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The US Is Testing a Microwave Weapon To Stop North Korea's Missiles (vox.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the cruise-control dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vox: According to an NBC News report, the weapon -- which is still under development -- could be put on a cruise missile and shot at an enemy country from a B-52 bomber. It's designed to use microwaves to target enemy military facilities and destroy electronic systems, like computers, that control their missiles. The weapon itself wouldn't damage the buildings or cause casualties. Air Force developers have been working with Boeing on the system since 2009. They're hoping to receive up to $200 million for more prototyping and testing in the latest defense bill. There's just one problem. It's not clear that the weapon is entirely ready for use -- and it's not clear that it would be any more effective than the powerful weapons the U.S. already possesses. The weapon, which has the gloriously military-style name of Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project, or CHAMP, isn't quite ready for action, but it could be soon. Two unnamed Air Force officials told NBC that the weapon could be ready for use in just a few days.

15 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Are North Korea using corn-based missiles? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 3, Funny

    Because that's how you get popcorn.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
    1. Re:Are North Korea using corn-based missiles? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Designing the system to cook people would be more effective, as the weapons would be shielded.

      This system would require a lot of lead time to load the B-52, takeoff, fly to NK airspace, launch the cruise missile, and wait for its subsonic engines to propel it to the target.

      The NK missile launch last week occurred with NO warning. They were able to fuel and prepare the missile for launch without detection.

      This microwave system would be worthless at countering a NK missile launch. It would only be useful as a first strike weapon. Fear of an American preemptive strike is exactly what motivated NK to develop their nukes in the first place.

      Maybe someday America will learn that you don't convince your adversary to stop being paranoid by threatening to attack them.

    2. Re:Are North Korea using corn-based missiles? by sysrammer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, just to play devil's advocate, what has worked?

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
    3. Re: Are North Korea using corn-based missiles? by whodunit · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If only we had stealth drones equipped with synthetic aperture radar that can generate FLIR-quality images through cloud cover. Like the RQ-170 and its successor, the RQ-180...

    4. Re:Are North Korea using corn-based missiles? by BlueStrat · · Score: 4, Informative

      This system would require a lot of lead time to load the B-52, takeoff, fly to NK airspace, launch the cruise missile, and wait for its subsonic engines to propel it to the target.

      The NK missile launch last week occurred with NO warning. They were able to fuel and prepare the missile for launch without detection.

      The US could keep a flight/flights of CHAMP-equipped-cruise missile-carrying B52s on station 24/7/365 as the old Soviet Union and NATO used to so during the Cold War.

      Really though, as someone with extensive high-powered RF engineering experience including radar and microwave, I have serious doubts about how effective such a weapon could be IRL. The inverse-square law of transmitted power, distance to receiver/tarfet, and signal strength/current/voltage/thermal heating induced means it would also require enormous amounts of power, especially with a size-limited transmission antenna array due to it all being crammed into a cruise missile.

      It's extremely inefficient energy-transfer wise. Only a tiny fraction of the power transmitted actually reaches the intended target (or receiver in the case of radio). Unless they can pack 1.21 gigawatts (or some similar ridiculously-huge number) into a cruise missile, I can't see how this could possibly be effective and practical as a weapon.

      Sounds more like propaganda for both domestic (look! we're doing...something!) and NK consumption (we'll blind you with Science! [insert cheesy Thomas Doolby '80s pop tune]) while doubling as a handy excuse to hand out US defense money for the usual reasons.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    5. Re:Are North Korea using corn-based missiles? by Solandri · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Fear of an American preemptive strike is exactly what motivated NK to develop their nukes in the first place.

      Maybe someday America will learn that you don't convince your adversary to stop being paranoid by threatening to attack them.

      You grossly misunderstand North Korea. The U.S. has had the capability to launch a preemptive strike against North Korea unchallenged for over 65 years and hasn't done so. There isn't much else it can/could have done to assuage North Korea's fears and convince it that it wasn't going to attack (at least not without opening up South Korea to another North Korean attack - North Korea's two top goals are to drive the U.S. out of the peninsula, and to reunify it, by violent means if necessary).

      Even the U.S. troops stationed in South Korea (about 37,000) aren't sufficient in number to represent any meaningful offensive fighting force if the U.S. did decide to launch a preemptive strike(North Korea has just shy of 1 million active military personnel). The U.S. troops there know it too. They call themselves "speed bumps." Their sole purpose is, in the event of a North Korean invasion, to be overrun and killed, so that the U.S. has an excuse to immediately get involved in a second Korean War without having to go through the UN like the first time (which only succeeded because the USSR was boycotting the UN that week)..

      North Korea's ire against the U.S. isn't based on paranoia. It's based on propaganda. Any repressive system generates extreme discontent within its population, which eventually leads to uprising and revolution. Unless you can present the people with an external bogeyman that they can fear and hate instead of their oppressive overload. North Korea has chosen the U.S. to be that bogeyman. They teach their grade schoolers to want to attack Americans for crying out loud. Please, educate yourself on what actually goes on in North Korea before you believe their claims of victimhood.

      In a way, North Korea is a test for what the world's future will be like. You attribute the lack of a violent confrontation with North Korea for 65 years to the effectiveness of a pacifist approach to them. My hunch is that it's more because North Korea simply didn't have the capability to strike outside of its borders effectively. The nukes aren't going to end with North Korea. On the contrary, this is just the beginning. First it'll be rogue nation-states getting nukes. Then rogue organizations. Then rogue individuals. You're not going to be able to appease them all by being pacifist. At some point, one of them is going to be sufficiently offended or self-deluded to actually use those nukes.

      The world needs to come up with some effective strategy for dealing with the proliferation of nukes. I honestly don't know what the best approach is (if it were simple, we would've already done it). I'm extremely troubled by Trump's aggressive attitude towards North Korea, but I can kinda see his point. We've known for decades that North Korea was a cancer in the socio-political fabric of the world. If it had been excised early on, we wouldn't be having this problem today. But instead we did nothing, taking the pacifist approach and hoping the problem would go away by itself. Well, it hasn't, and now it has nukes. And like I said, this isn't just about North Korea. This is just the beginning. Next it'll be rogue organizations with nukes, then rogue individuals with nukes. I really hope we can establish some effective way to deal with them, or we're doomed. We're going to look back at the time when terrorists brought down airliners with a bomb as the good old days.

    6. Re:Are North Korea using corn-based missiles? by gtall · · Score: 3

      There is no convincing the Norks the U.S. doesn't desire to own a poor country with nothing going for it. The intellectual giants running N. Korea only keep the threat of U.S. intervention alive so they can give the public a reason why they should stay in power and shouldn't be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

    7. Re:Are North Korea using corn-based missiles? by ceoyoyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Diplomacy, open trade, and international organizations. It's not as sexy as nukes and special forces, but the current stability of the world (and it is in an unprecedented state of stability) is almost certainly due to those things.

    8. Re:Are North Korea using corn-based missiles? by kilfarsnar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Diplomacy, open trade, and international organizations. It's not as sexy as nukes and special forces, but the current stability of the world (and it is in an unprecedented state of stability) is almost certainly due to those things.

      What do diplomacy, open trade, and international organizations have to do with North Korea?

      Only everything. There are no good military solutions to the conflict with North Korea. They all involve hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. If you think that's acceptable, we should probably reconsider who the murderous psychopath is in this situation.

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
  2. Thank God for North Korea by aberglas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Finally, a reason to spend billions more on missile defense. The arms industry will be very happy indeed.

    1. Re:Thank God for North Korea by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Informative

      High energy ground based lasers, using adaptive optics to reduce atmospheric distortion, could reliably block North Korean missiles from hitting America. All the technology exists for this.

      We already have laser planes which can shoot down a missile under ideal conditions. I'd be surprised if those haven't been improved since they were invented, to the point that they might even shoot down a sufficiently primitive missile in the real world.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Re:AJIT PAI == SHITTY SMELLY INDO-CHIMP by _merlin · · Score: 3, Informative

    No he isn't. He's US-born, raised and educated, graduating from one of your prestigious law schools and working as a lawyer for a glorious US telecommunications megacorporation. He's American through-and-through.

  4. CHAMP? Really? I can play too. by blindseer · · Score: 5, Funny

    I get the impression that the military just grabs words out of a hat for the next weapon system and makes up an acronym to fit. I can do that too.

    High
    Energy
    Radio
    Output
    Emitter
    System

    or

    Weapon
    Intercept for
    Nuclear and
    Non-nuclear
    Enemy
    Rockets

    Who else wants to try? Here's a tough one: VICTORY

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  5. Dear Slashdot by Hallux-F-Sinister · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You really need to create a score of -2, to differentiate that which is merely offensive garbage that does not contribute meaningfully to a conversation and ... posts like this.

    --
    Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
  6. Re:You could just as easily credit nukes by ceoyoyo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Don't believe what the media tells you. The actual numbers say the world has less violence and is more stable today than it ever has been. It's been getting more so for a thousand years, even if you include the 20th century wars.

    When you go country-by-country, the factors that emerge as contributing to stability, peace and prosperity are engagement with the international community and international trade ties. The trends were present well before nukes were invented. Nukes may explain why we haven't had any of the largest kinds of wars recently, but they really don't work as a good explanation on any other level, even limited to post 1945: all the nuclear powers have been involved in wars, and several of them aren't or weren't exactly what you'd call stable or peaceful.