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

Completely safe for civillians? I think not.

[Anonymous Coward]

How is disabling electronics completely safe for civillians?

Just imagine this being used near a busy traffic intersection, or near a hospital.

Re:Completely safe for civillians? I think not.

[maetenloch]

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.

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

[mikerich]

That treaty had an exit clause that we chose to excercise. You can disagree with the policy but we are not doing anything "despite signing a treaty" nor are we "breaking a treaty." We have fulfilled every requirement of the treaty. In either event the treaty did not bar research only deployment in more than one location. (We never deployed any ABM systems despite being allowed by the treaty to do so in one location - IN SOVIET RUSSIA they chose to protect Moscow with an ABM system)

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.

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...

Re:Oh goody, no civillian collateral damage (!)

[SkyTech12]

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.

Not quite EMP

[creepery2kplus]

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).

I find it interesting...

[dfj225]

that the article mentioned that we could use these weapons in the war on Iraq...I didn't realize that we are at war with Iraq yet...

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.

Re:Advantage..

[le_jfs]

Someday we'll be able to use such devices to fry the RFID tags in our tires.