UK In Danger From Electromagnetic Bomb, Says Defense Secretary

judgecorp writes "Britain must build defenses against an EMP bomb, the UK Secretary of Defense Phillip Hammond told a conference today. Electromagnetic Pulse devices mimic the result of a solar flare or a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere, creating a storm of electromagnetic radiation, which can break mobile networks and satellite systems. Any preparation for solar storms must also consider the possibility of deliberate electromagnetic events, warns Hammond."

Comments

New Country Same Shit

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Newt Gingrich and company have been scaremongering about EMP bombs for years now.

Re:New Country Same Shit

[Technician]

Proper surge protection, spark gaps, low pass filters, etc provide a high degree of protection. Narrow band antennas of a grounded design such as a yagi, will recieve power within it's passband.

Unshielded electronics such as your clock radio are hard to protect. Shielded equipment with power filtering, metal cases, over voltage protection, etc are relatively safe. Your desk top computer has an antenna wire attached to the keyboard and mouse, so these are vunerable. A traditional RFI metal case tower PC with all external cables removed would make a nice spare that can be quickly deployed after an attack.

A single point ground at the utility power and telcom entry into a building provides high levels of protection against the lower frequency components of an EMP as MOV, Spark Gap, and other protection is fast enough to ground it. A noise filter for the house power will block the higher frequencies so the over voltage devices can protect the load.

http://www.ese.upenn.edu/detkin/instruments/misctutorials/Ground/grd.html

Proper grounding, noise filtering, shielding, and overvoltage protection will provide a high degree of protection to EMP.

Re:Yay fearmongering

[sourcerror]

Solar flares are very different from EMP, as the change in field is much slower, so it mostly effects transmission lines, not computers.

Re:US and UK, best friends forever

[queazocotal]

"With EMP bomb, unlike a nuke, you don't waste energy to generate EMR in all the spectrum, with all the unneeded parts like visible light, IR and UV, and heat up surroundings to rather uncomfortable temperatures." - technically true, but somewhat misleading.

Around 0.1% of energy goes into EMP.
For a ten kiloton device, this is still the equivalent of 10 tons of explosive - in EMP.
But - a flux-compression-generator converts about a third of the energy into electricity, and then you get about half from the transmitter, if lucky.

So, to get the equivalent EMP to a 10 kiloton nuclear device, you need of the order of 60 tons of explosives alone.
The generator is likely to double that, and the transmission antenna and magnetrons (which have to be physically large so they don't just arc across) double it again.

So, of the order of 250 tons.
This is 'problematic' to get to a high altitude, where it needs to be, to have more than a local effect.
I note 10 25 ton truck bombs are going to be able to wreck large portions of most financial districts, and be considerably cheaper.

'terrorist' EMP weapons with more than a local (building or three) scale are fantasy.

Re:US and UK, best friends forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Syria: civil war.

Not really, it's Libya-style revolutionaries trying to take over the country. The US even asked the UN for a no-fly zone so they could give the revolutionaries air support like they did in Libya.

Libya: civil war.

Again, revolutionaries funded and advised by the West destroyed what used to be the most prosperous country in Africa. They wouldn't have been able to do it without the help of NATO which bombed cities in blatant violation of their UN mandate.

North Korea: The new dictator hasn't had any time to start wars but under the previous dictator, a South Korean warship was blown up while standing in international waters. That's an a act of war.

There are doubts as to whether it was an attack by North Korea, as the South Korean press points out. So before you cry "act of war", make sure you're not falling for another Tonkin incident.

Iran: Finance several groups that conduct war actions against other countries, thus engaging in war by proxies.

Countries like occupied Palestine, or occupied Iraq? That's not really fighting against those countries, but helping them against an occupying military.