Posted on 09/28/2003 10:58:01 AM PDT by Psalm118
In the blink of an eye, electromagnetic bombs could throw civilization back 200 years.
And terrorists can build them for $400.
BY JIM WILSON
Lead illustration by Edwin Herder
The next Pearl Harbor will not announce itself with a searing flash of nuclear light or with the plaintive wails of those dying of Ebola or its genetically engineered twin. You will hear a sharp crack in the distance. By the time you mistakenly identify this sound as an innocent clap of thunder, the civilized world will have become unhinged.
Fluorescent lights and television sets will glow eerily bright, despite being turned off. The aroma of ozone mixed with smoldering plastic will seep from outlet covers as electric wires arc and telephone lines melt.
Your Palm Pilot and MP3 player will feel warm to the touch, their batteries overloaded. Your computer, and every bit of data on it, will be toast. And then you will notice that the world sounds different too. The background music of civilization, the whirl of internal-combustion engines, will have stopped. Save a few diesels, engines will never start again. You, however, will remain unharmed, as you find yourself thrust backward 200 years, to a time when electricity meant a lightning bolt fracturing the night sky.
This is not a hypothetical, son-of-Y2K scenario. It is a realistic assessment of the damage the Pentagon believes could be inflicted by a new generation of weapons--
E-bombs.
The first major test of an American electromagnetic bomb is scheduled for next year. Ultimately, the Army hopes to use E-bomb technology to explode artillery shells in midflight. The Navy wants to use the E-bomb's high-power microwave pulses to neutralize antiship missiles. And, the Air Force plans to equip its bombers, strike fighters, cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles with E-bomb capabilities. When fielded, these will be among the most technologically sophisticated weapons the U.S. military establishment has ever built.
There is, however, another part to the E-bomb story, one that military planners are reluctant to discuss. While American versions of these weapons are based on advanced technologies, terrorists could use a less expensive, low-tech approach to create the same destructive power. "Any nation with even a 1940s technology base could make them," says Carlo Kopp, an Australian-based expert on high-tech warfare. "The threat of E-bomb proliferation is very real."
POPULAR MECHANICS estimates a basic weapon could be built for $400.
An Old Idea Made New
The theory behind the E-bomb was proposed in 1925 by physicist Arthur H. Compton--not to build weapons, but to study atoms. Compton demonstrated that firing a stream of highly energetic photons into atoms that have a low atomic number causes them to eject a stream of electrons. Physics students know this phenomenon as the Compton Effect. It became a key tool in unlocking the secrets of the atom.
Ironically, this nuclear research led to an unexpected demonstration of the power of the Compton Effect, and spawned a new type of weapon. In 1958, nuclear weapons designers ignited hydrogen bombs high over the Pacific Ocean.
The detonations created bursts of gamma rays that, upon striking the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere, released a tsunami of electrons that spread for hundreds of miles. Street lights were blown out in Hawaii and radio navigation was disrupted for 18 hours, as far away as Australia. The United States set out to learn how to "harden" electronics against this electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and develop EMP weapons.
America has remained at the forefront of EMP weapons development. Although much of this work is classified, it's believed that current efforts are based on using high-temperature superconductors to create intense magnetic fields. What worries terrorism experts is an idea the United States studied but discarded--the Flux Compression Generator (FCG).
A Poor Man's E-Bomb
An FCG is an astoundingly simple weapon. It consists of an explosives-packed tube placed inside a slightly larger copper coil, as shown below. The instant before the chemical explosive is detonated, the coil is energized by a bank of capacitors, creating a magnetic field. The explosive charge detonates from the rear forward. As the tube flares outward it touches the edge of the coil, thereby creating a moving short circuit. "The propagating short has the effect of compressing the magnetic field while reducing the inductance of the stator [coil]," says Kopp. "The result is that FCGs will produce a ramping current pulse, which breaks before the final disintegration of the device. Published results suggest ramp times of tens of hundreds of microseconds and peak currents of tens of millions of amps." The pulse that emerges makes a lightning bolt seem like a flashbulb by comparison.
An Air Force spokesman, who describes this effect as similar to a lightning strike, points out that electronics systems can be protected by placing them in metal enclosures called Faraday Cages that divert any impinging electromagnetic energy directly to the ground. Foreign military analysts say this reassuring explanation is incomplete.
The India Connection The Indian military has studied FCG devices in detail because it fears that Pakistan, with which it has ongoing conflicts, might use E-bombs against the city of Bangalore, a sort of Indian Silicon Valley. An Indian Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis study of E-bombs points to two problems that have been largely overlooked by the West. The first is that very-high-frequency pulses, in the microwave range, can worm their way around vents in Faraday Cages. The second concern is known as the "late-time EMP effect," and may be the most worrisome aspect of FCG devices. It occurs in the 15 minutes after detonation. During this period, the EMP that surged through electrical systems creates localized magnetic fields. When these magnetic fields collapse, they cause electric surges to travel through the power and telecommunication infrastructure. This string-of-firecrackers effect means that terrorists would not have to drop their homemade E-bombs directly on the targets they wish to destroy. Heavily guarded sites, such as telephone switching centers and electronic funds-transfer exchanges, could be attacked through their electric and telecommunication connections.
Knock out electric power, computers and telecommunication and you've destroyed the foundation of modern society. In the age of Third World-sponsored terrorism, the E-bomb is the great equalizer.
In the 1980s, the Air Force tested E-bombs that used cruise-missile delivery systems.
To ignite an E-bomb, a starter current energizes the stator coil, creating a magnetic field. The explosion (A) expands the tube, short-circuiting the coil and compressing the magnetic field forward (B). The pulse is emitted (C) at high frequencies that defeat protective devices like Faraday Cages.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN BATCHELOR
Yes. In an allegedly free society, people publish things that make other people uncomfortable. They even publish things that evil people can use to wreak havok.
It's not that terribly difficult to build EMP weapons that could be useful in a localized area. This information has been out there for years, yet e don't see thousands of people using them to sow destruction and confusion.
You do realise that the average household contains enough chemicals to produce some really nasty effects, don't you?
I have a copy of the 1903 edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittannica. Using the information in it, I could do many things including make TNT. Are we going to destroy all knowlege in the world to make the world safe from evildoers?
More or less true. However, US defense contractors bought some newer more sophisticated designs (i.e. not a classic FCG design) from the Russians in the early 90s for something like $11 million (fuzzy memory -- I haven't worked in that industry for years); the Russians were selling off many of their designs to curious defense contractors back then. The US took the sexier Soviet generator design, modeled them in supercomputers and completely re-engineered the materials, and came up with something MUCH more powerful than what you get out of a simple FCG and with much better range and performance than anything the Soviets could build.
The modern US version of the system is sufficiently powerful that it has been tested for use as a single-stage fusion trigger. Obviously though, there is very little in the way of specific details on it.
I agree.
If we spent more time working on the Flux Capacitor rather than the FCG we could go back in time (ala "Back to the Future").
Set one off atop the Empire State Building and the pulse woldn't reach the ground.
The Back offices of the brokerages are scattered all over New York, New Jersey and Conneticut.
The exchenges have mirrored systems located in salt mines in the midwest, and the brokerages have backup datastores there.
An EMP attack that took out all of Manhatten would take the exchanges down for maybe 15 minutes with no loss of data.
The same is true of the big banks and the Federal Reserve.
So9
I saw this posted on the net not too long ago -- possibly on Slashdot.
Keep your rollerblades in the car and don't take ny elevators.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.