Slashdot Mirror
Radiofrequency Weapons
BWJones writes "Global security is running a fairly detailed and interesting story on E-bombs (not email bombs, rather electronic microwave weapons) taken from the IEEE Spectrum Online.
We have long known (since the 1940's) about the effects that high energy weapons can have on electronic components from nuclear blasts, but this class of weapons is designed to exclusively attack electronic infrastructure. "
Are posing as solar flares.
All in favor of using Lindon, UT as the test range, say aye. AYE!
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
To celebrate, let's rob a high-profile casino using the most convoluted scheme possible. Plan should ideally include witty banter and excessively smug con-men.
The EMP Bombs?
Is this Keyboard real?
--- #@$DF@#2%@^%3^&*$%FRHG%%[NO CARRIER]
I remember a while back hearing about planes that could fly over and disrupt electronic devices. Are those planes using some of this kind of EMP technology or do they use something else that just performs similar actions?
Nice, now we got weapons that can destroy everything electronic (tank control system, missile guidance, radio, powerlines, etc.) without killing people (other than those with pace-maker). This shall revolutionize warfare, disintegrating it into one side with big guns fighting the other side who just got knocked into the stone age (maybe iron age if they're lucky).
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
In high school, I took a magnetron and a bunch of other crap (ahh, memories) and made a microwave gun. I demonstrated its effectiveness vs computers by proving that it could take a perfectly working, normal PC and make it display flashing ASCII characters on the screen. Turning the computer off and then on again would display a different arrangement of flashing ASCII characters.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Infrasound weapons anyone ?
Maybe we deserve this world ?
<i>microwave weapons</i>
Microwave weapons? Do they mean Hot Pockets?
All the government has to do is get a story posted on a particular "enemy" webserver -- and BAM!!! Slashdot Effect!
Instant infrastructure destruction.
From the article:
(There is, however, an effort to build a microwave weapon for controlling crowds; a person subjected to it definitely feels pain and is forced to retreat.)
Mass-tazering unruly crowds. Interesting concept.
Unless it's just overcooking a semi-rancid Hot Pocket into a portable microwave. Then I'm not so impressed.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
might be a cheap effictive way to obsolete all those old rocket launchers that are in the hands of terrorists.
love is just extroverted narcissism
You're cool dude!!! Did you learnt all this alone or got some teacher?
Call me morbid and i haven't read the article yet. but i think we would want neutron bombs. those kill all the people and leave the machinery intact. i would think from a military perspective that would be the better option. morals aside isn't it better to wipe out the enemy and use their weapons to attack the remaining soldiers.
Weapons like these were already used in Iraq by our own military. It is truly shameful what some people will do in the name of patriotism. This sounds like something the Nazis would have done in WW II.
Not so sure if this is going to work in any of the situations we seem to have the idea of putting ourself into anytime soon... Destroying mass amounts of electronic infrastructure seemes counter-productive to rebuilding efforts in urban environments.
Hmm.. maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree on a subject that I'm not too familiar with, but as I recall most military applications are shielded against EM pulses (to protect against the EMP effects of nuclear weapons). Wouldn't it then stand to reason that "e-bombs" would be more useful on civilian infrastructure/targets? I.e: You can take out that TV station (like we may have done in Iraq?), but you (probably) won't be able to fry the radar on that MIG-29.
With that in mind, could these weapons then become like chemical or biological weapons? Deadly to civilian populations but mostly useless against modern first-world military forces? If Saddam had gassed our troops it might have caused a few casualties and slowed us down... but it wouldn't have stopped us. If he had gassed the NYC subway system.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I remember one of my Econ profs made the joke in class that if did they detonate a nuke in the atmostsphere back in the cold war days, the Canadian army would still function because their radio equipment ran vacuum tubes.
:P, and I am a Canadian
I guess its time to bring back the vaccuum tubes!
Any time the Canadian Army can dominate is pretty funny to me
Every time our early-80's GE microwave kicks in, the TV goes all fuzzy. TV's infrastructure. I smell prior art...or is that burning popcorn...
Please help metamoderate.
We could have wireless APs that provide super-long range with no Pringles cans and double as home heating units.
There's been a technology in place for decades that has been used to render a population incapable and uninterested in resisting an authoritative force.
It's called television. It's very effective. What else would you need? If the government were smart, they'd start cloning Bill O'Reillys and deploy them throughout the world.
Now we can demoralize the enemy into surrendering by taking away their ability to surf porn!
I'd prefer they create these bombs then classic ones. (Of course, they will do both).
./er).
I'd rather have my puter die then little me. (I know, this is blasphemy for a
Point worth noting, though: these sort of bombs are most efficient in higly modernised countries, such as...hmm...well, those of europe.
Makes one wonder why they are pursuing this with such zeal.
I can see the yuppies kneeling over their
deceased iPods and Clies with tears in their
eyes and a look of utter despair on their faces.
Why!!!! Whyyyyyyy!!!!
Patent (A) 7637487234023407278462837:
Hard disk and microprocessor high-power microwave (HPM) weapons shielding device. A lead protective cover surrounds electronic computer components which are susceptible to HPM damage.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=35752&cid=3870 691
and
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/11/045123 6&tid=137
we have phasers (not handheld versions yet but i'm sure there'll be a time) where's my photon torpedoes and warp drives? *_*
If good things come to those who wait...why work now? Procrastinate!
A similar article was published in September 2001 in Popular Mechanics magazine.
/ 9/e-bomb/print.phtml
http://popularmechanics.com/science/military/2001
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
Microwaves with enough power *ARE* very much lethal. A lot of people suffered various levels of injury, or even death with conventional radar systems. The proposed weapon will have much larger output, than any radar ( remember, it supposed to destroy it).
In these media-fueled times, when war is a television spectacle and wiping out large numbers of civilians is generally frowned upon,
Am I reading too much into this or does the literary style of Mr Abrams make sound as he might be nostalgic for the good ol' times when "wiping out large numbers of civilians" wasn't something the media would be interested in or it'd be "generally frowned upon"
what a poor phrasing to start an article...
Clearchannel.
-dameron
Modern wars are fought mainly between irregulars armed with AK-47 and mortars. No, it won't revolutionize these conflicts and it doesn't matter against partisants.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
I get that same response when I ask managers why we are not defending against some attack... "Because the likelyhood of that kind of attack is very low." "But what if it DID happen?" - blank stare -.
Secondly, the article wafts past the issue of shielding against the harder "laser-like" weaponry's effects. Whether they skip it for security's sake or limited knowledge sake, they just avoid the whole issue.
[
This is going to be a goatse link in about 15 minutes.
Nice try, anti-slash trolls.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Are these much different from the HERF gun previously described on slashdot?
The main difference I see is ina HERF gun is a focused blast (like narrowband), whilst an EMP bomb will likely be area damage (ultrawideband).
A cool thing, and perhaps a balance to the technology wars (what good is a tank/fighter when one guy with a laser 10km away can down it?), but can't we already assembly things like these in a our basements (if not, somebody please point out the different, other than power)
Really? I'd like to see how millions of dollars of hightech electronic equipment can defend agaist people who are willing strap bombs to themselves and bomb just about anything that get in their way.
The real fight the US faces is NOT relatively high-tech foes like the Soviet Union, but low-tech guys armed with home-made bombs scavanged from artillery rounds and AK-47s.
What good is this kind of technology against these foes? It's almost impossible to think we even face an enemy capable of fielding a large force for a stand-up battle, let alone one easily immobilized by EM. Even the North Koreans, on anyone's short list for potential combat, likely rely heavily on WWII-era or older combat communications unaffected by EMP.
is skin color relevant? I dunno the melanin absorbance spectrum in the microwave range, but I'm thinking certain authorities would have entirely too much fun with a race-selective crowd control weapon...
I recall reading about them in some very stupid news-magazine (Time or something) back during the (first) Gulf War (along with another story about the Air Force's spaceplanes, which I thought was a much more interesting topic). It discussed the idea of dropping troops with one into a city right before a raid or assault, taking out all of the enemy comm systems without any warning.
Actually, that gives me a thought. The US has got to have at least a few lying around. Did the Soviets? What happened to them? As most of them weren't actually nukes*, that maybe they slipped away without anyone noticing, eh?
* I believe the early ones _were_ nukes, just 'toned down' so they produced a lot of electomagnetic energy and not that much 'nukage'. OK, nukage probably isn't a word. But you know what I mean.
Some of those bombs could give new meaning to "slashdotting a server".
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
There are radars (target radars on surface to air missile launchers) that can render a pilot in a plane a couple of thousand feets up sterile in just a couple of seconds...
A couple of thousand watts in a nice beam seems to do the trick..
Does that count as a electromagnetic wave weapon?
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
Have you seen Scarborough country on MSNBC?
Further reading:
Information Warfare: Cyberterrorism: Protecting Your Personal Security in the Electronic Age
by Winn L Schwartau, ISBN 1560251328
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
I remember reading in Popular Science, or Wired, or something, about 5 years back.
Some guy made an EMP gun with radio shack parts, and said if he drove up on some hill in California, with his van full of car batteries, he could shoot an EMP at Sun or something and ruin the economy...
Every day on the freeway will be a classic auto show day.
I have my grandfather's tube radio. Will I have anything to listen to? Or electricity?
HERF guns again. HERF guns don't kill computers, people with HERF guns kill computers.
I wouldn't be calling this very non-lethal if it managed to get aboard a plane at 20,000 feet ... or in an air-traffic-control room ... or on an ocean liner several hundred miles from land ... or in a subway ...
... it's the civilian ramifications that are scary.
I'm not worried about the military aspects of this device
topreacher@signature.slashdot.org 1% rm -rf sig
Microwave with enough power AND sustained period of time is lethal. But what I meant by powerful, I meant compare to the energy needed to blow up a CPU, which doesn't take a lot.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
That fuckin' advertisement that just showed up on the right side of the page.
Someone needs to be slapped....
As I understand it, this technology got big when there was a need to simulate the Electromagnetic Pulse from little nukes, but treaties forbade it. There were four ways to simulate this discharge of energy, one used capacitors and coils, one used a chemical reaction, and I forget the other two. According to TV reports, some of the cruise missles Clinton used on Bagdhad between the two golf wars had originally been fitted with these warheads, and they had to be re-armed with conventional explosives prior to launch. So unless it was to scare the Iraqi's, why announce these weapons as news?
So what's the defense to this? Standard hardening seems unfeasible. Since the more advanced ones are very directed, wouldn't it be possible to determine which direction it's coming from, and fire back? That's the same defense that could be used against all directed, concentrated energy weapons (lasers).
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
I just started a new job and I'm on a Windows NT loaner machine until they can get me my own system.
Do me, just do me!
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
I wonder if instead of massive shielding, the military is increasingly interested in optical computing for reasons like this.
The cover story of POPULAR SCIENCE several issues back was how to build a nukeless EMP bomb.
Gee, let's hope the French don't read POPULAR SCIENCE, and deliver EMP bombs to the Iraqis, North Koreans, et al.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
I heard that carbon nanotubes, when mixed with plastic, shield against electro magnetic pulse.
So once that technology gets off the ground, once they figure out how to mass-manufacture those things, they could easily make electronic cases shielded in this manner.
eBomb
iBomb
BombXP
BombFX
iBomb Extreme Edition
BeowulfClusterBomb
iBombOverlords
Maybe AMD could use them on Intel and then Apple on AMD then maybe Linus on Microsoft then maybe Apple on Microsoft.
Hmmm.... Apple wins.
thanks to this article... i'm now waiting to see how long it'd take one of this resourceful crowd, which so far seemed to have cloned and homemade everything remotely fun, to proudly declare to fellow geeks details of some overclocked and overmodded micorwave oven he hacked together.... for some reason i suspect it'll have green neon internals...
of course with the usual "for educational purposes only" disclaimer, eventhough he'll be linking to it from his post on alt.shenanigans
This was one of the infrastructure attack methods used in 'Terminal Compromise'. It's the information technology world's version of the neutron bomb.
Nonlethal to whom?
The diabetic who relies on refrigerated insulin?
The CPAP user who must have electronically-regulated pressurized air to sleep, otherwise they stroke out?
The preemie in the hospital, who lives only if their incubator works?
Nonlethal to soldiers, maybe, but veyr lethal to civilians.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
I need one of these to use on my neighbor's stereo.
Proverbs 21:19
...but does anyone remember the John Travolta/Christian Slater movie Broken Arrow? Not a great movie, in my opinion...a friend of mine who is a chemical engineer and I spent a good deal of the movie picking the movie apart.
There was one scene in particular that made me almost choke on my popcorn: the nuclear response team's helicopter being brought down by the EMP of an underground nuclear blast. Not to discuss the physics of an EMP that would make it through several thousand feet of earth, this was supposed to be the helicopter used by the nuclear response team of the United States of America. And it is susceptible to the EMP of a nuclear blast?!? Oy vey.
My sigs always suck.
Every time a carrier sails into port around here all the key-fob RFID systems fail at once. Everyone shows up at the car dealers claiming their doors won't open. I mean, really! I have to use my damn KEY instead of push the button! What a wretched inconvenience! The FCC gets involved and runs around the bay here in their fancy antenna vans trying to figure it out. Finally they suggest maybe the USN has something to do with it and there WAS that 90,000 tons of diplomacy just sailed in here, so just maybe.....
/switch/
But, no. Of course not. Silly me. The Navy says, "Wha? Us? No way, man! Couldn't'a been us. We dunno!"
"Hey! I can get into my car again! Wasn't that just the strangest thing?"
Next Installment: What happens at 4:00 pm every day to our spread-spectrum Air LAN install that points straight across the shipyard.
"Hey, computer room! We're down again!"
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Are you jealous of the Yuppie's money or good looks?
You aren't fooling anyone. Everyone knows that those who critique the Young Urban Professional People secretly desire to be just like them.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
As some have already pointed out, military equipment, at least in the USA, is equiped with redundant and resiliant electonics. This has been the case since they were searching for resisitance to EMP comming of atomic-bombs. The only civilian material to have it are spaceprobes, such as galileo.
So, in any case, when the US is persuing this, it knows fully well (as do terrorists) that it's most usefull against civilian targets, and modernised countries, such as those in europe. (It won't do squat to a village-mudpile in Afghanistan or the typical outdated and largely mechanical equipment there).
So...WHY exactly is the USA persuing this with such zeal?
When I built my house, I had them build me a lead room for my Linux boxen.. Now I just have to watch out for the lead poisoning
what IS new and yet to be leaked... is other RF weapons, besides the microwave lasers:
ultra sound based weapons.
1 guy can f** up everything in front of him at abotu 30 degrees and 100m out. Life forms even further away.
Its there NOW. I just hope I don't get a few guys I know into trouble... (well they will do that themselves, amazing how they got jobs working on that stuff.)
last I checked AK47's and chemical/biological/convential weapons all still work after EMP bombs.....But that's not to say it wouldn't completely criple communication systems and PC's everywhere. Don't expect to see these things being used on tanks...they'll be used on cities. And of course screw the hostipitals...their power would've been cut off eventually anyway.
These weapons will not change things much in terms of wars like Iraq...but you could kiss battleships goodbye...nuclear silos....tanks PARKED somewhere.
And actually these weapons are so easy to construct we should be a lot more worried about being attacked by them instead of releasing them on someone else.
I'd just like to have a little hand held device that I could use on those cars that I inevitably get stuck next to in traffic, the ones with the bass that thumps so hard it makes my mirrors vibrate. Man it'd be so cool to just go "zap" and see those guys start fiddling with thier stereos in panic when it stops working.
Not sure if the blast could be focused like that or not... it's fun to think about though.
Honestly, our computers where I work at are so frigging old that I wish Al Qaeda would EMP us! People, you have to think this through. If a terrorist attacked the company that I worked at with a local EMP bomb, we would have to buy 100 new computers and we'd be back in business in a few days. Thus, it would be an inconvenience, but, not really that damaging.
If a terrorist attacked the United States with an nuclear power emp bomb, then, Bush would probably nuke the rest of the middle east just for spite. Bush would launch everything at any place that flies the Crescent flag, and probably France too just to be on the safe side.
So, even though we'd be back in the stone age until we got our new computers from Dell / HP / Whoever (which would take a year perhaps), the rest of the world would be a giant crater.
Hitting economic infrastructure is less and less likely to work in any war because we can produce so much stuff so quickly that the disruption would hardly be noticable.
Even in World War II the Allies were oft astonished at the recuperative power of the German Army -- they always had plenty of bullets and planes, and in the end, it was an actual lack of fighting age men that did them in.
Today the recovery capabilities of any modern economy are too awesome to admit. Office buildings can be thrown up overnight. Network cabling can be run quickly. The United States and other modern economies are almost Borg like in their ability to recover from local terrorist attacks. The WTC was a terrible loss, yes, but because of the 3000 people that were killed - not the buildings and physical stuff. To turn the country into a police state for threats that don't really mean that much seems stupid.
This is my sig.
What types of media in which storage systems
would survive this form of attack?
One thing that these e-bombs won't effect are devices made out of vacume tubes. A while back we got this guy who used to work at a military contractor company and he would tell us interesting stories.
One of them was that during the cold war when the US air force first got their hands on MiGs they would laugh at the plane's electronics using vacume tube technology. Air force stopped laughing when they finally found out that the Sovets were expecting the pilots to fly at least one mission after nuke strike. At the time, there were no harden electronics and vacume tubes were known to not be effected by EMP generated by nuke explosion. Besides the as long as the plane can fly, all they need is for the pilot to stay alive for one mission after exposure.
This of course doesn't mean vacuum tubes are gona make a come back, but it sure is a poor man's way of "harden" the electronics against such a weapon.
First Golf war Arney Palmer v Jack Niclaus 2nd Golf war: Tiger v Singhe
The scene where the guys set off an EMP from the back of their van and the chaos that ensued from it?
A big enough EMP blast could theoretically take out a LOT of electronic gizmos. Even if the area of effect was only a few blocks, in the middle of manhattan or chicago, this could cause some major headaches.
Yes, many places would get their sites back up quickly, but what about pacemakers? Get 20 or 50 people to all have their hearts stop workikng at once hear the same hospital and suddenly you have a major medical emergency as they try to handle ALL of the cases.
But wait? How do the people get there when all the autos are munged up because THEIR electronic components just had a stroke? Lotsa two ton blocks of metal just sitting there, neding a lot of pushing.
TVs and radios? oops. Communications are now down. That PBX system that runs the phones? Fried like an egg. Cell phones? right. find a working tower, sparky.
Dont even start to think of the implications of setting one of these things off at O'Hare at 8 o'clock in the morning would have, not to mention the poor fuckers that are just geting off the ground when the onboard computers in their 757 all pop at once.
"Hey, did you hear thaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAHJESUSFUCKINGCHRIST!"
Big problems. BIG.
Match that with the fact that CNN will fly in an unaffected helicompter in and suddenly the world konws about it. They all start calling into an area that is blacked out to check up on their loved ones. We all konw how the unwashed masses will react to this - Panic, Panic! and PANIC!
Lets not forget that all our console games would flip out, removing any way of passing the time while this all sorts itself out... assuming we have electricity.
it's about more than computers, folks. Remember the fuckitued that ensued when new england lost power? THat was just loss of power, they didnt have to worry about everythign being just plain BROKEN.
s'wut i sed.
Still less lethal than a real bomb you asshat. Would you rather they dropped a bunker buster on that tv station to take it off the air?
Hitting economic infrastructure is the most damaging thing you can do to a country. If you shake the public's faith in the economy, the whole system becomes at risk of breaking down. Look at the Great Depression. The stock market crash frightened people and as a result there was a run on the banks that is what really put the piss in the punchbowl.
And EMP weapons of sufficient size and/or number would fuck up EVERYTHING, including the target's ability to manufacture equipment to replace what was fried. Power generation and transmission systems would be messed up, communications systems would be in utter chaos. Transportation would not be unaffected, either. Look at how crazy things were during the blackout in August, and that was just for a day.
Finally, let me tell you something about the WTC attack-- for every WTC-based company whose "amazing recovery" story you read about in InfoWorld or elsewhere, there were probably a dozen companies who were completely wiped out because they had no off-site backups or redundant locations. And the companies who did pull through relatively technologically/infrastructurally unscathed only did so because when the WTC was attacked in 1993, they were caught with their pants down and were scared into spending the money on disaster recovery planning. If there was no 1993 bombing, things would likely have been very different.
I have this box that I put food into, including eggs and meat, and I turn it on for a few minutes and the food comes out cooked. And while the urban legends about some poor lady cooking her kitty by putting it in the microwave to dry off after its bath are legends, they are most certainly not impossible. Microwave ovens emit a tiny fraction of the power these weapons would be capable of.
As to it's effectiveness against military computers, all sorts of electronics are "hardened" against EMP by all sorts of countries. HPM weapons are just a variation on EMP, actually just a part of the spectrum produced by an EMP. If the electronics are hardened, an HPM weapon will almost certainly have to be strong enough to be very damaging if not lethal to unprotected people to be effective against its electronic target.
An HPM weapon will be most effective against unhardened (read civilian) targets.
As part of the Regan era Star Wars development effort, nuclear weapons were designed which emitted very, very large microwave, xray, or gamma ray pulses in a particular direction. These were not quite the gamma laser of Honor Harrington SF, but a fairly directional cone-shape. There was an article in Scientific American about ten to fifteen years ago describing their effect. A microwave blast was estimated to be able to wipe out a city from about 100 kilometers altitude. The article never quite explained if "wipe out" meant kill everyone or wipe out all electronic and electrical devices. I assumed the author meant both.
Think about it, a city-killer at 100 kilometers. This is not a high-precision weapon.
the more unprecedented evile attempts to validate itself, the more obvious it's plight becomes.
Unfortunately most military equipment isn't shielded. The problem is that the shielding is expensive. And if you have n shielding that will protect you against a devise of n output, it is easier for the attackers to build an n+1 device than it is for you to upgrade all your shielding.
As a side note, this puts a different spin on the whole concept of the suicide attack. I don't care how many people you've got in your cause or how committed they are, it would be much easier to find people who would set these off than to find people who are willing to strap explosives to their chests. At least it seems that way to me.
If people start building these and then EMPing city blocks in say, Manhattan, the effects would be devastating but at the same time the psychological resolve required to do it seems to be me to be less. Its still an attack at your enemy but you're not actually killing anyone (or yourself). If articles like this are at all accurate - how long do you think it'll be before people start popping these suckers off?
Oh well, the stone age wasn't all bad... lots of time outside, fresh air and excersize, cave-babes in fur bikinis... I'd better practice up on my stone tool making.
I have titanium artificial hips. Good to know that I'm going to have my hips melt on me and fry me from the inside when one of these things goes off nearby.
Kentucky fried theolein!
People, listen to me! We must abandon our research on this E-bomb, and focus our efforts on preventing our nation's enemies from being the first to master the next new form of destructive weaponry. For truly it will be a sad day indeed if the terrorists gain the ability to drop the F-bomb.
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
We don't seem to have a problem winning "wars" with conventional weapons. The only real problem is cleaning up the stragglers (like in Iraq). You'll probably never find a solution to the rogue hit-n-run guerilla type attacks.
Just how non-violent would you like war to be? Please tell us and I'll have DARPA get right on it.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I was a 10-year member of IEEE until shortly after Sept. 11 2001, when IEEE's magazine "Spectrum" started making every second issue focused on high-tech weaponry and security issues. Perhaps this is at the forefront of many people's minds, but I couldn't handle it any more. The journal Science has also shown a similar tendency in its editorials and News items. This clearly reflects goverment policy, to which scientific policy is nearly equivalent in the US, but the one-sided perspectives presented in both these texts disturbs me. Nature provides a much more balanced view. Why does UK journalism question government policy while US journalism supports it? Does it just come down to news agencies seeking higher ratings in the States?
That's the beauty of the system - even guerella (sp?) forces are likely to need electronic communications for all but annoyance operations. I suspect the loss of cell phone service would cripple many (otherwise) low-tech operations.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
People driving in my neighborhood with their huge stereo's pumping out tunes you can hear from blocks away
And cripple any vehicle with electronic ignition which would be all the ones newer than about 30 years old. More diesel vehicles would survive, but newer ones use electronic fuel injection. I suppose this wouldn't do much in Cuba where they keep rebuilding 50's American cars because of the trade embargo.
A QRM bomb!
Meanwhile, Mr Cheney and the monkeyboy insist that we need Star Wars defense, to protect us from theoretical terrorists with ICBMs...
I love this country, I really do. Which is why this stuff makes me so fucking angry.Anyone remember [insert doomsday scenario book/movie/tvshow here]
Of course there are a lot of ways to mess with the system as it's built. Electricity, water, satelites, currency, food, weaponry, disease, asteroids. We're exposed to dangers on many fronts.
Parent post screaming about what will happen doesn't make it any more/less likely. If you're going to prepare for all the scenarios, have a fun time watching the news from your bunker eating freeze dried sausages. Save it for the screenplay.
The rest of the world will think about it for a little bit, then click. Humanity is too fragile to contemplate all the ways you could suffer and die. You, dear sir, are pooping on the party. Dance a bit on the blue ball and then dust off like a good human.
mug
RF WEAPONS AREN'T EFFECTIVE AGAINST RAG-TAG GUERILLA AND LOW-TECH/WW2-ERA WEAPONS. The resistance the USA is receiving west of Baghdad is a good example. Where do you target? Car bombs, very-low-tech surface-to-air missles (who knows where they're stored or deployed from), AK-47s, grenades, and home-made explosives are terrorizing USA troops. Where do you point your RF weapons?
the point iwas trying to bring up was that its not just computers to be worried about.
THEN i went off on the doom and gloom tangent.
I do agree with you, though. Screw preparing for the worst and let yourself experience the possiblity getting randomly bumped off. Keeps life a lot easier and more interesting.
Sorry I pooped on the party.
heh. poop.
s'wut i sed.
Neal Stephenson threw one into the Cryptonomicon, too. It was operated by Dwarves (see context) and used to cripple the equipment of Misguided Law Enforcement Personnel. That scene was quite entertaining, let me tell you.
==========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
One reason we got so far ahead of the Russians with our war technology was the Russian's fear of disruption of their electronics. They didn't want their planes dropping out of the sky and most of their MiGs still used vacuum tube technology which is much more robust to radiation... where as we moved on to semiconductor designs sooner.
I knew all this tin foil would be useful! Now to cover my walls and ceiling with three corner reflectors so the bastards fry themselves.
Anyone who has designed military hardware (which I have), knows that COTS was just a buzzword that was paid lipservice but never implemented. This was just a way for the military to say to america: "Hey, we are spending your money wisely!"
Military stuff is made to much higher standards of process control, reliability, and performance. Sure you might start with a COTS vendor and product, but at a minimum you pile a buch of MIL-SPECS on thier product, ending up with what amounts to a custom product anyway.
This goes for electronics such as op-amps and connectors, to mechanical parts such as bearings, paint, adhesives, etc.
Also, learn some manners. Don't post with such a smug, smartass, know-it-all tone, when you haven't a clue.
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Or how about China?
Maybe those new Chinese MBT's with lasers that (IIRC) they claim can 'shoot down' incoming anti-tank missiles would be a target for these EM weapons? Or maybe not...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Interesting that nobody has mentioned neutron bombs. You can drop one on a city and leave all structures standing, but kill everything and all electronic devices too.
Then there's the air burst canisters full of graphite filaments that NATO used over the former Yugoslav republic. The filaments drape over power lines and get into computers and basically short everything out.
What the hell is the application for this? Sure, it can probably do all sorts of interesting things. But what's the military rationale?
The article mentions two types of weapons: indiscriminate "ultrawideband" and focused, laser-like "narrowband".
Most of the US's potential enemies are still using cold-war equipment, and its electronics are shielded. If you use ultrawideband on those, you'll kill all the people wearing pacemakers and fry all the civilian infrastructure at the same time. Since recent events have shown that winning the peace is harder than winning the war, that seems like a very, very dumb move indeed. More soldiers have died since the end of major hostilities; worse conditions would have meant more dead.
But what of the laser-like narrowband? Well, as the article notes, "they are far more difficult to develop". What's the word for that? Vapor-ware?
It's also militarily counter-productive. If I were a general and my enemy had those weapons, or if I just suspected they did, I'd go straight to guerilla warfare. I believe an AK47 downed a US helicopter during major hostilities, a known vulnerability. Again, even more casualties can be expected. A very good strategy too when you consider the American public's repugnance for seeing body bags.
There are weapons escalations that are moronic, because they'll only make the whole business of war nastier. This is one of them.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Dark Angel was an awesome show, I watched it enthusiastically...
In the show, nobody knew who set off the EMP, and it affecte most of the world. It was a very high altitude Hydrogen Bomb, which implies that it was a world power that has both H-Bombs and ICBMs (I only know of two). Everyone just assumed that it was middle-eastern islamic fundamentalists, which is why
The show was set in Seattle, Washington.
I find it interesting that the show was cancelled right after Sept 11, 2001. Perhaps it struck a little too close to home.
Guess that's quite a few backup solutions out the window then...
How much are DVD drives these days?
"E-bombs (not email bombs, rather electronic microwave weapons)"
What's the difference? I'm sure the subtle theoretical differences will escape the end-user.
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There have been numerous published and gagged research papers related to EMP shielding techniques. See satellite and stealth tactical technologies for more information if you have clearance =)
;o) ;o) ;o) ;)
The weapon has always looked intangible, which airs of theoretical research done when the first public contracts from the government for a microwave weapon that could cook targets at a distance was to be awarded in 1930's. The prize should have been for the physical design of a power source necessary to generate a field of that strength at a distance never alone controlling its behavior (see inverse field laws). Would it not be faster, cheaper, and better to simply drop a modified guided tactical system on transmission lines resolved using EMF sensors (or triangulate a specific somebody on a cell-phone of unknown origin). War is about gaining control-using force, and destroying infrastructure costs the occupying forces during the rebuilding of the area captured (any similarity to recent events is strictly coincidental, read a history book for several examples). Motives and politics ultimately decide what policy will be implemented, a 100% clean method of control is never possible.
Propaganda + Ignorance = Dangerous Archetypes.
Reasons + Excuses = Action
Logic + Hydraulics = Wet Chips that are immune to EMP
Logic + Genetics = Gene Processing units immune to EMP
Logic + Optics = Optical communication systems immune to EMP
Logic + Brains = solution to any problem posed by intelligent minds...
Hence, 2 tin cans and a piece of string can subvert this technology
"Psstttt!" ]]]|--|[[[ "C.A.N. you hear me now?"
{This thing gets better reception than my cell} =)lol
Pull out the troops, and light off a small RF bomb above Tikrit. Threaten the same to any village hosting terrorists. Voila! A totally devestating, politically correct, weapon.
If only the AK-47 had a computer in it.
I remember reading something in New Scientist magazine about an "e-bomb" that was a stick of dynamite in a coil of wire connected to an antenna.. the shock of the explosion induces a current in the coil just before it destroys it.. this pulse then radiates from the antenna.. Neat huh? I haven't tried this.. not sure how to get my hands on a coil of wire.. ;)
So they should just nuke the place instead.
I know it may be disturbing but lets see..
On one hand we have maybe 10% (maximum) of a population of a city that has to have electronics is some way or shape to live; be it life support, refrigeration for their drugs, pacemakers, etc.
On the other, whoever uses this EMP bomb could just nuke of carpet bomb the place and have who knows what % of the population of that city killed.
Harsh reality but.. I'd take the first option.
Wrong.
Think of one as a "flashbulb", and the other as a flashbulb that only emits a certain wavelength of light. The cohesion is a different matter.
I think others have already poked holes in the description of FCGs.
I'm getting depressed I should stop... although the one light of hope was the mention of Tesla...
Q.
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Compared to the HREF weapon that is the slashdotmain page???
What good is a web server it cannot withstand a blast from this awesome HREF weapon that is launched from basements, living rooms and bedrooms around the world?
I'm sorry, it had to be done.
The reality of the political situation matters. We in fact could NOT drop nukes on Iraq, or massacre unarmed civilians by the tens of millions. There are 1 billion Muslims who might take offense at that, in addition to the fact that it would sever all of our existing alliances and we would be placed on a moral level equal with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. This would OBLIGATE the rest of the world to declare a war on us, a war where there could be no substitute for victory, no pause and no armistice. Even Canada would declare war on us. Even if we won, we would be destroyed, thousands of millions of people could die. Such an act would be a complete and total disaster for the US and the world, and only a moron would actually think such a thing would be a good idea.
True victory is always won in the hearts and minds of the enemy. They must be beaten, in every sense of the word, and coerced to a certain point of view which accomplishes our objectives. This can be done with weapons, with food, with television or perhaps by eliminating key leadership infrastructure with an EMP weapon and replacing it with our own. If we only offer someone certain anhilation in defeat and our only language is violence, they will have no other option than to fight to the end. There isn't any point in winning if we can't win with honor, unless you want to uplift tyranny.
I realize that the parent post is toungue in cheek to a certain degree, but it has been modded up to '5 insightful', which is absurd. Which leads me to believe that many people in this forum are:
A. On crack
B. Weak minded simpletons
C. Cattle who will consume whatever idiocy they are fed.
We could easily, permanently end the situation in Iraq. Sweep 500,000 troops through the country, shooting everyone they encounter. Or simply nuke it.
Whatever justification for the war in Iraq you accept, killing the whole population is not going to win it. The Iraqi people will not be "free" and Iraq will be producing no oil, if it is a nuclear waste land. The 500,000 troops thing is just silly too. Any country is ruled through individual fear. Iraq is no different. The military is always massively out numbered by the civilian population. If US troops start killing everyone, the whole population (20 million plus) would turn on them and slaughter them. If everyone is certain they are going to die they will fight. As it is the majority is scared of getting killed and so does nothing.
But I take your point, EMP weapons are not going to be much use against guerillas since they are unlikely to be using much electronics. However they are very useful in covert inforamtion warfare, such as knocking out TV transmitters etc. in neutral countries to impede the spread of information. Nowdays the US military is as interested in "managing" what its civilian population knows about a war as it is what the enemy does.
Iraq Coalition Casualty Count
Afghanistan US Fatalities
MOST regular fuel-injection systems will still work, even with the brain fried.
I'm not so sure about that. Granted I only have a sample size of one, but once while my father and I were driving to work (back when I interned at the same company he worked at, so in the same car), the accelerator suddenly dropped to about half power right smack in the middle of the highway (the Beltway, for those in the Washington DC area). Fortunately we were close to an exit and were able to half-coast off and to a service station. It turned out that the engine itself was okay, but a wire connecting a sensor to the mainboard was half-severed and delivering bad signals, causing the electronics to get the fuel/air mixture wrong and thus reducing acceleration.
Now, it may be that car technology just wasn't as good at the time, or that cars can handle complete failures but not partial ones, or whatever, but frankly I wouldn't count on cars doing well without their brains.
So I guess it's a good thing I live in Tokyo now, so all I have to deal with is getting squeezed to death in rush-hour trains when they stop and everybody panics.
When you induce 5-10 volts AC on every wire inside a computer facility, things don't survive too well. You might just let all the smoke out of the computer, and it won't work any more.
When did this sort of thing happen? Early to mid 1980s. I strongly suspect that most US and UK banks are protected from this sort of damage nowadays. Faraday cages are good. I think International Paper still makes a non-woven carbonized fabric that lays on walls like wallpaper, but protects like copper screen.
The trade magazines covering EMC issues like this have all ceased publication. Or at least the ones I am aware of. Since the end of the cold war, there has been far lower demand for Tempest (folks looking at the emissions of your computers via radio waves) and EMP (the energy given off by nuclear explosions and these electromagnetic devices) protection, which is the sort of thing you would be looking for to defend your company and home from this sort of weapon.
also, it will kill people with pacemakers.
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Nitpicking aside, as other posters have commented, I can't help thinking that the military that is most vunerable to this is...wait for it...THE AMERICAN MILITARY. I mean, we invest billions of dollars into developing weapons systems based around sophisticated electronics, and now there's a weapon that, for a few thousand $, can potentially destroy them. If I were a country afraid of an American invasion (i.e. just about anybody who dares to disagree with King George II), I'd definitely invest in E-bombs.
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I call bullshit. Put your lead lined beanie back on.
> I can't see any moral difference between "Killing a whole lot of people" (which we have) and "Killing
> an enormous number of people" (which is what I was talking about).
It's the difference between "shoot the terrorist to save the city" and "blow up the whole building the terrorist is in".
Surely you see a moral difference there, yes?
the other side who just got knocked into the stone age (maybe iron age if they're lucky). :-)
For some countries that's still progress
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Am I the only one that laughed at the following sentence: "For that, the flux compression generator, or FCG, is a good choice, says Kopp." ;)
When this weapon was discovered, your destruction power wasn't so big as now. This topic show us that few old technologies become more effective as the time goes by...
Except that most sensible military vehicles use mechanical injection, or carburettors.
You mean the Macs were protected from the baddies in the Tempest game or from actually loading the game itself?
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
"Right now we have 10 democrat presidential candidates that are so blinded by hatred and partisanship that the are hoping our economy gets worse and we fail in Iraq"....Do you really think that if you met one of the democrat candidates and said to him/her "You are blinded by hatred" that it really would make any sense? I think not.
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
don't forget the gamer who relies on counter-strike to not jump out the window
don't forget the cataracts it will cause. non-lethal...not non-harming. :)
and, they could shield things from it using sheets of metal. They said it would even penetrate bunkers with shielding that can withstand nuclear blast. I don't think this is true if they shielded it from the EM pulse also (you would think they would).