired aircraft during the Vietnam War. There was once an accident on his base involving one of the recon aircraft (do not recall its name at the moment). It seems the high-powered microwave transmitters had been left operational when a technician went to service the plane, and he was badly injured (burned) as a result of stepping to close to the underside of the plane.

So even if the microwaves are supposedly tuned to silicon instead of water, I am highly sceptical of any focused microwave energy being 'mostly harmless.'

Re:So why are they not used?

[fobef]

While studying wave physics at the university, a (swedish) defence researcher held a lecture about research in EMP weapons. The ones he had studied were supposed to be used in road blocks to stop vehicles, and when they tested it, it worked very well, and the vehicles were beyond repair.

However, when they tried to use it in Bosnia, the vehicles there were so old, it had no effect because it targeted the electronics in the cars, and the ones they used were too old =)

Re:So why are they not used?

[ThaReetLad]

Rubbish. EMP's are easy to generate. Some time ago New scientist magazine published details of how to make an EMP bomb out of a metal tube, a long bit of coiled wire, a battery and some explosive. All you have to do is wrap the wire around the explosive, insert it into the metal tube makig sure the two are kept apart by insulators, attach the battery and let it go BOOM. So long as the explosive explodes progressivly from one end to the other, you should get a load of energy quickly compressed into a bit of wire left sticking out of the other end, which then radiates your EMP. Its supposedly fairly easy to built one with a range of a hundred meters or so, which is great for destroying radar, C3 sites etc. Bad at killing people, but that's not what they're for.

Can't computers be shielded?

[watzinaneihm]

From the article
The technology behind HPM is based on that used in household microwave ovens

Now even if the microwave rays are many times stronger and even if you use a directional antenna shouldnt it be easy to stop the rays?
From a google search i got http://www.provincia.venezia.it/comenius/eu_oven2. htm which says There is a metallic net either inside the plastic panel or inside the glass panel, because the holes of the net are smaller than the length wave of microwave frequencies of about 12,5 cm at 2.5 Ghz. the glass panel is essentially opaque to the microwaves so all the energy of the microwaves is reflected inside the cavity of the oven.

Or I think you can just use an aluminum foil wrapper around your computer to temporarily stop the rays (atleast till the aluminium starts burning, and then you can have fun) , Anyway how long is a drone going to be able to produce some millions of watts of power ? (746 watts =1 horsepower, I think?)

Re:Completely safe for civillians? I think not.

[mikerich]

Hospitals shouldn't be considered valid targets in the first place.

They're not valid targets, they're specifically protected under the 1949 Geneva Convention.

But then, water and power plants are protected under Article 54 of the Fourth Protocol of the Geneva Conventions. 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.

Best wishes,
Mike.