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)

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...

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.

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.