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Boeing's CHAMP Missile Uses Radio Waves To Remotely Disable PCs
Dupple writes "During last week's test, a CHAMP (Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project) missile successfully disabled its target by firing high power microwaves into a building filled with computers and other electronics. 'On Oct. 16th at 10:32 a.m. MST a Boeing Phantom Works team along with members from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate team, and Raytheon Ktech, suppliers of the High Power Microwave source, huddled in a conference room at Hill Air Force Base and watched the history making test unfold on a television monitor. CHAMP approached its first target and fired a burst of High Power Microwaves at a two story building built on the test range. Inside rows of personal computers and electrical systems were turned on to gauge the effects of the powerful radio waves. Seconds later the PC monitors went dark and cheers erupted in the conference room. CHAMP had successfully knocked out the computer and electrical systems in the target building. Even the television cameras set up to record the test were knocked off line without collateral damage.'"
I need a tinfoil house!
Welcome to the age of industrial terrorism.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
So, the bad guys (junior grade) have to go out and buy aluminum foil to shield their gear.
The bad guys, senior grade, are worried about Tempest and already have shielding. (Note - if a missile can knock your monitor out, and that is a worry to you, you should also assume that a drone can pick up what the monitor is displaying.)
I think this is a pretty good use of our military budget. It knocks out enemy electronics without collateral damage. If it hits the wrong target, no civilian casualties. Granted, it's not too difficult to shield against, but that costs a fair bit of money and not everyplace can easily be shielded. If you can take out enemy electronics, you can effectively kill their communications and even a good portion of their mobility... which are probably the two most important elements in any conflict.
Excuse my ignorance on this one, but if the missile disrupts electrical systems, how is a Faraday cage going to help? Assuming that your generation is not self contained, would such a disruption take out the electrical system outside of the Faraday cage? And if there is a sufficient spike, still do damage to devices inside the cage? Yea, I imagine with sufficient surge protection and battery backup you might be able to withstand the attack, but in all seriousness, only a really hardened target would have a chance. In the era of asymmetric warfare, the U.S. would be unlikely to face an enemy with this type of planning and resources. And if it were symmetric conflict, I doubt the United States would be worried about such a target attack. Instead they would cripple infrastructure or simply take out the building.
The more likely use case would be conducting a targeted raid and using a weapon like this to ensure that all security systems and communications systems were disabled right before the raid. Think Bin Laden compound.
The even more likely scenario is that this is a way of making some companies very rich and this weapon will never see use.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
...with antennas to remotely disable machines. I've known people make them. However the issue was that 2.4GHz* would cause people to go blind if you hit them with it (due to the clear liquid in your eyes turning milky). As such I don't think this will ever be used in anything other than a war setting, and even then, if you're going to cook the occupants to death, you might as well hit them with a conventional explosive, probably a nicer way to go.
TFA doesn't mention which microwaves they use, perhaps they other other ones which do not affect humans so much.
So what they've basically done is created a missile that does the same thing as my cat -- disables computer systems. Though since my cat is not available for deployment in a combat zone, I think the missile is the way to go.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
If it hits the wrong target, no civilian casualties.
You killed my World of Warcraft! You bastards!
>Excuse my ignorance on this one, but if the missile disrupts electrical systems, how is a Faraday cage going to help?
The microwaves doesn't cause sufficient voltage spikes in the electrical power going into the building - that takes an EMP to happen. The microwaves causes voltage surges at the junction level in the microelectronics in the machine itself, where the threshold for a "fry" is much lower.
A faraday cage, like the one that keeps you from being irradiated with 1.5kW of radio waves as you stand in front of your microwave oven waiting for the popcorn, would be sufficient to keep the electronics inside the building working. Either build a room or shield the whole building with mesh.
Eine kleine chicken wire
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BMO
It's a bit like saying taking down a building has no collateral damage if it doesn't cause other buildings to collapse.
That is exactly what it means. If it takes down the intended building, then the intended building is not collateral damage.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
No casualties...
Except everyone with a pacemaker.
And everyone hooked up on life support.
And most of the people flying through the area.
And most of the people driving at high speed through the area.
>Nope, a Faraday cage is not 100% effective against microwaves
Microwave oven manufacturers would disagree with you. It's not magic.
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BMO
Microwaves are non-ionizing, so cancer 20 years later is unlikely.
Power supplies, especially the ones in computers and in cameras and everything else except things like fluorescent lamp ballasts, have transistors. These transistors get fried at the junctions.
You can't aim a microwave signal at a power line or transformer and get the desired result here. The wavelength is too short.
Note that the fluorescent lights are still on in the room in the photograph.
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BMO
Tin foil? Everything now is ALUMINUM foil, which does nothing to block government waves! They haven't made TIN foil since WWII. Oh they SAY it was because they needed the tin for the war effort, but the truth is they discovered tin was the only effective shield against their new toys so they made sure nobody could get it anymore!
=Smidge=
how are you supposed to record electromagnetic radiation when you are shielding against electromagnetic radiation? (optical filters and/or faraday cage?)
Waveguides are excellent high pass filters with great ultimate attenuation. If you don't believe me, do two experiments and look down the center of a straight section, and then wave a 9-volt battery on one end and a voltmeter on the other. I can't be bothered to look up circ waveguide cutoff freqs vs a standard c-mount inner diameter, but right off the top of my head a cmount hole is probably small enough to stick inside a piece of rectangular WR-42 waveguide so just tune your master blaster missile to somewhere lower than 25 or so GHz and the attenuation thru a cmount is likely to exceed 100 dB or so. Best ask a EE to model it to make sure you haven't built a coupling iris instead of a waveguide. In fact put a tiny little CCD with a pinhole lens in a small metal box that is way too small to resonate at the master blaster freq. Talk to an optician about designing the longest narrowest possible lens system aka a submarine periscope and make the tube outta metal aka a long narrow circ waveguide operating way below cutoff.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I think you're confusing "interferes with" which merely requires ruining the signal to noise ratio by enough that you can't demod without errors, with vaporizes.
You're talking about a temporary impairment, they're talking about the equivalent of putting your bluetooth gear in the microwave and turning it on until smoke is emitted.
Or another analogy is the geometry of sunlight on my deck railings makes shadows aka ugly black bars on the deck, but that's a far cry from using a giant magnifying glass to burn permanent ugly black bars into my deck.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I would suggest wrapping your laptop in bacon.
even if it does not protect the data, at least you get a really nice smell and lunch afterwards.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Further investigation will likely explain this better, but two possibilities are: Your microwave is slightly defective, or the interference is actually coming from the power cord, which the microwave is parasitically coupled to as an antenna. All sorts of electronics introduce noise on the power lines in your house, that's why they make fancy surge protectors with "filtered" outlets that reduce said noise from entering other devices.
I work right near the test facility, and let me assure your PC is perfectly safe. This thing cannot shu
Depending on the laptop, it can still cook the bacon.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Nobody uses tin for anything because it's rubbish. Also Aluminium was used heavily in and following the war for aircraft production...
The war was great for Alcoa. They sold aluminum to Japan before (and during) the war and it was turned into Zeroes which were then used to attack American planes and ships which used their aluminum, too. Win-win.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My understanding - and I am not an expert either - is that it prohibits weapons that are *intended* to cause blindness. It doesn't prohibit weapons which may cause blindness incidentially to their intended purpose, and this has come up in the past with regards to laser-guided missiles where the very high-powered targeting laser can be easily pointed into the enemy eyes to disable them while the missile closes.
The world desperately needs a lot of new things
Like, for example, more people with a basic education and some critical thinking skills. All the really good stuff comes easily afer that, everywhere it happens.
... teaching. Especially for teaching girls how to read and write. So, you know those guys, half a dozen of them riding around in the back of a pickup truck with AK47s? They need to be stopped from killing people who want to do things like read, write, and have a rational government with little things like constitutions and the rule of law. And guess what! Sometimes you have to use actual force to shut those guys down.
The problem is that there are organizations dedicated to preventing that from happening. You know, marching into a school, dragging the teacher out into the town square, and shooting her in the head for
Now, clearly you don't like the idea of surgical strikes, drones, etc., because you'd rather deal with guys like that and the camps where they gather by sending in a column of troops, armor, supply chains, and doing it all with on-the-ground firefights. Because, presumably, you'd like those guys to have lots of warning that the troops are coming, and you think that ground combat involves an acceptable (to you) number of casualties on the part of those defending the schools, and an acceptable amount of carnage and destruction from urban street-level combat. Why you'd rather have all of that mayhem and death and civilians-in-the-crossfire stuff instead of using modern technology to minimize it is a bit of a mystery. But I'm sure it all starts with your obsession with "you guys" instead of with girls who want to be educated.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.