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The Omega Report

Previous Message All Messages Next Message  Secret weapons of Iraq war  Alpha-Omega  Jul 30, 2003 17:06 PDT  Secret weapons of Iraq war and Their Potential Terrorist Use March 10, 2003 Prepared by Phoenix Technologies A Division of the Phoenix Foundation This report is subject to RESTRICTED DISTRIBUTION in accordance with internal classification and security procedures inasmuch as it contains information that could be harmful to U.S. national security if obtained by hostile forces. BACKGROUND OF RF WARFARE Electromagnetic Pulse                                              Railgun Information                                                BLU-114-B Soft-Bomb                                                Electromagnetic Weapons                                            EMP Weapons                                                        Microwave beam weapon to disperse crowds                           Non-lethal Anti-personnel Electromagnetic Weapons                  The E-Bomb - A Weapon of Electrical Mass Destruction               The E-Bomb - The New Threat The electromagnetic Bomb                                           The fuzzy ethics of nonlethal weapons                              The Military's Silicon Revolution                                  Trend #1 - Weapons Proliferation, 2003                             US non-lethal weapon reports suppressed                            War Weapon Hits Electronics, Not Humans                            What if an Asteroid Hit the Earth                                  What is the E-Bomb                                                 CONGRESSIONAL-MILITARY REVIEWS Carlo Kopp - Consultant DoD employees hold forth on radio frequency weapons for Congress JEC Hearing - E-bomb                                               Proliferation and Significance of Radio Frequency Weapons Technology.. Radio Frequency Weapons and the Infrastructure                     Robert Schweitzer's testimony on radio frequency weapons           DEPLOYMENT IN GULF WAR II Boots, Bytes and Bombs                                             Coming Soon to Baghdad - The Preview of the E-Bomb                 Coming to Gulf War II The e-Bomb                                   Dropping the E-bomb                                                'E-bomb' may see first combat use in Iraq                          E-Doom for Hussein's Military Muscle                               Hi-tech US weaponry could be used in conflict with Iraq            Iraq Attack-Code Black                                             Iraq War Could be Won in 48 Hours Report                           It Will Begin With a Bright Flash in the Sky Massive E-bomb attack                                              Pentagon Leaning Against Use Of E-Bomb Against Iraq                Pentagon may use new E-Bomb during war on Iraq                     Saddam Dusts off His Old Super Gun                                 Saddam To Be Target Of Britain's New 'E-Bomb'                      US 'E-bomb' set to destroy Iraqi communications                    US fears Iraq could copy e-bomb Washington wants to avoid civilian casualties in Iraq, but no guaran.. Will Saddam Fall Victim to the Elusive E-bomb    E-BOMB: ITS NATURE & DEPLOYMENT A new generation of 'smart' bombs                                  A Superconducting E-bomb                                           Britain develops shell to disable electronics                      DoD News Contracts for June 21, 2001                               E-Bomb Disrupts Electronics                                        E-Bomb Hoists                                                      EME Electro Magnetic Engineering AB: E-Bomb                       EME Electro Magnetic Engineering                                   Haley abduction                                                    High-Power Microwaves-USAF                                         Weapons -- DEW-High Power Microwave (HPM)                          SKEPTICS Electronic Pearl Harbor A slogan for US Info-warriors              EMP weapons Calling Victor von Doom                                Inconclusive Gossip About Radio Frequency Weapons The Chupacabras of Infowar                                         SOCIAL-POLITICAL COMMENTARY/OPPOSITION AlexasWish_com - WHATEVER! - The Bomb                              Citizens' Initiative Omega - E-bomb                                E-Bombing Civilization by Daniel McCarthy                          EMP - The Gentle Killer 3                                          EMP Weapons [Free Republic]                                        The Trouble With E-Bombs and the Predator                          USE AS A TERRORIST WEAPON E-Bombs And Terrorists                                             E-Bombs Are Coming - Could Throw Civilization Back 200 Years       harden.pdf                                                             Saddam Dusts off His Old Super Gun January 9, 2002, 3:39 PM (GMT+02:00) Saddam’s super-cannon of pre-Gulf War fame is making a comeback. In its newly adapted form, the fabled monster gun is designed to fire nuclear, chemical and biological shells at US military targets in the Gulf, Middle East, Red Sea and Mediterranean, as well as targeting Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey and Israel. This was revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly in its last week’s issue. In its original form, the gun was capable of firing a warhead at Tehran or Tel Aviv, having a range of 1,500 miles - or more, if boosted by a rocket. In 1985, in the closing days of the Iraq-Iran War, Saddam hired the super gun’s inventor, Canadian astrophysicist Gerald Bull, arguably the most prominent scientist of the day in the missile and artillery field, to construct a 424 mm cannon that could fire quarter-ton shells more than 1,700 miles. Bull was murdered in Brussels in 1990. Newspaper reports claimed Israel’s Mossad killed him to foil the super gun project. Another theory said he fell victim to Iraqi intelligence assassins because of Saddam’s suspicion that he was cooperating with Israel through South African contacts. The real story is still unknown. After Bull’s death, Iraq was left with the scientist’s plans but without the manpower or technical know-how to complete the project. But Saddam never gave up his grandiose plans for the super gun. One was to blast into orbit the military satellites he was building just before the 1991 Gulf War. In 1992 and 1995, experiments were made to launch spacecraft that would collide with enemy satellites making surveillance passes over Iraqi territory. On impact, the spacecraft would explode and spray the satellites with an adhesive substance that would put their cameras and surveillance equipment out of action. Touting his super gun, Saddam once boasted a missile could be launched only once but a cannon could be used repeatedly to fire projectiles. US and Israeli intelligence were taken aback to discover that not one, but three or four super guns, have just turned up in Iraq’s arsenal – advanced and more effective versions of Bull’s invention. It comes in two models, both hidden in the underground city Iraq has build as a hideaway for its government, top officials and strategic utilities in case of war. The largest has a 1,000 mm diameter barrel, 260 meters (248 yards) long and a maximum range of 2,000 miles. The barrel of the smaller version is 350 mm in diameter and 30 meters (32 yard) long. Its range is up to 250 miles. They were dismantled and concealed in segments – the barrel of the biggest super gun is made up of 35 separate pipes – and only spotted by US and Israeli satellites after they were assembled. Since most intelligence experts concede Iraq has been capable of building radiological weapons since 1991, its super guns – which can deliver a nuclear payload over great distances – will be one of the first goals of a potential US-led strike againstIraq. Killing the super gun could be the boldest move in Washington’s global war against terrorism. ------------------ Pentagon Leaning Against Use Of E-Bomb Against Iraq Thu Feb 20 2003 10:16:46 ET The U.S. military has developed a weapon that can permanently disable electrical and telecommunications systems and has debated the possibility of using it in any military assault against Baghdad, the WALL STREET JOURNAL reported on Thursday. The new weapon -- known as the 'e-bomb,' for the high-velocity electromagnetic pulses it discharges -- hasn't yet been tested in battle. But some midlevel Air Force commanders have said that using such a weapon, which was long in development but veiled in secrecy, would give the U.S. a decisive initial advantage in a war with Iraq. Top Pentagon and military-service officials are leaning against using the e-bomb, though. They are concerned its use could alienate the Iraqi populace by crippling Baghdad's phone and electrical systems and, hence, the city's hospital and emergency-services infrastructure. ------------------------- US fears Iraq could copy e-bomb    2-21-2003 - AP Pentagon officials reportedly oppose using the new "e-bomb" against Iraq because of fears that it could be copied and deployed against the US. Military advisers believe a cheap version of the weapon would cost as little as £300 to make. Described as a man-made lighting bolt, the e-bomb uses high powered microwave beams to unleash up to two billion watts and destroy any electronics within 1,000ft. ------------------------- January 27, 2003 Electrical Storm America's Ultra-Secret Weapon BY MARK THOMPSON - Time Magazine Every war has its wonder weapon. In Afghanistan, it was the Predator, the unmanned drone that would loiter, invisibly, over the battlefield before unleashing a Hellfire missile on an unsuspecting target. The Gulf War marked the debut of precision-guided munitions, and in Vietnam helicopters came of age. World War II gave us the horror of nuclear weapons, and World War I introduced the tank. If there's a second Gulf War, get ready to meet the high-power microwave. HPMs are man-made lightning bolts crammed into cruise missiles. They could be key weapons for targeting Saddam Hussein's stockpiles... -------------- U.S. got its e-bomb on New Scientist says that a military attack on Iraq could see the first use of an e-bomb designed to destroy electronics but not harm people. U.S. intelligence reports that Iraq has moved much of its military infrastructure underground or beneath civilian buildings like hospitals. As such, the magazine says, the role of non-lethal and precision weapons would be a critical factor in any conflict. The U.S. reportedly has in its arsenal High Power Microwave (HPM) devices that produce an electromagnetic field so strong they can destroy electronic equipment in hardened command, control, communications and computer targets. One mechanism for achieving this sounds like something out of "Back to the Future": An explosive pumped flux generator. That device is essentially a bomb which with a combination of explosives and electronics, sends out an electromagnetic wave of up to tens of millions of Amps. By comparison, a typical lightning strike --- which can wreak plenty of damage on its own --- carries just 30,000 Amps. ---------------- Coming Soon to Baghdad – The Preview of the E-Bomb Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com Monday, Feb. 17, 2003 It will begin with a sharp crack, like the sound of a bolt of lightning hitting its target. In an instant, Baghdad and its environs will go dark. Even though turned off, fluorescent lights and television sets will glow and the smell of ozone mixed with the odor of smoldering plastic will seep from outlet covers as electric wires arc and telephone lines melt. Palm Pilots will feel warm to the touch, their batteries overloaded. Computers, and every bit of data on them, will be history. Suddenly there will be a deadly quiet as internal-combustion engines shut down never to be restarted. No Iraqis will suffer any harm – they will simply be thrust back in time to an era where electricity and the electronics it made possible were non-existent. Saddam Hussein will sit in his silent darkened bunker – suddenly stifling as all air intake systems shut down. With communication with his armed forces arrayed around the capital city no longer operating, he and his top generals will be rendered as mute as the troops in the field themselves. Only by carrier pigeon could be hope to contact his forces. His missiles inoperative, his tanks without engines, his jet fighters downed, his radar installations useless, Saddam no longer has the instruments of modern warfare at his beck and call. He has been e-bombed back to the stone ages. That’s the scenario for the opening of the invasion of Iraq if intelligence reports are correct. The age of the e-bomb has arrived and modern warfare will never be the same. Early Beginnings It all began in 1925 with the atomic research of physicist Arthur H. Compton who 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, to the development of the e-bomb. Leap forward to the high altitude detonation of a hydrogen bomb over Siberia by the Soviets back in the 1960s which had an unexpected effect. It knocked out communications systems for hundreds of miles below the blast. While testing hydrogen bombs in outer space, hundreds of miles above the planet, American scientists also discovered that each atomic blast created a pulse of electromagnetic energy similar to conventional radio-made microwaves, but with energy so great that they erased magnetic memories and melted the microscopic junctions in transistors on the Earth below. These were veritable tidal waves of energy, sufficient to cripple sensitive microelectronics but too weak to be seen, heard, or felt by human beings. During one U.S. test, in July 1962, a hydrogen bomb was detonated approximately 650 miles in space, roughly where today's space shuttles orbit. Simultaneously, an incredible 2100 miles to the northeast, street lights went dark and burglar alarms began ringing on the Hawaiian islands. The reason was an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) produced by the blast. According to a report by intelligence expert Major Scott W. Merkle, then a student assigned to the Air Command and General Staff College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama, a declassified U.S. military report showed that the explosion of a bomb about one megaton in size (the exact size remains classified) eight hundred miles over Omaha, Nebraska, would shower the continental United States, southern Canada, and northern Mexico with an EMP capable of disabling virtually every computerized circuit in its potential damaging consequences of such an EMP attack in 1982, when he wrote in an obscure engineering journal Dependence on Computers “Today there is almost universal dependence on electronic computers. They are used by first-graders as well as research engineers. Industry, communications, financial records, are all at stake here. In the event of heavy EMP radiation, I suspect it would be easier to enumerate the apparatus that would continue to function than the apparatus that would stop.” “Due to this reaction, in 1963 the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty to counter the considerable threat posed by EMPs,” wrote Major Merkle. “Since then, that threat has grown at a fantastic rate, fueled by the rapid progress made in compacting ever more EMP-sensitive transistors onto the computer chips upon which modern electronics rely. ” Testifying before the House Committee on National Security, Military Research and Development Subcommittee, on July 16th, 1997 Dr Lowell Wood of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory described the effects of EMP. “Electromagnetic pulses, EMP, generated by high-altitude nuclear explosions have riveted the attention of the military nuclear tactical community for three-and-a-half decades since the first comparatively modest one very unexpectedly turned off the lights over a few million square miles in the mid-Pacific. This EMP also shut down radio stations, turned off cars, burned out telephone systems, and wreaked other mischief throughout the Hawaiian Islands nearly 1,000 miles distant from ground zero. “The potential for even a single high-altitude explosion of a more deliberate character to impose continental-scale devastation of much of the equipment of modern civilization and of modern warfare soon became clear. EMP became a technological substrate for the black humor: Suppose they gave a war and nobody came. EMP Wreckage “It was EMP-imposed wreckage, at least as much as that due to blast, fire, and fallout, which sobered detail studies of the post-nuclear-attack recovery process. When essentially nothing electrical or electronic could be relied upon to work, even in rural areas far from the blast, it appeared surpassingly difficult to bootstrap American national recovery, and post-attack America in these studies remained stuck in the very early 20th century until electrical equipment and electronic components begin to trickle into a Jeffersonian America from abroad.” EMP he said, “can induce large voltages and currents in power lines, communication cables, radio towers, and other long conductors serving a facility. Some other notable collectors of EMP include railroad tracks, large antennas, pipes, cables, wires in buildings, and metal fencing. Although materials underground are partially shielded by the ground, they are still collectors, and these collectors deliver the EMP energy to some larger facility. This produces surges that can destroy the connected device, such as, power generators or long distance telephone systems. An EMP could destroy many services needed to survive a war. “Many systems needed are controlled by a semiconductor in some way. Failure of semi-conductive chips could destroy industrial processes, railway networks, power and phone systems, and access to water supplies. Semiconductor devices fail when they encounter an EMP because of the local heating that occurs. When a semi-conductive device absorbs the EMP energy, it displaces the resulting heat that is produced relatively slowly when compared to the time scale of the EMP. Because the heat is not dissipated quickly, the semiconductor can quickly heat up to temperatures near the melting point of the material. Soon the device will short and fail. This type of failure is call thermal second-breakdown failure.(16) Vulnerability “It is also important to realize how vulnerable the military is to EMP. "Military systems often use the most sophisticated and therefore most vulnerable, electronics available, and many of the systems that must operate during a nuclear war cannot tolerate the temporary disturbances that EMP may induce."(17) Furthermore, many military duties require information to be communicated over long distances. This type of communication requires external antennas, which are extremely vulnerable to EMP.” Dr. Wood was dealing with a so-called HEMP (High Altitude EMP) activated by a hydrogen bomb which was by then outlawed and considered unthinkable. But even then the cat was out of the bag and the race began to develop a non-nuclear method weapon capable of delivering an EMP punch. If current reports are accurate the U.S. now has such a weapon – the so-called e-bomb, and is getting ready to demonstrate its power to Saddam Hussein. According to Associated Press Technology writer Jim Krane, the U.S. may fire a cruise missile tipped with a high-powered electromagnetic-pulse emitter - a so-called e-bomb - "which fries the electronics without killing the people," said Andrew Koch of Jane's Information Group. Wrote Krane, “The weapon's massive power surge is supposed to travel through antennas or power cords to wreck any unshielded electronic appliance - civilian or military - within a few hundred yards, according to studies cited by GlobalSecurity.org, a research organization. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Edward Epstein quoted Roger McCarthy, chairman of Exponent Failure Analysis Associates in Menlo Park, a firm deeply involved in developing futuristic weaponry for the Pentagon as declaring: "Kabammy! A huge electronic wave comes along, and sends out a few thousand volts. Wham! Your cell phone or your computer dies," Invisible Wallop Epstein explains that the weapons “pack an incredible, invisible wallop, hundreds of times the electrical current in a lightning bolt. That ‘directed energy,’ in principle not unlike the power used more benignly in laser pointers or supermarket scanners, opens a whole new area of warfare, one that for now gives the United States a leg up on potential opponents. In an age in which militaries rely on sophisticated electronics for everything from starting tanks and planes to using phones to direct operations, such a weapon could be devastating.” Experts say that an e-bomb could also disarm Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons and disable underground military sites. "If I was Saddam Hussein, I'd make a major investment in old motorcycles and go back to the era of World War II and use motorcyclists as messengers," retired Army Lt. Col. Piers Wood of GlobalSecurity.org, a group that tracks new weapons systems told Epstein. "These weapons are really about taking the energy of high explosives and converting the wallop into electromagnetic energy to disrupt electronic devices," McCarthy said, adding that a good-sized version of the weapon would produce thousands of volts and 10 million amps in a microsecond. That's hundred of times the energy generated by lightning. With the e-bomb an apparent reality, a warning issued by Rep. Curt Weldon during a hearing of the House Committee on National Security, Military Research and Development Subcommittee, on July 16th, 1997 raised a nightmarish possibility. Said Weldon. “If I am the commander of North Korea and I have one nuclear weapon and that weapon is in the range of 1 to 10 kilotons, which I assume it is, and if I have the capability of a Nodong or Taepodong 2, system which I assume can reach an altitude of 250 miles quite easily, General Marsh—at least that is the testimony that has been give to me—and I want to do something to hurt the United States, I think the weapon of choice is to launch that device in the air and wipe out our smart capability and then dare us to respond, because we haven't killed anyone, we haven't hurt any buildings, and we, being a moral Nation, what is our President going to do? Is he going to set off a nuclear strike against North Korea, when they have not killed one person in this country, but it would devastate our entire infrastructure? That is what concerns me.” ------------------------- This remarkable item was lifted from a usually reliable Australian warblog called War Now!. I raised the same possibility last fall on the old Yahoo board in reference to the opening round of operations in Afghanistan. It didn't come to pass, but the stakes are higher in Iraq and the Iraqi forces are more dependent on telecommunications. Quote: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IT WILL BEGIN WITH A BRIGHT FLASH IN THE SKY The war proper will probably start with a high altitude nuclear detonation close to Baghdad. It will be hysterically reported in the media as a US atomic bombing, but in fact it will have a single, vital purpose - to emit a high-energy electromagnetic pulse which will wipe out much of the Iraqi communications infrastructure. I'm saying this, not because I have any paticular insight into the secret war plans being put together at the Pentagon, but because I have heard it's what General Schwarzkopf asked for at the start of the air campaign against Saddam back in Gulf War I. [NOTE: I can't find confirmation of this, can ayone help me out tracking this story down?] He was reportedly overruled at the time, but I doubt there will be any strictures placed on Tommy Franks this time. The stakes are MUCH higher, because Saddam has his back to the wall, and he will lash out with everything he's got. "In a fight for his survival, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would be likely to unleash his arsenal of chemical and germ warheads on American troops and Israel, military sources and analysts say. That deadly prospect, they say, makes it paramount that any war plan approved by President Bush contain tactical surprise, pre-emptive air strikes and a strategy for turning some Iraqi military units against their supreme leader." ------------------------------ The e-bomb In the first moments of an attack on Baghdad, the U.S. may try an experimental weapon—the e-bomb. This top-secret weapon uses an intense explosion and a magnetic field to produce a powerful burst of microwave energy in all directions. These electromagnetic pulses can permanently fry every computer, electrical circuit, telephone switchboard, and air-defense system for a mile around, leaving an enemy deaf, dumb, and blind. The Pentagon still hasn’t decided whether to use the still experimental e-bomb in Iraq, The Wall Street Journal recently reported, because of fears it would anger ordinary Iraqis by crippling hospitals, electricity, telephones, and other services. Since the damage to electronic devices is permanent, it would also add billions to the cost of rebuilding after a war. Instead, the Pentagon might rely on an old standby—the BLU-114B “blackout bomb.” This weapon, used in the 1991 Gulf War, releases a shower of very fine carbon wire that temporarily short-circuits electrical systems in the immediate area. (3-7-03) http://www.theweekmagazine.com/briefing.asp?a_id=357 ----------------------------- E-Bomb Disrupts Electronics My brother Wes sent me this one. It comes from the UPI London office. "British scientists have developed a nonexplosive artillery shell that can put out such a powerful burst of radio-frequency energy it will destroy or disable electrical and electronic systems for miles around without killing anyone. The new so-called E-Bomb was developed privately by Matra BAe Dynamics and fits into U.S. research efforts into matching and countering similar Russian systems, whose advanced development startled Western intelligence officials> when it was revealed two years ago." Sounds like this is where the TV show "Dark Angel" got the premise for their society. It also sounds kind of scary. Sorry, I don't have a link for that one. ------------------------ 4 October 2002 Massive attack By Dan Baum Icon http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/04/1033538768085.html The "e-bomb" is to the digital world what kryptonite was to Superman: rare, elusive and deadly. The e-bomb, as developed by engineers in the United States, Britain and Russia doesn't kill people or destroy buildings. Rather, it uses either electromagnetic pulse, microwaves or radio frequencies to destroy electronic circuits from a distance. In friendly hands, it offers the tantalising prospect of winning wars without hurting people. In enemy hands, it threatens a nightmare scenario of instantly blacked-out stock exchanges, hospitals, airports - even whole cities. Although reports of US Air Force e-bomb tests have leaked out since 1993, the Pentagon, as of September 11 last year, takes the same maddening "neither confirm nor deny" stance it assumes when talking about nuclear weapons. "Our guys would love to talk about it, but we can't," says Conrad Dziewulski, of the Air Force Research Lab at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, where scientists are working on both the offensive and defensive aspects of e-bomb warfare. But the Soviet army reportedly tested e-bombs as early as the 1940s and the British defence firm Matra Bae Dynamics last year announced it had developed a battlefield e-bomb that uses radio frequencies to cook enemy electronics. American generals have been worrying and dreaming about electromagnetic pulse weapons ever since Test Shot Starfish in 1962, when the US burst a 1.4-megaton hydrogen bomb 400 kilometres above the Pacific Ocean and unexpectedly knocked out radio communications and satellite equipment across thousands of kilometres. "A member of the Russian Duma recently told me, 'you know, if we really wanted to hurt you, we would set off an atomic weapon at high altitude above your country and produce an EMP that would destroy your entire electrical power grid, computers and telecommunications infrastructure - including satellites,"' says Roscoe Bartlett, a US Republican politician from Maryland. Using a hydrogen bomb to take out electronics, though, is like using a chainsaw to cut your toenails. Hence the search for a more delicate tool. E-bombs are particularly attractive to the military in the era of ubiquitous media coverage. As a pair of US Air Force officers wrote in the journal Air Power, "the CNN factor" makes limiting collateral damage and keeping casualties to a minimum almost as important as vanquishing the enemy. The US Air Force let some Iraqi MiGs go unbombed during the Gulf War because Saddam Hussein had tucked them beside ancient monuments the Pentagon wasn't willing to damage. E-bombs could have fried their circuitry while leaving antiquity unscathed. They also, incidentally, offer the prospect of a battlefield where TV cameras don't work. Unfortunately from a defensive point of view, an e-bomb is a lot easier to build than a nuclear bomb, and they don't have to be delivered by sophisticated missiles. David Schriner, a former civilian electrical engineer for the US Navy, told Congress in 1998 that he'd assembled $US500 worth of automobile ignition coils, batteries, fuel pumps and other assorted hardware in his basement and in one week he'd built an e-bomb that could make a running car hiccup at 15 metres by overloading its electricals. Congress was sufficiently frightened to give Schriner a million-dollar contract to see if he could build a truly effective e-bomb out of readily available materials. "Until you have one that can take out a whole building," says Schriner, "you don't have a credible weapon." He has since built a "building within a building" at his Ridgecrest, California, engineering firm and, with a more powerful device built around a telephone-poll transformer the size of a desktop printer, successfully shot through walls to scramble a collection of IV pumps and other electronic medical equipment. The US Congress has ordered the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, to appoint a commission to study the EMP threat. Before you get too panicked at the thought of impending e-bomb warfare, keep in mind that defence against e-bombs can be as low-tech as the bombs themselves. "It's pretty easy to shield equipment," says Schriner. "Sometimes the fix is a 10-cent device like putting a ferrite doughnut around the mouse cord. "But until people know about the threat," he says, "they can't do anything about it." -------------------------- E-Bomb 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 Popular Mechanics Sept. 2001 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. ------------------------------- "Citing unnamed sources, U.S. military officials reported yesterday that a preliminary Iraq battle plan outlined for President Bush...calls for the most extensive use of electronic warfare in history -- including secret new electromagnetic pulse weapons to disable Saddam (Hussein)'s entire command and control structure." -New York Post, 8-14-02 [E-bombs] can unleash in a flash as much electrical power—2 billion watts or more—as the Hoover Dam generates in 24 hours. [And], although the Pentagon prefers not to use experimental weapons on the battlefield, "the world intervenes from time to time," - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. -Time Magazine, 1-19-03 ---------------------- Boots, Bytes and Bombs The Pentagon calls it ‘shock and awe.’ Iraq will call it a nightmare. The military’s new high-tech road map for taking out Saddam—and how he might fight back By John Barry and Evan Thomas NEWSWEEK 2-17-2003 Feb. 17 issue — It’s called the “E-bomb.” Delivered by a cruise missile, the E-bomb is a warhead that explodes to emit a high-energy pulse that, like a bolt of lightning, will fuse any electrical equipment within range. THE E-BOMB HAS been more than a little temperamental in testing, and engineers would still like another year to work out the bugs, but on the first night of the war against Iraq, E-bombs will detonate over President Saddam Hussein’s key command-and-control bunkers in and around Baghdad. If all goes according to plan, lights will blink out, computers will melt down, phones will go silent. Saddam and his lieutenants will be left shivering in silent darkness, alone and waiting to die. The desired effect of the first night’s bombing, in the expression commonly used by military planners, is “shock and awe.” The overall goal of the American blitz against Iraq will be to so stun and demoralize the Iraqi Army that Saddam’s forces will quickly give up. The Iraqis will realize that resistance is futile and throw down their weapons—or turn them on Saddam. In the first 48 hours of the attack, the United States armed forces are expected to rain some 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles on—Iraqi air defenses, command-and-control, WMD sites and “leadership targets,” which is to say they will try to kill Saddam, his sons and their closest followers.         WHAT IF? But what if they miss? What if Saddam succeeds in going underground and fomenting a guerrilla war in the streets of Baghdad? (He is said to have several doubles; he could hang one, vanish, then come back from the dead.) What if Saddam hits back with chemical and biological weapons against American troops, Israel—or Washington or New York? What if Saddam does not patiently await his doom but decides to strike first? “Because Saddam knows we’re coming to get him this time, he will not be reluctant to use all the weapons at his disposal,” says former White House national-security aide and retired Army Gen. Wayne Downing, commander of U.S. Special Forces in the first gulf war. All the more reason to strike as hard and as quickly as possible. The U.S. invasion force will not be at full strength until mid-March, but an earlier “rolling start” is not out of the question. President George W. Bush and his war cabinet may want to paralyze Saddam before he can hit back—or execute some kind of Gotterdmmerung strategy, burning oil fields or gassing his own people. With all the war talk and the accelerating buildup of troops and forces, America cannot hope for true surprise. Rather, the battle planners are counting on a new kind of war to oust Saddam without wrecking Iraq in the process. It may be the first war of the Information Age. Battlefields are usually murky and chaotic. Troops get lost, orders are bungled, bombs go astray. Historically, American armies have tried to cut through the fog of war with brute force: by slowly, ponderously grinding down the enemy with overwhelming firepower. This war will be different, say the planners. They use buzzwords like simultaneity, agility and effects-based targeting. What they mean is the creation of a nimble force that can see the whole battlefield and act quickly, using its superior information and its high-precision firepower to strike deep and fast, enveloping and disabling enemy units before they can mount a coherent defense. The concepts, and the high technology to carry them out, have been in the works for some years. But they have never before been tested on such a grand scale. High-tech forces are smart, even brilliant. But they can also be fragile. Sandstorms can blind eye-in-the-sky satellites and crash helicopters, communication links can go down, and some of the new gizmos have never been battle-tested. Indeed, a run through for the war at Gen. Tommy Franks’s new CENTCOM headquarters in Qatar last month was a blizzard of computer glitches. Gulf War II will bear only a superficial resemblance to Gulf War I. Many of the weapons will look the same: Abrams main battle tanks, Apache helicopters, F-14, -15, -16, -18 warplanes. But look a little closer. That odd black drum poised over the rotor shaft on the Apache is a new targeting system, called a Longbow, that allows the chopper to target 16 enemy tanks at once. That extra aerial sticking up from the Abrams is for GPS—Global Positioning System—which allows every vehicle commander to know precisely where he is. And the bombs hanging from the warplanes are JDAMS, equipped with minicomputers and GP systems to steer themselves within, on average, 10 feet of their targets. (In Gulf War I, less than 10 percent of bombs were “smart”; in Gulf War II, old-fashioned “dumb bombs” will account for less than a tenth of payloads.) OLD WAR, NEW WAR        Gulf War I “was the last of the machine-age wars,” says retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, who ran the Army’s official history of the gulf war and, more recently, the Army’s study of its future, the “Army After Next” project. The military essentially took the weapons and tactics developed during the cold war to confront the Red Army on the plains of Europe and moved them to the desert. Saddam foolishly accommodated by arraying his tanks and troops out in the open, where they could be slowly, methodically destroyed. The preparatory air war lasted 39 days, wave after wave of aging B-52s dropping dumb bombs, followed by a tank and infantry assault that would have been easily recognizable to General Patton. Indeed, the speed of the “left hook” advance to cut off Saddam’s forces was a stately 10 miles an hour. Because of the usual battlefield confusion, much of Saddam’s Army escaped. Gulf War II is poised to proceed at a much more rapid pace. Ground troops are expected to jump off within three or four days of the first bombs’ falling, and some Special Forces will move into Iraq sooner. The assault will more closely resemble the invasion of Panama in 1989—a sudden, go-for-broke “vertical envelopment” from many directions to take down the Manuel Noriega regime (it may not bode well that Noriega himself escaped and evaded a nationwide manhunt for several days). In Iraq’s western desert, Special Forces will hunt for Sad—dam’s handful of Scud launchers before they can be fired at Israel. Washington is worried that if a biological or chemical weapon hits Tel Aviv, Israel might strike back with a nuke. Fortunately, Israel’s new Arrow anti-missile system is expected to work better than the vintage 1991 Patriot missiles, which were, despite initial reports, notably unsuccessful at hitting Scuds. Israel held off from retaliating in 1991, but Ariel Sharon may not be so patient this time around. A violent Israeli reaction or a prolonged war could inflame the whole region. American airborne troops and Marines will quickly seize Iraqi oilfields in the south and north before Saddam can torch them. The fear is that Saddam may decide that if he goes, Iraq goes with him. From the outset, America will try to seize the Iraqi airwaves. Having used the E-bomb to knock out Saddam’s ability to communicate with his troops and the Iraqi people, America will wage a war of psy-ops (psychological operations). Emanating from orbiting planes and high-powered transmitters, Arab-language broadcasts written by American propagandists will seek to convince the Iraqi people listening to their transistor radios that American forces have come as liberators, not as occupiers. The digital age creates possibilities for creative disinformation—the residents of Baghdad may hear a voice that sounds very much like Saddam’s, calling on them to lay down their arms and surrender. Army information specialists call this sort of psy-war onslaught “doing a Joshua”—after the Biblical Joshua, whose mighty trumpet supposedly blew down the walls of Jericho. WAITING TO SURRENDER? The goal is not to massacre Saddam’s Army. Saddam’s soldiers will be told, in essence: we need you for the new Iraq; don’t die for the old one. America will need a professional Army to keep order and help rebuild the country after Saddam falls; far better that those soldiers be Iraqi than American. The assumption is that Saddam’s own troops hate the tyrant and that most of them are waiting to surrender. That is almost certainly true of the average Iraqi conscript, and Saddam’s once elite Republican Guard may also be ready to switch sides. But Saddam has about 15,000 Special Republican Guard troops who are likely to fight. And the 3,000 or so goons who make up his Special Security Organization have little incentive to surrender. After years of brutal repression, any member of Saddam’s palace guard stands to be strung up from the nearest lamppost by a vengeful Iraqi populace. Saddam’s wild card is his chemical-biological arsenal. The United States will want to bomb suspected CBW bunkers. But Colin Powell’s U.N. briefing notwithstanding, it is far from clear that U.S. intelligence can find Saddam’s hidden bugs and germs. And what if they are stashed in the basements of mosques and hospitals or tucked away in crowded urban areas? Saddam has reputedly authorized his field commanders to use CBW against American invaders. He would not hesitate to poison his own people (figuring, no doubt correctly, that many Arabs would blame the infidel invaders). On the road to Baghdad, an advancing American Army could be caught up in a grotesque humanitarian disaster, having to push past dying Iraqis who lack protective chem-bio suits. Saddam’s commanders, it is hoped, would refuse to execute his most outrageous orders. In 1944, as the Allies closed in, Hitler demanded, “Is Paris burning?” but his subordinates refused to destroy the occupied city. U.S. ground forces fully expect to get “slimed” (as GIs call a chemical attack) by Iraqi artillery and short-range rockets. American soldiers train to fight in protective gear, which is cumbersome and suffocatingly hot for desert fighting after about April 1. Americans train to fight at night, when it’s cooler and the enemy lacks night-vision capability. Americans may be more at risk of killing each other in the dark. During Gulf War I, one in five U.S. casualties was from “friendly fire.” New computerized systems are supposed to help American soldiers tell friend from foe, but the systems, like all computers, sometimes crash. Saddam is not completely defenseless against American technology. Top Pentagon officials worry that he will try to jam the GP systems that give American soldiers such precision. The jamming devices mostly have short ranges, however, and the transmissions of more powerful ones would instantly attract American EA-6B Prowler aircraft, which would home in with HARM missiles.         BAGHDAD AND VICKSBURG Saddam’s best bet is to try to pull his troops into a Fortress Baghdad and force the Americans to come and dig them out. In part to guard against a coup, Saddam has always been reluctant to mass armed forces inside the capital. Most of the Republican Guard units are spread out around the country. If those units do leave their barracks and head for Baghdad, American forces plan to pin them down and defeat them “in detail”—one by one, before they reach the city. The classic model is Grant at Vicksburg, crushing one Confederate Army before it could join forces with another on the far side of the Mississippi. American forces have always avoided fighting in cities if at all possible. Urban fighting is a meat grinder. Think of the Soviet vs. Nazi death clinches in Stalingrad and Berlin. Saddam has been handing out weapons to civilians, urging them to resist American invaders. Most will probably hide in their homes. But if even relatively few fight, American forces could get caught in another Mogadishu, pinned down by wild young irregulars firing Kalashnikovs, like the Rangers in “Black Hawk Down.” Although the Pentagon is trying to develop clever new tools for urban fighting, like cameras that can peer around corners, city fighting would rob American forces of their high-tech edge. Precision bombs are fine when the targets are easily identifiable. Indeed, during the air bombardment of Belgrade during the Kosovo war, Serbs living in Belgrade soon learned they were safe if they stayed away from certain government buildings. But if resistance is sustained or widespread, CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks will be faced with a bad choice: use overwhelming force and kill a lot of civilians, or show restraint and risk the lives of his soldiers. No wonder General Franks will try to get the war over with as quickly as possible. Franks is an old artilleryman, and his early war plans looked a lot like Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf’s in Gulf War I: a slow and deliberate armor advance that relied on mass to crush resistance. But cajoled by his impatient boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Franks has adopted a model that draws on the lessons of Afghanistan. The Taliban’s defeat was widely seen as a triumph of Special Operations: elite Army A-Teams and CIA operators, bearded and sometimes on horseback, riding to victory. But the real key was a breakthrough in the use of air power.         FLYING TURKEYS TO THE RESCUE Air Force theorists have long touted “strategic bombing” as the best way to break the will and muscle of the enemy. Destroy their industry, shut down their infrastructure (and, in World War II, burn their cities), and no enemy will stay in the field indefinitely, or so goes the theory. But in World War II and Vietnam, this sort of bombing produced mixed results, and sometimes actually encouraged defiance. At the same time, Air Force pilots disdained the task of hitting enemy forces in the field. Close air support to rescue friendly troops in peril: that pilots did bravely. But over the wider battlefield, their planes were too fast and their ordnance too inaccurate to have much effect—as every war from Normandy to Kosovo demonstrated. When a plane was designed for this task, the A-10, it was called “the Flying Turkey.” Pilots joked that it could get rear-ended by a bird. The war in Afghanistan shook up these old assumptions and stereotypes. The Air Force and carrier-based Navy planes exhausted their “strategic targets” after about two weeks. The Taliban and Al Qaeda did not have many “command-and-control nodes” or “logistics hubs” to bomb. Over time, however, air power proved tremendously effective in the unglamorous role it had long shunned: attacking enemy ground forces. Instant communication, GPS and laser-targeting systems meant that U.S. Special Forces on the ground could call in an airstrike at a moment’s notice. Rather than take off from their carriers to attack prearranged targets, Navy warplanes would fly out to loiter, waiting for the call. With their new generation of precision weapons, the warplanes could put a bomb at the mouth of a cave or strike a column of men suddenly materializing out of the hills. The Air Force, Army and Navy do not always work well together. But communications have been revolutionized since the 1983 invasion of Grenada, when an Army paratrooper had to use a pay phone to call the Navy for fire support. The cleverness and agility shown by U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan was an advertisement for what the secretary of Defense calls the “transformation” of the military. Rumsfeld has been dragging the conservative top brass toward a so-called Revolution in Military Affairs, a lighter, faster, smarter way of waging war. If the Army no longer has to haul around heavy weapons with long logistics tails (one armored division has as many as 10,000 vehicles), forces can be deployed around the world more quickly and easily. Not every old trooper is happy with the future, needless to say. If longer-range firepower for ground troops can come from the air, the tanker and artillerymen worry they will become obsolete. The Air Force would seem to be the big winner in the endless battle between the armed services for dollars and glory. But fighter jocks grumble that they are being turned into bus drivers, who simply dump out precision-guided weapons rather than juking and jinking into their targets. The pilots, too, may be eventually replaced—by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The Air Force has been notably reluctant to follow the CIA’s lead and use unmanned Predator drones as platforms for firing missiles at ground targets. Over the long run, UAVs mean unemployed pilots. For now, however, the problem is a shortage of Predators and Global Hawks. These battles between rival services might seem tiresome to the average citizen, removed from things military. But the war on terror has come home. If the military cannot take down the regimes of far-off failed states that harbor terrorists and make (and possibly sell) weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear ones, terrorists will have a haven for staging more 9-11s. U.S. intelligence officials fear that Saddam has “flushed” some of his WMD in diplomatic pouches, to embassies that can be used to supply terrorist groups. Last week Canadian intelligence was anxiously trying to find an Iraqi chemical-weapons specialist who failed to show up for an asylum hearing. Will he show up in New York for a chemical attack? The coming war in Iraq will be a critical test of the military’s role in the war on terror. It will not be the last.         With T. Trent Gegax in New York, Martha Brant and Mark Hosenball in Washington, Dan Ephron in Tel Aviv and Melinda Liu in Baghdad © 2003 Newsweek, Inc. ------------------------ Britain develops shell to disable electronics By Michael Smith (Filed: 27/12/2000) London Daily Telegraph A NON-LETHAL artillery shell designed to disable all the enemy's electronic equipment without killing anybody has been developed at a secret site in south-west England. The shell was designed following revelations that Russia was well ahead of the West in the development of so-called radio-frequency weapons. A paper given at a conference in Bordeaux in 1994 made it clear that the Russians believed it possible to use such weapons to disable all of an enemy's electronic equipment. Written by Dr A B Prishchipenko and entitled Radio Frequency Weapons on the Future Battlefield, it described Soviet research dating back to the late Forties, provoking near panic among western military planners. It gave credence to the nightmare scenario of a high-technology war in which all the radio, radar and computer systems on which their weapons depended would be disabled leaving them completely defenceless. Then two years ago, it emerged that the Russians had developed an electro-magnetic device, a so-called E Bomb, capable of disabling electrical and electronic systems and which could be carried in a briefcase. Amid intelligence reports showing that the IRA had discussed the possibility of closing down the City of London with an E Bomb, British research into the technology was stepped up. Matra BAe Dynamics set to work on producing a western version, as well as a means of countering the Russian weapon, in its Novel Technology section. It has now persuaded the MoD that the weapon is feasible. As a result of "a highly successful demonstration", the team won the BAe Systems Chairman's Gold Award for 2000. The announcement of the award made no mention of the type of weapon other than to say that it offered "a new capability for exerting force or the fear of force, a completely new war fighting capability to coerce and disable an adversary without inflicting lethal force". At the same time, the MoD published a summary of requirements for "Radio Frequency Munitions delivered by 155mm shell or rocket" as a possible future requirement, the first step in the procurement process. The shell or rocket will follow the normal trajectory of a standard missile but contain only a few grammes of explosive used to open it up as it approaches the target. An array of aerials then spring out and a burst of radio frequency of less than a second's duration is transmitted, disabling all electronic equipment within a given range. The weapon will allow commanders to disrupt completely the enemy's command and control systems. Computers on weapons, tanks and aircraft will crash and radios and radar systems will become useless. The weapon will also bring the civil structure to a standstill, causing national telephone, television and radio networks to go down and electrical grids to collapse. Used properly, the weapon can be deployed even in areas of concentrated population without risk of civilian deaths. This makes it particularly useful where the enemy is deliberately concealing its military assets in civilian areas. The system is low cost and can be deployed rapidly and without warning, making it very difficult to counter. One senior military officer said it was possible the new weapon might lead to the situation where an enemy could be conquered without fighting. "If you can take out the civilian economic infrastructure of a nation, then that nation, in addition to not being able to function internally, cannot deploy its military by air or sea, or supply them with any real effectiveness, if at all." External links    The E-Bomb- a Weapon of Electrical Mass Destruction - Infowar.com JEC Hearing on Radio Frequency Weapons - Freedom domain EMP Weapons - Free Republic EMP Weapons - Science Hobbyist EMP weapons: Calling Victor von Doom - Crypt Newsletter: Northern Illinois University Department of Sociology Statement of Lieutenant General Robert L. Schweitzer, US Army - U.S. House of Representatives Statement of Dr. Ira W. Merritt - U.S. House of Representatives Ministry of Defence [MoD] © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003. ---------------------- Coming Soon to Baghdad – The Preview of the E-Bomb Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com Monday, Feb. 17, 2003 It will begin with a sharp crack, like the sound of a bolt of lightning hitting its target. In an instant, Baghdad and its environs will go dark. Even though turned off, fluorescent lights and television sets will glow and the smell of ozone mixed with the odor of smoldering plastic will seep from outlet covers as electric wires arc and telephone lines melt. Palm Pilots will feel warm to the touch, their batteries overloaded. Computers, and every bit of data on them, will be history. Suddenly there will be a deadly quiet as internal-combustion engines shut down never to be restarted. No Iraqis will suffer any harm – they will simply be thrust back in time to an era where electricity and the electronics it made possible were non-existent. Saddam Hussein will sit in his silent darkened bunker – suddenly stifling as all air intake systems shut down. With communication with his armed forces arrayed around the capital city no longer operating, he and his top generals will be rendered as mute as the troops in the field themselves. Only by carrier pigeon could be hope to contact his forces. His missiles inoperative, his tanks without engines, his jet fighters downed, his radar installations useless, Saddam no longer has the instruments of modern warfare at his beck and call. He has been e-bombed back to the stone ages. That’s the scenario for the opening of the invasion of Iraq if intelligence reports are correct. The age of the e-bomb has arrived and modern warfare will never be the same. Early Beginnings It all began in 1925 with the atomic research of physicist Arthur H. Compton who 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, to the development of the e-bomb. Leap forward to the high altitude detonation of a hydrogen bomb over Siberia by the Soviets back in the 1960s which had an unexpected effect. It knocked out communications systems for hundreds of miles below the blast. While testing hydrogen bombs in outer space, hundreds of miles above the planet, American scientists also discovered that each atomic blast created a pulse of electromagnetic energy similar to conventional radio-made microwaves, but with energy so great that they erased magnetic memories and melted the microscopic junctions in transistors on the Earth below. These were veritable tidal waves of energy, sufficient to cripple sensitive microelectronics but too weak to be seen, heard, or felt by human beings. During one U.S. test, in July 1962, a hydrogen bomb was detonated approximately 650 miles in space, roughly where today's space shuttles orbit. Simultaneously, an incredible 2100 miles to the northeast, street lights went dark and burglar alarms began ringing on the Hawaiian islands. The reason was an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) produced by the blast. According to a report by intelligence expert Major Scott W. Merkle, then a student assigned to the Air Command and General Staff College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama, a declassified U.S. military report showed that the explosion of a bomb about one megaton in size (the exact size remains classified) eight hundred miles over Omaha, Nebraska, would shower the continental United States, southern Canada, and northern Mexico with an EMP capable of disabling virtually every computerized circuit in its potential damaging consequences of such an EMP attack in 1982, when he wrote in an obscure engineering journal Dependence on Computers “Today there is almost universal dependence on electronic computers. They are used by first-graders as well as research engineers. Industry, communications, financial records, are all at stake here. In the event of heavy EMP radiation, I suspect it would be easier to enumerate the apparatus that would continue to function than the apparatus that would stop.” “Due to this reaction, in 1963 the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty to counter the considerable threat posed by EMPs,” wrote Major Merkle. “Since then, that threat has grown at a fantastic rate, fueled by the rapid progress made in compacting ever more EMP-sensitive transistors onto the computer chips upon which modern electronics rely. ” Testifying before the House Committee on National Security, Military Research and Development Subcommittee, on July 16th, 1997 Dr Lowell Wood of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory described the effects of EMP. “Electromagnetic pulses, EMP, generated by high-altitude nuclear explosions have riveted the attention of the military nuclear tactical community for three-and-a-half decades since the first comparatively modest one very unexpectedly turned off the lights over a few million square miles in the mid-Pacific. This EMP also shut down radio stations, turned off cars, burned out telephone systems, and wreaked other mischief throughout the Hawaiian Islands nearly 1,000 miles distant from ground zero. “The potential for even a single high-altitude explosion of a more deliberate character to impose continental-scale devastation of much of the equipment of modern civilization and of modern warfare soon became clear. EMP became a technological substrate for the black humor: Suppose they gave a war and nobody came. EMP Wreckage “It was EMP-imposed wreckage, at least as much as that due to blast, fire, and fallout, which sobered detail studies of the post-nuclear-attack recovery process. When essentially nothing electrical or electronic could be relied upon to work, even in rural areas far from the blast, it appeared surpassingly difficult to bootstrap American national recovery, and post-attack America in these studies remained stuck in the very early 20th century until electrical equipment and electronic components begin to trickle into a Jeffersonian America from abroad.” EMP he said, “can induce large voltages and currents in power lines, communication cables, radio towers, and other long conductors serving a facility. Some other notable collectors of EMP include railroad tracks, large antennas, pipes, cables, wires in buildings, and metal fencing. Although materials underground are partially shielded by the ground, they are still collectors, and these collectors deliver the EMP energy to some larger facility. This produces surges that can destroy the connected device, such as, power generators or long distance telephone systems. An EMP could destroy many services needed to survive a war. “Many systems needed are controlled by a semiconductor in some way. Failure of semi-conductive chips could destroy industrial processes, railway networks, power and phone systems, and access to water supplies. Semiconductor devices fail when they encounter an EMP because of the local heating that occurs. When a semi-conductive device absorbs the EMP energy, it displaces the resulting heat that is produced relatively slowly when compared to the time scale of the EMP. Because the heat is not dissipated quickly, the semiconductor can quickly heat up to temperatures near the melting point of the material. Soon the device will short and fail. This type of failure is call thermal second-breakdown failure.(16) Vulnerability “It is also important to realize how vulnerable the military is to EMP. "Military systems often use the most sophisticated and therefore most vulnerable, electronics available, and many of the systems that must operate during a nuclear war cannot tolerate the temporary disturbances that EMP may induce."(17) Furthermore, many military duties require information to be communicated over long distances. This type of communication requires external antennas, which are extremely vulnerable to EMP.” Dr. Wood was dealing with a so-called HEMP (High Altitude EMP) activated by a hydrogen bomb which was by then outlawed and considered unthinkable. But even then the cat was out of the bag and the race began to develop a non-nuclear method weapon capable of delivering an EMP punch. If current reports are accurate the U.S. now has such a weapon – the so-called e-bomb, and is getting ready to demonstrate its power to Saddam Hussein. According to Associated Press Technology writer Jim Krane, the U.S. may fire a cruise missile tipped with a high-powered electromagnetic-pulse emitter - a so-called e-bomb - "which fries the electronics without killing the people," said Andrew Koch of Jane's Information Group. Wrote Krane, “The weapon's massive power surge is supposed to travel through antennas or power cords to wreck any unshielded electronic appliance - civilian or military - within a few hundred yards, according to studies cited by GlobalSecurity.org, a research organization. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Edward Epstein quoted Roger McCarthy, chairman of Exponent Failure Analysis Associates in Menlo Park, a firm deeply involved in developing futuristic weaponry for the Pentagon as declaring: "Kabammy! A huge electronic wave comes along, and sends out a few thousand volts. Wham! Your cell phone or your computer dies," Invisible Wallop Epstein explains that the weapons “pack an incredible, invisible wallop, hundreds of times the electrical current in a lightning bolt. That ‘directed energy,’ in principle not unlike the power used more benignly in laser pointers or supermarket scanners, opens a whole new area of warfare, one that for now gives the United States a leg up on potential opponents. In an age in which militaries rely on sophisticated electronics for everything from starting tanks and planes to using phones to direct operations, such a weapon could be devastating.” Experts say that an e-bomb could also disarm Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons and disable underground military sites. "If I was Saddam Hussein, I'd make a major investment in old motorcycles and go back to the era of World War II and use motorcyclists as messengers," retired Army Lt. Col. Piers Wood of GlobalSecurity.org, a group that tracks new weapons systems told Epstein. "These weapons are really about taking the energy of high explosives and converting the wallop into electromagnetic energy to disrupt electronic devices," McCarthy said, adding that a good-sized version of the weapon would produce thousands of volts and 10 million amps in a microsecond. That's hundred of times the energy generated by lightning. With the e-bomb an apparent reality, a warning issued by Rep. Curt Weldon during a hearing of the House Committee on National Security, Military Research and Development Subcommittee, on July 16th, 1997 raised a nightmarish possibility. Said Weldon. “If I am the commander of North Korea and I have one nuclear weapon and that weapon is in the range of 1 to 10 kilotons, which I assume it is, and if I have the capability of a Nodong or Taepodong 2, system which I assume can reach an altitude of 250 miles quite easily, General Marsh—at least that is the testimony that has been give to me—and I want to do something to hurt the United States, I think the weapon of choice is to launch that device in the air and wipe out our smart capability and then dare us to respond, because we haven't killed anyone, we haven't hurt any buildings, and we, being a moral Nation, what is our President going to do? Is he going to set off a nuclear strike against North Korea, when they have not killed one person in this country, but it would devastate our entire infrastructure? That is what concerns me.” ---------------------- America's Ultra-Secret Weapon By MARK THOMPSON Posted Sunday, January 19, 2003; 10:31 a.m. EST Every war has its wonder weapon. In Afghanistan, it was the Predator, the unmanned drone that would loiter, invisibly, over the battlefield before unleashing a Hellfire missile on an unsuspecting target. The Gulf War marked the debut of precision-guided munitions, and in Vietnam helicopters came of age. World War II gave us the horror of nuclear weapons, and World War I introduced the tank. If there's a second Gulf War, get ready to meet the high-power microwave. HPMs are man-made lightning bolts crammed into cruise missiles. They could be key weapons for targeting Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. HPMs fry the sophisticated computers and electronic gear necessary to produce, protect, store and deliver such agents. The powerful electromagnetic pulses can travel into deeply buried bunkers through ventilation shafts, plumbing and antennas. But unlike conventional explosives, they won't spew deadly agents into the air, where they could poison Iraqi civilians or advancing U.S. troops. The HPM is a top-secret program, and the Pentagon wants to keep it that way. Senior military officials have dropped hints about a new, classified weapon for Iraq but won't provide details. Still, information about HPMs, first successfully tested in 1999, has trickled out. "High-power microwave technology is ready for the transition to active weapons in the U.S. military," Air Force Colonel Eileen Walling wrote in a rare, unclassified report on the program three years ago. "There are signs that microwave weapons will represent a revolutionary concept for warfare, principally because microwaves are designed to incapacitate equipment rather than humans." HPMs can unleash in a flash as much electrical power -- 2 billion watts or more -- as the Hoover Dam generates in 24 hours. Capacitors aboard the missile discharge an energy pulse—moving at the speed of light and impervious to bad weather == in front of the missile as it nears its target. That pulse can destroy any electronics within 1,000 ft. of the flash by short-circuiting internal electrical connections, thereby wrecking memory chips, ruining computer motherboards and generally screwing up electronic components not built to withstand such powerful surges. It's similar to what can happen to your computer or TV when lightning strikes nearby and a tidal wave of electricity rides in through the wiring. Most of this "e-bomb" development is taking place at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M. The Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland has been studying how to deliver varying but predictable electrical pulses to inflict increasing levels of harm: to deny, degrade, damage or destroy, to use the Pentagon's parlance. HPM engineers call it "dial-a-hurt." But that hurt can cause unintended problems: beyond taking out a tyrant's silicon chips, HPMs could destroy nearby heart pacemakers and other life-critical electrical systems in hospitals or aboard aircraft (that's why the U.S. military is putting them only on long-range cruise missiles). The U.S. used a more primitive form of these weapons& -- known as soft bombs -- against Yugoslavia and in the first Gulf War, when cruise missiles showered miles of thin carbon fibers over electrical facilities, creating massive short circuits that shut down electrical power. Although the Pentagon prefers not to use experimental weapons on the battlefield, "the world intervenes from time to time," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says. "And you reach in there and take something out that is still in a developmental stage, and you might use it." ----------------- STILL MORE PRETTY MUCH INCOMPREHENSIBLE, INCONCLUSIVE GOSSIP ABOUT RADIO FREQUENCY WEAPONS: Dept. of Defense civil servants and one salesman go before Congressmen to discuss the chupacabras of information space. Victor von Doom: a.k.a Dr. Doom, an arch villain in the Marvel Comics universe often portrayed handcrafting a variety of directed energy weapons -- ray guns -- with which to smite enemies; now used by Crypt Newsletter as a catch-all designation for computer security snake-oil salesmen and assorted crackpots spreading freaky tales of non-existent electronic death rays. Usage: Victor von Doom, a faculty member at the University of Gobble-Wallah in Brisbane, Australia, warned frightened businessmen that a raygun capable of surreptitiously smashing networked corporate computers from a distance of half a mile could be easily fashioned from parts including a cattle prod, two potato knishes, one satellite TV dish and four car batteries. While Crypt Newsletter thought it would be able to give the legend of the EMP gun a rest this month, Congress passed a law forbidding such action. On February 25, Jim Saxton's (R - NJ) House Joint Economic Committee resumed hearings on the potential threat of the much heard of but still never seen non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse weapon. Indeed, the news of emp is cyclic, coming in waves, usually concomitant with annual computer security conferences or in this case, last June, when Saxton conducted similar hearings. At that time, Congressman Saxton produced an old warrior from the American arms trade -- Robert L. Schweitzer, a retired general -- who warned of EMP hand grenades and other munitions leaking from Russia, as well as electromagnetic ray guns assembled from RadioShack equipment, although no examples were produced. But before going further it becomes necessary for Crypt Newsletter to bore you with the story of the French scientist, Rene Blondlot. Blondlot claimed discovery of a new form of electromagnetic radiation he called "N-rays" at the beginning of the 1900s. Since the French were suffering from a brief inferiority complex over a misconception that their science was lagging behind that of Germany's -- Max Planck and Wilhelm Roentgen had just made enormous contributions -- other French scientists immediately took the bit in their teeth and also began publishing on N-rays. However, by 1904, the work on N-rays was discredited by an American physicist, Robert W. Wood, who went to France to observe Blondlot's experiments. Wood secretly removed a part of Blondlot's N-ray detecting machine and watched as the scientist claimed to detect them anyway. Although a number of scientists, including Blondlot, continued to cling doggedly to their claims for a short time, since their work was irreproducible, it was tossed onto the junk heap of science where it remains an interesting farrago. Partly as a result of this, Irving Langmuir, an American physicist and Nobel laureate, developed a set of laws in 1953 that he said applied to such stories, which he called "pathological science." Some of them easily fit the written statements presented to Saxton's Joint Economic Committee, as we shall see. Congressman Saxton's panelists included Alan Kehs of the U.S. Army Laboratories, James O'Bryon, Director of Live Fire Testing with the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon, David Schriner, Ridgecrest, California; a consultant for the northern Virginia company, Electronic Warfare Associates and a former engineering technician at the navy's testing facility at China Lake, California, and Ira Merritt, a scientist at the Missile Defense Space Technology Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The nut of O'Bryon's written statement is a vague, uninformative reference to a Joint Live Fire Test conducted against a Cobra gun ship. Crypt Newsletter did a search of the Net centered around the Economic Committee's panelists and found a document on the live fire test - entitled "EM Experiments for Computational Model Validation of AH-1 Cobra Helicopter" -- performed at Junction Ranch on the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center under the direction of a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist, Scott Nelson. (A hyperlink to it is included in the hypertext issue of the newsletter.) O'Bryon's statement, however, mentions neither where the testing was performed or who was involved. (Interestingly, David Schriner was a China Lake technician at the trials.) O'Bryon's statement to the Saxton committee also mentioned nothing of the protocols involved in the test. (Essentially, they were low power broadcasts of microwaves directed at a helicopter mounted on a tower ten meters from the broadcast source at the facility's radar range. This was done in order to obtain empirical results employed to validate a computer model simulation of the same test. The simulation, once validated, was supposed to provide information on future weapons platforms about to enter production. The range would seem to be hardly meaningful as one at which any potential weapon could be deployed but possibly useful if one is trying to get a general feel for the vulnerability of such a machine to a certain type of electromagnetic flux. If Crypt Newsletter is reading the original report correctly, the test was designed primarily to give scientists an idea of the cross-section of electromagnetic flux through the body of a helicopter by the use of radio frequency probes and sensors arranged throughout the Cobra. Higher power broadcasts were also part of testing conducted through last summer. The high power broadcasts, again performed at relatively close ranges -- apparently 10 and 90 meters -- were done to gain readings of electromagnetic fluxes through the helicopter as well as gather some idea about impact on the machine. The report says some measurements were not able to be made because the helicopter remained "operational all the time." Curiously, most of the test team thought it prudent to remain "one kilometer" away from the high power microwave broadcast trailer, even though distance to target was only a fraction of this. The report also makes a recommendation that future tests of potential weapons should have to demonstrate some stand-off capability -- ranges at several hundred meters. O'Bryon's statement to the Saxton committee said the test produced "significant results" but did not elaborate. At best, his testimony was needlessly cryptic since the tests, one of which was presented at a meeting held at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in 1997, are available on the World Wide Web. David Schriner's statement alluded to homebrew work he has conducted after retiring from China Lake and presumably under the auspices of a consultancy with Electronic Warfare Associates, a Pentagon contractor. Schriner wrote he had manufactured an emp weapon at home using anywhere from $200 - $800 worth of sundry electronic equipment salvaged from cars or a nearby RadioShack. While Schriner did not produce his weapon for Congressional inspection, he did take the opportunity to make a sales pitch to the military and emphasize that he already holds the proper security clearances. Of all the statements provided for Saxton's hearing, Ira Merritt's was the most detailed. Merritt goes into the interest in radio frequency/emp weapons as an consequence of claims emanating from Russia that such weapons in the form of electromagnetic pulse hand grenades and artillery shells -- were developed. Central to these claims are the assertions of Russian scientist A. B. Prishchepenko, who has been delivering lectures on the subject at international conferences since 1994. Merrit writes in his statement that the U.S. military sent a team to Nalchik, Russia, in 1997, to test Prishchepenko's claims. "The test results," writes Merritt, "left Russian claims unconfirmed, since most U.S. measurement equipment was not allowed by Russian authorities to reach the test site and since Dr. Prischepenko's team claimed that the radio frequency munitions that were tested radiated in a band that could not be measured with equipment at the site." In essence, it was a wild goose chase. The science of Blondlot's N-rays was similar. Only Blondlot could detect his discovery. Sampling from another report, Merritt writes "There is no confirmed evidence of employment of a [radio frequency weapon] to date . . . available in open sources.' Nevertheless, Merritt's statement does discuss the vulnerability of electronic components to a variety of electromagnetic pulses. An assortment of devices that might cause electromagnetic effects at extremely short ranges are mentioned: A Russian jammer with a range of only five meters -- no quantization of effect given; an electron accelerator called RADAN that had an unspecified effect on calculators and electronic watches at short range; and a powerful Russian radar called NAGIRA, purchased by the British in 1995 -- helicopters warned not to come within "several" miles of it. It should be mentioned that the short range effects on computer equipment could just as easily, more effectively and more cheaply be achieved by a vandal wielding a ballpeen hammer. In conclusion, Merritt writes, "We cannot now precisely quantify the risk presented by radio frequency weapons, but we know that risk is growing." Langmuir's laws of "pathological science," inspired in part by the Blondlot N-ray experiments, state that the magnitude of the observed effect is always independent of the intensity. While the detrimental effect of electromagnetic pulses on electronic equipment has been demonstrated, the effects attributed to alleged emp or radio frequency weapons are always widely variant with respect to the scale of the potential weapon. All of the statements delivered to the Saxton hearings fall into this category. Another Langmuir law states the "effect" is of something that is close to the limits of detectability. The U.S. military's attempt to look into the claims of Prishchepenko neatly fit this law. And, in another of Langmuir's laws, there are always claims of great accuracy. Although Irving Langmuir did not envision this in 1953, one is tempted to add another law of "pathological science": It comes adorned with a sales pitch and a classification wrapper. Postscript: Interestingly, David Schriner showed up on ABC's 20/20 in mid-February 1999 to demonstrate his electromagnetic pulse gun for an overawed Diane Sawyer. After donning fancy protective suits and unusual-looking copper mesh headgear, Schriner tested his weapon on Sawyer's corvette and a white limousine. At a range of about 5-10 feet and with the weapon pointed directly into the automobiles' open engine compartment, Schriner's electromagnetic pulse gun made Sawyer's idling corvette . . . run roughly. [Crypt News notes it can make any car's engine stop permanently, not just hesitate, at a range of five feet with a sledgehammer aimed directly into an open engine compartment.] Once, said Sawyer, the electric locks in her car's doors went up and down, too. While Sawyer stood well away from her car, farther away from it than Schriner's contraption, electronic videocameras inside the car continued to work during the firing of the "weapon." During the segment, Sawyer claimed "results" of testing of electromagnetic pulse on a Cobra helicopter at Junction Ranch in China Lake were "classified." Crypt Newsletter must now assume posting a paper on the World Wide Web constitutes "classification." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes: 1. In 1981, Robert Schweitzer was a staffer on Ronald Reagan's National Security Council -- that is, until he gave a speech to the Army Association in which he declared the Russians were "on the move" . . . they are going to strike." Schweitzer was fired and later worked for GeoMilitech, a Washington arms brokerage. In 1987 Schweitzer again was in the news, this time with Major General John Singlaub, hunting for lost Japanese gold said to be sunk near the Philippines. Last June, Schweitzer spoke extensively about electromagnetic pulse weapons before Saxton's committee. He started his presentation by seemingly making a joke about the gaffe that resulted in his 1981 firing. "Now, I am not a 'the Russians are coming' speaker, today," Schweitzer said. Schweitzer's June testimony alluded to the Live Fire Test against a Cobra helicopter without specifically mentioning it. [Crypt Newsletter finds this kind of testimony reflexively secretive and characteristic of the majority of Congressional discussions held on the subject. Without being an insider, it's almost impossible for the average citizen to determine precisely what is discussed, except that it is, of course, menacing and in the good hands of the military or government.] During the June hearing, Schweitzer made seemingly contradictory claims during the course of his presentation. At different times, Schweitzer claimed that electromagnetic pulse guns could be made for $800, that they could be made for $35, that they had been used against London banks although he was informed this was a hoax, and such weapons were now capable of disrupting Wall Street. " . . . the cost is about $800 to do this," Schweitzer said at one point. As for knocking out Wall Street, Schweitzer later commented to Congressman Saxton, "[It] can be done with going to RadioShack and buying the components . . . And the prices are from $35 to $200 to buy components and do a number on Wall Street." Schweitzer also alluded to, but did not mention by name, a generic hacker tech catalog that claimed to sell parts and schematics for such a weapon. Further, Schweitzer testified that London banks were attacked by radio-frequency weapons, a myth that has been touched on in Crypt Newsletter. "I was told that was a hoax," Schweitzer said to Saxton. ". . . and it's disputed in the Intel community and elsewhere but I think, frankly, and having gone into this in great detail, the dispute is to protect the fact it happened." Schweitzer added later: "I validated [this]. It isn't just taking rumors or drivel off of the tabloids. These are solid facts that I'm giving you." Almost without exception, however, Congressional testimony from the June Saxton hearings reads like gossip. As an independent example, consider from the same sessions, other testimony -- presented by author Dr. Peter Leitner on alleged Communist Chinese "yellow peril"-like subterfuge: "I've heard rumors . . . One I found particularly disturbing . . . [and] I haven't seen any recorded documentation of these incidents . . . where very young-looking Chinese students were going to the United States and placed in high schools in the U.S. except their ages were 24 - 25 years old . . . They were brilliant students . . . Well, it turns out it's an example of a sleeper agent, somebody who is put in position. He already has advanced degrees before coming in, then is put into the position as a seed and then is allowed to flourish in a totally unfair competition with U.S. student counterparts." Don't you take Crypt Newsletter's word for it, though! Secure a copy of "Economic Espionage, Technology Transfers and National Security" by the Joint Economic Committee (June 17, 1997, ISBN 0-16-055880-8) for yourself. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. "Red mercury," another alleged product of Soviet weapons scientists is of some interest when considering testimony on electromagnetic pulse weapons. As another alleged instrument of terror, red mercury started showing up in big newspapers around 1991 - 92. Most of the stories, like every bit of information surrounding the "substance," were never specific about what red mercury was, except that it was red (Duh!), and a mixture of mercury (Duh! Duh!) and other materials, maybe tellurium, maybe this, maybe that, maybe marshmallows. You get the idea. The kicker was that red mercury somehow, as a new ingredient in fusion bombs, made it possible for terrorists to make nuclear weapons easily and shrink their size to that of a briefcase. The descriptions were always couched in pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. Anyway, all the stories published pointed to the eastern bloc where smugglers -- always unnamed, and Crypt News has a collection of newspaper reports that bear this out -- were trying to sell it on the black market as technology looted from the nuclear weapons shops of the old Soviet Union. The details in red mercury pieces were always, almost by definition, indeterminate and vague -- completely unverifiable. However, they made for great thriller reading. A good example of the result of this mania manifested itself around 1995-96, when a Beverly Hills writer and former journalist for the Los Angeles Times and ABC by the name of Ben Sherwood popped up with a book called "Red Mercury." Hung on the tale of a terrorist who made a bomb from the material, the book was produced by Dove, a Beverly Hills publishing house run by Michael Viner and responsible for a tell-all about Hollywood celebrity hookers, Faye Resnick's take on the life of Nicole Brown Simpson and the O.J. case, a tattler by Dennis Rodman's ex-wife and other similar . . .scientific tomes. Very soon Sherwood was doing interviews and writing the occasional non-fiction editorial on terrorism, based upon the reputation of the "research" for "Red Mercury." One which appeared in the Los Angeles Times addressed security concerns at the Atlanta Olympic games. Ironically, the sample editorial was based on the plot found in "Red Mercury." Sherwood also showed up on television as a security expert, selling an identical message. "Fiction and reality instantly collided in my brain," Sherwood said to the Los Angeles Times, in an interview separate from the editorial. "I was thrust into a very troubling place." "The hideous red mercury . . . is not a fictional substance . . . ," claimed the Los Angeles Times in its Sherwood interview. Sherwood, and others, never actually explained what red mercury was. In fact, like everyone else involved as a source, no one could precisely explain what it was or how it would be fashioned into a football-sized nuclear weapon with the power to incinerate a Hiroshima-sized city. Of course, it was a great tie-in for Sherwood's novel, he made a spell-binding interview and Dove had an excellent talent for timely publicity. Stories on red mercury finally petered out around 1996. The lesson from red mercury is that it pays to be skeptical. Tales about mythological superweapons crop up regularly and satisfy some inner editorial desire in poor journalists for tales of Tom Clancy-like intrigue. A dead giveaway is the absolute absence of rational scientific discussion coupled with anonymous sources, gossip, claims of involvement with criminal netherworlds and the inability to produce any evidence stronger than hearsay. Throw in an author of fiction (or, sometimes a concurrent non-fiction book that reads like fiction) represented as an expert on the subject while simultaneously cultivating interest in the published work and you have the icing on the cake. Relevant links": Crypt Newsletter 47. Written statements given in Saxton's House committee meeting on emp weapons. Lawrence Livermore/China Lake low power radio frequency test on Cobra gun ship. Lawrence Livermore/China Lake high power radio frequency test on Cobra gun ship. Robert Schweitzer's oral testimony on radio frequency weapons. RF Weapons and the Infrastructure: Robert Schweitzer's June 1997 written submission to Congress. Radio frequency weapons: The chupacabras of info-war. More critical comment of the spectre of electromagnetic pulse guns. Back to Crypt Newsletter Send a comment: George Smith, Editor ---------------------- NAVY Breeze-Eastern, Union, N.J., is being awarded a $5,897,095 modification to exercise an option to previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract N68335-99-C-0005 for the procurement of 199 HLU-196D/E Bomb Hoists; 100 HLU-196D/E Bomb Hoist Battery Pack Recharge Units, and 100 HLU-196D/E Bomb Hoist AC Adapter Units. Work will be performed in Union, N.J., and is expected to be completed in March 2003. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, Lakehurst, N.J., is the contracting activity. 6-21-2001 - US Dept. of Defense ----------------------- HLU-196B/E BOMB HOISTING UNIT A hoist is a mechanism that provides a mechanical advantage when raising or lowering heavy loads such as bombs, mines, and torpedoes. The HLU-196B/E bomb hoisting unit is a lightweight, portable, gasoline engine driven unit. It consists of a gasoline engine, speed reducing gearbox and brake, and a cable assembly and storage drum that incorporates a clutch and a boom. All components and controls are mounted on a two-wheeled frame assembly. The entire unit weighs 75 pounds. It has a direct single cable lift capacity of 2,000 pounds. A double cable lift capacity of 4,00 pounds is obtainable by using various trolleys and rack adapters that are available. You can extend the cable by disengaging the clutch and manually pulling it until the necessary length is withdrawn. To reel the cable in , you must start the engine, engage the clutch, and carefully throttle the engine to control the reel-in speed of the cable. Maximum reel-in speed of the cable is 15 feet per minute. The HLU-196B/E is used to single or, by the use of various trolleys and adapters, double hoist various weapons and stores. - www.ordnance.org ------------------------ Dropping the E-bomb High-power microwaves are ready for use against Iraq. How will they work and just how dangerous are they? by Victorino Matus 02/05/2003 12:00:00 AM AS MARK THOMPSON of Time magazine writes, "Every war has its wonder weapon." And in an upcoming war against Iraq, we are told to "get ready to meet the high-power microwave." The way Thompson describes it, the "HPM" sounds almost too good to be true: They "fry the sophisticated computers and electronic gear necessary to produce, protect, store and deliver [chemical and biological] agents. The powerful electromagnetic pulses can travel into deeply buried bunkers through ventilation shafts, plumbing and antennas. But unlike conventional explosives, they won't spew deadly agents into the air, where they could poison Iraqi civilians or advancing U.S. troops." But Thompson's brief article leaves one thirsting for a bit more. Exactly how are high-power microwaves, aka "e-bombs," sent to targets? Who delivers them? In fact, who makes them? And even though HPMs are specifically designed to avoid collateral damage, what happens if you find yourself directly beneath the microwaves' rays? HIGH-POWER MICROWAVES are currently being tested at the Air Force Research Laboratory on Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. The laboratory is divided into directorates--one of them devoted to "directed energy." And within this directorate you will find the High Power Microwave Division. It is here that scientists are working to harness HPMs, trying to maximize their power while insuring the safety of their operators and unintended targets. They work in two facilities: One of them contains "Shiva Star," the Air Force's largest pulsed-power system that produces 120,000 volts and 10 million amps in one-millionth of a second, creating a power flow equal to a trillion watts. The other facility is found deep in the Manzano Mountains where tests are conducted not only for high-power microwaves but also high-energy plasmas. One gets the feeling that decades from now, when our soldiers are using blasters and plasma rifles, Kirtland Air Force Base will be looked upon as this century's Los Alamos. In fact, Kirtland is also where a solid-state laser is being developed, though most experts believe its tactical application is still ten years away. Outside defense contractors are also highly involved--through intensely guarded research and development operations with names like Skunk Works (at Lockheed Martin) and Phantom Works (at Boeing)--what Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, calls "the black world." If you ask the folks at the Air Force Research Laboratory, they'll tell you they "regret that there is very little that is releasable on the subject." But their fact sheets do go some length toward explaining their intentions: "Whereas a typical microwave oven generates less than 1,500 watts of power, the Division is working with equipment that can generate millions of watts of power. When microwaves encounter modern microelectronics-based systems, the results can be disastrous to the electronics--causing systems to 'burn out' and fail or function improperly. This heavy reliance on electronic components in today's weaponry makes high-power microwave weapons attractive." How will the military deploy the HPMs? Andrew Koch, Washington bureau chief of Jane's Defence Weekly, says that at the moment, they will most likely be delivered via cruise missiles. "The missile would fly slow over a target and then emit a pulse in a single shot." That shot would zap anything electronic on the ground--and also on the cruise missile itself, making it useless thereafter. "This is the sort of high-power microwave that will be available for use in a war in Iraq." But Koch stresses the problems of microwaves versus lasers. "Unlike a laser, high-power microwaves are a lot more difficult to control. They aren't as tunable as lasers." HPMs are emitted from sidelobes and not as a single beam. "The rays can reflect off the ground and affect the pilots above," he says. Hence the use of cruise missiles for now rather than strike fighters or even unmanned drones. (Back at Kirtland Air Force Base, however, microwave tests are already being done using F-16 fighters housed in "anechoic" chambers--rooms free of all echoes and reverberations.) So what of the effects? Time's Mark Thompson warns of the dangers of using HPMs near hospitals or anyone wearing pacemakers. Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute says "there is human testing going on now for some HPMs. There is also a body of medical and environmental testing data, some based on the allegations of illnesses produced by high voltage power lines." But in an article last summer in Jane's Defence Weekly, Koch and co-author Nick Cook asked a scientist familiar with the effects of high-power microwaves what would happen if someone were hit by a megawatt HPM weapon: "All the fluid in their body cells would instantly vaporise into steam. It would happen so fast, you wouldn't even be aware of it," the scientist says. "If, on the other hand, you were caught in the sidelobe of the beam, or even by a weak reflection of the main beam off a metal surface--which could easily happen in a city--you would probably suffer terrible burns as well as permanent brain damage." Yet Koch reminds us that the reason for the e-bomb is to avoid what happened in the last Gulf War when a bomb ripped through an Iraqi military bunker that was also used as a shelter for civilians. "In this case, the e-bomb would fry the electronics on the surface but no one underground in the actual bunker would get hurt." (On the other hand, Koch says you could be harmed if you happened to be "on the surface.") Human rights organizations and international law watchdogs will be carefully observing how HPMs are managed in a war on Iraq--ideally used against deeply buried targets and not by accident on a hospital. "I would be surprised if there weren't accusations leveled against the use of HPMs," says Goure. "Of course, the alternative, which is 2,000 pounds of high explosives, seems a lot worse to me." Victorino Matus is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard. ---------------- E-Bomb Disrupts Electronics NewsMax.com Wires Friday, Dec. 29, 2000 LONDON (UPI) - British scientists have developed a nonexplosive artillery shell that can put out such a powerful burst of radio-frequency energy it will destroy or disable electrical and electronic systems for miles around without killing anyone. The new so-called E-Bomb was developed privately by Matra BAe Dynamics and fits into U.S. research efforts into matching and countering similar Russian systems, whose advanced development startled Western intelligence officials when it was revealed two years ago. Particularly worrying to British intelligence officials were reports that the IRA has discussed using a version of the Russian bomb that can be carried in a briefcase. The target, according to the London Daily Telegraph on Wednesday, was the City of London. A meltdown of unprotected computer electronics in the heart of one of the world's primary financial centers is one of Britain's worst nightmares. But almost equally alluring to British Ministry of Defense officials was the prospect of using such a weapon themselves. Last summer they issued a summary of requirements to companies for "radio frequency munitions delivered by 155mm shell or rocket," without saying what they would use it for. U.S. cruise missiles and bombs are believed to be earmarked for similar radio frequency devices, but this is the first time one has been designed for close-in artillery systems that are cheaper and less easily shot down. "It's being looked at for peacekeeping operations, perhaps for hostage situations where you want to knock out someone's mobile phones, computers, electronic security devices and so on," said a BAe Systems spokesman Thursday. The company's work on the system won the scientists a gold award for innovation from the BAe Systems chairman. The E-Bomb works by being fired from a long-range 155mm artillery gun or MLRS rocket launcher and then breaking open its outer casing over the target. The shell or rocket then unfolds its radio transmitter aerials and the transmitter sends a high-powered radio pulse of billions of watts that lasts just a few nanoseconds. Just how effective it would be against a modern military force remains uncertain, however. British, American and other NATO equipment is significantly "ruggedized," encased in extra layers of protective materials compared to that of off-the-shelf commercial electronics. The result of an E-blast could be, therefore, that the enemy military has the only functioning communication systems while the civilian infrastructure, including power plants, manufacturing, hospitals and transportation, stops working. NATO's military has been hardening its electronic systems for many years, primarily as a defense against nuclear warfare. It has long been known that the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) of a nuclear blast severely damages electronic equipment. Up to now, however, EMP has only been considered a peripheral concern of the far more devastating consequences of nuclear war, not as a weapon on its own. "The theory and strategy of active electronic warfare in non-nuclear situations has still to be determined," said one senior British officer. "We are still sorting out some of the lessons of the air campaign on Serbia last year. But this is the first I've heard of a practicable, usable design for the artillery. It certainly tends to open up the discussion a bit." A Ministry of Defence spokesman said there was no contract for the Matra BAe device, and no funding commitment to the futuristic project. The Matra BAe spokesman said it could be 10 years before it is deployed. Copyright 2000 by United Press International. All rights reserved. ------------------- "E-bomb" may see first combat use in Iraq 17:45 08 August 02 NewScientist.com news service Weapons designed to attack electronic systems and not people could see their first combat use in any military attack on Iraq. It is widely believed that the US is planning for an attack that could overthrow Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, who it believes is developing weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqi president responded publicly for the first time on Thursday, exhorting Iraqis to be prepared "with all the force you can to face your enemies". US intelligence reports indicate that key elements of the Iraqi war machine are located in heavily-fortified underground facilities or beneath civilian buildings such as hospitals. This means the role of non-lethal and precision weapons would be a critical factor in any conflict. High Power Microwave (HPM) devices are designed to destroy electronic equipment in command, control, communications and computer targets and are available to the US military. They produce an electromagnetic field of such intensity that their effect can be far more devastating than a lighting strike. Pumped flux The effect exploited by HPM weapons was accidentally demonstrated in the 1950s when street lights in Hawaii were knocked out by the electromagnetic pulse produced by high altitude nuclear tests. One unclassified approach to producing the required pulse is a device called an Explosive Pumped Flux Generator. In this a charged bank of capacitors energises a coil wrapped around a copper tube, which itself contains high explosives. On detonation, the explosives expand the tube from the back and moves rapidly forward, forcing the tube to make progressive contact with the coil and causing a short circuit. This has the effect of crushing the magnetic field at the same time as reducing the coil's inductance. The resultant spike lasts tens to hundreds of microseconds and can produce peak currents of tens of millions of Amps and peak energies of tens of millions of Joules. By comparison, a typical lighting strike produces around 30,000 Amps. Single use HPM weapons would be single-use and could be delivered on almost any a cruise missile or unmanned aircraft. Future devices are likely to be re-usable. Military planners will be particularly interested in claimed ability of HPM weapon's to penetrate bunkers buried deep underground by using service pipes, cables or ducts to transmit the spike. Insulating equipment from such spikes, for example by using Faraday cages, is believed to be very difficult and expensive. Another weapon that targets electronic equipment has already seen use in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. Blackout bombs, such as the formerly classified BLU-114/B, releases a spider's web of fine carbon filaments into the air above electrical distribution infrastructures. This causes short circuits when the filaments touch the ground. Tomahawk cruise missiles fitted with warheads operating on similar lines attacked the Iraqi power grid during the 1990 Gulf war. David Windle ---------------- US non-lethal weapon reports suppressed 14:47 09 May 02 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition Bugs that eat roads and buildings. Biocatalysts that break down fuel and plastics. Devices that stealthily corrode aluminium and other metals. These are just a few of the non-lethal weapons that the US has tried to develop, or is trying to develop. Titles of some of the non-lethal weapon reports But quite how close such weapons are to reality we may never know. The US National Academy of Sciences is refusing to release dozens of reports proposing or describing their development, even though the documents are supposed to be public records. The academy is justifying its unprecedented reticence by citing security concerns after 11 September. But campaigners think the real reason is that the research violates both US law and international treaties on chemical and biological weapons. The documents in question were collected in 2001 by a panel of academic and industry scientists set up by the NAS to evaluate recent non-lethal weapons research for the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program. The US took an increased interest in non-lethals after its disastrous peacekeeping mission in Somalia in 1993, when rioting civilians killed American soldiers. The panel, whose report is due out later in 2002, collected 147 reports and proposals from researchers, many of them funded by the JNLWP. One group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, for example, proposes using intense electromagnetic fields to produce effects "ranging from the disruption of short-term memory to total loss of control of voluntary bodily functions". Others propose directed energy weapons. Off the record In March, as is usual with non-classified studies by the NAS, they were deposited with the academy's Public Access Records Office, and their titles were released (see table). "These documents are supposed to be public," says Ed Hammond of the Sunshine Project, a group campaigning against biological weapons. When he asked the records office to see 77 of the documents, it agreed to hand them over. "But two days later the NAS pulled the documents," says Hammond. "Kevin Hale, the NAS security officer, told me it was because someone had expressed concern." Who did so is not clear. The pressure for the clampdown does not appear to have come from the JNLWP itself, because last week it sent Hammond eight documents he had requested, including three on the NAS list. New Scientist could not get hold of Hale. "We are still formulating our response to the Sunshine people," is all an assistant would say. But the few reports that Hammond did obtain make interesting reading. In 2000, New Scientist revealed that senior officials in the JNLWP want to rewrite the chemical and biological weapons treaties to give themselves more freedom to develop non-lethal weapons. The reports make it clear that research that violates the treaties has been under way since the 1990s. Eating tarmac One 1998 funding application from the Office of Naval Research proposes creating genetically engineered microorganisms that would corrode roads and runways, and produce "targeted deterioration of metal parts, coatings and lubricants of weapons, vehicles and support equipment, as well as fuels". The plan was to isolate genes for enzymes that attack materials such as Kevlar, asphalt, cement, paints or lubricants, and put them into microbes that churn them out in large quantities. The bugs were to be engineered to self-destruct after wreaking havoc. It is not clear how many of these ideas have actually been realised. But the group has already patented a microorganism that would decompose polyurethane, "a common component of paint for ships and aircraft", including stealth anti-radar coatings. Another 1998 proposal, from a biotech lab at Brooks Air Force Base near San Antonio in Texas, was to refine "anti-material biocatalysts" already under development. One of these involved a bacterial derivative that breaks down organic molecules such as fuels and plastic. Stink bombs The proposal claims that such substances are exempt from biological warfare restrictions. But that is not true, argues Mark Wheelis of University of California, Davis. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972 prohibits the "development, production, stockpiling or acquisition of biological agents or toxins" other than for peaceful purposes. What is more, last year the US itself introduced a law banning the possession of bioweapons, including microbes designed to attack materials. The withheld documents also include proposals to use stink bombs, sedatives and opium derivatives as weapons, which Wheelis thinks would contravene the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1992. This prohibits "any chemical which ... can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm". Debora MacKenzie -------------- Microwave beam weapon to disperse crowds 10:07 29 October 01 - New Scientist Tests of a controversial weapon that is designed to heat people's skin with a microwave beam have shown that it can disperse crowds. But critics are not convinced the system is safe. Last week, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in New Mexico finished testing the system on human volunteers. The Air Force now wants to use this Active Denial Technology (ADT), which it says is non-lethal, for peacekeeping or riot control at "relatively long range" - possibly from low-flying aircraft. ADT uses a 2-metre dish to create a narrow beam of microwaves that can be scanned across a crowd or even aimed at individuals. AFRL is using infrared photography to analyse the heating effect on the volunteers' bodies. AFRL says that the 3-millimetre wavelength radiation penetrates only 0.3 millimetres into the skin, rapidly heating the surface above the 45 °C pain threshold. At 50 °C, they say the pain reflex makes people pull away automatically in less than a second - it's said to feel like fleetingly touching a hot light bulb. Someone would have to stay in the beam for 250 seconds before it burnt the skin, the lab says, giving "ample margin between intolerable pain and causing a burn". Little data But critics question the AFRL's claims that the weapon's undisclosed exposure levels are safe. John Pike of think tank Globalsecurity.org fears that the beam power needed to scare people may be too close to the level that would injure them. Air Force scientists helped set the present skin safety threshold of 10 milliwatts per square centimetre in the early 1990s, when little data was available, says Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave News. That limit covers exposure to steady fields for several minutes to an hour - but heating a layer of skin 0.3 mm thick to 50 °C in just one second requires much higher power and may pose risks to the cornea, which is more sensitive than skin. A study published last year in the journal Health Physics showed that exposure to 2 watts per square centimetre for three seconds could damage the corneas of rhesus monkeys. Jeff Hecht, Boston ------------------- 3.9 DEW-High Power Microwave (HPM) FAS Military Analysis Network USAF-http://www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/defense/dtap/weapons/ch100309.htm 3.9.1 Warfighter Needs The DoD requires improved capabilities in countering artillery fire, ship defense against cruise missiles, aircraft self-protection, suppression of enemy integrated air defense systems, space control, security, counter-proliferation, and disruption or destruction of command and control assets. All of these requirements can be addressed by HPM weapon systems which upset or damage the electronics within the target. HPM weapons offer military commanders the option of: Speed-of-light, all-weather attack of enemy electronic systems. Area coverage of multiple targets with minimal prior information on threat characteristics. Surgical strike (damage, disrupt, degrade) at selected levels of combat. Minimum collateral damage in politically sensitive environments. Simplified pointing and tracking. Deep magazines and low operating costs. Coordinated Army, Navy, Air Force and DNA HPM transition plans are focused on demonstrations of mission-oriented concepts: aircraft self protection, anti-ship missile defense, and counter munitions (EW Electronic Attack - degrade/neutralize enemy defenses); and lethal Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) and C2W/IW (Precision Force, MOUT, and IW). Potential Warfighter payoffs include generic protection against a wide variety of missile/munition threats (IR, EO, RF, laser-guided), improved effectiveness and lower attrition rates of friendly systems, and negation (permanent damage, long-term disruption, and temporary degradation) of enemy command, control, and general information systems. Finally, electronic protection techniques developed under the HPM program are being continuously transitioned to users in order to harden US systems against hostile HPM weapons or inadvertent EMI/EMC. Joint development and test projects demonstrate the maximization of investments to meet individual Service/Agency mission requirements. 3.9.2 Overview 3.9.2.1 Goals and Timeframes. Technology development and demonstration efforts are oriented to establish a mature and comprehensive technology basis to support microwave weapon systems development decisions. In many cases, this requires an integrated demonstration of microwave source, pulsed power and antenna subsystems. Major goals and associated time frames include the following: Application/Mission Short-term (1-2 years) Mid-term (3-5 years) Long-term (6+ years) HPM System for Point Defense. Demo of compact, high-power UWB source. Demo of high average power narrowband source. Live fire cable-car demo. Field demo of high average power narrowband source. Ship-self-defense demo, Countermunition demo. HPM System for C2W/IW. Effects assessments. Field demo. Airborne demo. HPM System for SEAD. Demo of compact, high-power narrowband source. Explosively-driven single pulse device demo. Multiple-pulse device demo. HPM System for Space Control. Effects assessments. Modeling and simulation for concept development. Field demo. 3.9.2.2 Major Technical Challenges. The major technical challenges for HPM weapons include developing and demonstrating: Compact, high peak power and/or high average power HPM sources. Compact, high gain, ultra-wideband (UWB) antennas. Compact, efficient, high power, pulse power drivers. Predictive models for HPM effects and lethality. Low impact hardening of systems against hostile and self-induced EMI. Reliable and affordable system integration meeting military platform requirements. 3.9.2.3 Related Federal and Private Sector Efforts. DoD organizations have primary responsibility for the development and applications of HPM technology. However, both DOE and private sector efforts complement military HPM programs. Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories have HPM source development and effects programs which directly support Service efforts, while the private sector has evolved both independent and cooperative RF effects programs. CRDAs have been initiated to develop and transition improved techniques for measuring electromagnetic interference. The electronics industry as a whole is working closely with the Services to ensure compliance with new international standards for electromagnetic protection. 3.9.3 S&T Investment Strategy In executing the DoD HPM Program, focus is maintained on specific technology demonstrations, in order that the technology effort at the component level can also be focused. DoD investments among the various technology demonstration and technology development efforts are allocated in accordance with their potential payoff to warfighting needs and their relative contribution to achieving the HPM goals. 3.9.3.1 Technology Demonstrations. HPM weapons encompass a number of technology demonstrations in the field. Major demonstrations support two DTOs: Aircraft Self Protection Demonstration (WE.19) Command and Control Warfare/Information Warfare Demonstration (WE.22) Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) Demonstration (WE.22) 3.9.3.2 Technology Development. Coordinated Army, Navy, Air Force, and DNA HPM technology developments are subdivided into a number of major constituent areas, these include: Compact, High Power HPM Sources: Includes fourfold increase in UWB output power, six-fold increase in narrow band pulse length, and narrowband tunability up to an octave. Weight should be ~500 lbs and volume ~1.5 cu ft (exclusive of antenna and pulse power). Compact, High Power, High Gain, Ultra-Wideband Antennas: Requires reduction to 18 inch antenna diameter with approximately 15 - 20 dB of antenna gain. Compact, Efficient, High Power Pulse Power Drivers: Primary challenge is to develop compact (~500 lbs in less than 10 cu ft), high peak power (>50 GW) packages. HPM Effects and Lethality: Includes RF testing of a wide range of air, sea, land, and space military assets; RF effects database development; reliable prediction of RF effects to permit extrapolation to other systems, development of innovative countermeasure techniques and incorporation of HPM into accepted military weapon engagement models. Also includes assessment of biological effects necessary to establish safety thresholds for personnel protection. Systems Integration Meeting Military Platform Requirements: Encompasses integrating pulse power drivers, HPM sources, and output antennas into military platforms such as fixed-wing and rotary aircraft, naval combatants, land vehicles, aircraft pods, unmanned aerial vehicles and munitions. Low Impact Hardening of Systems Against Hostile and Self-Induced EMI: Includes transitioning EM hardening to users in response to existing EMI/EMC problems and projected threats; identifying susceptibilities in US air, land, sea and space militarily critical systems; and developing hardening countermeasures which minimally impact system performance, cost or maintainability. Evaluation of Additional Applications: Based on effects assessments and technology development efforts, evaluations are being performed to identify additional militarily useful applications. Applications under consideration include: ASMD, counter-proliferation, counter-munition, and space control. These evaluations will lead, where appropriate, to additional technology demonstrations. 3.9.3.3 Basic Research. Basic research efforts for high power microwaves emphasize the fundamental understanding of the limitations of microwave technology and its application, and investigation of promising new approaches and concepts. Efforts are conducted in RF sources, antennas, and pulsed power systems and in RF effects phenomenology. http://www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/defense/dtap/weapons/ch100309.htm ---------------------- CBU-94 "Blackout Bomb" BLU-114/B "Soft-Bomb" FAS Military Analysis Network May 7, 1999 The BLU-114/B is a special-purpose munition for attacking electrical power infrastructure. Although very little is known about this highly classified weapon, reportedly it functions by dispensing a number of submunitions which in turn disperse large numbers of chemically treated carbon graphite filaments which short-circuit electrical power distribution equipment such as transformers and switching stations. The weapon is sometimes referred to as a "soft bomb" since its effects are largely confined to the targetted electrical power facility, with minimal risk of collateral damage. This previously undisclosed weapon, carried by the F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter, was used for the first time on 02 May 1999 as part of Operation ALLIED FORCE strikes against Serbia. Following these attacks lights went out over 70 per cent of the country. The munition was subsequently used on the night of 07 May 1999 to counter Serbian efforts to restore damage caused by the initial attack. Similar in concept to the "Kit-2" Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missile warhead used in the opening days of Operation DESERT STORM, few details of either weapons can be established on an unclassified basis. The missiles, packed with bomblets filled with small spools of carbon-fiber wire, deprived Iraq of 85% of its generating capacity. During the Gulf War Iraq responded to the use of this type of munition by disconnecting electrical power grid circuit breakers. Attacks on Iraqi power facilities shut down their effective operation and eventually collapsed the national power grid. Coalition planners in the theater initially directed that the switching system be targeted, rather than the generator halls. For the first three days, the ATO explicitly contained specific aimpoints for strikes against electrical production facilities. Subsequently the specific aimpoints were only sporadically included. When wing-level planners lacked specific guidance on which aimpoints to hit at electrical power plants, they sometimes chose to target generator halls, which are among the aimpoints listed in standard targeting manuals. The BLU-114/B detonates over its target and disperses huge numbers of fine carbon filaments, each far smaller than the crude wire spools used in the gulf war. The filaments are only a few hundredths of an inch thick and can float in the air like a dense cloud. When the carbon fiber filaments dispensed from the BLU-114/B submunition contact transformers and other high voltage equipment, a short circuit occurs and an arc is often created when the current flows through the fiber, which is vaporized. The graphite, which is a conductor of electric current, is probably coated with other materials to enhance these effects. At the spot where the electric field is strongest, a discharge is initiated, and electrons rapidly form an ionized channel that conducts electricity. At this stage current can flow and an arc forms. This causes instantaneous local melting of a certain amount of the material at the surface of the two conductors. If the current involved is strong enough, these arcs can cause injury or start a fire. Fires can also be started by overheated equipment or by conductors that carry too much current. Extremely high-energy arcs can cause an explosion that sends fragmented metal flying in all directions. Although specific details remain classified, and the Pentagon has explicitly declined to provide any information on this munition, it is probably the case the unit cost of the munition is comparable to that of the Joint Standoff Attack Weapon or the CBU-97/CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapon -- in the range of several hundred thousand dollars. The relative simplicity of the concept and the potential to utilize components from other munitions probably allowed relatively low development costs. The BLU-114/B designation refers to the special purpose submunition, rather than the entire weapon system. It is certainly the case that this submunition is carried to the target area by some dispenser system, of the sort that typically delivers other such submunitions. The first use of the BLU-114/B submunition was during Operation Allied Force, when it was used to attack Serbian power grid transformer and switching yards. Dropped by the F-117, the munition was dispensed using the SUU-66/B Tactical Munitions Dispenser normally associated with the delivery of the terminally guided BLU-108/B submunitions carried on the CBU-97/CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapon. The unguided used in these systems is typically delivered with a circular error probable of a few hundred feet. Other more precise weapon delivery systems such as the Joint Direct Attack Munition do not appear readily adaptable to existing submunition dispenser systems, though such an application would not constitute an overly challenging engineering problem. The AGM-154A Joint Standoff Weapon [JSOW] is intended to provide a low cost, standoff air-to-surface glide weapon with a modular design which allows several different submunitions, unitary warheads, or non-lethal payloads to be carried. The JSOW is a launch and leave weapon that employs a tightly coupled Global Positioning System (GPS)/Inertial Navigation System (INS), and is capable of day/night and adverse weather operations. The JSOW will be employed on a variety or aircraft, including: F/A-18A/B, C/D, and E/F; AV-8B; F-14A/B and /D; F-16C/D; F-15E; F-117; B-1B; and B-52. JSOW initial introduction to the operational commands was on the Navy/Marine Corps F/A-18 in mid-1998. Certification for carriage on the B-2 was achieved in early 1999, and scheduled for the B-52 in 2000. Block E upgrades to the B-1B to integrates the Joint Standoff Weapon for standoff capability are scheduled to by completed in FY2002. The AGM-154C (Unitary Variant) carries the unitary BLU-111/B 500-pound penetrator warhead. The warhead of the AGM-154A (Baseline JSOW) consists of 145 BLU-97/B submunitions. The warhead for the AGM-154B (Anti-Armor) is six BLU-108/B submunitions from the Air Force's Sensor Fuzed Weapon (SFW) program. It is possible that another more precise BLU-114/B delivery system, either currently or in the future, would consist of a previously undisclosed AGM-154D variant of the JSOW.              Electrical Distribution System Overview Modern power grids are extremely complex and widespread. Surges in power lines can cause massive network failures and permanent damage to multimillion-dollar equipment in power generation plants. After electricity is produced at power plants it has to get to the customers that use the electricity. As generators spin, they produce electricity with a voltage of about 25,000 volts [a volt is a measurement of electromotive force in electricity, the electric force that pushes electrons around a circuit]. The transmission and distribution system delivers electricity from the generating site (electric power plant) to residential, commercial, and industrial facilities. The electricity first goes to a transformer at the power plant that boosts the voltage up to 400,000 volts for distribution through extra-high voltage (EHV) transmission lines. When electricity travels long distances it is better to have it at higher voltages since the electricity can be transferred more efficiently at high voltages. High voltage transmission lines carry electricity long distances to a substation. At transmission substations a reduction in voltage occurs for distribution to other points in the system through high voltage (HV) transmission lines. Further voltage reductions for commercial and residential customers take place at distribution substations, which connect to the primary distribution network. Utility transmission and distribution systems [T&D] systems link electric generators with end users through a network of power lines and associated components. In the United States typically the transmission portion of the system is designated as operating at 69 kilovolts (kV) and above, while the distribution portion operates between 110 volts and 35 kV. A further distinction is often made between primary distribution (voltages between 2.4 and 35 kV) and secondary distribution (110 to 600 volt) systems. Industrial and commercial customers with large power demands often receive service directly from the primary distribution system. Transformers are a crucial link in the electric power distribution system. Utility transformers are high-voltage distribution transformers typically used by utilities to step down the voltage of electricity going into their customers' buildings. Distribution transformers are one of the most widely used elements in the electric distribution system. They convert electricity from the high voltage levels in utility transmission systems to voltages that can safely be used in businesses and homes. Distribution transformers are either mounted on an overhead pole or on a concrete pad. Most commercial and industrial buildings require several low-voltage transformers to decrease the voltage of electricity received from the utility to the levels used to power lights, computers, and other electric-operated equipment. Transformers consist of two primary components: a core made of magnetically permeable material; and a conductor, or winding, typically made of a low resistance material such as copper or aluminum. The conductors are wound around a magnetic core to transform current from one voltage to another. Liquid insulation material or air surrounds the transformer core and conductors to cool and electrically insulate the transformer. Many different distribution transformer designs are available to utilities, depending on the loading patterns and needs of the end-user. Transformer engineers modify transformer design and vary material depending upon the needs of a particular utility (cost of energy, capacity, etc.). A blackout is a condition where a major portion or all of an electrical network is de-energized with much of the system tied together through closed breakers. Any area whose tie-lines to the high voltage grid cannot support reasonable contingencies is a candidate for a blackout. System separations are possible at all loading levels and all times in the year. Changing generation patterns, scheduled transmission outages, and rapid weather changes among other reasons can all lead to blackouts. Separations due to dynamic instability are typically initiated by multiple contingencies such as loss of corridors, several transmission circuits, several generating units, or delayed fault clearing. The system just prior to a blackout may not be dynamically unstable but in an overloaded condition. At such loadings, the collapse may come about due to damage to thermally overloaded facilities, or circuits contacting underlying facilities or vegetation. When an overloaded facility trips, other facilities will increase their loadings and may approach their thermal capabilities or relay trip settings. Voltage collapse is the process by which voltage instability leads to the loss of voltage in a significant part of the system. This condition results from reactive losses significantly exceeding the reactive resources available to supply them. Circuits loaded above surge impedance loadings and reduced output of shunt capacitors as voltages decline can lead to accelerating voltage drops. Voltage collapse can look like both a steady-state problem with time to react and a problem where no effective operator intervention is possible. It is very hard to predict the area that will be affected or electrically isolated from the grid. Voltage collapse is an event that occurs when an electric system does not have adequate reactive support to maintain voltage stability in which the sustained voltage level is controllable and within predetermined limits. Voltage Collapse may result in outage of system elements and may include interruption in service to customers. Apparent Power, the product of the volts and amperes, comprises both real and reactive power, usually expressed in kilovoltamperes (kVA) or megavoltamperes (MVA). Real Power is the rate of producing, transferring, or using electrical energy, usually expressed in kilowatts (kW) or megawatts (MW). Reactive power is the portion of electricity that establishes and sustains the electric and magnetic fields of alternating-current equipment. Reactive power must be supplied to most types of magnetic equipment, such as motors and transformers. It also must supply the reactive losses on transmission facilities. Reactive power is provided by generators, synchronous condensers, or electrostatic equipment such as capacitors and directly influences electric system voltage. It is usually expressed in kilovars (kvar) or megavars (Mvar). The system restoration sequence and timing will be directly impacted by the various sizes, types, and state of operation of the system generating units prior to the blackout. After a system has blacked out, the system operators perform a survey of the system status. Circuit breaker positions will not provide a reliable indication of faulted versus non-faulted equipment. Breakers can be found in the closed position, but the associated transmission facility is faulted. If the system blackout is storm-initiated, this condition is quite possible. The storm can continue to damage equipment after the system is de-energized. Also, equipment with neutral connections, such as reactors, transformers, and capacitors, may be locked out from the neutral overcurrent conditions during system shutdown. These facilities may be in perfectly serviceable condition. Most relay systems will remain reliable and secure during restoration, provided there is adequate fault current available to activate the relaying. The most questionable relay reliability issues come from reclosing relays. A power generating unit separated from the may have islanded and continue to generate power for its station auxiliary load. With no system load on the generators, the station auxiliary demand will be quite small, and the steam generators output may be difficult to control. Immediate load addition may be required to keep the steam generator from tripping or having the steam turbine trip out on overspeed. Other units may be able to operate indefinitely on their auxiliary load. An electrical utility which experiences an operating capacity emergency seeks to balance its generation to its load to avoid prolonged outages of service. The emergency reserve inherent in frequency deviation may be used as a temporary source of emergency energy. A utility unable to balance its generation to its load removes sufficient load to permit correction of the outage. In the event of a capacity deficiency, generation and transmission facilities are used to the fullest extent practicable to promptly restore normal system frequency and voltage. If all other steps prove inadequate to relieve the capacity emergency, the system may take immediate action which includes but is not limited to manual load shedding. Unilateral adjustment of generation to return frequency to normal may jeopardize overloaded transmission facilities. Voltage reduction for load relief is made on the distribution system. Voltage reduction on the subtransmission or transmission system may effective in reducing load; however, voltage reduction would not be made on the transmission system unless the system has been isolated from other interconnected systems. If the overload on a transmission facility or abnormal voltage/reactive condition persists and equipment is endangered, the affected system or pool may disconnect the affected facility. shutdown. If abnormal levels of frequency or voltage resulting from an area disturbance make it unsafe to operate the generators or their support equipment in parallel with the system, their separation or shutdown would be accomplished in a manner to minimize the time required to re-parallel and restore the system to normal. After a system collapse restoration begins when it can proceed in an orderly and secure manner. Restoration priority is normally given to the station supply of power plants and the transmission system. Even though restoration is intended to be expeditious, system operators seek to avoid premature action to prevent a re-collapse of the system. Customer load is normally restored as generation and transmission equipment becomes available, since load and generation must remain in balance at normal frequency as the system is restored. When voltage, frequency and phase angle permit, the system operator may resynchronize the isolated area with the surrounding area. In order to systematically restore loads without overloading the remaining system, opening circuit breakers may isolate loads in blacked-out areas. Reenergizing oil-filled pipe-type cables must be given special consideration, especially if loss of oil pumps could cause gas pockets to form in pipes or potheads. After determining the extent of the blackout and assessing the status of system equipment, the switching operations necessary for system reintegration represent a significant portion of the restoration process. Depending on the specific utility's requirements, there are two general switching strategies which may be used to sectionalize the transmission system for restoration. The first is the "all open" approach where all circuit breakers at affected (blacked out) substations are opened. The second strategy is the "controlled operation" where only those breakers necessary to allow system restoration to proceed are opened. Specifications Classified Sources and Resources Graphite bombs - Obrenovac, power plant near the explosion site Snimio/Photos: Milos Lazarevic, Obrenovac AGM-154A Joint Standoff Weapon [JSOW] ELECTRIC SYSTEM RESTORATION A Reference Document by the North American Electric Reliability Council Operating Committee http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-114.htm Updated Friday, May 07, 1999 6:20:37 AM -------------------- E-Bombing Civilization by Daniel McCarthy www.LewRockwell.com http://www.lewrockwell.com/dmccarthy/dmccarthy-arch.html February 6, 2003 There’s a new weapon of mass destruction, one designed to destroy critical electronic infrastructure. It shorts out everything from office computers to traffic lights to pacemakers, crippling the machines that run a modern economy – not to mention those that run a modern hospital. Although not intended as an anti-personnel device, the side-effects that this weapon has upon human beings caught within its blast radius are devastating: those lucky enough to suffer a direct hit are more or less instantly vaporized. The less fortunate on the periphery of the blast, or those caught by a ricochet, suffer severe burns and damage to the internal organs, including the brain. The weapon is the "e-bomb," or microwave bomb, and as you may have guessed, this new marvel of terror is brought to us by the same folks who gave the world the atomic bomb and weaponized anthrax. Yes, it’s a creation of the United States federal government and its "defense" contractors. Victorino Matus writes about the e-bomb on the Weekly Standard’s website; Matus cannot quite conceal his enthusiasm, but he does at least mention the humanitarian concerns about the device. Of course, he concludes by reiterating that the purpose of the bomb is actually to spare lives: to destroy electronics without also killing people. This is a humanitarian weapon. Something here doesn’t add up. Several news sources have reported that the e-bomb may see its first use in the attack on Iraq. That’s understandable as far as it goes; Iraq is not really a stone age country, despite years of sanctions. It may still have enough electronics to make the bomb an effective weapon in the U.S. arsenal (although then again, it may not). But think about this in the long term. The real danger to the United States at present comes from terrorist organizations, not from "rogue states," which are only significant to the extent that they harbor and support terrorists. How do you use an "e-bomb" against al Qaeda? It’s not a weapon of much use against people hiding in caves. Nor is it of any use in stopping a hijacked airplane – it could bring down an aircraft, of course, but so could a conventional missile, and the e-bomb would run the additional risk of shorting out any other electronics nearby, including other planes and systems on the ground. Even its usefulness against Iraq will be very limited. To put it bluntly, an anti-technology weapon is most useful against a target dependent on high technology. That doesn’t mean Iraq, and it certainly doesn’t mean Afghanistan or al Qaeda. It means countries like the United States. By its very nature, the e-bomb poses more of a danger to the United States and other first world countries than it does to terrorists or rogue states. So why is the US developing this weapon? One explanation would be that the military-industrial bureaucracy is still fighting the last war. The e-bomb might work fine against the aircraft and mechanized infantry divisions of a large nation state such as the Soviet Union. It would be a useful weapon to deploy against cities as well, to scramble communications and handicap the economy. But this kind nation-to-nation warfare is not what America or the world currently faces. Even apart from al Qaeda, most of the fighting in the world today is within, not between, states. Outside of Africa, what warfare there still is between states typically now takes the form of the United States and its allies fighting a single, smaller foe of extremely limited conventional forces (Serbia, Iraq, etc.). In such engagements the e-bomb has limited practical value. It’s a bunker-buster, and one of a highly specialized sort, in an age characterized by fewer and fewer bunkers. It might have applications in Iraq, but it would have had few indeed in Serbia – except, again, as a weapon for use against cities. On the other hand, the e-bomb would be a very convenient weapon for anyone who wanted to attack America. There are ways to shield, or "harden," electronics against electromagnetic pulses, but microwaves are the most difficult radiation to harden against. No doubt some of the most highly sensitive military technology might be proofed against an e-bomb, but civilians would have little protection. In addition to hospitals and traffic lights, power grids, air traffic control systems, and telecommunications could all be crippled or destroyed. The loss of life and economic damage would be bad enough in Belgrade or Baghdad; in an American city it would be far worse. The microwave bomb really is a weapon of mass destruction, one particularly tuned to the weaknesses of a modern, computer-reliant city. Will the government’s development of this weapon come back to haunt us? In twenty years’ time we may have President George P. Bush threatening war with Bhutan unless the Bhutanis can prove that they haven’t been developing an e-bomb. Meanwhile our own military-industrial complex will be busily at work creating yet another weapon of mass destruction. It’s happened before and now it’s happening again. Daniel McCarthy [send him mail] is a graduate student in classics at Washington University in St. Louis. Copyright © 2003 LewRockwell.com -------------------- E-Doom for Hussein's Military Muscle? www.ABCNews.com - 4-28-2003 http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/CuttingEdge/empbombs011019.html During the original Operation Desert Storm, U.S.-led coalition forces used high-tech cruise missiles, stealth fighters, and laser-guided bombs against Saddam Hussein's forces in Iraq and Kuwait. But this time around, analysts say a new breed of bomb could spell a big difference in Iraq. It's called the e-bomb — "e" as in "electronic." And, as the name suggests, it's designed to be the slayer of all things high-tech. The e-bombs, being tested by the military, don't directly harm people or buildings. But they do deliver a massive jolt of microwave radiation — millions of watts worth of electrical energy — into the atmosphere, shorting out radios, telephones, computers, and anything else with an electrical circuit. "Virtually any solid state device is going to go," says ABCNEWS' military analyst Tony Cordesman. He and other military experts say that such a weapon may be ideal for use against Hussein's command and control structure. An e-bomb energy blast could effectively "blind" Iraq's vast air defense network, says Cordesman. Others are not so sure that e-bombs would be a logical choice for U.S. forces. "An e-bomb can disable equipment like refrigeration units that store biological weapons without destroying the nearby buildings," says Michael Levy, a researcher with the Federation of American Scientists. "But the tricky thing is bomb damage assessment. How do [military planners] decide if a second strike is needed?" The Pentagon won't comment if the U.S. military has a working e-bomb or if it plans to use such weapons in Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would only say, "You never know." — Jim Hickey, ABCNEWS Cybershake is produced for ABCNEWS See Also: Will Saddam Fall Victim to the Elusive E-bomb? http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/SciTech/iraq030218_Ebomb.html ----------------------- Electromagnetic Weapons http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/e-mweapons.htm This site is dedicated to the research of electromagnetic weapons for Physics 135-2 (Fall Quarter 2001-2002) at Northwestern University. Our group members are John Joo, Jerome Kare, Derek Shiell, and Jeremy Wachutka. There are many types of electromagnetic weapons that are currently in use and even more that are still being researched and developed. The most commonly known one is the electromagnetic pulse (EMP), a weapon/phenonemon which we will go into the most detail. Other weapons include railguns and weapons that affect the body and/or mind. Click on a link below to learn more about electromagnetic weapons. Electromagnetic Pulse http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/emp.htm Railgun Technology http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/railgun.htm Non-lethal Anti-personnel Electromagnetic Weapons http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/naew.htm To contact us, send an e-mail to any member of our group: j-j-@northwestern.edu j-k-@northwestern.edu d-sh-@northwestern.edu j-wac-@northwestern.edu Definition of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP): 1. The electromagnetic radiation from a nuclear explosion caused by Compton-recoil electrons and photoelectrons from photons scattered in the materials of the nuclear device or in a surrounding medium. The resulting electric and magnetic fields may couple with electrical/electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges. May also be caused by nonnuclear means. 2. A broadband, high-intensity, short-duration burst of electromagnetic energy. Note: In the case of a nuclear detonation, the electromagnetic pulse consists of a continuous frequency spectrum. Most of the energy is distributed throughout the lower frequencies between 3 Hz and 30 kHz. History of the EMP The existence of the electromagnetic pulse has been known since the 1940's when nuclear weapons were being developed and tested. However, because of lack of data, the effects of an EMP were not fully known until 1962. At this time, the United States was conducting a series of high-altitude atmospheric tests, code named "Fishbowl." The nuclear explosion, "Starfish Prime," which was detonated in the Pacific Ocean 800 miles from Hawaii, caused an EMP that disrupted radio stations and electrical equipment throughout Hawaii. Consequently, in 1963, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty to counter the considerable threat posed by EMPs. Unfortunately, the destructive potential of an EMP increases everyday as society becomes evermore technological because of an escalating dependence on electronics. Physics of the EMP An electromagnetic pulse starts with a short, intense burst of gamma rays produced from nuclear detonation. The gamma rays interact with the atoms in air molecules through a process called the Compton effect, wherein electrons are scattered at high energies, thus ionizing the atmosphere and generating a powerful electrical field. The strength of the EMP depends highly on the altitude at which it is released. At altitudes above 30,000m, it is the strongest. It is also significant at surface or low altitude bursts, but is not as effective between the two extremes. Effects of an EMP Although the electric field created from an EMP lasts for only a short time, its effects can be devastating. It is predicted that a single high altitude burst 200 miles above Kansas could propagate an EMP enveloping the entire United States. Electrical systems connected to things that can conduct current like wires, antennas, and metal objects will suffer significant damage. EMP effects on electronics include interference of radio frequency links, irreparable damage to microcircuits, and even the disabling of satellites. Fortunately, electronic equipment that is turned off is less likely to be damaged. Protecting Against EMP Electrical equipment is "hardened" to protect itself from an EMP. The basic concern of protection is cutting down the outside EMP level. Metallic shielding is used to route EMP fields away from vital electrical components. If it is also connected to a cable, transient protection like surge protectors, wire termination procedures, screened isolated transformers, protective enclosures, spark gaps, and filters are used to protect at the point of entry. To protect against EMP in an indirect way, other methods are used, such as increasing immediate backup units and avoidance (i.e. keeping equipment out of range of EMP bursts). Electromagnetic Pulse: A Terrifying Threat After the events of September 11 our nation has come to the painful realization that our country, our way of life is not immune to the attack of malicious peoples, peoples with no regard for the rights we so highly value as Americans, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These ideals have been tainted as the ominous specter of terrorism has descended across them. We must not buckle; we must not curb the practice of such self-evident truths, for to do so would be to give in to our heartless assailants. However, we must recognize the danger and take precautionary measures regarding all possible avenues of terrorism so that the catastrophe of the twin towers is never again repeated. One such vulnerability that must be addressed is America's vast and virtually unprotected electrical infrastructure. The development and maturity of electromagnetic pulse technology has made the possibility of some terror organization harnessing an E-Bomb practically inevitable. The physics behind such a weapon as well as the dire consequences if such were to be harnessed by hate-mongers such as Osama bin Laden who have already proven beyond a doubt their complete lack of humanity will be discussed. It will be made apparent why such a horrendous tool in the hands of the enemy for less that $400 is a terrifying, yet very plausible, reality. The fundamentals of the workings of an E-bomb are grounded in a basic understanding of electromagnetic physics theory. The technology relies on an electromagnetic pulse that may be conceptualized as an electric shockwave created when a stream of highly energetic photons collides with atoms of low atomic numbers to cause them to eject a 'pulse' of electrons. Such a phenomenon called the Compton effect was first observed in open-air tests of nuclear bombs when the immense detonation energy interacted with the oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere to shoot mass quantities of electrons radially outwards from the explosion. Though these pulses diminish in strength over distance, electric lights hundreds of miles away were overloaded. Today American scientists are working diligently on the creation of E-bombs that can target artillery hells and missiles and disrupt their trajectory in mid-flight. They could be of crucial assistance in today's strategic theater that is based much more around urban warfare where one bomb could take out an enemy's electrical infrastructure before the arrival of ground troops. America's first major tests of their high-tech EMP weapons based on using high-temperature superconductors to create intense magnetic fields will take place in less than a year, however terrorists can today easily construct a potent E-bomb using 1940s technology for only $400. This rudimentary form of E-bomb is called a flux compression generator. It consists of an explosives packed tube inside a copper coil that is energized by a bank of capacitors. This creates a magnetic field. When the explosives are detonated from rear to front, the tube flares outwards touching the copper coil and so creating a moving short circuit. This compresses the magnetic field forward and creates an EMP that surges from the ordnance with peak currents of tens of millions of amps. Such a high frequency pulse can pass through faraday cages used to ground electromagnetic energy from lightening. However, even if the cages were effective they would still be easily bypassed since any wires running from the devices within them would act as antennae and conduct the high transient voltage. There is also a so called 'late-time EMP effect.' This refers to the observations of EMPs creating localized magnetic fields within electrical systems they pass through that soon collapse sending huge surges through power and telecommunication infrastructure. This sparks a chain reaction in which all devices attached to these lines will be rendered useless by the massive surge. Such FCGs can be made with basic electrical materials, plastic explosives and readily available machine tools and can be smaller than a suitcase. The fact that this weapon is so startlingly simple to construct and can potentially be so devastating to our society coupled with the terrorist attacks of September 11th constitutes a wakeup call to our national defense planners. Terrorists have proven that they are serious, now we must prove ourselves up to the task of planning for every contingency, including the dreaded scenario of a weapon that could propel our society back two-hundred years to an age devoid of electricity. Internet Sources http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://huachuca-usaic.army.mil/contlearning/infrastructure/media/mipb/janmarch97/merkle.html http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://popularmechanics.com/science/military/2001/9/e-bomb/ http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/kopp/apjemp.html http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/5971/emp.html http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://www.georgetown.edu/sfs/programs/nssp/nssq/Edwards.pdf http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/dir-013/_1938.htm --------------------------- RAILGUN WEAPONS http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/railgun.htm General Information For many people, the word "railgun" simply refers to an advanced technological weapon only seen in movies, and therefore is theoretically impossible. In fact, railguns do exist, but not in the same way as depicted in sci-fi novels. For those completely unaware of railguns, see the movie Eraser, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, to get a better picture of the power delivered by these devices. However, do not be fooled by the physics of the movie. Arnold shooting a slug at just under the speed of light implies his shoulder is enduring a momentum of approximately 29700000 N-s from the gun (assuming each bullet is 100g and neglecting the increase in mass which occurs as velocity approaches the speed of light). Railguns are actually relatively simple devices consisting of two parallel copper rails with a groove cut into them. A small projectile made of either aluminum, copper, or graphite is fitted in the groove. The projectile must be at least semi-conductive in order to complete the circuit. The rails are hooked up to an enormous power source which sends an electric current up one rail, through the projectile, and down the second rail. The current up and down the raill causes magnetic fields that interact with the electrons (current) moving through the projectile. This interaction is known as the Lorentz Force and acts in a direction perpendicular to the magnetic field and the current. The effect of the force acting perpendicular to the magnetic field and current causes the projectile to accelerate down the rails. Therefore, using longer rails causes the projectile to reach a higher velocity before leaving the rails, due to the fact that the Lorentz Force will be acting on the projectile for a longer period of time. Mathematics To determine the force on the electric current across the projectile in a uniform magnetic field, the following equation applies. · F=I*L x B I = Current L = length along which current is flowing B = uniform magnetic field To determine the exit velocity of the projectile, we find: V=(L'*I²*t)/(2*m) where, V = velocity L' = inductance of rods I = current t = time length of current pulse m = mass of projectile Reasons for Railgun Development What is the reason behind all of the commotion about railguns? It all began with the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or "Star Wars") in the mid 1980's, lead by U.S. President Reagan. The SDI comprised a complicated system using advanced weaponry and was designed to orbit the Earth with the purpose of destroying enemy missiles from space. Millions of dollars were allocated towards weapons research, and one of the weapons to receive funding was the railgun. Design Considerations To get a better understanding of the design of a railgun, it would be a helpful to look at an example.One railgun that was built was powered by a huge generator two stories high that could create 1.6 million amps. This railgun was able to shoot a 3 gram cube up to 6 km/s. The g forces on the cube were equivalent to about 300,000 times normal. Other more recent railguns have generated forces up to 200,000,000 g's. This is equivalent to propelling an object from 0 to 5 km/s over a 2cm distance. Although these results look promising, there are a variety of problems with railguns. Here are some of the reasons why railguns have not come into regualar use by military or other potential users. Railguns need an enormous power supply Magnetic bursting forces warp the rails (similar to the stresses caused by the explosion of gunpowder in the barrel) The electromagnetic to kinetic energy transfer is too inefficient, because too much energy is lost to heat and the magnetic field The power supply must produce a high current at a low voltage The projectile should have an exit speed of approximately 12km/s in order to successfully intercept missiles A powerful repulsion between the rails is generated upon firing the railgun. This can cause the rails to collapse after repeated use. The high current produces wear on the rails. Some recent improvements in railgun technology include: Viable railguns can now be constructed with rails only 1 meter long Using smaller power sources to charge capacitors The use of graphite projectiles (do not erode the rails like copper and aluminum) Peaceful Applications Though the railgun could be an intensely dangerous weapon, it is actually considered a safer technology than current weapons. Railguns are safer to the personnel operating them and the vehicles carrying them, because there are no weapon magazines and no explosives. This means less space is required on ships, and ships toting railguns have less to fear from fires caused by enemy weapons. However, this sort of use will be extremely limited until power supplies can be made more powerful and smaller. One non-military use of the railgun is that it could be used to slingshot materials into orbit. Such a system could save millions of dollars over sending supplies by rockets. Theoretically, railguns could also be used to produce nuclear fusion (would need to be 150 km/s). Hydrogen pellets could be shot causing fusion to occur on impact, or they could be used to refuel reactors. Unfortunately, in order for this to work, exit velocities of around 150 km/s must be attainable, and thus far, no railgun can produce speeds close to those results. Internet References http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://www.homewood.k12.al.us/compsci/projects98/bteam/railguns.html http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://sis.bris.ac.uk/~cj0810/main.html http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://www.perpetual.net/kyle/index.asp?Section=engineering%3C/ http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://www.its.caltech.edu/~seds/lab/railgun.html http://www.iap.com/eleclaun.html http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://www.perpetual.net/kyle/scifair.htm http://www.scienceweb.org/movies/eraser.html ------------------ Non-lethal Anti-Personnel Electromagnetic Weapons http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/naew.htm In recent years, militaries around the world have faced questions in their ever-changing military role. As we move into a new age in military tactics, countries are encountering situations where the enemy is no longer clearly visible. In June of 1993, Pakistani troops on a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mogadishu, Somalia, faced with a mob of angry women and children hurling rocks at them, opened fire and killed 20 unarmed civilians. Even in our own country, the 1993 standoff between the Branch Davidians and the FBI still sends chills down our spines. Could the tragic endings of these two events been prevented, using some non-lethal weapon? Today, the United States government is researching new technologies that could enable law enforcement officials and militaries to control angry mobs and to deal with volatile situations where unarmed civilians are mixed with dangerous adversaries. PHOTO-The Ray Gun (U.S. World News Report, July 1997) For many people, the "ray gun" is the stuff of science fiction. It has been thought that there were too many obstacles in developing such a weapon. From all the possibilities of non-lethal electromagnetic weapons, the use of microwaves was labeled as the least feasible. One of the largest problems has been range. A microwave beam designed to heat someone standing 300 yards away could possibly kill someone standing 10 yards away. This problem combined with the fact that electromagnetic fields weaken very rapidly over distance also brought about the quest of a suitable power source. Finally, the described beams seemed almost impossible to aim. However, setting your phasers on stun may not be too far away. After 10 years of highly classified research and development, the United States Air Force, Marine Corps, and the Pentagon have announced what they have termed as the "Vehicle-Mounted Active Denial System" or VMADS. Unveiled in the March 5, 2001 issue of Marine Corps Times, it has been hailed as "the biggest breakthrough in weapons technology since the atomic bomb". This new directed energy beam works by using our own natural defense mechanism of pain against us. Just as you jerk your hand away from a hot light bulb, the beam would have the same effect. It heats the surface of the skin to make the person feel a sensation equal to about 130 degrees Fahrenheit, yet it leaves no permanent damage. How it works (Computer graphic of proposed VMADS, Pentagon) The active-denial system works by transmitting a narrow electromagnetic beam to the adversary, heating up the surface of the skin. It works much like a microwave oven works. The electromagnetic energy which falls near the microwaves on the electromagnetic spectrum forces the water molecules in the skin to vibrate with a higher energy. This causes the skin to heat up rapidly which creates a burning sensation similar to placing your hand on a hot light bulb. However, it is not a simple militarized form of a microwave oven. The system fires shorter directional waves that are at higher frequencies than microwave oven. Because of this, these waves can penetrate clothing. The beam is transmitted at the speed of light from something that looks like a satellite dish measuring 10 feet by 10 feet. Officials say that the energy from the beam penetrates less than 1/64 of an inch, ruling out permanent damage to any vital organs within the body. Theoretically, the energy from the beam is less harmful than getting a suntan, although perhaps not as pleasurable. To clarify, the beam does not burn its victims. According to Col. George P. Fenton of the Marine Corps, director of the Department of Defense's Joint Non-lethal Weapons Program in Quantico, Va., "It's not designed to burn. It's a heat-induced sensation. It's safe, absolutely safe. You walk out of the beam and the pain goes away. There are no lasting effects." The range of the beam still remains classified along with its exact frequencies, wavelengths, and amplitudes, but project officials have said that the range exceeds 750 meters. Current plans designate the Active Denial System to be mounted on top of High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle or the HMMWV (Humvee). However, the Pentagon is also considering hand-held and plane-mounted versions. The field ready version could be ready by 2009. History behind the Machine Although the Marines unveiled it and will probably be the first to use it, it was actually the Air Force who began initial research. The active denial system was researched in a combined effort between two teams from the Air Force Research Laboratory (one from the Directed Energy Directorate and one from its Human Effectiveness Directorate) and the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate. The new technology is a result of 10 years of highly secret research and $40 million of taxpayer money. Over the next 5 years, the project for further development is budgeted at $26 million. Testing (A demonstration version of the ADS) The active denial system has so far been tested on 72 people since 1994 on Brooks Air Force base. Only one minor injury has occurred out of the 6,500 tests conducted. In these tests, subjects were exposed to the beam for an average of less than 10 seconds, and the sole person injured merely received a nickel sized burn when the tester programmed the weapon incorrectly. The VMADS system was being tested on Kirtland Air Force base in New Mexico where the subjects have been human volunteers and goats. All testing has been done with strict observance of all laws, procedures, and regulations regarding human and animal experimentation. The military continues testing as it also abides by all of the United States' treaty obligations. Concerns Human rights activists have objected to the weapon, saying that it could cause blindness. Military officials say that people would close their eyes quickly before any damage to their eyes would occur. However, other vital safety questions have also been raised. What affect does the system have on pregnant women and children? Will the beam have effects on the subjects other than the sensation on their skin? What happens when a person is exposed to the beam for a long period of time? The answers are not yet known or perhaps they are not yet unclassified. Only time will tell if this weapon becomes the way militaries and law enforcement agencies work to combat a new type of disorder. Internet Sources http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://www.howstuffworks.com/pain-beam.htm A brief explanation of the USMC VMADS. http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://www.adacomp.net/~mcherney/usnews.html A link to a US News article http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://www.raven1.net/raygun.htm An article by Frank Morales detailing the USMC VMADS. http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://www.datafilter.com/mc/nonlethalWeapons.html An article about "Non-Lethal" and Directed Energy Weapons http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001Fall/Phyx135-2/19/ http://www.adacomp.net/~mcherney/mn142a.htm Article by Capt Paul E. Tyler, MC, USN. "THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM IN LOW-INTENSITY CONFLICT" Periodical Sources Pasternak, Douglas. "Wonder Weapons." U.S. News and World Report. July 7, 1997 Brinkley, Mark. "The People Zapper." Marine Corps Times. March 5, 2001: 10-11. --------------------------- SKEPTICS SAY E-BOMB IS MYTH Electronic Pearl Harbor A slogan for US Info-warriors electronic Pearl Harbor (or "EPH"): a bromide popularized by Alvin Toffler-types, ex-Cold War generals, assorted corporate windbags and hack journalists, to name a few. EPH is meant to signify a nebulous electronic doom always looming over U.S. computer networks. In the real world, it's a cue for the phrase "Watch your wallet!" since those wielding it are usually doing so in an attempt to convince taxpayers or consumers to fund ill-defined and/or top secret projects said to be aimed at protecting us from it. It has been seen thousands of times since its first sighting in 1993.                          --from the Crypt Newsletter "Joseph K"                          Guide to Tech Terminology "Electronic Pearl Harbor" and variations on it, Crypt Newsletter has noticed, are now some of the most overused buzz-phrases in the topic of computer security and information warfare. Using Internet search engines, it is possible to quickly find over 500 citations for the phrase in on-line news archives, military research papers and press releases. Paradoxically, overuse of the phrase has had quite the opposite effect desired by those who unwittingly wield it. One can easily imagine p.r. handlers coaching our leaders, generals and corporate salesmen to not forget to say "electronic Pearl Harbor" at least one time just before giving a speech or interview. Since it is a gold-plated cliche, anyone with more sense than it takes to pour piss from a boot can use it as an infallible detector of Chicken Little-like cyber-bull. Paraphrased: Anyone still caught uttering "electronic Pearl Harbor" in 1999 is either an ex-Cold Warrior trying to drum up anti-terrorism funding through the clever use of propaganda, completely out of it, or a used-car salesman/white-collar crook of some type. Here then, Crypt News presents for your amusement, a selection of the unclothed emperors speaking of "electronic Pearl Harbor." Note: To underline how rich in history the cliche has become, Crypt Newsletter recently began updating this list after skipping much of 1998. Congressmen, Pentagon officials and hack journalists are those most prone to deploying "electronic Pearl Harbor" ad nauseum. And at this juncture, Crypt Newsletter receives about 2-3 articles a week from the big mainstream press featuring cites on the potential for "electronic Pearl Harbor." Other common players, many of which are listed in this archive, constitute an assortment of aggressive shills pimping consulting services or spot hardware and software solutions aimed at avoiding "electronic Pearl Harbor." These articles, all of which, obviously, are not included in this page, are distinguished by their mind-numbing repetition and similarity in tone. The same names tend to appear over and over, always uttering exactly the same menacing declarations. And -- again and again -- the same clueless media organizations recycle the same clutch of quotes and cliches, uncomprehending or indifferent to the fact that they aren't actually producing anything that is real news. Other characteristics of "electronic Pearl Harbor" stories are: 1. Obsession with hypotheses upon what might happen -- not what has happened. 2. Rafts of generally insignificant computer security incidents accumulated as anecdotal evidence and delivered in out-of-context or exaggerated manner pointing to the insinuation that something awful is about to happen -- today, tomorrow, a year from now, two years from now . . . always in the not easily glimpsed future. 3. Abuse of anonymous sourcing and slavish devotion to secrecy. All EPH stories usually contain a number of "anonymoids" -- from the Pentagon, the White House, Congressional staff, computer security firms, intelligence agencies, think tanks or unspecified consulting firms. Frequently the anonymoid will allude to even more secret and terrible things which cannot be mentioned in print or the Republic will crumble. 4. Paranoid gossip -- the equivalent of which is offered up as still further proof the nation is in electronic danger. Russia, China, France, India, Israel . . . almost any country not-USA can be portrayed as taking electronic aim at the American way of life. Programmers of foreign decent or mixed American-foreign decent are tarred as potential cybersaboteurs in a kind of modern techno-McCarthyism. Teenagers are transformed into electronic bogeymen with more power at their fingertips than the Strategic Command. The allegations tend to be delivered by anonymous sources or "experts" not required to provide substantive examples backing up the gossip for the print journalists acting as their stenographers. 5. The standard of proof becomes plastic. If your definition of evidentiary proof is restricted to that which is demonstrated by a reproducible public testing process, EPH stories become very confusing. In EPH news, the standard of "proof" is radically different, equivalent to a fantastic but undemonstrated (or when 'demonstrated,' always secret) claim, often passed along by "hackers" looking for publicity, employees of the Pentagon, the National Security Council or related institutions. This phenomenon has unfolded over six years since the initial prediction of "electronic Pearl Harbor" and national death by keyboard first reared its head. Perhaps not unexpectedly, as the nation approaches the New Year 2000, the production of stories about a variety of "electronic Pearl Harbor" catastrophes -- hackers attacking under cover of Y2K problems; computer viruses timed to activate on, near or after the rollover; secret cyberwars with names like "Moonlight Maze" and "Eligible Receiver" and; fifth column saboteur programmers working in league with foreign powers -- has also accelerated. ------------- January 4, 2000: The following is excerpted from a Pentagon press briefing given by Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre. It is signal because Hamre is a frequent visitor to our "Pearl Harbor" file and has been one of the loudest voices over the past two years when it came to forcasting disaster via cyberterrorist. John Hamre: "I think, for example, we experienced surprisingly little cyber activity during this period. That was a surprise to me. I had thought we would have encountered more than we did. There were some efforts by hackers in cyberspace to break into some of our systems, less than we normally experience on a weekend. Evidently, the lonely hearts out there in cyberland had something else to do and weren't just banging on us all night! We did disconnect a number of potential penetration efforts before they could do any further damage to us; we simply unplugged them. So we didn't have the problems that we had anticipated we may have in cyberspace." Which is something of an understatement, considering Hamre's past rhetoric in the area. A journalist then asked, "When you say there were fewer incidents than in a normal weekend, can you help us with the numbers? On a normal weekend you have a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand?" John Hamre: "You know, I'll be happy to answer the question, but I honestly don't have the data. I know we had four instances where we pulled the plug on some hackers that were trying to break in. You know, this is a problem that's been growing . . ." Another question: "What areas did they want to break into?" John Hamre: "I don't really know." " . . . don't have the data . . . some hackers . . . I don't really know . . . " The very picture of a cyberterror conspiracy. ------------- New Year's Day: Reuters continued to insist on deluding itself and readers in spite of all quiet on the cyberfront on January 1, reporting, "While a general Y2K crisis appears to have been averted, concerns remain that malicious hackers have planted viruses that will hit in the days ahead when computer users boot up their machines . . ." The news agency then produced an anti-virus shill from Computer Associates who warned balefully, "All computer users must take extra precautions during this virus onslaught . . . We can't stress enough the importance of powerful and reliable antivirus software . . ." More on the "virus onslaught" . . . that never showed up. January 1, 2000 In the "famous last words" department, this quote -- supplied by a well-known "electronic Pearl Harbor" booster -- is the best thing Crypt News could find to certify the Y2K rollover: ". . . Y2K will illustrate what a attack could do . . . Anybody who says after January 1, 2000 that this [threat of cyber attack] is all just made up I think is an idiot." --- James Adams, author of "The Next World War" and head of iDefense, a company that provides intelligence on cyberterror, appearing in USC's Networker magazine, 1998-99. Or how about this one from November 4, 1999: ``We expect that (terrorists) will attempt to use Y2K as a cover for putting some kind of attack into a vulnerable place . . . That is, when a Y2K solution goes in, they will fly underneath that with an attack of their own that will shut the system down . . . " said Utah Republican Senator Bob Bennett at a National Press Club event. Or this from an issue of Federal Computer Week: "Hackers will take advantage of Y2K," Assistant Secretary of Defense John Hamre [said] for a Congressional panel. December 27, 1999: "Hackers loom over Y2K" was the title of this piece in the Chicago Sun Times. "Hackers might use Y2K-related chaos as a cover to slip into computer systems, and computer viruses triggered by the new year may already be in place, some law enforcement officials are warning," read the piece. A computer security salesman shows up: "[Hackers] probably won't be out partying," said a vice president of Telenisus, a local firm. The bogeyman of foreign programmers working to install trapdoors under cover of Y2K is produced: "A top FBI official has warned that some technicians hired by companies to make Y2K repairs may have used the opportunity to plant a virus . . ." "Jan. 1 has been described as the Super Bowl for virus writers," was another quote. No evidence to back any of these claims up was produced. Read "The Y2K virus-scare grinches who tried to steal Christmas" for a more balanced view. ------------- December 21, 1999: "Government Warning About Y2K Hackers" was the title of a story in The Washington Post. "Some of the government's Y2K watchers are warning of computer problems on New Year's Eve that may arise not from the date rollover, but from pranks committed by mischievous hackers," read the piece. "They are watching for intentional acts perpetrated at the stroke of midnight under the cloak of Y2K problems . . . the stealthy attacks of viruses, worms and other damage-dealing software that already have made their way across the Internet and corporate computer networks." In something of an understatement, Post reporters wrote: "In recent weeks, the warnings have become louder and more fretful." The litany of recent computer viruses announced by anti-virus press release is offered as proof of bad juju afoot: BubbleBoy, MyPics . . . The anti-virus vendor appears -- in this instance, Vince Gullotto of Network Associates. The same Vince Gullotto who launched the hype on BubbleBoy virus in November . . . when zero examples of it were in circulation. The Post article stated that the menace of Y2K viruses was based on "hard evidence." "Hard evidence" like this? On December 21, the anti-virus vendor DataFellows released this memo publicly: "[The company's] research shows no increased activity on the part of the virus-writing underground in anticipation of the coming Y2K weekend . . . Many security companies have warned about the possibility of thousands of Y2K viruses appearing overnight, either intentionally spread over the new year or spread earlier but programmed to activate and do damage on or around January 1, 2000. Yet in actual fact, by the middle of December 1999, just ten viruses or trojans designed to do damage at New Year 2000 had been found, and of these only two were found in the wild . . ." Of course, DataFellows hasn't appeared in many US media reports on Y2K viruses, particularly the "louder" and "more fretful" ones. A "hacker" said of Y2K: "I, along with my 'computer' friends, will more likely be VERY drunk." For a shattering dissection of the assorted salesmen and national security mandarins warning of Y2K viruses you will surely want to read Rob Rosenberger's analysis of the continuing mythos. ------------- December 20, 1999: In this transcript from ABC World News Tonight entitled "Computer Hackers Could Target Military," news reader Connie Chung stated: "Computer experts have been worried for some time about a flood of viruses designed to disrupt the nation's computer systems over the new year. The systems may be at far greater risk than most people believe." Chung continued: "ABC's Kevin Newman has been granted access to a group of elite hackers who usually operate in secret." Yes, so secret, the well-known group -- The L0pht -- has a website, has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, has appeared before Congress, has appeared . . . well, you get the idea. For a secret group, they sure appear in the media a lot. The purpose of the interview seemed to be aimed at convincing the viewing audience that "the L0pht" were the masters of the world. Senator Fred Thompson appeared in the videotape, inadvertently acting as "the L0pht's" unpaid press agent: "I'm informed that you think that within thirty minutes the seven of you could make the Internet unusable for the entire nation. Is that correct?" UNIDENTIFIED [L0pht] HACKER #1: "That's correct. It would definitely take a few days for people to figure out what was going on." [Sound of Crypt Newsletter's channel-changer switching to WWF pro wrestling, where the phonus-balonus and bluster are more entertaining.] ------------- December 19, 1999: "US Monitors Millennium Trouble Spots Around the World" was the title of a Tim Weiner penned piece in the New York Times. In keeping with the overkill mania that characterizes New Year's Eve-as-doomsday reporting, this story ran with the predictable theme that terrorists everywhere are taking aim at the US as part of their Year 2000 party itinerary. "From now until after the New Year's holiday, hundreds of FBI agents will be monitoring cyberspace for warnings, like ancients searching the skies for a sign, looking out for electronic assaults by hackers and tracking political extremists by computer. "Civilian and military officials across the country, worried about an organized attempt to take down government computers, are watching everything from reservoirs to the Federal Reserve. Like old Jacob Marley, Richard Clarke -- the broken record of the National Security Council -- is produced to rattle his electronic chains and howl menacingly for the rubes. " . . . Richard A. Clarke of the National Security Council, repeatedly warns them that 'cyberterrorists' could launch computer attacks 'shutting down a city's electricity, shutting down 911 systems, shutting down telephone networks and transportation systems,' as he said in a recent interview." More accurately, Clarke has been stupefyingly repetitive on the subject through 1999, beginning with another Weiner-penned article on February 1 (see further entries, below). Near the end of the New York Times piece, Weiner repeats: "At FBI headquarters . . . hundreds of agents will mark the New Year by staring into computers and looking for signs of political violence, cyberspace attacks and Year 2000 computer problems at home and abroad, officials said. ". . . The FBI says that malevolent hackers might try to exploit the problem with viruses timed to multiply on January 1." Noted computer virus expert Senator Bob Bennett (R -- Utah) said, "We are seeing evidence that some of them will release viruses that will look like Y2K failures but are not." Read what a real virus expert at Sophos, not some Congressional windbag, has to say on the topic of Y2K viruses. Sophos is an anti-virus software developer of long standing in the UK. ------------- December 16, 1999: "Y2K -- Experts Say 1000 Computer Viruses Released by 2000" was the title of a Beijing China Radio International report broadcast in English to North America recently. "Experts in the field are warning computer users of new viruses that are designed to break out with the coming of the new millenium." " . . . But in the past year or two, the Y2K bug has been the main focus of attention, and computer viruses have been neglected somewhat," read the Chinese radio reporter over the air. Sez you, bub. "However, experts pointed out that viruses related to the entrance of the year 2000 pose a serious threat to computer safety . . . Furthermore, the number of such viruses is on the rise. They are programmed to break out together with the Y2K bug, which poses a double danger." Shill alert: The People's Republic of China, it seems, also has no shortage of anti-virus vendors (some supplied as Chinese operations of American firms) wishing to peddle software and hardware services on top of hysteria about Y2K. This is particularly interesting, because the broadcast is in English and aimed specifically at the Chinese community in America. It's quite a sales coup to worm your way into a public service broadcast, particularly if you're fronting for an American anti-virus firm. "Deng Jianbin is vice president of Computer Associates, China, a joint venture producing leading anti-virus software. He says that the Y2K problem provides a good opportunity for computer crime. Deng Jianbin says some viruses can pretend they are tools to solve Y2K problems, while others cause symptoms like that of the Y2K bug itself . . . Deng Jianbin added that the Y2K problem is not only a date problem, because the viruses are also software and can be affected by the Y2K bug. If this happens, some of the viruses presently under control may become uncontrollable in their damage to computers. So far, only a few Y2K-triggered viruses have been found in China . . ." And the pitch, leavened with a bit of voodoo: " . . . However, experts warn that in the less than 20 days before the coming of the new century, a minimum of 1,000 viruses will be released to celebrate, in a very selfish way, the new millenium. They suggest that you back everything up before the fateful day, invest in the latest anti-virus software, and keep your fingers crossed." ------------- December 15, 1999: "Future War in Cyberspace" was the title of a special broadcast on the Voice of America US government radio station. Disclosure: Crypt News made an appearance in it. "At least twice this year, [the Pentagon's] Dr. John Hamre has said the United States was in the middle of a cyber war -- and the pace of attacks on U-S Military computers has increased since then," read the announcer John Hamre said: "We are in a day to day, virtual cold war. In that sense that we have people trying to disrupt the Department of Defense's computers on a daily basis. So far, we are staying ahead of the problem. But just barely." Frank Cilluffo, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank said the danger of cyberterror "is real and constant." "The myth persists that the United States hasn't been invaded since 1812. I'd like to inform you otherwise. And that is the fact that invasion through cyberspace is now a daily occurrence," Cilluffo said for Voice of America. " . . . George Smith is skeptical that offensive military operations will work very well in cyberspace." "For years, Mr. Smith has been writing a newsletter on computer break-ins . . . He says Pentagon officials are overstating the danger from computer hackers and intruders." "Nevertheless, [Smith] expects the United States and many other nations to try to create 'cyber-attack' forces: 'I think it is likely that people will try, I think it is unlikely they will have any impact.'" "Mr. Smith says armies in Bosnia and the Gulf War faced computer problems, including viruses. He says they coped with them in much the same way they coped with flat tires on vehicles, or worn out parts on aircraft. "[Smith] said] the idea that small groups of people, armed only with keyboards, could seriously hurt a powerful military force belongs in Hollywood -- not the battlefield." ------------- "U.S. torpedoed on information warfare: Experts say the country isn't prepared to fight a war in cyberspace," was the title of piece from the December 9, 1999, issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The inevitable deluge of experts warned of more electronic doomsdays at a short info-war conference held at the Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. " . . . terrorists are getting wise to the potential for disruption hacking can cause, said Professor Stephen Sloan of the University of Oklahoma." And cribbing from Washington Times articles on November 17 and 18 that the nefarious Chinese were planning to make a move in the field of cyberwar: "The Chinese are thinking of establishing a fourth branch of their military -- in addition to the army, navy and air force -- devoted exclusively to information war, said Lt. Col. Michael Warsocki," an Army officer. "They think they're in a war now," Warsocki said for the Gazette. "Just the reconnaissance phase, but to them, it's war." Buckle down, Warsocki! Buckle down! ------------- Still more "Experts warn of hacker threat" was the title of a December 7, 1999, San Francisco Examiner piece. It was another "electronic Pearl Harbor"-day piece on . . . Pearl Harbor Day! "Despite numerous well-publicized computer break-ins and crimes, U.S. society remains dangerously vulnerable to hacker attacks on computer and communications networks, experts warn," was cliche number one. Then a magic number and an unspecified but very bad hypothetical doomsday scenario appear: "Computer crime costs companies more than $100 million a year, but a far worse loss - perhaps in an international catastrophe triggered by a lone hacker . . . is possible, computer security experts said at a Stanford University gathering Monday . . ." Then a National Infrastructure Protection Center analyst was deployed to furnish another hypothetical -- emphasis on "hype" -- scenario for which no evidence is provided: Osama bin Laden could instigate a computerized equivalent of the World Trade Center bombing. "Alan B. Carroll, an FBI agent . . . urged those at the conference to imagine a computer or communications version of the World Trade Center bombing - a disaster that brings down, say, computer or telephone networks on which society depends . . . 'Referring to the alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden . . . Carroll said that 'given the resources of this man, you can imagine the kind of damage he could do.'" ------------- Life is full of delicious irony. On December 7, Pearl Harbor Day, the Athens Ta Nea published a story entitled "Greek Defense Ministry Establishes Cyber-Warfare Office." It was . . . about electronic Pearl Harbor! Much of the piece, furnished by the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, was devoted to the usual stack of repetitive and patently ridiculous claims about i-war cobbled together from assorted American stories on Pentagon info-warriors and the ubiquitous uber-wargame, Eligible Receiver. Sub-slugged "Cyber-Soldiers in the Front Line," the Athens Ta Nea report breathlessly proclaimed: "The Air Force base in Miami, Florida, is on 'red alert.' The operation -- an exercise -- involves the dispatch of heavily armed aircraft to bomb targets in North Korea during a supposed international crisis. The bomber pilots are waiting, engines ready, for the air-to-ground missiles to be loaded but an unforeseen event interrupts the exercise: at the last minute, crew members suddenly notice that, instead of missiles, all the storage depots are stocked with electric lighters!" Crypt Newsletter almost fell out of the chair laughing. "Pyle!!!!" screamed the always enraged Sgt. Carter. "Why are all these crates from Ronson stacked up at the front gate???" "Well, Golll-eeee, Sarge, when I was shopping for a pack of ten lighters on Amazon the gol-durned '0' key kept sticking." But back to the Athens Ta Nea story on "e-Pearl Harbor." " . . . Only a few minutes before . . . gigantic transport planes take off, the crew notices that there is no fuel available!" Those pesky hackers had drained the av gas from our birds on the runway! The nerve of them! "The incident is not pure speculation," wrote the Ta Nea. "Kept secret at all costs, the complete collapse of the US Pentagon's supply system occurred recently and was ingeniously characterized as 'the electronic Pearl Harbor'. Its perpetrators were a group of hackers secretly hired by the US Government to locate possible 'holes' in the government's information networks and close them. The tools available to the Red Team (as the group was named) during the 'cyber-attack' were only techniques and information accessible on the Web, with no further internal assistance. In record time, the hackers had incapacitated, apart from the supply system of the Armed Forces, the air traffic system and the energy networks. "The story might sound like Hollywood, but it is no longer a movie fantasy . . . As far as Greece is concerned, the issue has also gone beyond the movie theaters: at the behest of Akis Tsokhatzopoulos, after recommendations by his colleagues, the Ministry of Defense will establish, as of next week, an Information Warfare Office within the YEETHA [National Defense General Staff]. "Dr. Alexandros Polimenopoulos, a special consultant to the Ministry of Defense, states that these soldiers will also be 'experts in the use of computer viruses, logic bombs, worm programs and other tools, which, used at the critical moment, could completely destroy the enemy's information infrastructure.'" A diligent Crypt News reader in the US Air Force drily comments: "Inform Athens Ta Nea we no longer have a base -- per se -- in Miami. A hurricane destroyed it. NONE of the hurricane-proof hangars survived. Repair teams resurrected 12-15 buildings for emergency services, but the rest of the base disappeared in the hurricane or fell to a wrecking ball. 'Homestead AFB' was renamed 'Homestead ARB': a tiny little component of the Air Force Reserve." ------------- December 1, 1999: "Pentagon Planners Gird For Cyber Assault" was the title of a Philadelphia Inquirer generated "electronic Pearl Harbor" story. It contained the standard EPH elements and claims. "In a large windowless room of a nondescript office building a few miles from the Pentagon, the war of the future is being waged," read the Inquirer. ". . . If fears of a concerted cyber attack on the U.S. military are realized - what Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre has called an 'electronic Pearl Harbor' - this room, the Global Network Operations and Security Center, is where the battle will be won." The Inquirer story warns, "the rapidly approaching Y2K rollover has military officials wondering if they will be able to distinguish between a network intrusion and the millennium computer glitch." "Capt. Bob West, deputy commander of the Joint Task Force on Computer Network Defense, said there was real potential for a 'crippling' attack at any time because of 'substantial' vulnerability . . ." The malicious code planted under the cover of Y2K threat scenario is described: " . . . there is some worry that intruders have planted code disguised as Y2K protection but set to go off Jan. 1, like a time bomb." The now always secret, but seemingly unproductive, cyberwar against Serbia is cited. And new Pentagon jargon for "info-war" is invented: "non-kinetic warfare." "Some of this 'non-kinetic' warfare occurred during the bombing campaign against Serb forces in Kosovo," reads the Inquirer. Then the Eligible Receiver script appears. "A 1997 war-game exercise known as Eligible Receiver showed that sophisticated hackers (in this case from the National Security Agency) could cause power outages and 911 emergency phone system overloads . . . " Moonlight Maze is referenced: "A real attack occurred from January through March, described by officials as a 'sustained, well-resourced intrusion'. . . No one is commenting, even off the record." ------------- November 18, 1999: "Internet Warfare Concerns Admiral" was the title of another piece by Bill Gertz of the Washington Times. It continued the story line of China cast as a Net menace started by Gertz in an article the previous day. "The Pentagon's top intelligence official said yesterday that China's announced plans to conduct 'Internet warfare' poses a future threat to U.S. military dominance on the battlefield." "We are clearly interested and concerned about this whole idea of information attack," said Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), to Gertz for the Times. Richard Allen, national security advisor during the Reagan administration, is suddenly produced as an expert on cyberspace and information warfare. "Richard Allen . . . said the Chinese could inflict strategic damage from military-backed information warfare attacks." "Mr. Allen said the recent computer attacks on the Pentagon by an Israeli hacker and two teen-agers in California would pale in comparison to a Chinese military computer strike." [Editor's note: Actually, these "attacks," if you can call them that, were more than a year old.] "This is something about which we ought to be mightily alarmed," said Allen to the Washington Times. Rob Rosenberger of Virus Myths comments: Dear Crypt News, "Internet Warfare Concerns Admiral" in the Washington Times raises a plausible idea -- but not the one described in the story. First, let's remember President Reagan scared Soviet leaders with nothing more than a concept for space-based missile defense systems. Yeah, we spent a lot of money on it. Yeah, David Lorge Parnas resigned because it wouldn't enter the state of the art in his lifetime. What can I say? We won the Cold War because Russia feared bogeymen in spacesuits. Now one of our own admirals quakes in his wading boots after reading a Chinese military newspaper. How much does military ink cost these days? In other words: "information warfare." Not what we expected of the term, eh? China 1, U.S. 0. I remember a hilarious movie scene where Jimmy Stewart scared his date into screaming at a restaurant table. "Eeek!" Your gown looks lovely tonight, admiral . . ." CN replies: Yeah, but who reads the Liberation Army Daily outside of Cold War admirals and those unlucky enough to have the task as part of their job description? The Chinese need a pipeline into network news or the New York Times if they want to really win the propaganda i-war. Revised score: Pentagon: 500 or so, China 1. Go boys, go! ------------- November 17, 1999: "China Plots Winning Role in Cyberspace" was the title of a Bill Gertz front page story in the Washington Times. The Washington Times is what Congressmen, particularly Republicans, read regularly before work. As such, material in it is influential in decision-making. This particular piece continues the current Zeitgeist thread in which mainland China is painted as a threat. "It is essential to have an all-conquering offensive technology and to develop software and technology for Net offensives so as to be able to launch attacks and countermeasures on the Net, including information-paralyzing software, information-blocking software, and information-deception software," Gertz quoted a Chinese military publication as stating. He neglects to mention that US Department of Defense print similar tripe fairly regularly -- and have done so for most of the decade. Pentagon "anonymoids" show up on schedule: "A senior Pentagon official said he was notified about the article, which has raised concerns among defense officials who see China's information warfare capabilities as a potential threat to U.S. civilian infrastructures . . ." An "expert," "William Triplett, co-author of a new book on the PLA," said: "All of this offensive-warfare talk, when China is not threatened by anyone, shows that the dragon is at the point where it doesn't have to hide its claws." Then the scary hypothetical scenario of catastrophe is produced. According to Triplett, by way of the Washington Times, "China could launch a devastating computer-run sabotage operation by attacking U.S. oil refineries, many of which are grouped closely together in areas of Texas, New Jersey and California." "A [Chinese] computer attacker could penetrate the electronic 'gate' that controls refinery operations and cause fires or toxic chemical spills . . . " ------------- In England, Independent Television News On-line published a story in November entitled, "Fears as anarchists organise on the Net." "President Clinton has pledged $2 billion this year to protect the United States from what has been called 'an electronic Pearl Harbor,'" read the piece. "In Britain the Government is also waking up to the threat." "The threat is escalating on pretty much a weekly basis. New tools and technologies are evolving all the time," was one quote from D K Matai, the head of a small UK company that sells solutions for Internet troubles that usually on his company can see. "The Internet is a military experiment that has escaped [from the US military's] control. It's a whole new way of organising," he said for ITN. Matai, commented Nick FitzGerald, moderator of comp.virus and editor emeritus of Virus Bulletin, "[is] into hyping up Y2K issues in general with the UK media." "He was quoted [recently] in the (UK) Sunday Times over some 'Y2K virus' that is not a virus . . . and it seems his company is the only one to have seen the code." The London Sunday Times material from Matai can be found in a report at Virus Myths. Another critical view addressing a Matai claim is found in a Sophos white paper on the topic of Y2K viruses. Sophos is an anti-virus software developer of long standing in the UK. "In the City of London, if you were to hit two or three places - nor more than that - they would be able to turn the city off and that would stop the banking system and it would stop the share-trading system . . . Identifying the crazed, skilled cyber attacker is perhaps the single most difficult task that the cyber spooks face at the moment," said Peter Sommer from the London School of Economics for ITN. The turn-off-the-power story, it seems, is also popular in the UK media. ------------- "US Corporations Warned of Cyber-Terrorism" was the headline of piece that appeared on November 4, 1999, in the "The Washington File" -- a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. "With the increasing use of the Internet in business operations, it will not be long before, 'more damage can be done with a keyboard than with a car bomb,' according to Nickolas Proctor, Executive Director of the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC). OSAC is an office within the State Department devoted to fostering the exchange of information on security issues between government, businesses and other organizations operating internationally." "Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security David Carpenter told [an] audience of business security specialists that they must educate themselves about the mounting threats of cyber-crime. He said terrorists are constantly devising new ways 'to cripple business, government, and infrastructure,' and inventing new methods of 'creative destruction.'" In what can only be described as a continuing propaganda exercise aimed at the press, the Pentagon grail, Eligible Receiver -- or possibly the new edition of Eligible Receiver -- Zenith Star -- was cited. "Michael Peters, the technical director for operations, readiness and assessments at the National Security Agency, described his successful efforts to expose weaknesses in the security of U.S. government information systems. In an exercise to test the vulnerability of systems within the Department of Defense (DOD), Peters said a team of 20 government information experts posed as adversaries attempting to break through DOD computer security . . . 'The bad guys won,' Peters said. 'We were able to cause serious problems for DOD.'" Now, if only taxpayers could convince "our bad guys" to spend more time actually teaching people fundamentals in computing technology rather than wargaming, we'd be getting somewhere. ------------- "My, how they do go on," remarked one reader of Crypt Newsletter while forwarding more missives on EPH. On November 4, 1999, national counter-terror guru appeared yet again in a story entitled "US Said Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks" distributed by the Associated Press. Sounding like a broken record, or a talking parrot, depending upon your point of view, Clarke declaimed: ``We could wake one morning and find a city, or a sector of the country, or the whole country have an electric power problem, a transportation problem or a telecommunication problem because there was a surprise attack using information warfare.'' "Clarke compared the reliance [on computer networks] to former drug addicts enrolled in a recovery program," read the AP article. ``We need to take a lesson from that -- at least they know they have a dependency problem. Many of you are still in denial.'' "[Clarke] said [programmers] hired to make a company's computer system Y2K compliant could easily slip `a little Trojan horse or malicious code' into the system instead." ``We expect that (terrorists) will attempt to use Y2K as a cover for putting some kind of attack into a vulnerable place . . . That is, when a Y2K solution goes in, they will fly underneath that with an attack of their own that will shut the system down . . . " said Utah Republican Senator Bob Bennett at a National Press Club event. ------------- The Los Angeles Times continued the proud tradition of unsophisticated, shallow reporting on "electronic Pearl Harbor" with an October 31, 1999 -- Trick or Treat day in LA county -- article, entitled: "US Scurries to Erect Cyber-Defenses." The article, written by Bob Drogin, is unspectacular in that it merely mimics similar reporting done by competing newspapers weeks -- well, actually sometimes even years and months -- before the LA Times joined the business of recycling the same cliches. (See entries for October 9 and October 7 for more comment on Drogin-penned material or this analysis on Moonlight Maze for related text. In the Times piece, it's "round up the usual suspects:" "The stakes could not be higher," writes Drogin. " . . . how can America best protect itself from hostile nations, foreign spies, terrorists or anyone else armed with a computer, an e-mail virus and the Internet?" (NB: Actually, Drogin -- from a technical standpoint -- appears to be underprepared for this article. Macro viruses come in infected documents transmitted as file attachments -to- e-mail, of which the recent Melissa was one example; the Good Times virus -- or Join The Crew, or Penpal, or Just Say Yes to Jesus -- still don't exist.) George Tenet, CIA director is quoted: "Potential targets are not only government computers but the lifelines we all take for granted -- our power grids and our water and transportation systems." Another Pentagon wargame scenario, this time called Zenith Star, is invoked. The standard pro forma claims are issued: "enemy hackers supposedly had triggered blackouts . . . They paralyzed 911 systems . . . They started disrupting crucial Pentagon computer networks." Repetition is a component of the Times piece. Just a couple paragraphs from the mention of Zenith Star, the Pentagon's 1997 grail, Eligible Receiver, is repeated. The same claims are made: " . . . a team of NSA hackers proved that they could easily disable power, telephones and oil pipelines across the country as well as Pentagon warfighting capabilities." The reader should ask himself this general question: If such claims are so demonstrably obvious -- which is a characteristic of the general direction of reporting on "cyberwar" -- why is it necessary to repeat them so frequently? "We see more and more terrorist organizations . . . are recruiting computer-smart people and even providing the training for them," said John Campbell of the Pentagon's Joint Task Force for Computer Network Defense. And those terrorist organizations would be? No one can say. An anonymous "senior" official makes an appearance: "[we are] under constant attack, more than one a day from outside the country." The usual ripping up of Webpages from NASA-JPL, NDU.EDU., the Naval Coastal Systems Center and others are offered as proof of cyberattack. And Moonlight Maze was an operation in which "vast amounts of technical defense research were illegally downloaded and transferred to Russia." And those materials would be? No one can say. Addendum: Crypt Newsletter asks its readers to review recent quote on EPH, starting with a statement from the National Security Council's Jeffrey Hunker: "[The term Electronic Peal Harbor] connotes this 'lights-out' idea," Jeffrey Hunker for Defense Information magazine on October 22. "It tends to oversimplify the threat, which ranges from existential terrorism to overt acts to overthrow the military. . . . It trivializes the real [danger], which I think is much more than what's been understood." From the LA Times, attributed to CIA director George Tenet: "Potential targets are not only government computers but the lifelines we all take for granted -- our power grids and our water and transportation systems." From the LA Times, attribution by way of the Pentagon's John Campbell of the Zenith Star "operation" -- "enemy hackers supposedly had triggered blackouts . . ." From Richard Clarke, National Security Council counter-terrorism expert, in the August issue of Signal magazine: "Envision all of these things happening simultaneously - electricity going out in several major cities; telephones failing . . ." Again, from Richard Clarke, this time in the February 1, 1999, issue of the New York Times: "I'm talking about people shutting down a city's electricity . . . shutting down 911 systems, shutting down telephone networks and transportation systems. You black out a city, people die. Black out lots of cities, lots of people die." ------------- The Economist published a "cyberwar" editorial on October 30 entitled "Asia's lethal computers: Nerd world war." As far as "electronic Pearl Harbor"-related pieces went, it displayed the "Yellow Peril" and the let's-write-about-what-might-have-happened- not-what-did fetishes. "Hacking, spamming and spreading viruses. Each is a means to disrupt an enemy's computer systems, and each has been employed by whizz-kids, maybe [CN emphasis added] even by governments, in recent international disputes . . . " read The Economist. "Especially in Asia, computer nerds have nudged their way to the front line this year, arguing that the Internet is a potent weapon." The editorial outlined a few "cyberwars" that were said to have happened -- but which seem to accomplish nothing -- if they are even noticed at all outside of the media. "Jose Ramos Horta, a Timorese leader, vowed that specialists would infect computers of the Indonesian banking system with viruses," read the article. "One report suggests that 72,000 'cyberspace attacks' [have been] launched from China against Taiwan in August alone." "The toll can be severe," wrote The Economist. "The Pentagon reckons that last year the Taiwanese spread two viruses, known as the Bloody 6/4 and Michelangelo . . . They damaged some 360,000 computers in China, at a cost of $120 million." CN has no idea where this wild-ass quote came from but it can tell its readers that the idea of using the Michelangelo and Bloody computer viruses in a "cyberwar" is absurd. Neither virus is spread on the Internet or by networked computer connections. Both are very old boot sector computer viruses -- infectious programs that add themselves to the system sectors of diskettes, floppies and a PC's hard disk. They are -- or rather more accurately, were spread in the first years of the decade by exchange of infected floppy disks. Both have long been essentially extinct on western computers. The idea that one could have a "cyberwar" in which the enemies throw virus-infected diskettes back and forth at one another in the wishful hope that something bad might happen illustrates the rather quaint technical ignorance about computer viruses in those who would believe this stupid claim. "Hackers at NATO may [CN emphasis added] have meddled with Yugoslavia's communications system . . . " "Cyber attacks have become a favourite topic of military strategists," read The Economist. No argument there. ------------- The truly wonderful thing about "electronic Pearl Harbor" and "cyberwar" is that you can declare both without providing any evidence to substantiate either. "U.S. Opened Cyber-War During Kosovo Fight" was the title of a Scripps Howard News Service piece that ran in the Washington Times on October 24, 1999. Even by the stretchy standards of "electronic Pearl Harbor" story-telling, the missive was notable for its megalomaniacal and grandiose tone. "With utmost secrecy during the war in Kosovo, the United States triggered a superweapon that catapulted the country into a military era that could forever alter the ways of war and the march of history . . . Silently, American forces launched offensive cyber-combat, a development of breathtaking promise and peril that some experts say matches in significance the first use of bombs dropped from warplanes during World War I and the nuclear decimation of Hiroshima in 1945," claimed the piece. This is a rather interesting claim . . . in the sense that the observation of delusional and psychotic behaviors are interesting. Essentially, it compares an alleged cyberwar in Kosovo -- of which it has been remarkably hard to glimpse even the slightest manifestation -- with the incineration of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians by atomic bomb in World War II. Which Crypt Newsletter thinks its readers will agree . . . was hard to miss. The Scripps Howard article was filled to the gunwhales with theories, hypotheses, sci-fi scenarios and a standard number of anonymous national security sources peddling the same. To wit, "a cruise missile [could be reprogrammed] to turn around and plow into the ship or plane that fired it." "Details are still classified, but top U.S. military officials only now confirm that during NATO's air war last spring, the United States launched a computer attack on Yugoslav systems . . . " went the piece. Details about U.S. "cyberwars" are always secret -- classified. Ssshhhh! It burnishes their cachet. However, the Scripps piece was wrong about the confirmation of cyberwar vs. Serbia. Unnoticed by many in the big mainstream media, the magazine Inside the Army published an article during the Kosovo conflict on April 20 of this year. In it, readers find: "[Asst. Secretary of Defense John Hamre stated] U.S. forces are conducting their own cyber attacks on Serb computers describing a campaign [waged by the Air Combat Command] as 'very heavy electronic warfare against a capable opponent'." Claims made by the Scripps piece include anonymous sources claiming such non-provables as disruption of the Serbian command network and "keyboard warriors" planting fake electronic mail. US info-warriors, claimed the article, "can plant computer viruses, erase computer memory, turn an electrical grid on or off and redirect the flow of money in, for instance, a leader's bank account." Which fails to explain why the Air Force relied so heavily upon high explosive bombs and fancy chaff dispensers -- things you can see as opposed to things you can't -- to attack the power plants around Belgrade. "Also vulnerable to U.S. cyber-attacks are such critical pillars of foreign civilian infrastructure as public telephone networks; electric or gas production and distribution; water supply; emergency services; financial systems; mass transit, railways and airports," reads the article. It's no surprise that Crypt Newsletter maintains most of the debate about information warfare coming from the Pentagon is the equivalent of a propaganda war meant to impress Congress, other military men sanguine about its efficacy and passers-by rather easily gulled by Tom Clancy-like stories at home and abroad. There are, to be sure, literally many easily understood reasons for this: massaging of budget requests, pseudo-public justification for projects of uncertain quality (CN calls this the "My-boss-thinks this-is-a-waste-of-time-so-plant-something-to-the-contrary-in-the- local-paper-that-he'll-read-at-breakfast" ploy), simple ego, salesmanship gone mad, different agencies all jockeying for command roles in the alleged endeavor, et cetera. While our information warriors are said to be the mightiest in the world, the Scripps Howard piece also reads: "A nation that would have no chance challenging America's conventional or nuclear forces might well prevail in a computer attack." Then the standard "electronic Pearl Harbor" cast of enemies to the American way are invoked as potential threats: "Among the most sophisticated are India, Syria and Iran [anonymous] experts say." And the Chinese -- outraged over the bombing of their embassy in Serbia -- "revealed an astonishing 3,000 to 4,000 'back doors' into U.S. computer systems" -- constituting another unverifiable and, on the face of it -- rather ludicrous, claim supplied by "Jay Valentine, head of Infoglide Corp., an Austin, Texas, company that investigates computer security breaches for the U.S. government." The article goes on to state that this is only "about 5 percent" of the trapdoors the always-to-be-watched Chinese have been able to install in American computer systems. In the spirit of the times, where the Yellow Peril is now said to be responsible for many plots often seemingly derived from the spirit of Sax Rohmer and his sinister Dr. Fu Manchu -- the theft of nuclear secrets, the planting of software boobytraps under the cover of Y2K remediation, the running of intelligence operations in America under the cover of Chinese-American businesses -- the commie Chinese are also said to be possibly planning to strike America with computer viruses. If so, they will have to achieve something really spectacular, Crypt News notes, or the accomplishment will likely go unnoticed among the 40,000 computer viruses already tabulated in anti-virus industry labs. The remainder of the article is devoted to stereotypical and often mutually contradictory Strangelovian theorizing by assorted Pentagon and intelligence agency windbags over the alleged capability of information warriors -- the same talk that has been circulating since 1993. 1. " . . . But a cyberattack on a country's power grid, while militarily defensible, can cause more calamities than a missile and far more 'collateral damage' to innocents than it causes harm to an enemy's forces or ability to fight." 2. Less civilian casualties -- because it's only cyberwar, not blow-'em-up-type war. 3. More civilian casualties -- because cyberwar is more dangerous than blow-'em-up-type war. "It is not benign. It can potentially be very, very deadly," according to "Michael Swetnam, a CIA veteran and consultant to the White House and Senate." 4. Cyberwar could escalate to nuclear war: "Russia, for instance, already has vowed that it will react to a computer attack 'by any means' - including with nuclear weapons." This is what the info-war hawks at the Pentagon love to talk about. A great deal of the flavor of bloviation in this article can be seen as the result of simple mirroring. American journalists covering these stories tend to be uncognizant of the impact on people overseas of the periodic, albeit often weird, declarations of the U.S. Department of Defense and ancillary national security mandarins. Quite frequently those on the receiving end go on to imitate the same, so as not to appear laggard before their national leaders. For example, National Security Council-member Richard Clarke stated for the press in March of this year that, "An attack on American cyberspace is an attack on the United States, just as much as a landing on New Jersey . . . The notion that we could respond with military force against a cyberattack has to be accepted." And the US Army rather publicly announced at the beginning of the decade that it was interested in getting into the business of developing computer viruses as weapons to be thrown at an enemy. The December 1991 issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, for instance, featured an un-bylined article entitled "Attention hackers: Uncle Sam wants you," which read: "The US Army has caught the computer virus bug and is now expanding its interest in germ warfare to include electronic germs." The US Army, said the article, was "soliciting proposals for the development of a 'weaponized virus' or a piece of 'malicious software' that could destroy enemy computers or software." "This is the Army, we're in the weapons business," said one of the Army's project engineers. It comes as no surprise, then, when other countries issue similar proclamations . . . sometimes years after the US military professed a desire for involvement in the same types of projects. In fact, a good intelligence analyst would tell you this is to be expected. Postscript: Humor break -- in late 1996, Crypt Newsletter added the following definition to the Joseph K Guide to Tech Terminology in response to similar articles on the i-war "superweapon:" mutual assured annoyance (MAA): the state that exists when U.S. Department of Defense information warriors engage in secret combat with hackers or the information warriors of other nations. Usage: Colonel Crystal often thought about the consequences that might befall him should his Air Force superiors ever discover that the best result his team of information warriors could hope for was mutual assured annoyance of the enemy. ------------- October 24, 1999: A Los Angeles Times story entitled "Some Fear Sabotage by Y2K Consultants: Foreign contractors in particular may be infecting programs as they fix 2000 bugs US security experts warn" was largely more of the same completely unsubstantiated "the foreigners are doing it"-type drivel common to stories of its type. The Times coverage, as has been the paper's trend in this area, has been heavily dependent upon repetition of the same substance, quotes and sources that have appeared previously in other publications covering the topic. "Some of the people hired to make computer programs Y2K compliant, including foreign contractors, may have deliberately infected them with hostile programming code," writes the LA Times. In any case, the Times article does not supply any specific examples of such -- a generic characteristic of EPH stories focusing on the peril of alleged saboteur programmers inserting computer viruses into systems under the cover of Y2K remediation. It cites Terrill Maynard's National Infrastructure Protection Center report alleging the same. The Times article fails to mention to readers that Maynard's report was remarkable for its total lack of verifiable citation of specific examples of programming sabotage. A couple of sources for the story mention that it is "unfair to point the finger at overseas programmers." A computer consultant selling services to uncover Y2K saboteurs, Warroom Research, makes the claim it has uncovered "a dozen" such instances. And they would be? Of course, the company does not say for the Times. But it gets the press, anyway. Then the usual anonymoids show up from the White House and the National Security Council. "We think there's a vulnerability . . . " says one for the Times. Another one billed as a "senior Clinton official," curiously, is quoted as claiming, "There's a lot of silly talk out there." Physician-heal-thyself alert. The Times fails to mention in its article that White House officials, National Security Council counter-terror "experts" and Clinton administration appointees are responsible for a great deal of "the lot of silly talk." Specifically: Around October 7 -- "Michael Vatis of the National Infrastructure Protection Center, the top U.S. `cybercop,' warned . . . that changes to computer software that might threaten security could have been planted by foreign contractors under the guise of Year 2000 bug fixes." And in another example from August -- Richard Clarke, the White House's counter-terror expert on the National Security Council: "It is at least theoretically possible that a nation could insert such trapdoors, and then make demands of the United States under threat to our infrastructure." And another Clarke-ism from the same time: "It doesn't merely have to be the use of a trapdoor to enter a system, seize control and destroy the system . . . Any combination of malicious virus, denial of service and trapdoor disruptions can create chaos." ------------- October 22, 1999: A Defense Information and Electronics Report story entitled "DOD Official Says Hackers Are More Sophisticated Since Solar Sunrise" reveals a Pentagon official, Arthur Money, and a National Security Council official, turning up the volume once again on the issue of cyberterror. It's worse than "electronic Pearl Harbor," claims an official, adhering steadfastly to the pro forma requirements of a good "electronic Pearl Harbor" story:" absence of smoking guns, allegations that unnamed "state actors" are involved and reliance on impressive-sounding but devoid-of-content policy wonk jargon like "assymetric attack" and "existential terrorism." "Moonlight Maze brings a whole different, much more sophisticated approach . . . But it also brings another dimension -- no longer with hackers, but with the problem of a state-sponsored attack," said Money for the publication. Ironically, alert readers will recall that Arthur Money has not been averse to contributing to the mythos of the hacker as national security menace with his old story of hospital blood-type information tampering. (See September 8, 1999 entry, below.) The publication explains that Moonlight Maze was more serious than a previous cyberwar the Pentagon blew the whistle on -- Solar Sunrise -- "because of reports the hacking originated from the Russian Academy of Sciences . . . Reports indicate the hackers accessed sensitive DOD science and technology information." "Moonlight Maze points a much stronger feasibility of an asymmetrical attack sponsored by a nation state," writes the publication. The DI&ER article went on to mention that critics of the Pentagon maintain DoD uses EPH to scare financing from Congress. Money said for the magazine that the danger of EPH was "not exaggerated." Jeffrey Hunker, a colleague of Clinton administration counter-terror guru Richard Clarke (also well known to readers of this archive), claimed that "electronic Pearl Harbor" is not scary enough to accurately describe the nefarious Internet threats aimed at the Department of Defense. "[The term Electronic Peal Harbor] connotes this 'lights-out' idea," Hunker said for Defense Information. "It tends to oversimplify the threat, which ranges from existential terrorism to overt acts to overthrow the military. . . . It trivializes the real [danger], which I think is much more than what's been understood." NB: Perhaps Hunker should scold his partner on the National Security Council, Richard Clarke, for "trivializing the real danger." In August, Clarke, expanding on a scenario for "electronic Pearl Harbor," stated for Signal magazine: "Envision all of these things happening simultaneously - electricity going out in several major cities; telephones failing . . ." Th national security mandarin rhetorical tactic for this week can be boiled down to the following: If the current propaganda on "electronic Pearl Harbor" is insufficiently menacing-sounding, make claims that the shadowy evil is even worse than previously imagined. ------------- October 9, 1999: "In Theory, Reality, US Open to Cyber-Attack -- An NSA test exposed vulnerability of critical computer systems to hackers; Outside assault proved it," was the sensational headline from the Los Angeles Times. The piece continued the trend of inexplicably poor reporting on Moonlight Maze by the Times. LA Times reporter Bob Drogin's pieces on Moonlight Maze in the second week of October have been notable for their great reliance on anonymous sources and a number of notable factual gaffes. In paragraph seventeen, buried near the end of the piece, Drogin writes: "Indeed, the evidence suggests a certain amount of hype and hysteria have overshadowed the reality of cyberspace." It was an inadvertently telling choice of words, for in the story's second paragraph -- one of the piece's impact points -- Drogin falls prey to the same phenomenon. Drogin invokes the Pentagon ghost story of Eligible Receiver -- the secret DoD wargame conducted two years ago which proponents of "electronic Pearl Harbor" insist demonstrated the nation could be flattened by cyberattack. Drogin writes: "The [Eligible Receiver] hackers broke into networks that direct 911 emergency systems." It is a clear and rather extravagant error. Appearing in June of 1998 to testify before Congress, Ellie Padgett, deputy chief of the National Security Agency's office of defensive information warfare spoke of how Eligible Receiver addressed the alleged vulnerability of the 911 phone system. In a simulated exercise, Padgett said, "we scripted (an) Internet message (that) would be sent out to everybody saying there was a problem with the 911 system, understanding that human nature would result in people calling the 911 system to see if there was a problem." The working idea in this part of Eligible Receiver revolved around the hypothesis that many people viewing the message on the Internet in a newsgroup might panic and phone their local 911 trunk, causing a jam-up on the line. "It can probably be done, this sort of an attack, by a handful of folks working together . . ." Padgett said. This is an extremely far cry from Drogin's assertion that the 911 system was broken into by alleged Eligible Receiver hackers. In fact, it has nothing at all to do with breaking into a 911 computer system, whatever that might be. However, it is consistent, thematically, with the flavor of of the mythology propagated on Eligible Receiver. In fact, during an interview with Crypt Newsletter in the summer of 1998 concerning Eligible Receiver, a Pentagon spokeswoman for the affair asserted "no actual switching systems" were broken into at any time during Eligible Receiver. She went on to say that Eligible Receiver had only simulated these attacks on NSA computer networks set up to emulate potential domestic national systems. Nevertheless, Drogin also writes in paragraph two of the Times piece: "In less than three months, the [Eligible Receiver hackers] secretly penetrated computers that control electrical grids in Los Angeles, Washington, and other major cities." The lead claims in the Los Angeles Times article are the framing points for a larger discussion on how Moonlight Maze has publicly proved what the Eligible Receiver exercise secretly demonstrated two years ago, which constitutes another rather extensive leap in linking the facts that are known about both. Drogin quotes from counter-terrorist "czar" Richard Clarke: "An enemy could systematically disrupt banking, transportation, utilities, finance, government functions and defense." The Clarke quotes are functionally identical to the same assertions made for Signal magazine (see below) in August of this year when it was suggested that the Freedom of Information Act could be "modified" as part of a plan to help protect us from cyberattack. They add nothing to the actual body of knowledge on Moonlight Maze. "It's cheaper and easier than building a nuclear weapon," said Clarke for the LA Times. Buried in Drogin's piece is comment by John Gilligan who "directs information technology and information systems at the [Department of Energy.]" Gilligan, while talking about hacker attacks, "[also argued] that the danger is usually overstated," according to the Times. "To get access to the electricity grid computers, to start to shut some of the grid, you have to really work at it . . . To do a Pearl Harbor, you need a lot of inside information." Which is precisely the point Crypt Newsletter made in a more lengthy article late last year. Or read this media analysis condensing what is known about Moonlight Maze over the past nine months. ------------- On National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," Representative Curt Weldon declaimed on topics related to Moonlight Maze. "[Curt] Weldon says a successful hacker could disrupt civilian life, striking hospitals or train systems," said the NPR interviewer. WELDON: "It's not a matter of if America has an electronic Pearl Harbor, but when." This favorite Weldon mantra has appeared a number of times in the past year. (See August 8 and March 5, 1999 entries, below.) ------------- October 7, 1999: "Everyday a new cyberwar!" Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times filed a front page story entitled "Yearlong Hacker Attack Nets Sensitive US Data." It was, you guessed it, on Moonlight Maze. Drogin's story, while lengthy, produced no new information on Moonlight Maze. In it, no one could say with any precision what had been stolen that was so important, other than the usual references to "unclassified but still sensitive information about defense technical research matters." Drogin's piece stated that Wednesday marked "the first public confirmation of Moonlight Maze. This was flat-out wrong. The first public confirmation of Moonlight Maze was before Congress by Curt Weldon and Asst. Secretary of Defense John Hamre in the first quarter of this year. Note 1: The genesis of Moonlight Maze: Read about how Pentagon info-warriors claimed we were in the secret cyberwar earlier this year. The Los Angeles Times article was notable for its genuinely excessive reliance on anonymous sources passing on innuendo, speculation, hypotheses and gossip on the matter. Some excerpts: " . . . circumstantial evidence points heavily toward a Russia-based intelligence gathering operation, officials said." "'There are strong indications and it's our belief, that it's coming from Russia and that it may be a sponsored activity,' a senior Energy Department official said." "Another computer security expert called Moonlight Maze 'the longest-running and most widespread attack we've seen. It's not been stopped . . . It's not even clear why. But the consequences are potentially huge." "One US intelligence veteran, now a Senate staff member, said that the Internet has created huge new opportunities, as well as frightening vulnerabilities, for spy agencies around the world. 'Think of it . . . You can sit anywhere in the world now and run a spy operation.'" "A senior White House official said that the evidence so clearly points to Russia that it almost seems like a deliberate diversion." "Other intelligence experts argued that skilled hackers hired by Russian organized crime elements may be probing for commercially valuable information." "Some experts suggested that France, a longtime proponent of economic espionage, may be the ultimate customer. That theory also remains unproved, however . . . " Which would seem indisputable. ------------- The CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) supplied a brief October 7 report from Moscow's ITAR-TASS news service entitled: "Russian Intelligence Denies Alleged Cyber Attack on US." "Russian intelligence has nothing to do with stealing information from U.S. Federal networks," Boris Labusov, spokesman for the SVR Foreign Intelligence Service, told Itar-Tass on Thursday [7 October]. "Labusov noted that 'American specialists never found out the source of the attack, they just mentioned it came from Moscow.'" "[Labusov] said just ordinary amateur hackers or secret services from third countries might well be behind [Moonlight Maze]." This continues a recent pattern in which parties associated with the US government or Pentagon repetitively accuse other nations of engaging in cyberwar or cybersabotage against American assets. Earlier this month, a National Infrastructure Protection Center analyst issued a report alleging unnamed foreign computer programmers from India, China, Israel and a host of other countries were quite possibly engaged in vague but nefarious plots to install software backdoors in American operating systems as part of plans to bring about "electronic Pearl Harbor." Subsequently, Indian officials denied such was the case. ------------- Everyday a new cyberwar -- another in a continuing series! In the continuing manic theme that is "cyberwar" Reuters published "Y2K seen as possible cover for Cyberwars" on October 7, 1999. While it repeated much of the cliches currently in favor, it was unusual in that it actually presented the view of a few skeptics. "If you've been worrying that the worst case scenario for the millennium computer bug is that your heating could fail for a couple of days or the traffic lights go on the blink, brace yourself . . . Some military experts fear that guerrillas or rogue states might launch assaults on communications networks under cover of the millennium computer bug in what's been called a possible `Digital Pearl Harbour.'" "Michael Vatis of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the top U.S. `cybercop,' warned . . . that changes to computer software that might threaten security could have been planted by foreign contractors under the guise of Year 2000 bug fixes." "The good news is that this information warfare or `NetWar' is considered unlikely." The Reuters report added that terrorists wishing to attack a nation's infrastructure "would be more likely to try to blow [it] up with conventional explosives." Paul Beaver, a Jane's Defence Weekly flugleman, mystifyingly implied Serbian hackers were the only ones capable of attacking the West. ``I don't think there is anyone around with the motive to do anything with the exception of the Serbs; they are the only people with the technical capability who are a potential enemy and might have a grudge.'' ``This idea of a digital Pearl Harbour, the Americans are worried about it, but more as a long term problem than just Y2K.'' You ain't just whistlin' Dixie, cobber. ``I have my doubts about this digital Pearl Harbour syndrome, you have to assume some rationality even in terrorists,'' added another expert for Reuters. "Real bombs are more likely than computer attacks," wrote Reuters. ``The notion that terrorists are thick and lash out at things around them is wrong," was still another piquant quote. The Reuters piece then went back to the idea that foreign nations have used their programmers to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids by planting boobytraps and computer viruses in software during Y2K remediation. ``The longer term problem is to what extent have terrorists or criminals been able to get into corporate and government networks and plant problems for the future like logic bombs.'' ------------- Everyday a new cyberwar -- another in a continuing series! While the US mainstream media has been obsessing about Moonlight Maze this month -- the story of unnamed "Russian hackers" attacking the Department of Defense in a secret cyberwar (that actually made similar rounds in the first quarter of the year) -- gone unnoticed is this next small item from the Australian Associated Press. "Hackers from US military base attack ASX system" was the title of an Australian news story on October 3 -- about unnamed "American hackers" who had tried to break into the Australian Stock Exchange from a U.S. military base. Crypt Newsletter can't help but smile at the irony of this situation and it is purely the milk of human kindness that prevents it from pointing out too strongly that the Australians don't seem to have as catchy a name in their press as the US media does in "Moonlight Maze." "Computer hackers from a United States military installation had tried to break into the Australian Stock Exchange's data base, ASX managing director Richard Humphry revealed [on October 3]" wrote the Australian wire service. "[Humphry] said the attempt from the US military installation 'was trying to break into our site, but had broken into another site to achieve that objective.'" "We were able to trace that back to another country, and to an installation that was associated with military activities and accordingly we contacted the defence department and asked that they advise us the likelihood that this country was attempting some form of attempted break into our database," Humphry said for AAP. "[Humphry] said he had received an assurance that there was no possibility of the attack being an official attempt to breach the ASX's security arrangements . . . it was understood the attempt came from an airbase situated in a western US state." Buried in the Australian news was a comment from a spokesperson at the Australian Stock Exchange that the cyberwar coming from the US military site occurred in late 1998. Why this would suddenly be news in the last quarter of 1999 was not explained by the news organ. ------------- Everyday a new cyberwar, et cetera! October 7, 1999: a New York Times story entitled "Computer Intruders Apparently From Russia, Senate Panel Is Told" joined the media cascade on Moonlight Maze. As has been the pattern with Moonlight Maze, the Times story added nothing to information already published. It did, however, rehash the same gossip and repeat the usual warnings about national computer danger repeated since 1992. "Intruders who stole sensitive information on Defense Department weapons during a widespread series of attacks on government and private computer networks are apparently based in Russia, an FBI official told a Congressional panel . . ." wrote the Times, referring to NIPC's Michael Vatis. Vatis' testimony on Moonlight Maze, in fact, has been in response to continued media interest in it -- not because anything special appears to be happening re US national security interests. Lost in much of the overheated coverage on Moonlight Maze was Vatis testimony before Congress that most computer security breakdowns can be traced to insiders. "Senator Robert F. Bennett, a Utah Republican who is chairman of a special Senate committee that is overseeing Year 2000 efforts . . . [said] 'The challenge of information warfare will be the No. 1 security issue for the next administration," wrote the Times. He proposed "electronic FEMA" -- this on top of the already endless proposals for computer security czars and super-spying networks to combat the dread threats coming at us from the Internet. And, of course, it doesn't mention all the agencies already in place that allegedly make claims to be dealing with the threat -- like the NIPC, the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office (CIAO), the NSA, the too numerous to count DoD computer emergency response teams, the Department of Energy's Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC), the NSTAC (the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee) the . . . well, you get the picture. One could fill a fair-sized pamphlet with names and numbers. "I think there are indications that there will be some [attacks] -- not teen-agers hacking, but nation-states . . . We are living in a new world, a world where there is no sanctuary. It becomes very important to start thinking that way," Bennett said for the Times. ------------- October 6, 1999: "Cyber Blitz Traced To Russia, FBI Says," was a story issued by Reuters. Once again it revives Asst. Secretary of Defense John Hamre's Moonlight Maze -- rapidly becoming the "Eligible Receiver" of 1999 in this year's stories on "electronic Pearl Harbor." "A major effort to pierce U.S. government and private-sector computer networks seems to have originated in Russia, a top U.S. law-enforcement officer told Congress Wednesday," wrote Reuters. NIPC head Michael Vatis was testifying before John Kyl's Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology and Terrorism. For want of a better descriptor, Kyl is basically the Senate version of "electronic Pearl Harbor" dilettante Curt Weldon. (Read more on Kyl, Weldon and Moonlight Maze in subsequent entries.) The astute reader will note that Vatis did not actually say anything new on Moonlight Maze. In Moonlight Maze, Vatis said intruders had stolen ``unclassified but still-sensitive information about essentially defense technical research matters.'' ``About the furthest I can go is to say the intrusions appear to originate in Russia,'' he said. A Pentagon public relations officer "said the Defense Department knew of no classified information that had been jeopardized in the Moonlight Maze intrusions." Like so many things having to do with secret cyberwars and "electronic Pearl Harbor," testimony and gossip on Moonlight Maze have been all over the map. The following, a selection of quote from recent stories, illustrates the mutually contradictory nature of it: From Newsweek reporter Greg Vistica: "This was, Pentagon officials say flatly, 'a state-sponsored Russian intelligence effort to get U.S. technology' -- as far as is known, the first such attempt ever by Russia." From Federal Computer Week: ". . . Pentagon officials and security experts refute claims that the Russian government officially took part in a computer break-in that reportedly resulted in the theft of sensitive naval codes and missile-guidance data." From Federal Computer Week: ". . . a DOD spokesperson called recent media coverage of [Moonlight Maze] 'a combination of outright fabrications, distortions and incorrect quotations,' adding that military secrets were not compromised." From a London Sunday Times piece which ran in July: "The intelligence heist . . . that could cause damage to America in excess of that caused by Chinese espionage in nuclear laboratories, involved computer hacking over the past six months." From Reuters: ". . . the Defense Department knew of no classified information that had been jeopardized in the Moonlight Maze intrusions." Reuters attributed Senator John Kyl with "frequently" mentioning ``electronic Pearl Harbor.'' "[Michael] Vatis linked the greatest potential national-security threat to ``information warfare,'' the ability to launch viruses and other cyber weapons against the bits and bytes that glue modern life," wrote Reuters. The wonderful thing about secret cyberwar is that it can be anything anyone wants it to be. In secret cyberwar, it is not really necessary that anyone be an actual reliable witness to it or that effects of it even be presented or seen. ------------- October 1, 1999: Electronic Pearl Harbor between 1:30 and 3:30 quoth the teenage hacker. "Hacker Threatens To Leave Country In The Dark" was the headline of an un-bylined story issued by Reuters on Wednesday, Sept. 29. "A computer hacker has threatened to break into the computers of Belgian electricity generator Electrabel Wednesday afternoon and halt the power supply to the entire country," proclaimed the news service in 500-word squib. ``Tomorrow I will leave Belgium without power, and that is not so difficult,'' an anonymous hacker crowed to a Belgian newspaper. ``Wednesday I will get into Electrabel's computers between 1:30 and 3:30 in the afternoon and shut down all the electricity.'' The Belgian electric company, Electrabel, "said it was taking the threat seriously but felt that the hacker had little chance of succeeding." ``There is very little chance that Belgium could be without power,'' said a corporate spokersperson. No national blackout was subsequently reported. Reuters reporters have established a reputation as easy targets for "hacker" pranks. Earlier this year, the news agency ran a story in which a hacker group claimed to have hijacked a British military satellite. This, too, was revealed to be without substance. (See below or Crypt News 51 for extended comment). This new addition to the Crypt Newsletter Joseph K Guide to Tech Terminology results: cyberwar: a condition in which electronic conflicts, threats and absurd claims are reported by the media but not experienced by anyone else. Anonymous teenagers or employees of the Pentagon tend to be central players. Usage: After being forbidden to attend a rave in Antwerp by his mother, the teenage "hacker" went grumpily to his room and declared a cyberwar on Belgium by sending a menacing electronic mail to a local reporter. ------------- September 27, 1999: "Department of Defense Preps For Y2K-Related Cyberattacks," was the title of this story in Federal Computer Week. The Pentagon continues to feed the idea that the New Year will bring upon us "electronic Pearl Harbor." "DOD and intelligence officials are concerned that rogue nations or foreign intelligence agents may use Year 2000 failures as a smokescreen to take down or steal electronic information from sensitive DOD networks," writes FCW. "Sandia National Laboratories officials [said] that 'terrorists, hackers and other criminals might use Y2K-induced infrastructure failures as cover for theft, arson, bombings, etc.'" Hackers are going to use alleged Y2K glitches to start fires and blow up buildings? The FCW article writes the Pentagon has "established five graduated Year 2000 alert levels that DOD will use to warn units of imminent Year 2000-related threats." However, such a threat tier appears to already be in place at DoD with the INFOCON system -- warning levels used to describe information warfare conditions DoD-wide. "Under the highest state of Year 2000 vulnerability -- Y2K Posture Level One -- DOD units are advised to prepare for 'deliberate information operations attacks and opportunistic engagements by hostile forces.'" That is, smoking keyboards, crashing networks, PC's bursting into flame and a condition of general war against US forces. Paradoxically, DoD's Y2K Posture Level One would appear to be identical to its INFOCON DELTA, like Y2K Posture Level One, the fifth tier in an infowar alarm system. INFOCON DELTA is for: smoking keyboards, crashing networks, PC's bursting into flame and a condition of general war against US forces. It is perplexing why DoD would create two functionally identical warning systems for infowar conditions. This would appear to be a a good recipe for confusion if the systems become unsynchronized or are interpreted heterogeneously throughout the US military. "Defense Secretary William Cohen is expected to issue the first Year 2000 posture statement after Sept. 30," writes FCW. FCW continues that the Joint Task Force for Computer Network Defense (JTF-CND) and the National Infrastructure Protection Center will conduct a classified conference on October 4 and 5 called "Preparing for the Cyber War." ------------- September 13, 1999: The story of Moonlight Maze is one that refuses to die. Appearing in the first quarter of this year and timed to coincide with FY 2000 budget determinations, John Hamre and Congressman Curt Weldon warned of a secret "Russian attack" on US intelligence secrets allegedly located in cyberspace. The original story petered out around March but was revived again in July of this year when the London Sunday Times published a piece on it. Throughout the latter part of the summer, reporters from the mainstream media contacted Crypt Newsletter about it. All of the reporters contacting Crypt Newsletter for comment had one thing in common: They were all working from the exact same crib sheet. In addition to being inspired by the London Sunday Times piece (see below), the reporters all said or wrote that one "anonymous" source in "the Pentagon" was informing them that "Russian hackers" working off of the "Russian Academy of Sciences'" Internet domain were "involved." This being the case, one cannot totally dismiss the possibility that one person or office within the Pentagon or Department of Defense is attempting to pump this story into the mainstream U.S. media for the usual "cyber-scare" purposes. The latest appearance of "Moonlight Maze" comes from Newsweek, September 13, in Gregory Vistica's "We're In The Middle Of A Cyberwar." The Newsweek title is actually an old quote attributed to the Pentagon's John Hamre and lifted from the first quarter of the year. As such, the quote has become a watermark for stories on Moonlight Maze, although reporters employing it in the last quarter of 1999 rarely mention to their readers that it dates from much, much earlier in the year and a series of functionally identical articles published in the mainstream media at that time. Vistica's article reports nothing new. However, it takes all of its cues from the London Sunday Times piece and republishes, unattributed, much of the quote, phraseology, innuendo and unsubstantiated gossip from it. The same Murderer's Row that appears in all stories on Moonlight Maze -- Curt Weldon, John Hamre, and/or an unspecified "anonymous" Pentagon source -- appear. "Russian hackers may have pulled off what could be the most damaging breach ever of U.S. computer security . . ." writes Vistica breathlessly. "It's being called 'Moonlight Maze' . . ." which creates for Newsweek readers the impression that it is relatively new . . . when it is anything but. "This was, Pentagon officials [anonymous, of course] say flatly, 'a state-sponsored Russian intelligence effort to get U.S. technology' -- as far as is known, the first such attempt ever by Russia." Postscript: On September 27, 1999, Federal Computer Week published a story on "Moonlight Maze" by reporter Dan Verton. Entitled "Russia hacking stories refuted," the piece stated flatly, "DOD sources say U.S. military secrets were not compromised." Bias disclosure: Crypt Newsletter was a quoted source in this article. ". . . Pentagon officials and security experts refute claims that the Russian government officially took part in a computer break-in that reportedly resulted in the theft of sensitive naval codes and missile-guidance data," wrote FCW. ". . . a DOD spokesperson called recent media coverage of [Moonlight Maze] 'a combination of outright fabrications, distortions and incorrect quotations,' adding that military secrets were not compromised." This is an interesting quote because it reveals that some anonymous parties within Department of Defense become dismayed when the Pentagon's original propaganda on info-war takes on a life of its own and spins out of control in the mainstream media. Consider, it was Asst. Secretary of Defense John Hamre who started the news of Moonlight Maze when he went before Congress to attest in classified session that the US was under attack from the Internet by foreign parties in the first quarter of the year. One of the anonymous sources peddling the story of Moonlight Maze through the summer, "who works for a major Internet domain registration firm, said he found copies of DOD duty rosters, network maps and photographs of DOD facilities residing on servers belonging to [the alleged attackers]." "George Smith, editor of the Crypt Newsletter . . . said the so-called offensive C2 network in [Russia] 'sounds like a good description of a common playground for teenage hackers -- Russian, American, European or Asian.'" "As far as the pictures of DOD facilities and other materials that sources claim to have found on Russian systems, Smith said that type of material can be found in many places on the Internet." " 'Portions of DOD are prone to yell cyberwar at just about any potential misuse of cyberspace,' he said." ------------- "Info war or electronic saber rattling?" was the title of a Ziff-Davis News story by Kevin Poulsen, on September 8, 1999. Rather tepid stuff, by Poulsen's standards (he, a famous uber-hacker who has done his share of time in the big house), it demonstrated that, disappointingly, no matter your credentials, Ziff-Davis can straight-jacket even the most legitimately opinionated of its correspondents into a mostly vanilla-flavored flugleman for whatever power-suited tripe comes out of the dog-and-pony shows that pass for information warfare conventions. Reporting from Winn Schwartau, Inc's. annual infowar convention in Washington, DC, (although he doesn't mention it by name in the text) Poulsen quoted the ubiquitous "electronic Pearl Harbor" dilettante, Pennsylvania Congressman Curt Weldon. Speaking as one of Schwartau, Inc's featured EPH-pitchmen (for which assorted military types and corporate managers will pay $1000 or so a ticket to hear), Weldon said: "In my opinion, neither missile proliferation nor weapons of mass destruction are as serious as the threat you are here to discuss." This was quite surprising, as far as Weldon propaganda goes, actually, because it was only two years or so ago that the Republican from the House used almost exactly the same terms to describe what was then his current fad worry: loose Soviet suitcase nukes. Dreaded loose Soviet suitcase nukes were said to be possibly floating around in the criminal underground, just waiting for the right buyer wishing to blow up an American city. The Russians denied it, Weldon ranted, the Russians denied it, Weldon ranted, the Russians denied it . . . no cities blew up, and Congressman Curt moved on to better things . . . like "electronic Pearl Harbor." Representative Weldon has become well known inside the Beltway for his remarkable ability to see things others cannot quite glimpse. The loose Russian suitcase nukes are only one of the first entries in a growing list of dreadful menaces that has also included "Russian hackers" attacking Department of Defense computers in operation Moonlight Maze and the threat of nefarious nuclear weapon-pumped electronic attack on the US mainland. At a conference in June of this year hosted by the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association (AFCEA), Weldon intimated that another threat facing the nation was that of an electromagnetic pulse attack in which an enemy would detonate a hydrogen bomb high in the atmosphere over the continent in order to destroy the country's electronic communications networks. However, even the Pentagon has been reluctant to accept this as a reasonable possibility. At Schwartau, Inc., Poulsen quoted Weldon, retelling this howler: that of the computer terrorist changing patient blood-type information at a U.S. hospital through remote diddling. The blood-type-information-tampering hacker is a legend that has been floating around in different flavors for a number of years. Late in 1998 it got renewed impetus when the Pentagon's chief information officer, Arthur Money, put it into one of his speeches. (See Crypt News 51) Money embedded it as yet another techno-myth in the public domain when he informed a group of journalists at an AFCEA convention in 1998 -- the same one in which Curt Weldon indicated that the nation was at risk from a nuclear missile-pumped electromagnetic attack -- that "hackers" had altered information in a medical database by changing the data on blood types of soldiers. Several news sources subsequently reported the story. And it has already become an addition to the "lore" on the alleged "capabilities" of anonymous hackers. However, none of it was true. Money neglected to inform his audience that the "incident" was a simulation from another Pentagon wargame. Money -- heh, heh, just kidding, folks -- later corrected himself. More recently, this ghost story, in slightly different text, raised its head in a CIA Foreign Broadcast Information Service translation of a Russian TV segment on hackers broadcast by Moscow NTV on the 29th of August. From the FBIS translation of the script, the Russian TV correspondent recounts: "In a shoot-out FBI agents wounded a criminal who could have given them a lead to an entire gangster syndicate. The colleagues of the bandit, who was taken to hospital and was being heavily guarded there, tried to do away with him several times, using their usual methods. To no avail. And then hackers took over . . . Because his condition was extremely serious, he was put on an artificial blood circulation system and a cardiostimulator. It is no secret perhaps that in America all electronic systems, including medical ones, are interlinked within a net so that help could be provided quickly, another hospital could be consulted and so on. Using the Internet criminals, broke into this hospital's local network and then into the patient's cardiostimulator and changed the stimulator's programme with remote control. The patient died." Later on in the Russki TV script, another giggler erupts: "Well-known Hollywood scenes showing some intellectually advanced terrorists destroying spacecraft or blowing up chemical plants or power stations with the help of a computer are not an invention by sci-fi writers. Today this is real, says a representative of the FBI in Moscow. At least one case has been reported in which a recently launched satellite was lost due to intervention by hackers." This particular hoax was accepted by a couple of news services earlier this year and later disowned with little notice. In the first week of March 1999, Reuters and the London Daily Telegraph reported a British defense satellite had been hacked and, as a result, lost. The British Ministry of Defense subsequently issued a humorous denial and Reuters repudiated its piece on the subject but the hoax was nevertheless successfully injected into the electronic aether of the misinformation warriors. (See Crypt News 54 -- special edition.) The Russian TV show also claimed "hackers" could write software "causing people to have hallucinations," which is still another myth . . . but not worth going into in detail here. In any case, like most hoaxes and myths, no one ever cites real people, places or things attached to them. At Schwartau Inc's convention, Weldon couldn't name names for Poulsen, either. "Not everyone is convinced that America is facing an electronic Pearl Harbor, though," wrote Poulsen. Do tell. At the close of the piece, Poulsen quoted EPIC's Marc Rotenberg naysaying the notion. Postscript: This year's edition of Schwartau, Inc. also features another famous gobbler of hoaxes, James Adams -- he of Gulf War virus myth infame, as chairperson of a workshop rather ironically entitled: "Perception Management in Peace, Conflict, and War." ------------- In an August 31, 1999 edition of Reuters' "Netrends" feature, journalist Dick Satran trotted out a couple computer security industry marketing reps and corporate salesmen to warn that hackers and other unnamed terrorists were poised to use the cover of the Millenium to strike with viruses and assorted software boobytraps. "The threat ranges from the pranksters -- people who celebrate the millennium by hacking a few computers -- to cyber-terrorists who want to bring modern civilization to its knees," declared Constance Fortune, a vice-president for Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) menacingly. SAIC has often aggressively marketed its expertise in providing info-war "solutions" for computer threats it just happens to warn the press of. "You need people who recognize the signs of an attack, and who are trained to shut down the system as soon as possible when [trouble] hits," added Fortune. And who can supply such people? Why, SAIC, naturally. "We're already seeing lots of (Y2K hacker) postings [on the Internet]," continued the SAIC sales veep, helpfully. The SAIC marketroid alleged further that programmers hired to fix Y2K-related problems were also quite possibly using the opportunity to install malicious software which would later be exploited by unnamed hackers. SAIC, of course, knows how to handle such problems. One hacker was quoted as saying the computer security industry was purposely exaggerating the case for malicious meddling and virus peddling to boost sales of its services. Science Applications International Corporation's Fortune also made an appearance in an Australian Associated Press article published on June 15, entitled, "Y2K problem opens door for cybercrime." "The Y2K bug had created a diversion large enough for cyberterrorists to wreak more havoc on the world's computer systems than any computer virus, a computer security conference [in Brisbane] was told today," said the article. "Those who create viruses, worms and other destructive computer phenomena have found ways to take advantage of the Y2K problem," said the Science Applications marketroid for reporters. "By working through the programming gaps, cybercriminals and cyberterrorists may gain unauthorised access to the technology and information on other parts of the system," she said for AAP. "If that system is a major military or financial system, the results could be disastrous and the Y2K problem would take the blame." Science Applications International Corporation employees appear infrequently in the mainstream media to sound the alarm on this topic. The distinguishing characteristic of their media testimony is the company's unwillingness to cite specific, verifiable examples. Another example: In late 1998 Science Applications International Corporation vice-president, Duane Andrews, who appears multiple times in this archive -- claimed for USA Today -- "We have seen multiple times where Y2K activity has resulted in trap doors being placed in commercial systems." More on Duane Andrews of SAIC. Currently, Rob Rosenberger at Virus Myths is running an in-depth page on media-declared cyberwars and alleged virus attacks timed to coincide with Y2K. ------------- The August '99 issue of Signal magazine ran a long interview with counter-terror national security advisor Richard Clarke. Entitled "Hidden Hazards Menace U.S. Information Infrastructure," it contained all of the cliches, bromides and unbacked-up theories and allegations about information warfare that Crypt Newsletter readers have come to know and love over the past five years. "The greatest threat to U.S. security may come from internal software or hardware trapdoors lying dormant in the nation's critical infrastructure. The digital equivalent of Cold War moles, these hidden threats would serve as access points for criminals, terrorists or hostile governments to extort money, impel foreign policy appeasement or ultimately launch crippling information attacks on the United States," states Signal. There is "a very real possibility of an electronic Pearl Harbor," said Clarke for Signal. "Without computer-controlled networks, there is no water coming out of your tap; there is no electricity lighting your room; there is no food being transported to your grocery store; there is no money coming out of your bank; there is no 911 system responding to emergencies; and there is no Army, Navy and Air Force defending the country . . . All of these functions, and many more, now can only happen if networks are secure and functional. "A systematic [attack] could come from a terrorist group, a criminal cartel or a foreign nation . . . and we do know of foreign nations that are interested in our information infrastructure and are developing offensive capabilities that would allow them to take down sectors of our information infrastructure." For Signal, Clarke claimed "trapdoors" unspecified and theoretical, "some of which may already be in place, as the greatest potential threat to the information infrastructure. Residing in the operating systems of key networks that support the U.S. critical infrastructure, these trapdoors would provide windows of opportunity for any ill-intentioned adversary to wreak considerable havoc. 'It is at least theoretically possible that a nation could insert such trapdoors, and then make demands of the United States under threat to our infrastructure.'" And then the standard cyber-terror scenario that any fifteen year-old could dream up was deployed. "One possible scenario would feature a demand leveled by a foreign government or terrorist group. When the U.S. government refuses to comply, this adversary demonstrates its capabilities by reducing a region of the United States to chaos. 'I think the capability to do that probably exists in the hands of several nations,' Clarke states. 'I think it could exist in the near future in the hands of criminal and terrorist organizations.'" Clarke then repeats the mantra of "Eligible Receiver": "Envision all of these things happening simultaneously -electricity going out in several major cities; telephones failing in some regions; 911 service being down in several metropolitan areas. If all of that were to happen simultaneously, it could create a great deal of disruption, hurt the economy . . . " The updating and patching of software is detailed as a grave threat to national security. "Malicious individuals and organizations regularly peruse [software patch] lists, and they probe systems to find someone who has not applied the patch," said Clarke. Clarke alleges, theoretically -- of course, that foreign governments inimical to the United States, could be, were or are inserting malicious trapdoors in the computer and networking industry by having their agents pose as programmers who are subsequently hired to do contract work on the inside. So anyone who employs foreign nationals, or Chinese-Americans, or . . . or . . . is vulnerable. " . . . a few could act as enemy saboteurs, either sympathetically or through blackmail or bribery." "Malicious, self-propagating viruses strike computer systems worldwide," states Signal, rather obviously. Therefore viruses, too, will be the harbinger of "electronic Pearl Harbor." "It doesn't merely have to be the use of a trapdoor to enter a system, seize control and destroy the system . . . Any combination of malicious virus, denial of service and trapdoor disruptions can create chaos," states Clarke. Clarke democratically opines for Signal that the US government is willing to work with corporate America to change laws that could be "impediments to information assurance and security." And these impediment laws might be? Why, only ". . . the Freedom of Information Act, antitrust legislation and liability laws," reads the Signal piece. ------------- On Sunday, August 8, 1999, the Los Angeles Times published a story by one of its Washington, DC, bureau reporters, Jube Shiver. Entitled "Infamous Hacker's Sentencing Brings Little Comfort to Officials," the story -- although featuring a photo of Kevin Mitnick from 1995 -- was not really about him . . . but more along the lines of the stereotype "electronic Pearl Harbor" piece. Indeed, in the fourth paragraph, Shiver quoted Rep. Curt Weldon: "It's not a matter of if America has an electronic Pearl Harbor . . . It's a matter of when." Crypt Newsletter readers know the quote isn't new, dating from March of this year when it showed up in story supplied for an MSNBC piece written by Robert Windrem and John Miklaszewski.The Times piece suffered from the same shortcomings the vast body of literature on the subject already suffers from -- non-specific, unverifiable mumble about attacks by "terrorists" or "foreign nationals." " . . . domestic and foreign terrorists are taking aim at government computers," writes Shiver. No terribly convincing examples are cited other than the standard teenage defacement of government Websites. [NB: If one makes the assumption for a moment that cyberterrorists aimed at bringing down the American way of life are, as the mainstream media intimates, ubiquitous as ants at a picnic -- the empirical evidence would seem to indicate that they should be encouraged to keep wasting their time messing with the Internet and virtual .mil domains to no visible effect.] Anyway, Shiver repeats Curt Weldon's announcement about "Russian hackers" attacking the US, originally aired in other newsmedia in the first quarter of this year. Dubbed "Moonlight Maze" by John Hamre of the Pentagon, the story has more recently (as you have read) been revived by the London Sunday Times. Although Shiver does not call it "Moonlight Maze," he paraphrases Weldon's reference to it by writing, "[Weldon] added that the attackers included not just teenagers but also 'foreign nationals.'" The "foreign nationals," as is standard practice in these types of stories, remain unidentified. "Indeed, the FBI estimated that illegal hacking of Web sites in general caused more than $123 million in losses last year and said that the activity poses 'a growing threat . . . to the rules of law in cyberspace,'" writes the Times. However, by matter of contrast Crypt Newsletter notes that $123 million/year in damages, while only a guess by the FBI, pales in contrast to other common price tags: $2 billion for one combat ready B2 Stealth bomber, for instance; $40 million for an emergency Y2K office that the President wants to run for one weekend on January 1; $4.5 - 5 billion which President Clinton wants to earmark for extended computer security and counter-computer terror activities, on top of that which is already spent as a matter of day-to-day course in corporate, academic and government America. Shiver cannot -- or does not -- get the government or independent sources to provide any substantive proof of any potential for EPH other than the ripping up of a number of trivial Web pages that did not even exist a couple years earlier. "Although experts are uncertain whether the defacement of government Web sites may be a barometer of the government's vulnerability to more serious computer threats . . . The ease with which some government computers are being broken into has important implication for the nation." One of the implications? "Electronic commerce cannot flourish unless those using the Internet have faith that transactions are secure." This would probably constitute really startling news to regular users of Amazon . . . or CompuServe . . . or AOL . . . or eBay . . . or eTickets, all of whom seem to, as a group, have a fair amount of confidence in electronic commerce. Crypt Newsletter has never actually heard any Amazon user, and it knows a few, say, "Geez, I'm going to stop buying my books and CDs online because Curt Weldon and the Pentagon and newspapers said 'foreign nationals' are attacking our military in cyberspace and all our wallets in cyberspace must be next." ------------- "CyberScare" was published by ABCNEWS.com on August 4, 1999. "Beware the next Pearl Harbor! It won't come by sea, air or land. The next great threat against American could come by computer . . . at least that's what top Clinton administration officials say while trying to drum up national awareness about attempts to hack into U.S. government . . . systems . . . " Crypt Newsletter gives this article a solid "thumbs up"! But it's biased, since the piece is critical and CN was quoted extensively. Read "CyberScare" at ABCNEWS.com ------------- This next article, published by the United Kingdom's "Register" on August 2, 1999, never mentions "electronic Pearl Harbor" directly but is exactly about EPH . . . being a summation of beliefs delivered by US cyber-warriors that January 1, 2000 will be the equivalent of December 7, "a day that will live in infamy." Unlike the vast majority of counterparts in the US press, the Register's article is actually quite good. It brings an inspired sarcastic delivery to what most reporters only write about with hackneyed hysteria. "US govt views Y2K rollover with fatalism" goes the piece. At a Congressional hearing of the Senate's Y2K Committee, The Register writes: "The sexy topics for this hearing were cyberterrorism and information warfare. The cast of witnesses included Michael Vadis [sic], director of FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC); John Koskinen, chairman of the President's Information Coordination Center (ICC); and Richard Schaeffer, director of infrastructure and information assurance for the Department of Defence (DOD). Their theme, endlessly repeated, was that Y2K stuff-ups are going to provide an unfortunate layer of cover for terrorists and hostile military organisations belonging to various tribes without the law, enabling them to visit secret plagues upon information systems graciously maintained by decent Christian peoples." "No one is saying whether the digital barbarians really are at the gate, or who they are if so . . ." continued the piece, which is a rather astute statement concerning the claims of the info-warriors and mandarins of national security. Richard Clarke, Bill Clinton's counter-terrorism point man, was absent from the hearings commented the publication. Although expected, The Register opined that Clinton advisors had sandbagged Congress and found an excuse to keep him away so he would not have to testify about FIDNET, the grand Federal plan to monitor all of US cyberspace, leaked a day before the Senatorial hearing. Instead, committee co-chair Sen. Christopher Dodd (D -- Conn) had to rely on Michael Vatis, head of the National Infrastructure Protection Center. Dodd, wrote The Register, inquired of Vatis whether there was any "hard evidence" the US was being cyber-attacked by foreign military organizations." "I wouldn't want to answer in this forum," Vatis said. The hearings also discussed the Clinton administration's proposal to spend $40 million taxpayer dollars on an Information Coordination Center (ICC) to handle alleged Y2K meltdowns, unspecified attacks on the US infrastructure, and other related but only vaguely described computer catastrophes expected on January 1. ------------- From the London Sunday Times, July 25, 1999: "Russian Hackers Steal US Weapons Secrets" was the title of this breathless article. "American experts have long warned of a 'digital Pearl Harbor' in which an enemy exploits America's reliance on computer technology to steal secrets or spread chaos as effectively as any attack using missiles and bombs." wrote the Times. In this piece, the ubiquitous Assistant Secretary of Defense, John Hamre, appeared claiming: "We are in the middle of a cyberwar." This particular "cyberwar," which you may not have heard of, has been dubbed Moonlight Maze. The Hamre quote is not new, dating from the first quarter of the year. [See subsequent entries.] The Times wrote this secret cyberwar could be with Russia or China and speculated: " . . . Russia's relations with America have reached their lowest ebb since the Cold War because of NATO's intervention in Yugoslavia. Relations with China have also suffered. An offensive in cyberspace may be their one way of retaliating without getting into a shooting war." ------------- On June 26, 1999, the Christian Science Monitor featured a story entitled: "The hidden dangers of information warfare." The Monitor's reporter cited the Pentagon's secret exercise, Eligible Receiver, as an opportunity to invoke the cliche. ". . . Operation Eligible Receiver demonstrated the potential vulnerability of the U.S. government's information systems. The National Security Agency hired 35 hackers to launch simulated attacks on the national information structure. The hackers obtained 'root access' - the highest level of control - in 36 of the government's 40,000 networks. "If the exercise had been real, the attackers would have been able to create power outages across Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, and New York. They could have disrupted the Department of Defense's communication systems (taking out most of the Pacific Command) and gained access to computer systems aboard U.S. Navy vessels. "It was a disturbing exercise. So much so, that several top White House officials have spoken of the possibility of an 'electronic Pearl Harbor' attack on the U.S. mainland. Added to these vulnerabilities is the fact that most Americans have no sense of how information warfare will affect them." Further along, the Monitor called upon James Adams to provide the pro forma warnings. "It is a very serious problem," said Adams for the Monitor. "And it's getting more serious day by day. The structures that we have held constant for many years are disappearing and we need to look at things with new eyes. After all, your defenses are only as good as the single event that takes you down." Adams is well-know to Crypt Newsletter readers as author of "The Next World War," a book on the threat of information warfare that contained a number of laughable hoaxes, among them the infamous Gulf War virus myth, the writer accepted as fact. Adams is also the director of iDefense, a northern-Virginia based firm that offers consulting services aimed at the avoidance of the type of "electronic Pearl Harbor" scenarios he predicts. An iDefense press release distributed on June 3, 1999, states, in the grand hyperbole that is rather standard for missives distributed via PR Newswire: . "Infrastructure Defense, Inc. (iDEFENSE), an innovative market leader in protecting industry from cyber- attacks, announced today the launch of the only service available to the private sector that provides daily, comprehensive critical infrastructure threat and vulnerability alerts. Available next Monday (6/7/99), the unique service provides iDEFENSE clients daily notification and tailored analysis of a wide range of threats, vulnerabilities and incidents that could adversely impact their critical business operating systems. "The ongoing cyber-war between the government and various hacker groups highlights the urgency for the public and private sectors to develop a comprehensive approach to protecting the 'critical infrastructure.' While the hackers are currently focused on federal computer systems, the skirmish could quickly spill over into the private sector . . . 'One need only look at today's headlines to recognize industry's need for iDEFENSE -- the trusted source for knowledge it can use to protect the critical networks and systems upon which it are so dependent," said James Adams, CEO of iDEFENSE. "iDEFENSE draws upon an unparalleled understanding of the critical infrastructure and a keen awareness of the growing threats and vulnerabilities confronting industry to provide its clients a timely and truly unique service." Crypt Newsletter notes that dozens of relatively new companies, many of them based in northern Virginia, also offer "the only service available to the private sector that provides daily, comprehensive critical infrastructure threat and vulnerability alerts." In this article, Crypt Newsletter outlines James Adams' involvement with the Gulf War computer virus hoax. ------------- U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre warned Congress of an "electronic Pearl Harbor" by cyber-terrorists on March 9, 1999, and said the target is more likely to be commercial than military. "And this Pearl Harbor's going to be different," Hamre said scarily. "It's not going to be against Navy ships sitting in a Navy shipyard. It's going to be against commercial infrastructure . . . " ------------- "It's not a matter of if America has an electronic Pearl Harbor -- it's a matter of when," said Rep. Curtis Weldon, R-Penn, to reporters John Miklazewski and Robert Windrem, for MSNBC on March 5. In the same article and for the New York Times, Richard Clarke, a Clinton advisor on terrorism, said "An attack on American cyberspace is an attack on the United States, just as much as a landing on New Jersey . . . The notion that we could respond with military force against a cyberattack has to be accepted." Acting on the advice of Clarke, President Clinton recently proposed spending $1.5 billion for cyberdefense. Clarke, who has also employed the phrase "electronic Waterloo," because "electronic Pearl Harbor" isn't sufficiently scary, "is the genius who overrode the State Department, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and got Clinton to launch cruise missiles at training camps in Afghanistan and a medicine factory in Sudan, in hopes of killing the alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden," reads a piquant quote from an editorial that ran in the February 2 issue of the San Francisco Examiner. "All [Clarke] got was a night watchman and a few guerrilla trainees whose comrades are now even madder at us," it continues. "In 1986, Clarke hatched a plan to wage psychological warfare against Libya's Moammar Gadhafi by having spy planes set off sonic booms over his head . . . " ------------- Pentagon "information technology czar" Arthur Money told the trade publication Defense News on March 8, 1999, "We are appalled at how lax the public and industry are . . . I think it would take an electronic Pearl Harbor to wake up industry." Money's use of the info-warrior cliche came as a result of more efforts before Congress -- and anyone who will listen, really -- to raise more, um, money for cyberdefense. And what is Money's money? Fifteen billion dollars -- a figure carried over from a 1997 Defense Science Board report authored by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) vice-president Duane Andrews. Andrews, as you will read, is also featured in this piece for his publicity contributions in 1996 and 1993. Late in 1998 Crypt Newsletter wrote in "Issues in Science & Technology" magazine: " . . . [a] reason to be skeptical of the warnings about information warfare is that those who are most alarmed are often the people who will benefit from government spending to combat the threat. A primary author of a January 1997 Defense Science Board report on information warfare, which recommended an immediate $580 million investment [and $15 billion over five years] in private sector R&D for hardware and software to implement computer security, was Duane Andrews, executive vice president of SAIC, a computer security vendor and supplier of information warfare consulting services." This struck a nerve at the Pentagon and prompted a letter of response from Deputy Secrety of Defense John Hamre that read, in part: ". . . I take particular exception to [Crypt News'] insinuation that those who express concern about information warfare do so mainly because they will benefit from the resulting government spending. For several years a wide variety of sources in and out of government-private industry advisory councils, think tanks, academia, as well as entities such as [Duane Andrews'] Defense Science Board -- consistently have said we must do more in the area of information assurance and computer security. It is hardly surprising that some of the proponents of this research should work for companies who do business with the Defense Department. To impugn the integrity of their analysis on the basis of these associations does a disservice to those whose judgment and integrity I have come to value deeply." The recent budget requests for cyberdefense were also tied to Pentagon-triggered media reports that Department of Defense was in a cyberwar with parties unknown. ------------- On February 1, 1999, The New York Times' Tim Weiner profiled Richard Clarke: "The Man Who Protects America From Terrorism." "[Richard Clarke's] stock in trade is the stuff of techno-thrillers -- biological bombs in the Wall Street subway, chemical clouds of death in the Pentagon parking lot, cyberwar attacks . . . " "The mission of protecting Americans from attack, whether by states or rogue groups," wrote the Times, "is 'almost the primary responsibility of the government.' [Clarke] is trying to raise the fear of terrorism in the United States to the right level -- higher, not too high -- as he girds the nation against the possibility of an assault from nerve gas, bacteria and viruses, and from what he calls 'an electronic Pearl Harbor.'" "In his office, where a small sign reads 'Think Globally/Act Globally,' he spoke passionately about the threat of cyberwar, invisible attacks on the nation's computers, a terror so insidious, so arcane he has trouble convincing corporate chieftains and political commissars it is real. But it is out there, somewhere, he says, even if he can't prove it," wrote the Times reporter. "There is a problem convincing people that there is a threat . . . There is disbelief and resistance. Most people don't understand. CEOs of big corporations don't even know what I'm talking about. They think I'm talking about a 14-year-old hacking into their Web sites." Clarke rambles on, referencing the Pentagon's secret wargame "Eligible Receiver," but not mentioning it directly: "I'm talking about people shutting down a city's electricity . . . shutting down 911 systems, shutting down telephone networks and transportation systems. You black out a city, people die. Black out lots of cities, lots of people die. It's as bad as being attacked by bombs." "An attack on American cyberspace is an attack on the United States, just as much as a landing on New Jersey . . . The notion that we could respond with military force against a cyber-attack has to be accepted." "Imagine a few years from now: A president goes forth and orders troops to move. The lights go out, the phones don't ring, the trains don't move. That's what we mean by an electronic Pearl Harbor." "Clarke's profile first surfaced in 1986," Weiner writes. "He was an intellectual author of a plan to use psychological warfare against the Libyan leader, Moammar Gadhafi. Under his plan, flights of SR-71 spy planes set off 'sonic booms over [Gadhafi'] head, to tell him his air defenses couldn't stop us,' and mysterious American rafts floated up on the shores of Tripoli, Clarke said. The operation backfired when the Reagan White House was caught planting a false report in The Wall Street Journal about Libya's support of terrorism." --------------- The following citation is rather too rich in irony: On December 7, 1998, President Clinton's special counter-terror assistant, Richard Clarke, announced: "If an attack comes today with information warfare . . . [it would be] much, much worse than Pearl Harbor." --------------- On May 25, 1998, Brigadier General Robert F. Behler of the Strategic Command stepped up to the plate in the pages of Federal Computer Week to opine on "electronic Pearl Harbor" in a piece entitled "Fighting the virtual Cold War: There's no peace in cyberspace." Excerpts are included for your reference. "Less than a decade after the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, we are in the midst of a new Cold War," stated Behler on the secret cyberwars of the Internet. "A digital enemy can bypass the military and take down critical infrastructure -- automated power plants, stock markets and transportation systems -- and disable this nation without firing a shot . . . Call it a virtual Cold War . . ." "As the point man for computer security at the U.S. Strategic Command, which directs all U.S. strategic nuclear forces, I'm keenly aware of the stakes of warfare in the cyberworld. Each day, I see evidence that the United States is in a digital war with cyberbandits and terrorists who are intent on destroying our nation's computer systems. We are faced with individuals who may attack our computer systems, and more than 30 nations have sponsored programs to disrupt information systems worldwide. Experience has taught me that there is no peace in the cyberworld." "Keeping ahead of cyberenemies must become a national priority . . . I suggest the United States commit to a 'Year of Cyberspace Security.' Such an initiative would range from teaching schoolchildren the consequences of giving out their Internet addresses to developing better means of safeguarding sensitive information. ". . . Are we losing this war in cyberspace? Maybe; at this time I'm not certain. But I am certain that if we maintain the current level of complacency about computer security, 21st century cyberwarlords will 'eat our lunch.' ". . . The Year of Cyberspace Security is an idea whose time has arrived. We must step up to this challenge now or face an electronic Pearl Harbor . . ." --------------- Twice in the May 1997 issue of WIRED magazine, both in John Carlin's "Farewell to Arms." 1. "We will have a cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor at some point, and we do not want to wait for that wake-up call," attributed to former U.S. Deputy Atty. General Jamie Gorelick. 2. "I-war can be the kind of neat, conceptually contained electronic Pearl Harbor scenario that Washington scenarists like -- collapsing power grids, a stock market software bomb, an electromagnetic pulse that takes the phone system out." --------------- Twice in Robert Minehart's tutorial on Information Warfare, a course currently presented by the U.S. Army's training school in Carlisle, PA. Minehart's bio refers to him as an NSA/CIA/DIA employee and Visiting Professor of Information Warfare at Carlisle. Minehart prefers "Information Pearl Harbor" to "electronic Pearl Harbor" but as far as Crypt Newsletter is concerned, they're the same thing. 1. "So what would an effective Information Pearl Harbor look like?" 2. "The U.S. may find it difficult to use military force in response to an Information Pearl Harbor-type attack." --------------- Once by John Woodward, a mouthpiece for MITRE Corporation in McLean, VA, in a long-winded 1997 company Website sales pitch for hiring MITRE expertise in avoiding "electronic Pearl Harbor": "It's MITRE's job to keep the information warfare equivalent of [electronic] Pearl Harbor solely and exclusively in the realm of simulation." Also attributed to Woodward, "MITRE is the best source on information warfare in the world." Of course, how could it be otherwise? --------------- "Electronic Pearl Harbor" was invoked three times by strategist Martin Libicki, in "Defending Cyberspace and other Metaphors," a paper on info-war published by the Pentagon-administered National Defense University in Washington, D.C. The paper appeared earlier this year and Libicki uses the term "digital" in place of "electronic." 1."A strategic motive for a digital Pearl Harbor could be to dissuade the United States from military operations (perhaps against the attacking country) or to hinder their execution by disrupting mobilization, deployment, or command and control. 2. "How much damage could a digital Pearl Harbor cause?" 3. "A more pertinent question than how much damage a digital Pearl Harbor might cause is how well hackers attacks can delay, deny, destroy, or disrupt military operations." --------------- In the January 6, 1997 edition of the Wall Street Journal, reporter Tom Ricks attributes Duane Andrews of Science Applications International Corporation and the Pentagon's Defense Science Board with: "Warning of a possible 'electronic Pearl Harbor,' the task force appointed by the Defense Science Board also said the Pentagon should seek the legal authority to launch counterattacks against hackers." Keep in mind SAIC, like MITRE Corporation, advertises its skills in avoiding problems related to "electronic Pearl Harbor." --------------- "We could be on the brink of an 'electronic Pearl Harbor' or an 'information Chernobyl' and not even know it." This one was uttered by Frank Morgan, an Air Force Intelligence Agency/Air Force Information Warfare Center officer out of Kelly AFB, Texas, in an article for the September 1996 issue of Airman magazine entitled "Info Warriors!" --------------- In Cybernautics Digest, Vol. 3, No. 7 (1996), "All's Not Quiet on the Information Front": "Pentagon officials fear an electronic Pearl Harbor: an attack which could go undetected until it is too late." --------------- "[John] Deutch favors center to avoid `electronic Pearl Harbor' and [it] would not require hiring new personnel," showed up in a July 1, 1996 story on Congressional testimony on the subject of hackers and info-war. It appeared in Federal Computer Week. If you've been following newspapers, sometimes it seemed as if CIA-director Deutch spent most of 1996 talking about "electronic Pearl Harbor," a remarkable feat from someone who could not distinguish the PenPal Greetings Net virus hoax from reality. And in the same story, a couple paragraphs on: "I don't know whether we will face an electronic Pearl Harbor, but we will have, I'm sure, some very unpleasant circumstances in this area," said John Deutch. Postscript: In rather too obvious a case of delicious irony, John Deutch demonstrated in 1999 that even he didn't take his propaganda on "electronic Pearl Harbor" and the necessity for rigid computer security very seriously. Deutch received a reprimand for copying materials from a classified intelligence agency computer system to his home -- unclassified -- PC. It was, Crypt Newsletter wagers, a "very unpleasant circumstance" for the former CIA leader. And you can read about how John Deutch was taken in by the famous Penpal Greeting virus hoax. --------------- "Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), who chaired the hearing, raised the issue of 'an electronic Pearl Harbor' against the 'national information infrastructure,' and asked 'are we fully alerted to this danger now?" The above quote came from an article written by John Elliston for something called "Dossier." It, of course, also repeats the Deutch "electronic Pearl Harbor" quote -- published by hundreds around the country -- taken from the same July 1996 Congressional hearings. --------------- "We're facing an electronic Pearl Harbor," said Ronald Gove, a vice president of Science Applications International Corporation, at a 1995 National Computer Security Association Info-war conference, as reported by a September '95 issue of the Arizona Star. --------------- "The Pentagon's New Nightmare: An Electronic Pearl Harbor" was the title of a Neil Munro-penned editorial in the July 16, 1995 edition of The Washington Post. --------------- And in Alvin and Heidi Toffler's 1993 book entitled "War and Anti-War," "electronic Pearl Harbor" is said to be just waiting to happen. (Page 149 in a section entitled "Info-terror.") Duane Andrews of Science Applications International Corporation also makes an appearance in the Toffler book, and similar to what he said in 1997, he says in "War and Anti-War:" "Our information security is atrocious, our operation [secrecy] is atrocious, our communications secrecy is atrocious." --------------- Other interesting articles du jour: An Electronic Pearl Harbor? Not Likely -- From the National Academy of Sciences' "Issues in Science and Technology" policy journal. Like a hotdog and relish, there's no "electronic Pearl Harbor" without the Pentagon's Eligible Receiver. The Nutty Professors: Academics tabbed by FBI disgrace agency by falling for Internet April Fool's jokes. Another classic story of confusion and dirty deeds done dirt cheap on the info-highway from "The Virus Creation Labs." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- EMP PROTECTION METHODS - 1996 Information Warfare IW with electromagnetic attack or High Power Microwave HPM-weapons Cyberwar attack of electromagnetic type against electronic/computer installation, is intended to cause denial of service for short or long periods of time. Some reports from Europe and the US suggest that IT electromagnetic attack is beginning to occur. Most military programs are classified and the general public knows little concerning their nature but as the technology becomes available to criminals and terrorists, it may be directly applied to the infrastructure elements of our society. This includes financial institutions, aircraft, security, medical, automotive and other critical equipment used everyday in our society. An important criteria for a cyber-terrorist would be that any of the parts and materials used would have to be those that could be easily found in any city and were not traceable by conventional counter-terrorist agencies such as the local police and insurance investigators. From unclassified sources, we know that a lot of nations are well ahead in this field. With the size of a small briefcase, the generator could be placed very close to target system, like a computer at a desk. 1995 saw the first known use of HPM technology by subversives. Chechnyan rebels used HPM to defeat a Russian security system and gain access to a controlled area. Having determined that we are at risk from electromagnetic attack, we must then determine what the likely style of IW-attack will be. High Power Microwave HPM-weapons of conventional type is a narrow band system and generate extremely high powered (gigawatts) RF sine wave at some given frequency, most often to cause a target system (computer) to burn out. Ultra Wide Band UWB-weapons generate a much wider band of frequencies than do HPM sources (narrow band) and thus ensure that some energy is at a frequency to efficiently couple to the computer system. Equipment which has been hardened against electromagnetic attack will withstand orders of magnitude greater field strengths than standard commercially rated equipment. For information about High Power Microwave (HPM) detectors invented at FOA, see EME AB's and FOA's homepage. Our business is protection against IW Information Warfare with electromagnetic attack, HPM-weapons (High Power Microwave) and HERF-weapons (High Energi Radio Frequency). Contact EME for more information ! EME AB Phone: +46 13 213434 Plojaregatan 70 Mobile: 070 7190251 583 33 Linkoping Fax: +46 13 213434 ------------------------------- High Power Microwave (HPM) detectors invented at FOA FOA Defence Research Establishment is looking for industries interested in buying the patent right or contributing means for a continued development of existing prototypes currently being tested at FOA in Sweden. Patent applications for detectors of HPM-radiation have been submitted and one of them is now patent pending as Swedish Patent 507 085. EME AB have recently received a contract from FOA to investigate the market and applications for the active and passive HPM-detectors invented at FOA. With the patent pending invention, it is possible to distinguish field strength, wavelength and polarization of the HPM-radiation. Photographic films and thermal printing paper have sucessfully been used as a detector indicator mean in tests at FOA in Sweden with a HPM generator operating at 37 GHz. The following experiments concern tests of active detectors based on photodiodes, in a FOA internally funded innovation project which is planned to end in December1998. This video was shot in the FOA Defence Research Establishment HPM-laboratory with a shielded videocamera, which was pointed at three different objects under test - with short pulse wideband electromagnetic radition from a so called sub nanosecond slicer. The field strength was about 10 kV/m. The result from one such pulse was the following: - The unshielded electronic calculator (in front) was permanently damaged. - The shielded electronic calculator (in back) was not affected. - A false alarm was induced in the unshielded IR-alarm (to the left). Produced by: Kent Madsén and Rolf Jonsson, FOA Defence Research Establishment. Principles of HPM detectors The patent pending HPM-detector is available in both passive and active versions. It is based on field enhancement and concomitant microwave breakdown in narrow slots on ground planes. The breakdown causes a spark of light and the intent is to detect this light, either by a passive mean (such as films or sensitive paper) or an active mean (for instance sensitive photodiodes). By choosing the length, width and orientation of the slots, it is possible to distinguish the wavelength, field strength and polarization of the HPM radiation, with arrays of slots. The advantage of the passive detector is that it would be cheap to fabricate and could therefore be extensively deployed. The passive detector is reusable, simply by changing the recording media on the detector. The active detectors do not require personell checking the detector in situ, the alarm signals can instead be fed by optical fiber to central alarm units. Applications of HPM detectors The possibilities to generate short microwave pulses of extremly high pulse power by means of more and more compact devices imply a new electromagnetic threat for both the National Defence and the civil society. Equipment for generation of high-energy microwave pulses can be mounted on different types of vehicles, and can thereby easily be moved for achievements of hidden sabotage against establishments of different kinds, for instance against stores containing defence electronics and systems forming part of the telecommunication network. An agressor could use such mobile microwave weapons for carrying out sabotage activities, for instance in order to eliminate the function of stored electronic systems, even when they are not activated. A forewarning that HPM irradiation has occurred could deprive the agressor the time advantage and chaos he hopes to gain from this kind of hidden sabotage activities. Therefore, there is a military need of a sensor which can detect that an object has been exposed to potentially harmful microwave pulses. Such a sensor could also have civil applications. It could for instance be included in the equipment of aircrafts, so that in the event of crashes or incidents it could be ascertained whether exposure to powerful microwave pulses might have caused the accident or incident. Computer installations and other sensistive systems could also be provided with such sensors in order to render possible a check whether system errors could be due to microwave exposure. An other civil application of the HPM detector is a detector for short pulse detection intended for biological health monitoring of microwaves. Market for HPM detectors The market for the passive HPM-detectors is very large, if deployed on all military equipment containing electronics which potentially could be exposed to high power microwaves. It could be very small and mounted outside the equipment for visible inspection of microwave radiation, very similar to the concepts of glass tubes detecting excessive shock to equipment which might have occurred during transportation of sensistive equipment. The civil market is also growing, with increasing awareness of the electromagnetic threat from profileration of HPM-technology. When biological safety standards for microwave short pulse exposure for personell are agreed and established, there will be a need for a product to monitor HPM-pulses of short duration and the invented HPM-detectors would fill this need. Prototypes currently under test at FOA in Sweden The first experiments were conducted by placing a metal ground plane with slots in the focal plane of a camera, and by using high speed films it has been possible to photographically record microwave breakdown in slots. The camera was put in the microwave radiation beam and the camera was set to long time exposure. A simple camera could be used, and it does not contain any electronics. Figure 1 below shows the camera with the slotted ground plane. Figure 1. Camera HPM detector demonstrator. An assembled simple prototype of an HPM-dector with a narrow slot on a ground plane, optical fiber and photo diode is shown in the figure below. The slots were made by laser cutting the thin metal film, to get the desired lengths and widths of the slots. Figure 2. Assembled active HPM-detector with optical fiber and photo diode. A close up view of the ground plane with slot is shown in Figure 3. Figure 3. Close up view of HPM-detector based on microwave slot breakdown. The slot was covered with an optically opaque, but to microwaves pervious, black tape and the assembled detector ready for testing in the FOA HPM laboratory is shown below. Figure 4. HPM-detector on the test stand. The detector was designed for the 37 GHz frequency of the High Power Microwave generator for the Radan 303 generator equipment, which was purchased by Defence Material Administration (FMV) for HPM research two years ago. The HPM generator is set up at a 1 m test range as shown in Figure 5. Figure 5. Test range for HPM-detectors at FOA. ------------------------------------------------------------- EMP - The Gentle Killer 3 ABCNews - 2003 http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/default.htm 2,000 years ago, the Chinese warrior, Sun Tzu, wrote what is thought to be the oldest Military treatise in the world. It was called "The Art of War". Among other things, he wrote about how to defeat the enemy without actually fighting on the battlefield. This is especially relevant to the USA, which is the greatest user of electricity in the world, and is also, electronically-speaking, the most advanced nation in the world. As a nation, their military and civilian superiority is based on microelectronics - and this makes them the most vulnerable nation on Earth to electronic warfare. The weapon that could do this is called the E-bomb, or electronic bomb - and people have built them in a few weeks for less than $1,000. Both the Russians and the Americans have been working on E-bombs, and have been releasing information on their work since the early 1990s. E-bombs work because most of our modern electronic devices have high density Metal Oxide Semiconductor devices inside them. These devices are very compact and powerful and chew up very little power - but you can permanently wound or destroy them by any voltage over a few tens of volts. E-bombs generate enormous voltages. There are many different sizes. A little one would fit in a briefcase so that you could place it near the target computer. You could build a big one in your backyard and aim it at over-flying aircraft. And there are ones in between that you could mount in a small van and park outside a building. There are also many different designs. One design that both the Russians and the Americans have been experimenting with for a few decades is the Flux Compression Generator. It turns the chemical energy of explosives into electrical energy, and then magnetic energy, and finally microwave energy that does the actual damage. Because there are so many stages, these High-Powered Microwave weapons are not very efficient - but that doesn't really matter, as there is a huge amount of energy in a kilogram or two of explosives. In fact, a typical Flux Compression Generator E-bomb can generate a few million megawatts - which is a few times the electrical power output of the USA. Mind you, it can generate this level of power for only a few billionths of second - but that is long enough to burn out all the computers in a city block. Carlo Kopp, from the at Monash University in Melbourne is an internationally-recognised expert in this area. He has described how E-bombs work. First, you start with a hollow metal cylinder and stuff it full of explosive - something that burns at about 600 metres per second. Wrap a few hundred turns of wire around the cylinder, and feed some electricity into them. This sets up a magnetic field. Then, ignite the explosive at one end. It pushes against the metal cylinder and makes it expand. In fact, as it burns it turns the metal cylinder into a cone shape, with the cone angle being about 13o. This compresses the magnetic field. By the time the expanding metal reaches the end of the cylinder, the device is destroyed - but not before it has generated currents of tens of millions of amperes (much bigger than in a lightning bolt) and power outputs bigger than the electrical output of the USA. A Flux Compression Generator that will fit into a suitcase will destroy all electronic devices within a few tens of metres - and if you want more range and destruction, you can stack the output of one E-bomb into the input of another E-bomb. Newspaper reports from 1998 claim that both Sweden and Australia have bought some E-bombs from the Russians. And Swedish reports claim that terrorists have already extorted large sums of money from financial institutions by threatening to destroy their entire electronic banking system. Back in the Gulf War of 1991, the Americans first used their previously-secret CBU-94. Each one was a bobbin, about 18 mm across and 12 mm thick, with a few hundred metres of very fine carbon fibre. On the first day of the Gulf War, Tomahawk cruise missiles dropped thousands of these on power stations all across Baghdad - and as the conductive carbon fibres unwound, they fell across pylons and wires, and immediately shorted out most of the electricity in town. Perhaps, like the previously-secret CBU-94s, we might soon see E-bombs used in warfare. One person who wants to see E-bombs used in the community is Jack Rains. He has designed small E-bombs to burn out the electronics of a speeding car. His interest is personal - in August 1994, his 19 year-old son died in a high-speed police car chase. Each month, there are 1,000 high-speed police car chases in Los Angeles alone. But where will it all end? How long before the criminals get E-bombs? One thing that Sun Tzu, that ancient Chinese warrior, told us - weapons generate anti-weapons, and one war starts another... © Karl S. Kruszelnicki Pty Ltd 2003. --------------------------------------------------- EMP Weapons C.N. Ghosh, Senior Fellow, IDSA FreeRepublic , LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794 http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a19fc922494.htm#top During the Kosovo war a Tass wire story reported for the first time about the presence of a new weapon being tested by USA. The weapon could have been fabricated at Los Alamos and this was the most secret weapon of USA designed to destroy radio electronic equipment. The Russians also went on to report that these bombs were dropped by B-2 stealth bombers to generate electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Pentagon officials however denied its use and reported that there was no intention to use any such weapon in the Yugoslav conflict. But the assertion that the U.S had indeed used such a weapon was made during the first few days of the Kosovo conflict which came direct from the Russian Defence Minister who told the Tass reporters about its use. He went on record to inform that USA was using Yugoslavia as a test range for its latest secret means of destruction.1 USA while categorically rejecting the report went to state that they wanted to keep the capabilities of the weapon under complete secrecy and would use the same in a future campaign against a sophisticated foe. Existence of the weapon had not been denied. It seems that the weapon can be delivered by cruise missile or by any other stand off platform and can be exploded within yards of a target. The explosion would be followed by generation of high power microwaves that can disable electronic circuitry in computers and communication equipment. This EMP could erase software and computers. David Fulghum2 while reporting on this unique bomb stated that on a clear day the effect could be felt in an area as large as a football field. Col John Alexander, has written in his book "Future Wars" 3 about the use of High Power Microwave (HPM) or electromagnetic pulse weapons (EMPs) and carbon graphite fiber or ribbon bombs. While the effectiveness of carbon-graphite bombs are now well established from raids on Baghdad and Belgrade, the HPM weapons are less known. Alexander thinks that the concept of EMP bomb may be comparable to a lightning strike in the vicinity of computers or other electronic equipment. The electro magnetic pulse effect was first observed during the early testing of high altitude airburst nuclear weapons. EMP is caused by the rapid release of gamma radiation from the nuclear explosion. The release of these particles at the speed of light will produce regions of positive and negative charges as atmospheric molecules are stripped of their electrons. These charges will propagate through the air at the speed of light and can have significant effects on all electromagnetic signals within line of sight of the nuclear detonation. The electromagnetic pulse is in fact an electromagnetic shock wave. The EMP energy produces such a storm of electromagnetic field that it produces short lived transient voltage of thousands of volts (Kilovolts) on exposed electrical conductors like wire or conductive tracks on printed circuits boards where exposed. One significant factor in EMP effect is the amount of coverage desired. The area of exposure depends upon the size of the yield. It was also observed that high altitude Electro Magnetic Pulse became the highest concern as the entire electromagnetic spectrum could get affected. It was also found out that high altitude burst could produce large amplitude EMP field over thousands of kilometers. Peak energy fields can reach levels of 50 kilovolts per meter. The peak levels can be reached very quickly and will have large broadband frequency coverage extending from Direct Current to 100 Mhz frequencies.4 The covert testing of the weapon in an active field of Yugoslavia has demonstrated that the EMP bomb is round the corner5 and that the US will not hesitate to use the same in any future conflict considering its negligible collateral damage making capability. The idea would be to immobilise the enemy before destroying him Development of this type of weapon has more or less become a necessity because of the changed environment. Information flow to be strengthened for own side and for the enemy it has to be stopped. This could be the cleanest bomb, a clean match winner. No doubt this is a future requirement. While carrying out spectrum comparison it was determined that EMP spreads in a waveform. Diagrammatic representation of the same is shown in Fig 1. This waveform has been broken down into three segments.6 The first is called early time EMP, and is the most devastating segment of the waveform; maximum levels of energy are produced in a very short time. Because of the intensity of the energy and the speed of the waveform, unprotected circuitry will be damaged or destroyed. On the other hand Late Time will occur at about one second after generation and can last up to 1000 seconds. During late time EMP low levels of energy are induced into the varying magnetic fields in the earth, which results in electrical fields being determined by the earth's surface resistance. This energy can pose a threat to long landlines such as telephone, power and submarine cables. Conventional Electronic Bombs Timothy L. Thomas while discussing the desperate situation of the technologically antiquated nations stated that, "Rapid technological change presents a specific new challenge to strategists: the requirement to master the emerging forms and functions of information technologies. New developments in managing information can create suspicion—even-paranoia—among nations that lack the enabling technologies we take for granted. Technologically antiquated nations, those without as well as those whose infrastructure are outdated, could be more inclined to preemptive behaviour when they perceive a threat than would those states more attuned to the capabilities and limitations of the latest technologies."7 In many areas, technology for designing an electronic bomb is quite mature. And it is estimated by Western experts that the fabrication of an effective FCG can be accomplished with basic electrical materials common plastic explosives such as C-4 or semitex and readily available machine tools such as lathes and suitable mandrels for forming coil that would be more than sufficient to build a bomb. And it is also estimated that the cost of building one bomb could be as low as $1000-$2000. Key technologies, which could be used in the near future, are discussed here: - l Explosively Pumped Flux Compression Generator (FCG). l HPM devices based on Virtual Cathode Ray Oscillator or Vircator. l Propellant driven magneto-hydrodynamic generators. Flux Compression Generator It was in the late fifties that the first demonstration of FCG was carried out at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and this could be the most matured technology today. The current produced by a large FCG could be 100 times greater than that produced by a lightning stroke. FCG device can generate energy to the tune of greater than mega joules in 100th of microsecond and produce peak power level exceeding tens of mega-amperes. A cylindrical copper tube forms the armature of typical coaxial FCG as indicated above. The tube is filled with a high energy explosive. The armature is surrounded by a helical heavy copper coil, which forms the FCG stator. The stator winding can be split into segments with wires bifurcating at the boundaries of the segments. This could optimise the electromagnetic inductance of the armature coil. A structural jacket made of concrete or Fibreglasses hardened with Epoxy can be used to prevent the FCG from disintegrating at an early stage due to intense magnetic force. The weight of the bomb, supply of start current, and matching the FCG to the intended load carrier are the major technical issues of a FCG. When the start current peaks, the explosive is initiated, and explosion takes place in the armature, distorting it into a conical shape. Start current is isolated and stops the current inside. The magnetic field gets compressed, reducing the inductance of the start winding. This will produce a very high current pulse, which peaks before final disintegration of the device. FCG is generally constrained to the frequency band below 1 MHz. Many targets will be beyond this range of frequencies and as such will be difficult to attack.8 Vircator The Vircators could be the source of High Power Microwave source. Other devices that could produce HPM are Klystron, Magnetron, Reflex triode etc. However, the best suited for the bomb would be the Vircators or Virtual Cathode-ray Oscillators. Vircator is capable of producing a very powerful single pulse of radiation and can operate over a relatively broad band of microwave frequencies. The basic idea of Vircator is to accelerate a high current electron beam against a mesh anode. Many electrons will pass through the anode and form a bubble of space charge behind the anode. If the space charge region is placed into a resonant cavity, which is tuned, correctly, very high power can be generated and microwave power can be extracted. Power level achieved by Vircator experiments ranges from 170 Kilo watts to 40 Giga watts with frequencies covering over the decimetric and centimetric bands. Output pulse duration of a Vircator is likely to be in the order of microseconds and is limited by anode melting. Two types of Vircators are known to be used. Axial Vircator and Transverse Vircator.9 Magneto-Hydrodynamic Generators Explosive and propellant driven Magneto Hydrodynamic Generators is not too well known a technology. There is every indication that the range of development of this system is at a very elementary stage and thus precludes its being used in weapons systems. Best advantage of MHD generators are their compactness (liquid-metal MHD generators) and the absence of rotary parts. MHD can be used very easily as a compact source of electrical energy and that would be attractive for military applications. Effect of Radiation on Electronic Devices Present generation electronic devices like diodes, transistors, gate arrays and ICs are based on pure silicon slices. Their electrical properties depend upon the regularity and uniformity of the basic silicon crystal lattices. The initial total damage from Neutron radiation is proportional to the neutron influence, but there is a subsequent annealing process during which there is some degree of recovery. This apart, the damage could be permanent. Also it may be made clear here that it makes no difference whether the device is working equipment or kept on the shelf for future use. However, the annealing process will be longer in such cases. Commercial computer equipment is particularly vulnerable to EMP effects. It is basically built with high-density Metal Oxide Semiconductors (MOS) devices, which are very sensitive to exposure to high voltage transients. MOS can sustain permanent damage with very little energy. Any voltage typically in excess of tens of Volts can produce an effect termed gate breakdown,10 which effectively destroys the device. Even if the pulse is not powerful enough to produce thermal damage, the power supply in the equipment will readily supply enough energy to complete the destructive process. Wounded devices may still function but their reliability will be seriously impaired. Similarly computers used in data processing systems, communications systems, displays, industrial control applications, including road and rail signaling in the advanced nations and those embedded in military equipment, such as signal processors, electronic flight control and digital engine control system are all potentially vulnerable to EMP effects. Degradation effect on few of the key elements employed in electromagnetic equipments are given below:- Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) LEDs can suffer degradation in optical output by 10 to 20 per cent. Photo Diodes and Photo Transistors. These are extremely sensitive to damage by Neutron radiation and Phototransistors may suffer a loss in optical sensitivity. Diodes. In case of diodes, there is a permanent increase in the forward voltage drop. This would require provision of additional heat sinking for high power devices. Bipolar Transistors. Reduction in current gain and increase in collector emitter saturation voltage. This may point out about a requirement of high power high voltage transistor. But the design of the same may be difficult. Lethality of Electromagnetic Weapons The calculation of electromagnetic field strength achievable at a given radius for a given device is not difficult. But determining a kill probability for given targets under such conditions is complex and difficult because target types are very diverse in their design, frequency range and electromagnetic hardness. Moreover, certain types of equipments, which have been shielded against electromagnetic discharges of higher order, will withstand orders of magnitude greater than standard commercial equipments.11 Microwave can couple more easily than weapons of lower frequency range. That is why microwave weapons are more lethal. Front Door Coupling. Let us take an example of an antenna subsystem, which is designed to couple power in and out of the equipment. This is the route for the power flow from the EMP weapon to enter the system and cause damage. Backdoor Coupling. Similarly backdoor coupling takes place when electromagnetic field from a weapon, produces spikes of large transient currents. These could be produced either by low frequency weapons or by electrical standing waves produced by a HPM (High Power Microwave) weapon. Equipment connected to electrical routings experience high voltage spikes and damage exposed semiconductors. As a result this could damage power supplies and communication systems and if the spike flows inside an equipment, damage could occur to other devices inside.12 The damage causing scenario could be serious because low frequency weapon will couple into wiring infrastructure of the telephone lines, networking cables and power lines which generally follow streets, building contours and corridors. Deployment of the weapon will be of no consequence, because at least few segments of the wiring will be oriented in such a way that good coupling could take place by the emission of the electromagnetic energy. Electrical equipment like consumer electronic goods when exposed to low frequency and high voltage spikes similar to a lighting strike sustains extensive damage. Similar spikes would definitely damage computers and communication equipments (voltage as low as 50 V can inflict substantial damage to computers). The safe operating envelopes of some semiconductor devices are discussed here for easier understanding of the lethality of the electromagnetic shock waves. Breakdown voltage rating for Silicon high frequency bipolar transistors vary between 15 V and 65 V. These transistors are used in communication equipment. An essential component of computer is Dynamic Random Access Memories (DRAM), which are vulnerable to 7 Volts. Rating of CMOS logic is between 7 to 15 Volts. And microprocessors of the computer are vulnerable over a voltage of 3 to 5 V.13 The above parameters clearly indicate that many of our equipments operating within the above voltage range can become an easy prey for the EMP weapons whether high yield or low yield. No doubt the damage will be extensive. Microwave weapon can substantially be more lethal than the low frequency weapon because it can bypass many protection devices built by the manufacturers. Scientists are busy finding out the vulnerability vs. quantum yield of a weapon. Target diversity, individual electrical characteristics of the equipments' wiring and infrastructure around the target makes it difficult to predict the lethality of a weapon. However, design factor should take into consideration the maximum lethality of an EMP bomb. To do that, it would be necessary to maximise power output and increase duration of radiation of the weapon. Enhancement of the known techniques like Flux Compressions Generation and Vircator effectiveness of High Power Microwave (HPM) may be the answer. For efficient back door coupling it would be necessary to determine a known lethal voltage level, and that could be the basis to find the required field strength to generate voltage. The lethal radius for given weapons configuration can be calculated once the field strength is known. A resultant several kilo volts meters is expected within the footprint of 400 to 500 mtrs of a Vircator type device producing 10 GW. 5 GHz HPM. Target to device distance can be calculated easily and can be safely estimated that the device can be exploded at a fairly longer distance from the target. This would be quite contrary to any conventional weapon. Another design characteristic would be to maximise efficiency by making sure that the emitted energy is not wasted at the cost of lethality. This could be the researchers nightmare. Targets for Electromagnetic Bombs For a military man it will not be an easy task to identify targets for the electromagnetic bombs because of the complexity of the entire system. It may be easy to identify certain targets but to match the bomb capability with the target may not be that easy. Buildings, housing various government departments and installations areas are easy to locate and target because of their geographical locations and can be attacked provided the aircraft can penetrate to weapon release point and height. Present generation smart bomb technology can be used to deliver E weapons to derive best possible results.14 Only the aim is to disable communication related equipments and the computers. Mobile and camouflaged targets like air defence radars, missile complexes, mobile troops, naval vessels over the high seas are good examples of the target system that can be attacked with E weapons. Location of such targets could be carried out through the use of Electronic Support Measures (ESM)) and Emitter Locating System (ELS). Once located, the slow moving targets could be attacked easily because they could not get away easily from the footprint of the bomb. Army targets would be difficult to detect because those would be heavily camouflaged and do not radiate overtly. These could only be detected by tracking the Unintentional Emission (UE) also known as Van Eck radiation. Due to poor shielding electronic emissions leak out from various equipments used at the war front. Detection and demodulation of the same could give adequate target intelligence to attack them with electromagnetic weapons with impunity. There is no doubt that smart emitter locator could locate the emissions from computer networking cables, superheterodine receivers etc. Deployment of UAVs over the suspected target areas could reap rich dividends. Delivery of E Bombs Like any other conventional warhead, the E Bomb would also have some given mass determined by the density of the internal hardware. Typically an E Bomb will comprise an electromagnetic device, an electrical energy converter and an energy storage device for sustaining the electromagnetic device charge after separation from the delivery platform. A radar altimeter fuse could provide fusing for air burst bombs. The fraction of the warhead could be 15 per cent and the rest of the space could be utilised for the electromagnetic device and other supporting elements. Like conventional warheads, E Bomb could be fitted on a Cruise missile, Conventional missiles or on an aircraft.15 Surface-to-Surface Missile. E Bomb placed on a Surface-to-Surface missile would comprise an electromagnetic device, an electrical converter and an on board storage device such as a battery. The battery is drained as the weapon is pumped. Missile on board fusing system would detonate the electromagnetic device. Cruise Missiles. Arming a cruise missile with E Bomb may well impose certain restrictions. The size of the priming current and its battery may be the root cause of these limitations. In a cruise missile the bomb could be tied to the navigation system, in an anti shipping missile the radar seeker and in air-to-air missile, the proximity fusing system. The warhead to launch-mass of the weapon should be 15 per cent to 30 per cent. Delivery by Conventional Aircraft. Delivery of these types of weapons by aircraft could score over other systems. Because the launch aircraft having its own power system could prime the weapon optimally without any loss of power. In such a situation the bombs capacitor bank can be charged by the launch aircraft en route to target, and after release, a much smaller on-board power supply could be used to maintain the charge in the priming source for weapon initiation. Every aircraft capable of delivering a standard weapon should be in apposition to deliver an E Bomb. And should the weapon ballistic criteria remain the same, then no software changes for the delivering aircraft would be required. Stand off delivery of these kinds of weapons could be the only answer because of its lethal radius. Cruise missile or delivery by any other type of missiles would pose no problems. Delivery of E Bombs from conventional aircraft would require careful planning lest the aircraft becomes victim of the bomb itself. Fire and forget type guidance system would be suitable for all types of air delivery weapons like air-to-air, air to surface and glide bombs. The launch aircraft must gain sufficient separation of several miles before the bomb detonates. This could be carried out either by toss bombing and delivering a glide bomb. The recently built GPS satellite navigation kits for conventional bombs and glide bombs has increased the accuracy of the weapon to a large extent. Therefore toss bombing both from low level and high level could be the answer. Importance of glide bombs could be manifold. The glide bomb can be released from outside the effective radius of target air defences, minimising the risk for attacking aircraft. Large stand off distance means that the aircraft can remain well clear of the bomb's effects. The bomb's autopilot may be programmed to shape the terminal trajectory of the weapon, in a way that the target may be engaged from the most suitable altitude and aspect.16 Search and Kill by UAV. An easy electrical kill could be achieved by using UAVs armed with emission locator and E weapons. Because of their inherent advantages an UAV could loiter over a target for a considerable period of time away from the base and once the emission is located distinctly, it could launch its on-board weapon. Limitations of Electromagnetic Bomb Like all other weapon systems, E weapons also suffer from their inherent limitations. Despite being an area weapon, the E weapons will demand better accuracy for their delivery. Because, it would be important to illuminate the target area completely to achieve best results. Therefore though it is not difficult to calculate the area of its effectiveness yet it suffers from better CEP syndrome. Electromagnetic field strength achievable at a certain distance from the application would be the prime consideration. Vacuum tube equipment based on Thermionic technology is extremely resilient to the electromagnetic weapons effect than solid-state technology. Therefore a weapon designed to destroy solid state computers and receivers, may cause little damage to a thermionic device. Early 1960 Soviet equipment falls in this category. This leads to another limitation of the E Bombs which pertains to difficulties of kill assessment. The enemy may fool the attacker by switching off the emitters prior to an imminent attack and once the attack is over they may switch on the emitters for its usual functioning. Absence of emissions therefore would not indicate the success or failure of the attack. Non-radiating electronic equipment would also get affected due to an electronic attack but success of the same could not be assessed correctly also. Van Eck radiation detectors would be the only answer. Atmosphere plays a leading role towards the ultimate effectiveness of the E weapons. Lethal coverage of an E Bomb will depend on atmospheric propagation. The decays in lethal effect with increasing distance within the atmosphere will be greater due to higher frequencies and significant absorption peaks due to existing water vapour and oxygen. These will reduce the effect of HPM weapons to smaller radii than are ideally achievable in the K and L band.17 Electrical collateral damage could be another limiting factor of this type of equipment. However no international treaty or legislation has been brought forward to curb its application. Defence against EM Bombs In any future war our defence forces are going to face some kind of EM weapons and it would be necessary to pay attention towards the defence against this emerging threat of the future. No air defence system could provide total safety from air attacks and therefore those systems that could suffer probable damage by such a new menace must be electro magnetically hardened. Faraday Caging could be one method of this hardening process. Cage the entire system in an electrically conductive atmosphere to avoid being exposed to electromagnetic radiation. This can prevent the electromagnetic field from gaining access to the protected equipment. But that would be next to impossible and certain amount of damage cannot be ruled out because the equipment would have to breathe and maintain contact with the outside world. This will give it away and its protective shield. To ensure better security the lines entering the equipment could be fed through an arrester.18 Limitation of Hardening There is no doubt that system hardening is an absolute must to avoid damage to any part of the electromagnetic equipment. But hardening has its limitations. Conceptually the E weapon menace is at its infancy, as such no one really knows whether equipment can be hardened totally or some part will remain vulnerable to electromagnetic attack. And if one part gets affected, what would happen to the equipment as a whole? Considering this futuristic threat, the newer generation equipments could be hardened to an extent at certain cost. But it would be next to impossible to harden the older equipment. The damage is sustained mainly by the wounding semi-conductors and as such the equipment does not get destroyed completely and may keep on working intermittently, which would be more disturbing than a complete breakdown. Electronic Combat Operation Command of the electromagnetic spectrum should be achieved as quickly as possible to carry out subsequent operations with other conventional weapons. Futuristic wars would face this menace. Unless effective steps are being taken, a nation could become a hapless victim. Hard and soft kills would render the command control ineffective, the economic system could suffer most grievously, subject to the lethality of the weapon and the hardness of the target. An attack may not render the entire equipment totally useless but certain affected parts will make it partially serviceable which could be dangerous.19 The massed application of electromagnetic bombs in the opening phase of an electronic battle will allow much faster attainment of command of the electromagnetic spectrum, as it will inflict attrition upon electronic assets at a much faster rate than any conventional means. Electronic combat operation using E Bombs involves attacking radars, command control system, and air defence weapon systems. These need to be attacked first to paralyse the enemy decision-making ability or to ingress into its OODA loop. The idea would be to achieve hard or soft electrical kill at the very opening round, followed by conventional attack with a fair amount of impunity. Presently the ARMs (Anti Radiation Missiles) are used for Suppression of Enemy Air Defence (SEAD) operation which are not only expensive, but have many other disadvantages, like single weapon for a single target etc. But E bomb can be targeted against multiple targets, achieving much better results than the ARMs. That is why Calo Kopp in his article "The Electronic Bomb" has termed the E Bombs as "Weapon of Electrical Mass Destruction (WEMD)". He has gone to the extent of explaining the horrendous effect of such weapons system not known to mankind so far.20 However, as the bomb is not very well known, and only scrappy evidence of its possible use in Kosovo war has emerged it does not allow us to judge its actual capability. Exact calculation of force multiplication could not be carried out. But it is also true that an aircraft carrying a collection of E. weapons capable of disabling a SAM site with collocated acquisition and fire control radar will have equal potential of many ARMs fired from multiple aircraft supported by the integral jammer force. As such, it is seen that massed application of electromagnetic weapons for Electronic Combat operations will provide a much faster rate of attrition against hostile electronic assets, in comparison to any other conventional means. E weapons would allow much greater concentration of force. Post Gulf war strategic air campaigns are bound to follow the Warden model, which identifies five centers of gravity in a nation's war fighting capability. IW model can be formulated in similar fashion, that is to disable an opponent's fundamental information processing infrastructure as part of the Strategic IW campaign. But this is yet to happen anywhere so far. Warden model is explained in Fig. 4. The innermost ring in Warden's model comprises the leadership network, which comprises government bureaucrats, and civilian and military C3 systems. The effectiveness of attack on this inner ring will produce devastating results by disconnecting the decision-making authority from the rest of the war making machines. Of particular interest in this context of strategic air attack is that while E weapons are lethal to electronics they have little or nil effect on the human beings. Such peculiarity is not inherent to other weapon systems either conventional or nuclear. The cost of hardening existing computer networks is prohibitive, as is the cost of replacement with hardened equipment. Therefore, the use of E weapons against government facilities should be extremely successful.21 Electronic Counter Air Operations Airfields are geographically located areas; housing innumerable electronic systems both on base and inside an aircraft and would be ideal targets for E weapons. Attacking airfields with E weapons could make it totally useless to mount both offensive and defensive operations. Attack on electromagnetic spectrum will disable communication, air traffic control facilities, navigational aids, air defence set up and other operational support equipment. The aircraft on ground will also become easy targets because the modern generation aircraft rely heavily on electronic equipment. It would be impossible to safeguard them considering the immensity of the problems about their hardening. Conventional blast hardening will not be effective. Electrical power cabling and communications cabling will carry electromagnetic induced transients into most buildings. Therefore Electronic Counter Air Attack could give the initial advantage of having a Favourable Air Situation . Electronic Battlefield Air Interdiction Win or lose situation in any future ground battle will depend upon the mobility and communication capability of any army. The armoured regiments are heavily packed with electronic and communication equipment supported by air defence weapon systems. Coordination and control of them will be the essence of the battle. An attack on the armoured concentration will render this force rather harmless. The effectiveness of their fire control and communication systems would be destroyed. The best tactics would be to attack the armoured formation with E Bombs and create confusion. Follow up with an attack with conventional weapons. Electronic Air Defence Operations Interception is the buzzword in the air defence parlance. You use whatever is available in your arsenal, missiles, interceptors or guns to deter the strike force to deliver its weapons in own territory. These platforms are used to counter enemy raids one by one. But it is beyond the comprehension of the air defence community that an area weapon like E weapon can be used against an incoming raid. The E weapons can be effectively used in all air defence operations provided the weapon can be made sufficiently compact to be loaded on an air-to-air missile. The enemy formation depending heavily on electronic on-board equipment could face a most novel challenge by losing their eyes and ears to carry out any successful attack and return safely to their bases. Their Nav attack radar could misread, mission computers could malfunction, digital engine control computers could fail, and communication equipment and electronic flight controls could become useless thus making the aircraft totally vulnerable to attack by defending fighters or conventional missiles.22 Electronic Maritime Air Operations Surface combatants are fitted with a substantial quantity of electronic equipment like any other modern military machine. An electromagnetic weapon can render a surface force totally ineffective if caught within its lethal radius. Thus making it vulnerable to any type of conventional attack. Information Age Terrorism India is constantly fighting terrorism and insurgency since independence and there is no doubt that our Armed Forces are the most experienced in the entire world in this respect. The Indian Armed Forces are yet to counter this novel and silent way to spread terrorism. To counter these 21st century insurgents, Indian defence forces should include information age terrorism in their doctrine and tactics before the troops in the field are surprised by these novel enemies.23 Indian Electronic Weapons What is new about IW is the centrality given to these previously important, but secondary aspects of warfare. Also we cannot deny that IT in the civilian economy and national infrastructure has overshadowed the military in many ways. Disruption of the electromagnetic spectrum would not be tolerated by the Western powers at any cost. And they are bound to bring international legislation to curb the desire of the aspiring nations to develop such capabilities to manufacture EMP weapons. These weapons do not cause any collateral damage and are not very well known to the world community. But it can cause havoc to many systems belonging to the nations riding high on the IT tigers. The Westerners call it 'collateral electrical damage'. The imagination of many a nation is yet to catch up with this awesome capability and understand its legal and other effects. India termed as hegemonistic among her neighbours and long harbouring the idea of force multipliers, could take a quantum jump by developing these weapons and perfecting their delivery system. Indian technology is mature enough to address this not too difficult a challenge. Force multipliers have been the dream of the military planners of India for many years based on AWACs and air-to-air refueling system. But procurement and system integration would take many years. IL76 (Moss) based AWAC is a far cry from the actual Indian need. Whereas, a force multiplier or a clean winner could be the EMP weapons.24 No matter what Pakistan could procure or develop in future will not be in a position to match this capability. Air Defence system built around EMP weapons could nullify many a Chinese threat of the future. The situation, 'advantage India', cannot be lost. It is the right moment for India to develop, build and stockpile these cleanest of bombs before the 'collateral electrical damage' becomes a rallying point for the highly vulnerable affluent nations and the next political battle is being fought by India at Geneva following the epic CTBT skirmish. To begin with the Indian military must take the lead, harden their electronic equipment and provide thrust for development of EMP weapons. Infrastructures of DRDO could be pressed into action. The IITs and the Indian scientific community could be asked to participate. India does not lack technology, it only lacks scientific leadership. There is no doubt that the current technological base of India can produce EMP weapons and perfect their delivery system, before our neighbours wake up. The revelation by Russia about US involvement of testing EMP Weapons in Yugoslavia could be a pointer towards another kind of war that mankind will experience in future. Helplessness against this type of attack can well be imagined only. The information hungry world depending upon real time communication; internet revolution, electronics based entertainment industry, electronic sophistications of military equipment, over dependence on electromagnetic spectrum, would make the nations more and more vulnerable to EMP weapons. Hardening of equipments could create certain amount of safety but to build up all round credible defence against an EMP attack would be impossible. As the EMP weapons do not cause any damage to population or visible property of a nation the attack may go unnoticed by the world. Victim nations will understand and pay for any misadventure. That is why we would not mind calling these deadly clean bombs as the best force multipliers of the future.25 NOTES 1. David A. Fulghum: "Microwave Weapons Await a Future War" Aviation Week & Space Technology, (Washington: June 7, 1996) p.30. 2. Ibid., p.30. 3. Ibid. 4. Space Operations Orientation Course Handbook, Third Edition (Colorado 80909-6822: Air Force Space Command, Peterson AFB, August 1, 1993). 5. Richard J Harknett. "Information Warfare and Deterrence", Parameters, Autumn 1996, "…destruction of societal connectivity need not be limited to specific attacks on personal electronic or institutional records. It may be conducted on a broader scale, where electronic connectivity is indiscriminately targeted. ……But little expertise is required to manufacture enough of a magnetic field in a directed fashion so as to put at risk the circuitry of an individual computer or computer system. Weapons such as HERF (high energy radio frequency) guns and EMP/T (electromagnetic pulse transformer) bombs are not only conceivable but may already have been built, p. 96. 6. Space Operations Orientation Course Handbook, Third Edition,(Colorado 80909-6822: Air Force Space Command, Peterson AFB, August 1 1993). 7. Timothy L Thomas, "Deterring Information Warfare: A New Strategic Challenge", Parameter, Winter 1996-97, pp. 81-91. 8. NHQ Publication Information Warfare, vol. 6, 2000 9. Carlo Kopp "The Electromagnetic Bomb—a Weapon of Electrical Mass Destruction" <http://www.cs.monash.edu.au/-carlo/>, pp. 10-12. 10. Ibid., p. 12. 11. Ibid. p. 14. 12. NHQ Publication, Information Warfare, vol. 6, 2000. 13. Kopp, n. 9. 14. John Tirman, "Collision of a particle from a Neutral Particle Beam Weapon with an air molecule". The Fallacy of Star Wars by Union of Concerned Scientists (New York: Vintage Books, 1983) Chapter 5 p.11. 15. Joseph Goldblat and David Cox, "Nuclear Weapon Tests Prohibition or Limitation" (Sipri: Oxford University Press, 1988) pp. 240-241. 16. Robert Jastrow, How to Make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete, (London: Sidgwick and Jackson 1985) pp. 89-99. 17. Kopp, n. 9. 18. Peter D Feaver, "Blowback.:Information Warfare and the Dynamics of Coercion." Military Review, September-November 1998, pp. 26-30. 19. Carlo Kopp "The Electromagnetic Bomb—a Weapon of Electrical Mass Destruction" <http://www.cs.monash.edu.au/-carlo/> 20. Laos Nicholas K. "Information Warfare and Low Intensity Operations." Perceptions, July-August 1999, pp. 174-195. 21. Clemmons Byard, "Cyber warfare: Ways, Warriors and Weapons of Mass Destruction", Military Review, September-October 1999, pp. 35-45 22. Arquilla, John et al "Information Age Terrorism", Current History, April 2000, pp. 179-185. 23. Ellis R Evan, "Organisational Learning dominance: the emerging key to success", Comparative Strategy, April-June 1999, pp. 191-202. 24. Roger C. Molander, Andrew S. Riddle, and Peter A Wilson. "Strategic Information Warfare: A New Face of Warfare", Parameter, Autumn 1996, pp. 81-92. 25. <www.astalavista.com> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Posted on 11/20/2000 20:39:46 PST by Sawdring ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Poohbah, GeronL, Askel5, Flamefront, Rightwing2, Travis McGee Bump. I saw some discussion on EMP today so I thought I would post this. 2 Posted on 11/20/2000 20:42:56 PST by Sawdring ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Sawdring I memorised the whole thing. 3 Posted on 11/20/2000 20:51:20 PST by Revel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Sawdring EMPs are pansy weapons. Now, fuel-air bombs ... THOSE kick clymer. 4 Posted on 11/20/2000 20:52:51 PST by Timesink ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Sawdring Mobile and camouflaged targets like air defence radars, missile complexes, mobile troops, naval vessels over the high seas are good examples of the target system that can be attacked with E weapons. Location of such targets could be carried out through the use of Electronic Support Measures (ESM)) and Emitter Locating System (ELS). Once located, the slow moving targets could be attacked easily because they could not get away easily from the footprint of the bomb. I was a computer repair tech in the USAF from 1982-86, working at SAC bases. The technology (printers and video screens at least) was already present to prevent EMP attacks. All equipment had EMP circuits. Although I didn't understand the exact circuitry details, it worked essentially like a fuse...the circuit would burn out before the rest of the board was fried. I'm sure that since then they've made many more advances. I would say, don't worry. 5 Posted on 11/20/2000 21:03:11 PST by DouglasKC ---------------------------------------------------------------------To: Sawdring Good find, Saw. This is the very reason that vacuum-tube radio equipment will never become obsolete. Once the atmosphere recovers from the detonation of an EMP-generating device, people with vacuum-tube transmitters, receivers and a generator to power them, will be able to communicate, while all the Sangean-505 owners will have a good doorstop. I've kept my Johnson Viking Valiant transmitter, Gonset GSB-101 amplifier, National NC-300 receiver, and a Drake TR-4 in operational condition, just for such times as these. Too bad my AOR AR-2800 won't work afterwards, but then, I suppose I'd need a doorstop too :-) 6 Posted on 11/20/2000 21:17:50 PST by Washington_minuteman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Sawdring Good find. 7 Posted on 11/20/2000 21:23:38 PST by Free the USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Free the USA On the other hand, an EMP weapon would have interesting effects upon personal data/tracking chip implants like Digital Angel, electronic tracking collars, etc. We should keep this info in mind for the day when the Bad Guys start implanting us "for our own good"... 8 Posted on 11/20/2000 21:33:52 PST by B-Chan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: DouglasKC This stuff is more for domestic consumption than foreign. This is to reinforce the "we don't stand a chance against the black helicpters" crowd. Sure enuff if the US don't have all kind of fancy stuff. But we don't really have bunches of it. They sent how many Apaches to Bosnia? 24? And how many flew any missions? None? And how many burned and killed their pilots? 2? Lord, we could win a revolution against this military just by declaring it and hunkering down 'til they fried themselves. I really do grow weary of that "what are you gonna do about the black helicpoters" crowd, though. 9 Posted on 11/20/2000 21:36:40 PST by wastoute ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Washington_minuteman This will be increasingly critical as the Army begins to rely increasingly upon the "perfect intelligence" of the "digital battlefield" to survive and win. 10 Posted on 11/20/2000 21:41:30 PST by Travis McGee ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Sawdring Very interesting read...Thank you! 11 Posted on 11/20/2000 22:53:58 PST by jerseygirl ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Sawdring The BLU-114/B is a special-purpose munition for attacking electrical power infrastructure. Although very little is known about this highly classified weapon, reportedly it functions by dispensing a number of submunitions which in turn disperse large numbers of chemically treated carbon graphite filaments which short-circuit electrical power distribution equipment such as transformers and switching stations. The weapon is sometimes referred to as a "soft bomb" since its effects are largely confined to the targetted electrical power facility, with minimal risk of collateral damage. This previously undisclosed weapon, carried by the F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter, was used for the first time on 02 May 1999 as part of Operation ALLIED FORCE strikes against Serbia. Following these attacks lights went out over 70 per cent of the country. The munition was subsequently used on the night of 07 May 1999 to counter Serbian efforts to restore damage caused by the initial attack. 12 Posted on 11/20/2000 23:16:23 PST by green team 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Washington_minuteman I've kept my Johnson Viking Valiant transmitter, Gonset GSB-101 amplifier, National NC-300 receiver, and a Drake TR-4 in operational condition, just for such times as these. My first reaction was: You have got to be kidding, then...glad this guy is on my side...LOL...as long as my AR15 keeps firing...I be happy. 13 Posted on 11/20/2000 23:22:56 PST by oneway ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Sawdring Can't you get a nearly identical result by reverse biasing a Gen II Heisenberg Compensator? 14 Posted on 11/20/2000 23:24:05 PST by Redcloak ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: DouglasKC I was a computer repair tech in the USAF from 1982-86, working at SAC bases. The technology (printers and video screens at least) was already present to prevent EMP attacks. All equipment had EMP circuits. Although I didn't understand the exact circuitry details, it worked essentially like a fuse...the circuit would burn out before the rest of the board was fried. I'm sure that since then they've made many more advances. I would say, don't worry. Posted on 11/20/2000 21:03:11 PST by DouglasKC Guess what? Tempest restrictions on equipment were basically done away with in 94-97. Our hardware is not required to be shielded now, and most/all of it isn't. We are very susceptible to EMP now. 15 Posted on 11/20/2000 23:24:54 PST by got_Jesus? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Sawdring Your failure to flag me is unforgivable. 16 Posted on 11/20/2000 23:28:35 PST by Lazamataz ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Travis McGee That's right Travis (re. your #10), and it brings to mind something else, which has been attributed to Albert Einstein who was supposed to have said that he didn't know how they would fight world war three, but he knew how they would fight world war four: with stones and clubs, or something to that effect. That nasty EMP-effect has no cure. Oh sure, one can try and protect circuit boards from high-intensity, close proximity discharge damage, but in spite of the fact that the board may be saved, the energy of the EMP destroys the delicate semiconductors themselves (the connections within an integrated circuit are only microns thick), and there's no practical way of protecting them from an energy field that is conducted via the electromagnetic lines of force which permeate everything on earth. Such things didn't exist in the Army I was a part of, which leads me to wonder if this high-tech equipment can be operated manually, or does it also become a very expensive doorstop (or anchor, as dictated by size). People who are determined to survive catstrophic events, natural disasters, wars, etc., should avail themselves of at least one high-frequency, vacuum tube transceiver (with one spare set of tubes), a good matchbox (for random-length wire antennas), and a small generator to power the thing. In a situation of desperation, maintaining communications with one's fellows would be an important motivational factor to the restoration of normalcy, as well as providing an invaluable intelligence advantage for those vulnerable to enemy assault. 17 Posted on 11/20/2000 23:31:42 PST by Washington_minuteman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Washington_minuteman With respect to the Army's "digital battlefield" with it's "perfect intelligence", it will be ironic to see our "starship troopers" over run by little guys with AKs after all the systems are crashed by EMP. One other point: in 1962 the US put about a 5 megaton hydrogen bomb atop a Redstone rocket and launched it into space about 20 miles up from Johnson Atoll @ 600 miles south of Hawaii. Even in those pre-microcircuit board days, it caused havoc on Oahu for about an hour: the release of gamma rays in the high atmosphere causes the Van Allen Belts to go crazy for an extended period of time. The launch of the next test of a bigger nuke even higher was scrubbed because scientists were very worried about even wider and longer duration effects. I believe that (for one example) a Chinese attack on Taiwan might begin with an EMP burst in low space east of Taiwan, to blind both our naval forces and Taiwan's air defenses. Our total reliance on high tech solutions may be our achilles heel, an "electronic Maginot Line" that the Chinese may nullify and "work around". Something to ponder. 18 Posted on 11/20/2000 23:45:32 PST by Travis McGee ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: oneway "... as long as my AR15 keeps firing...I be happy." Just keep it clean and oiled, and it will. Techno-wizbangs are fun to play with, but there's a lot to be said for the simple, and reliable. Oh, BTW, Tritium sights are much better than night-vision gear, too, and they don't require batteries :-) 19 Posted on 11/20/2000 23:48:46 PST by Washington_minuteman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Travis McGee There was an really interesting article a few months back in one of the trade magazines entitled "Armegeddon in LEO-T". It basicaly discussed the fact that a single nuclear device exploded at an altitude of 400 to 500 miles, would destroy all of the electronics on board those spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). What's more, it would be almost impossible to replace those same spacecraft with in the next decade because of the residual effects of such a blast. Keep in mind that these spacecraft suppy weather, military intelligence, limited communications services and a large part of the finnacial services used world-wide. It got really interesting because the idea was discussed that a small nation could actually do this and not suffer any retaliation because they did not actually attack another country. They could claim that they were "just testing" and had no idea of the effect that would occur. At the same time, it would basically shut down any nation or economy that depended on the services provided by those satellites. Just food for thought. 20 Posted on 11/21/2000 00:06:01 PST by Brad C. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Brad C.,Sqantos,Myrddin The Chinese could over run Malaysia, Borneo, the Philipines etc etc using AKs and bugles, while our military and economy would be utterly ruined. Again, we may be hiding behind "an electronic Maginot Line", and like the Germans, the Chinese may find a "work around solution", this time in the form of EMP blasts in space. 21 Posted on 11/21/2000 00:14:48 PST by Travis McGee ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Travis McGee Something to ponder indeed (as if I didn't already have enough to worry about < grin>). When I was in High School, I constructed a large Tesla coil which will produce energies close to 1 giga-Volt at 30 kHz. Recently, I was curious to see how much energy it would require to wipe-out the IC's in a PC. I experimented, using an old Compaq-286 I had laying around, and managed to completely wipe out every integrated circuit in the computer (including the power supply rectifiers) with a 500,000 Volt, 50 millisecond discharge to ground, from the Tesla coil running at 12.5 kHz, at a distance of around 20-feet. The Tesla coil was enclosed in a closed, steel-sided building and the computer was sitting in the back of my pickup, running on an 12-volt inverter off the truck battery. The energy I was able to produce with the Tesla coil is nothing compared to that released by a hydrogen bomb (which would be measured in billions of electron-volts). It's difficult to imagine the range of damage such a high-altitude detonation would cause - hundreds of miles, at least. Our technological dependence is worse than the Maginot Line, as our enemies could render us impotent before we could so much as get a single shot off. 22 Posted on 11/21/2000 00:28:54 PST by Washington_minuteman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Washington_minuteman Just a question but would a "grounded" metal container such as a 20mm Ammo can with a foil wrapped radio of any type , tube or not, in side, survive ?. I am of the understanding that such a package is somewhat safe against EMR. I used to store electric blasting caps in such a manner and static sensitive electro explosive devices while in EOD in the service. I have stored condensors and coils ect ect for my sand rails in such a manner. Would like your honest opinion please. Regards up front........ America under duress day 14....... 23 Posted on 11/21/2000 00:40:09 PST by Squantos ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Squantos (Sigh) Yes, pal, just wrapping stuff in metal keeps the EMP away. Remember to wrap the antenna and the power wire too. Grounding something is good for controlling static-electricity, and is an excellent idea when dealing with computer chips, PC boards, and explosives. I don't know why this EMP, 'secret-stuff', keeps showing up here every six months or so. An 'Electro-Magnetic-Pulse' is only created by a Nuclear or Thermo-Nuclear explosion! There ain't no 'EMP-in-a-briefcase'! If it existed, we would have seen it by now! It's like 'Time-Travel', Squantos, it doesen't exist now OR IN THE FUTURE! If it existed, Jesus would have lived a full life, Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin would have died young, bubba-klintoon would be pumping gas in Buttfuck, Arkansas, and albore would still be a gleam in his uncles' pants! Forget the EMP crap.....FRegards 24 Posted on 11/21/2000 02:29:24 PST by gonzo ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Sawdring-& others interested in EMP weapons Go here: Link and dig around; there are diagrams of modern EMP warheads and tons of other "stuff..."Hummmm.... funny, it was there a week ago-- try later- the addy is: http://www.softwar.net 25 Posted on 11/21/2000 03:05:59 PST by backhoe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Travis McGee Having been involved in the design and test of EMP hardened systems, I can say that there is sufficient hardening technology available to protect critical systems. Since I retired from the Aerospace industry, I do not know how much of that technology is being employed. EMP testing can be a very interesting undertaking. 26 Posted on 11/21/2000 04:12:32 PST by cannonball ---------------------------------------------------------------------To: got_Jesus? Guess what? You don't know what you're talking about. TEMPEST isn't called TEMPEST anymore, but, if anything, the requirements got tougher--I ought to know, I am working on Navy command and control systems, and I have to jump installation plans through the approval hoops. 27 Posted on 11/21/2000 05:03:22 PST by Poohbah ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Sawdring Lots of jargon, very little meaningful content. The report fails to explain that EMP weapons capable of reliably causing significant damage across a wide area will also kill anyone in the target area--the only way to overcome uncertainties is to increase the output dramatically. 28 Posted on 11/21/2000 05:06:25 PST by Poohbah ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Poohbah "TEMPEST isn't called TEMPEST" I wasn't aware of the name change. I sure know what you mean about going through all the hoops. 29 Posted on 11/21/2000 05:16:48 PST by cannonball ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Sawdring The propellant driven generators are a mature technology. They are used in numerous weapons systems for example, PeaceKeeper....and they are small enough to fit in your hand. The only undeveloped technology of propellant generators is that of mass production to the best of my knowledge. The $1000 price tag is not very realistic. It would not take much of a development program to load these up like bomblets in a cluster bomb. On the other hand, the defenses for small magnitude EMP are already mature technologies and incorporated on most if not all military systems. The only systems that are vunerable to small magnitude EMP are cheaply built commerical systems such as your PC. 30 Posted on 11/21/2000 05:29:55 PST by SSN558 (hatecl-@guns.monica) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: gonzo "I don't know why this EMP, 'secret-stuff', keeps showing up here every six months or so." Aw, gonzo, now you've gone and done it. Just when we all thought we really had discovered a good distraction for the Palm Beach Fiasco, and were really getting into it too, you come along and ruin the whole thing for us by pointing out that there are no suitcase-EMPW's. Shame on you - go take a nap (< grin >) - I gotta go now and listen to the talking heads try and tell me how to think (sigh). 31 Posted on 11/21/2000 07:40:03 PST by Washington_minuteman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Squantos Re.: your #23, I would say that you'd have to consider the possible amount of energy being released, combined with your proximity to the release, as important factors in determining how much shielding would be required. With static-sensitive electronic components or the blasting caps you mentioned, the primary concern is preventing current flow through the device. This is why many people will punch the pins of an IC through a piece of aluminum foil, thereby shorting all of the conductors to one another, and providing the discharge current a shorter path, and one of less resistance, to follow. These measures are usually sufficient to protect devices from static discharge energies which result from normal handling and transportation, which typically develope potentials between 15,000 and 50,000 Volts. Storing radios in a shielded condition, such as you describe, should provide a measure of protection against EMP damage, as the energy will be attenuated as it passes through the shielding, again, as long as you're not in close proximity to the release. For additional protection, underground storage would enhance protective measures by placing large amounts of earth and concrete (several feet and inches, respectively) between the discharge and the device. It's hard to beat this kind of shielding because of it's inherent attenuation capabilities. If you're, say, within 60-80 miles of a possible nuclear target, the best place to store such equipment would be in an underground fallout shelter: some 10-15' below the surface, the walls and roof being reinforced concrete and a minimum of 8" thick. Further away, basement storage should suffice, in most cases. Operation of a battery-powered receiver in the shelter can be used as a test: If you can receive radio signals from the target area in the closed shelter, you will also experience some EMP effects, because the energy travels using the same medium. Let's hope that these ideas are never put to the test. When I was younger, I took exorbitant measures to insure my survival in the event of a nuclear attack (living only 10 miles from a primary target - Fairchild AFB). As I've grown older, my focus has shifted more geared towards watching for red flags, detection of possible ICBM attacks using a VLF receiver (which goes nuts whenever something passes through the ionosphere) and evacuation to a safer area. I hope some of this is helpful. Take care. 32 Posted on 11/21/2000 12:56:19 PST by Washington_minuteman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Timesink You mean this? 33 Posted on 11/21/2000 13:16:21 PST by coloradan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Poohbah Re: "TEMPEST isn't called TEMPEST anymore" Not to mention the fact that "Tempest" is commonly reffered to as a sheilding to prevent the radiation of signal from electronic equipment, and is not necessarily designed as nor is it EMP protection. EMP protection (Hardening) is usually done at the chip level. 34 Posted on 11/21/2000 13:29:27 PST by kissthis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Washington_minuteman Yeah, _minuteman, It does git tedious, don't it? The nice part is that the butt-holes in washingtoon are about to hit-the-wall of something called: "The Rule of Law", here in Florida! They are initially, not gonna believe that it's happenning to them, and when the reality sinks in, there will be much gnashing-of-teeth, and rending-of-hair, and hopefully, much self-immolation! Unfortunately, we're gonna have to scrub everything after they leave....FRegards 35 Posted on 11/21/2000 23:51:24 PST by gonzo (barys-@aol.com) To: *Superweapons bump 36 Posted on 11/30/2001 21:19:49 PST by Zadokite --------------------------------------------------------------- MORE SKEPTICAL OPINIONS From the Josef K Guide to Tech terminology: EMP gun: n. Always suspected but never seen, the EMP -- electromagnetic pulse -- weapon is the chupacabra of cyberspace. Accordingly, it is said to be responsible for much nettlesome corporate computer and bank failure, almost always in countries where such things cannot be verified. Usage: Pelham was amused when the overly gullible newspaper reporter published his frank lies about Russian computer programmers knocking over international banks with emp guns made from stolen Radio Shack equipment. ------------ One of the most persistent fairy tales propagated in information warfare circles is the urban legend of the electromagnetic pulse gun. When it shows up in the mainstream media, courtesy of Reuters or the Associated Press, it looks something like this: "Dateline BRUSSELS -- Criminals can use the Internet to create powerful electromagnetic weapons that threaten society with chaos and destruction, a Latverian military officer warned Friday. "Underground sites on the Internet contain instructions on how to put together dangerous weapons that use electromagnetic or high-energy pulses that cripple computer systems, telephone systems and alarms, according to Victor von Doom, chief engineer at the Defense Materials division of the Latverian armed forces' electronic systems division. "High-tech goods found everywhere in the world can be used to create powerful weapons using recipes found on the Internet," said von Doom at a meeting of the International Association Of Quack Computer Consultants in Europe. "The problem is spreading from Russia, von Doom said." Pretty scary. But sensationalistic garbage that was actually published by one of the wire news services. Crypt News only changed the names of the parties involved. [For a more recent example from the newsmedia, consider 20/20's coverage of radio frequency weapons in the "Postscript."] Crypt News took the time to talk to some scientists at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque. Neal Singer pronounced it an interesting urban legend. Sandia, of course, is one of the national laboratories responsible for weaponization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The lab has also done extensive research into shielding against and generation of electromagnetic pulse effects. Awareness of electromagnetic pulse effects happened in 1962 when a 1.4 megaton nuclear weapon was detonated in Test Shot Starfish. The Starfish shot was conducted 400 kilometers high above the mid-Pacific and the electromagnetic pulse from it destroyed satellite equipment and blocked high frequency radio communications across the Pacific for 30 minutes. "Strings of street lights in Oahu went out and hundreds of burglar alarms set off when the pulses overloaded their circuits," wrote William Arkin in "S.I.O.P.: The Strategic U.S. Plan for Nuclear War." A scientist at Lawrence Livermore, Nicholas Christofilos, had predicted this effect earlier in the rear, calculating that high energy particles from a nuclear burst high in the atmosphere would become trapped in the Earth's magnetic field, producing a series of lightning-like pulses. Since then, the idea of using electromagnetic effects as a death ray, of sorts, produced without a messy 1.4 megaton nuclear explosion, has become increasingly interesting to fans of the weird quack-science of non-lethality and, for some reason, computer security experts and teenage hackers. For example, Crypt Newsletter frequently receives poorly spelled advertisements put together by teenagers advertising schematics for electromagnetic computer death rays for about $5.00 cash U.S. These, along with instructions for turning the telephone handset into an electric chair, software for melting the circuitry in a PC, and recipes for poisoning enemies with arsenicals -- come dirt cheap on pink photocopying paper or cheesy-looking pamphlets sold at "Survival Books" in north Hollywood. Interestingly, Winn Schwartau did much to embed the myth of the emp weapon in the mainstream imagination with his 1994 book "Information Warfare." In it, Schwartau wrote of secret U.S. missiles used against Iraq in the Gulf War to short circuit communications through bursts of microwaves. It was an interesting mistake based on a more prosaic reality having nothing to do with emp weapons. In the Gulf War, the Navy used a few Tomahawks containing spools of carbon filament. The filament was deployed across Iraq's power lines and stations by the Tomahawks, causing black-outs by short circuit around Baghdad. Since 1992 the tale of the emp gun has been seized upon by hackers rather too eager to sell gullible journalists on a pseudo-reality of imposing feats of technical legerdemain. (For example, mention of it as a hacker tool contaminates Alvin and Heidi Toffler's "War and Anti-War," published in 1993. The EMP gun appearances are also cyclical, many times attached every year to Winn Schwartau, Inc.'s information warfare conventions in Washington, DC. Journalists attend these types of things and report that the EMP gun has just been invented. Almost like clockwork -- appearances in the media, be it 1997, 1998, 1999, even mere months apart, such reporters have almost no memory on subject -- and the EMP gun is "invented" anew, rising from its own ashes, another phoenix of mystifying electronic danger that puts us all at risk. However, what is usually "invented" is little more than a glorified stun baton that can make a television screen blink or a radio speaker emit static at about ten paces.) In another such story, "Hack Attack," published as a cover feature in a 1996 issue of Forbes ASAP magazine, a number of "dangerous ex-hackers" played the game, "Let's lie to the journalist." The emp-weapon-used-against-Iraq myth was deployed: Forbes writer: Have you ever heard of a device that directs magnetic signals at hard disks and can scramble the data? Dangerous ex-hackers, in unison: Yes! A HERF [high energy radio frequency] gun. Dangerous ex-hacker A: This is my nightmare. $300: a rucksack full of car batteries, a microcapacitor and a directional antenna and I could point it at Oracle . . . Dangerous ex-hacker B: We could cook the fourth floor. Dangerous ex-hacker A: . . . You could park it in a car and walk away. It's a $300 poor man's nuke . . . Dangerous ex-hacker A, on a roll: They were talking about giving these guns to border patrol guards so they can zap Mexican cars as they drive across the border and fry their fuel injection . . . Dangerous ex-hacker A, really piling it on: There are only three or four people who know how to build them, and they're really tight lipped . . . We used these in the Persian Gulf. We cooked the radar installation. In other parts of the article the "dangerous ex-hackers" discuss the ease of building what purports to be a $300 death ray out of Radio Shack parts and car batteries. In a rare moment of intellectual honesty and self-scrutiny the "dangerous ex-hackers" admit there are a lot of "snake oil salesmen" in the computer security business. The sticking point of the legend, according to Sandia's Singer and others Crypt News interviewed, is the generation of militarily interesting amounts of electromagnetic pulse. To generate the effects ascribed to the notional weapon requires power fluxes that would kill everyone triggering the device and everyone in the vicinity of the detonation and target. Far easier to use Tim McVeigh's fuel oil-soaked fertilizer truck bomb. John Pike, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Space Policy Project puckishly commented, "[This] is sorta like Dr. Strangelove saying that a Doomsday Machine 'would not be dificult'! It is easily within the reach of even the smallest . . . nuclear power." Nevertheless, the myth of electromagnetic pulse weapons remains powerful, gaining lodgment in the damndest places. Indeed, in Crypt Newsletter 42 one article discussed how a U.S. Army course on information warfare in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was instructing about them in its sub-lecture devoted to weaponry. Now, Crypt News provides a thumbnail list of the myth's characteristic hearsay. 1. The EMP gun is always seen in remote places, as in "Boris Badenov, a computer security consultant, said criminal hooligans had destroyed a bank network in Dvinsk with an emp gun and escaped with 8 millions rubles in blackmail money." 2. The EMP gun is always developed by adjunct professors, fringe military reservists, or hackers. For example: "Glip Popple, an adjunct professor of information warfare at the Technical University of Gobble-Wallah in Australia, said he had built a working emp gun for $2,000," or "Uber-Fiend, a hacker for a group calling itself Karn Evil 9, told Reuters correspondents he had built a 12 gigaJoule electromagnetic pulse projector." 3. EMP guns are always secret, protected by classification, as in, "W. E. van Azathoth, a computer scientist genius working for the northern Virginia company Nefari US Electronics, had written a working paper on constructing emp weapons from four bags of sour cream and onion potato chips, a roll of aluminum foil and a positronic hammer -- it was immediately seized and classified by the National Security Agency. 4. Sometimes only unnamed "experts" talk about EMP guns, as in: "Experts have revealed to Associated Press reporters that U.S. banks lost $90 billion due to electromagnetic pulse attacks in 1996 -- the assaults untraceable, the perpetrators -- unknown." 5. Illicit EMP gun blueprints are on the Internet. Usage: "This reporter was told by a very highly placed Pentagon consultant that plans for EMP guns were on the Internet and that teen hooligans and criminal gangsters had obtained them." 6. Infrequently, an "EMP gun" -- more accurately, anything that can emulate the electromagnetic emissions of a large, unshielded electric motor -- will be demonstrated on assorted pieces of electronic equipment at conversational range. Results will be trivial or unremarkable and the demonstrator, often someone with a cargo cult-like devotion to the memory and work of Nikola Tesla, will dress them up as quite the opposite. Invariably, the demonstrations are conducted by people or agencies who just "coincidentally" happen to offer consulting services to defend against EMP guns. Indeed, it must be considered that in a country where a googly-eyed eunuch can persuade a large group of educated adults to poison themselves in preparation for hitching a ride on a flying saucer and a significant portion of the citizenry cannot be convinced that aliens didn't land at Roswell, the EMP gun must be a lead pipe cinch to sell. Postscript: Interestingly, an EMP gun inventor, David Schriner, showed up on ABC's 20/20 in mid-February 1999 to demonstrate the effects of it for an overawed Diane Sawyer. After donning fancy protective suits and unusual-looking copper mesh headgear, Schriner tested his weapon on Sawyer's corvette and a white limousine. At a range of about 5-10 feet and with the weapon pointed directly into the automobiles' open engine compartment, Schriner's electromagnetic pulse gun made Sawyer's idling corvette . . . run roughly. [Crypt News notes it can make any car's engine stop permanently, not just hesitate, at a range of five feet with a sledgehammer aimed directly into an open engine compartment.] Once, said Sawyer, the electric locks in her car's doors went up and down, too. While Sawyer stood well away from her car, farther away from it than Schriner's contraption, electronic videocameras inside the car continued to work during the firing of the "weapon." During the segment, Sawyer claimed "results" of testing of electromagnetic pulse on a Cobra helicopter at Junction Ranch in China Lake were "classified." Curiously, Crypt Newsletter covered the results of this test which were published on the Web over a year ago by the government. [Found in the attached links at the end of this story.] Crypt News must now assume posting a paper on the World Wide Web constitutes "classification." Besides David Schriner's demonstration of a short range microwave's ability to occasionally stall an idling, parked car at extremely close range, Sawyer's story -- like all Crypt News has seen on the subject, relied a great deal upon hearsay. Now, here comes the tricky part. Sawyer also claimed on 20/20: "Russian criminals have used an RF weapon, we're told, to disarm security and rob a bank." Crypt Newsletter repeats from the top of the story: "Pelham was amused when the overly gullible newspaper reporter published his frank lies about Russian computer programmers knocking over international banks with emp guns made from stolen Radio Shack equipment." And: "Boris Badenov, a computer security consultant, said criminal hooligans had destroyed a bank network in Dvinsk with an emp gun and escaped with 8 millions rubles in blackmail money." Read carefully: Crypt Newsletter made these statements up in 1997 as humorous examples -- jokes -- to be used as material for this article. In the context of this piece, they are amusing fictions. Apparently, Crypt Newsletter's jokes about EMP guns have travelled sufficiently far away from their original source to wind up gulling Diane Sawyer on 20/20 in 1999. Update: March 03, 1998: One of Diane Sawyer's sources for the 20/20 broadcast was Victor Sheymov, a KGB defector who advertised himself as a communications expert. Sheymov told Sawyer the KGB has used a microwave weapon to start a fire in the U.S. embassy in 1997 for the purposes of annoyance and in hope that firemen would be summoned. Using the firemen as cover, the idea was to plant listening devices in the embassy. Sheymov said the same thing before the House Joint Economic in February 1999, describing what can only be characterized as trivial effects of alleged Russian EMP gun use: Sheymov: Another example of a [EMP] attack was the KGB's manipulation of the United States Embassy security system in Moscow in the mid-80s. This was done in the course of the KGB operation against the Embassy which targeted the U.S. marines there. The security system alarm was repeatedly falsely triggered by the KGB's induced [radio frequency] interference several times during the night. This was an attempt to annoy and fatigue the marines [sic] and to cause the turning of the "malfunctioning" system off. Woo - a ringing alarm and, next, an alleged minor fire -- pretty scary stuff. Surely the cloth a national emergency is woven from. Sheymov: Additional example of an [EMP] attack was when the KGB used it to induce fire in one of the equipment rooms in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in 1977. A malfunction was forced on a piece of equipment. It caught fire, which spread over a sensitive area of the Embassy. The KGB tried to infiltrate its bugging technicians into the sensitive area under the cover of the firefighters who arrived immediately after the fire started. Subsequent to his appearance on 20/20, Sheymov was placed on the payroll of the National Security Agency where what was unclassified trivial testimony for TV reporters is, apparently, now classified. [Crypt Newsletter asks the question: How does one measure the incentive for alleged KGB defectors to embroider their stories for American handlers in hopes they will be put on a taxpayer-derived salary?] Update -- March 23, 1999: Yellow Peril -- The EMP gun hallucination is now intermingled with the hysteria over Chinese spying. In a mid-March Newsweek story on alleged Chinese penetration of the U.S. network of nuclear bomb-making national laboratories, magazine reporters write: "[The Chinese] may also have stolen secrets about U.S. efforts [emphasis added] to devise a nuclear weapon tailored to create an electromagnetic pulse; a man-made lightning bolt that would short out anything in an enemy nation that uses electricity." By the 19th, the Newsweek rumor had quickly mutated into a tale of stolen electromagnetic pulse guns, courtesy of the New York Times. Initially, during a White House press conference, President Clinton was asked by a Fox News reporter: "Mr. President, you said just a short while ago that no one has reported to you they suspect Chinese espionage at U.S. nuclear labs during your administration, sir. But sources tell Fox News, and we are reporting this evening, that China stole the technology for electromagnetic pulse weapons from several nuclear labs during your first term in office, sir, and that the Chinese have successfully tested these weapons in China. And the sources also say that the administration, at least, was aware of this. "Can you tell us, sir, were you not personally aware? Are you concerned about this? And what will be your administration's response to the report?" This raises an interesting question. How can the President determine if a weapon is stolen if it is not known to exist? Ambushed by phlogiston, the President nevertheless gamely tried to answer: President Clinton: "Well, you didn't say what the source of what they sold was. You say they 'stole, is that the word you used?" Fox reporter: "Yes, sir, the technology for EMP weapons, from four of the 11 nuclear labs." The President susbsequently said he knew nothing of the matter and that he forgot little of what went on during national security briefings. By Saturday, the New York Times had picked it up. This time, the statements on EMP guns, not nuclear weapons tuned for EMP broadcast, was attributed to the standard EMP red herring, the anonymous government source. The reader will notice the confusion and chronic abuse of anonymous sourcing common to all of these stories. From the New York Times, "When asked by a reporter from Fox News about whether China stole information from the labs about a nuclear device called an electromagnetic pulse warhead, during his tenure, the president said he knew nothing about that." "A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Friday night that intelligence reports show that China is satisfied that it has obtained the technology to develop a so-called electromagnetic gun. That gun, the official said, shoots an electromagnetic pulse." "It is not a nuclear weapon, however," continued the New York Times, "and is different from the electromagnetic pulse warhead in the U.S. nuclear arsenal." In June 1997, the House Joint Economic Committee entertained testimony from a retired general, Robert Schweitzer, who claimed China was attempting to obtain EMP gun technology from Russia. During the same hearing, a great deal of effort was spent in bloviation about the Red Chinese peril. In early 1999, a KGB-defector named Victor Sheymov claimed on national television that the KGB had used EMP guns to attack the U.S. embassy in Moscow, causing an alarm system to ring and the instigation of a minor fire. As a result, Sheymov was hired as a consultant to the National Security Agency. One month later, amidst more Yellow Peril hysteria, the Chinese are accused of stealing not only the plans for a standard nuclear weapon, but also electromagnetic pulse guns, which have not been demonstrated to exist, and -- maybe -- plans for a nuclear weapon-tuned to create maximum EMP. [Perhaps the NSA should be paying "the national labs" for consultation?] The reader may notice how none of these rumors, or news reports, appear to be on the same page. Update -- April 11, 1999: The war against Yugoslavia has spawned its own EMP weapon chupacabras. Rumors of new weaponry in use by the US Air Force floating around the Usenet and in and out of mainstream news organizations which should know better appear to stem from a brief article of extremely suspect credibility originally published by the Moscow ITAR-TASS news service on March 29. In "US Uses [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] as Test Site for New Bomb," reporter Anatoly Yurkin writes: "The USA is using Yugoslavia as a testing ground for its latest secret offensive weapons. The ITAR-TASS correspondent was told today at the Defence Ministry that, besides cluster bombs, which are extensively being used during the air strikes, the American bomber crews are using experimental samples of the latest aircraft bombs, the specifications of which differ considerably from those of conventional offensive weapons. "This aircraft bomb was developed in secret laboratories in Los Alamos, where the first American nuclear bomb was created. The new weapon is designed to disrupt the enemy's radio-electronic equipment. When it explodes, it generates an electric impulse, similar to the electromagnetic waves during a nuclear explosion. In its military specifications this bomb is a cross between a conventional weapon and a nuclear one, which provides grounds for regarding it as a weapon of mass destruction. "It is reported that the US air force is using two strategic B-2 bombers, developed with the 'Stealth' technology, to test the latest American aircraft bomb." Crypt Newsletter reminds its readers that "official Russian news agencies" like ITAR-TASS have much in common with editorial practices at tabloids like the Weekly World News and National Enquirer. Traditionally, intelligence analysts have regarded it as a good source of fairy tales. For example, on December 16, Komsomolskaya Pravda, like ITAR-TASS, one of "Russia's largest circulation and most outspoken dailies," published a feature entitled: "Electronic 'Hiroshima' Already Hidden in Moscow; 21st Century Wars Will Be Like Computer Horror Games." An interesting and rather amusing myth passed on by the Russian news agency was framed around the appearance of Richard Pryce, one of two British hackers who broke into the Department of Defense's Rome Labs installation at Griffiss Air Force Base in 1994. Pryce and his [accomplice], claimed the Russian article, launched a "[space] shuttle" remotely and switched all of "New York's traffic lights to green." In the same piece, the EMP weapon chupacrabras is invoked. However, instead of U.S. bombers using it over Yugoslavia, the situation is quite the opposite: The Russian military will use EMP bombs, which it calls "beer cans," to destroy U.S. "supercomputers." One hallmark of the EMP weapon chupacabras is its extreme flexibility. One month it can be your secret weapon; the next it can be your enemy's. Updated -- September 9, 1999: Schwartau, Inc's. annual information warfare convention in Washington, DC., rolled out the same electromagnetic pulse gun demonstration David Schriner deployed for Diane Sawyer on 20/20 in February 1999. The primary difference was if you had a television and could tune to Sawyer in February, the demo was free, but if you went to Schwartau, Inc. in September it cost you $1000 or so. (Oops, better hope your boss who gave you use of the company credit card for it isn't reading this.) Schwartau, Inc's. blurb for its $1000-buck-a-seat infowar convention read: "On Sept. 9 at InfowarCon-99, the first ever (Crypt News emphasis added) public conference demonstrations of an 1870 technology developed by Heindrich Hertz [sic] generates powerful electromagnetic effects on modern technology. First ever, Crypt Newsletter adds, only since an identical dog-and-pony show in February 1999 on primetime network TV. From the 20/20 transcript of Diane Sawyer's piece on David Schriner's Tesla ray in February of this year: DIANE SAWYER (voice over) But will it work? We take precautions with our cables and computerized cameras by enclosing them in copper shielding. [David] Schriner and his assistant use copper mesh masks to protect their eyes and face. DAVID SCHRINER: Ray one is ready for testing. DIANE SAWYER: The first target, two computers. The objective -- to crash them. DAVID SCHRINER: Going hot! DIANE SAWYER : Every short burst has the energy of 100 radio stations, a million watts. Watch the computer on the left. In just three seconds, it crashes. And a few seconds later, so does the other one. Real pants-wetting stuff, this material: "first ever" crashing of a PC at about ten paces and guys in funny-looking copper wire hats. Add this to KGB officer Victor Sheymov's claims (made in the same Diane Sawyer 20/20 broadcast in February) about the same "first ever" technology being used to set off a burglar alarm and start a small fire at the US embassy in Moscow a couple decades ago -- still surely the whole cloth national security emergencies are woven from. Virus Myth's Rob Rosenberger puckishly comments: "It takes a 20 MegaWatt focused radio pulse just to crash Win9x? Bah! I'd write off the demo as a complete flop. The FAA believes a suicidal maniac can bring down a 747 with nothing more than a Rio. You can attack the cockpit from the rear of the plane, I might add. 'Listen up! I downloaded the final 43 seconds of the Sgt. Pepper's CD and I'm prepared to use it!' Seaman Tesla needs remedial DeVry training if you ask me." ----------------- More relevant links: Electromagnetic pulse guns: The chupacabras of info-war. Electromagnetic pulse guns and "red mercury": Yikes! Robert Schweitzer's oral testimony on radio frequency weapons. Electromagnetic pulse weapons and the infrastructure: Robert Schweitzer's June 1997 written submission to Congress. The favorite slogan of U.S. Info-warriors. --------------------------------------------------------- * Forwarded by Glenda Stocks (1:330/201) * Area : I_UFO (I_UFO) * From : Chris Terraneau, 1:330/201 (07 Oct 95 09:34) * To   : Rich Boylan * Subj : Re: sdi weapons systems ................................................................... Frm: (Chris Terraneau) Chris.Te-@f201.n330.z1.fidonet.org For: Rich Boylan Org: None -=> Quoting Rich Boylan to Chris Terraneau <=- RB> Frm: (Rich Boylan) Rich.B-@f730.n203.z1.fidonet.org RB> For: Chris Terraneau RB> Org: QST BBS - Sacramento's Premier Ham BBS (1:203/730) Hi Rich! RB> I would be interested in hearing more about the High Power RB> Microwave (HPM) weapon system: how it works, power output, RB> narrow or wide beam application, range, deployment status, etc. The HPM demonstrator we built consisted of basically two sections. A so-called Marx generator, which produces a very brief, very high voltage, high current pulse, and a magnetron/antenna assembly, which converts the pulse current into an intense burst of microwave energy and then directs it towards a target. The demonstrator was housed in a trailer which had its own 15 kW diesel generator, and they used to tow it out to the desert to test it. The testing was done at the Cibola Range of the Yuma Proving Ground near Yuma, Arizona. A commercial 100 kV DC power supply was used to charge the 20-stage Marx, where it charged its capacitors in parallel, and then via a series of spark gaps discharged them in series. With the power supply set to 27 kV, the Marx would output a 265 kV, 3500 ampere, 21.4-nanosecond pulse. The spark gap array was pressurized with air, and the air pressure was regulated so as to control the point at which the Marx would fire. This allowed the system to operate over a range of output power levels. One megawatt was a typical pulse-power output, and with typical 50% magnetron efficiency, a half-megawatt RF pulse could be achieved. The negative-polarity output pulse from the Marx was coupled to a rather large, cold-cathode magnetron tube equipped with a superconducting magnet. The magnet was cooled to superconducting temperatures by liquid helium, and the magnetron itself was evacuated by a small vacuum pump. A specially-designed magnet power supply (1 volt, 70 amperes) was used to energize the magnet assembly. A waveguide couples the resulting microwave energy (4.4 GHz) to a 10-foot diameter dish antenna, which was mounted several feet above the trailer. Precautions were necessary around the operating equipment to protect personnel. Strong magnetic field, X-radiation from the magnetron, and RF hazard from the antenna all had to be considered. A zone of "denied occupancy" was set up in front of the antenna, which was basically a 12-degree cone which extended some 800 meters out in front of the antenna. The most intense part of the beam occupied a 6-degree angle, and in the center of the beam at a range of 30.5 meters, 9.85 watts per sq cm was developed. I never went out to the test range myself, but the guys who did told me they used to set up electronic equipment downrange, and try to destroy it. Apparently it worked great! They mentioned personal computers, and LCD wristwatches, amoungst other things. If they tested it on any military electronics, I was not told specifically what type of equipment. I did hear, however, that an Army land mine was detonated at a distance of two miles. I was told by one person who had been with the company a long time, that there was a videotape floating around someplace that showed a rat inside a waveguide with a clear window on the side. The rat was then subject to ever-increasing HPM pulses, which caused him to experience (apparently) great pain, and then death. I do not know the power levels used in this experiment, and I never heard anything about this particular demonstrator being used on any humans or other biological specimens. The date of all this was 1987 to 1989. The company had some old photos of other HPM and EMP simulation equipment, which to me looked like they could have been taken in the 1960s. In approximately 1990, the company built a two- man carried portable HPM generator. One guy carried the Marx generator (sulphur hexaflouride gas insulated), high voltage supply (50 kV) and battery pack on his back, and the other carried the magnetron tube and antenna. The two were connected together by a high voltage coaxial cable. Apparently, this device was a complete failure. It only produced a 300-watt output, probably due to not having a strong enough magnet on the magnetron. Since man-carrying a dewer full of liquid helium was out of the question, they used barium- ferrite permanent magnets. I remember them taking a photograph of it before turning it over to the government sometime in 1990. As far as current deployment status, I really do not know. I do know that the Army was very pleased with the HPM demonstrator (trailer-mounted version), but shortly after all this, the HPM division of the company was sold to General Atomics Corporation, the four guys and all the equipment then being transferred there. Up to that point, it was obvious that the HPM/EMP research had been going on for many years, and it was very well funded. The huge screen rooms they had, and all the state-of-the-art analysis and data logging equipment was testimony to that. That Marx generator was truly a work of art! RB> Also, I have been shown by a retired air Force Colonel a photo RB> of an Electro-Magnetic Pulse weapon. Am also interested in power RB> output, target types, range, and deployment status. RB> I believe one was used near Eglin Air Force Base/Hurlburt RB> Field USAF/CIA/Special Forces headquarters near Mary Esther, Florida RB> Panhandle. What do you know about Florida and New Mexico sites RB> specifically? Earlier this year, I spoke to abductee Leah Haley on the phone. She was very gracious in her information, and sent me a color Xerox of a supposed EMP weapon located on the beach at Eglin in Florida. Maybe you've heard her story of how the alien spacecraft she was in was shot down there on the beach by such a weapon. How she and her alien (and human???) captors were taken into custody by military personnel. She sneaked back there on the beach at a later time, and photographed the device. I have a couple of .GIF images of it on my BBS at (619) 635-8685. They are HALEY1.GIF and HALEY2.GIF in the misc image files area. There's also a text file, HALEY1.TXT in the misc textfiles area, which contains her story as related on Art Bell's radio program. I would be curious as to whether or not it looks like the photo you saw of such a device. THOSE FILES ARE HERE:HALEY.HTML I don't know too much about EMP weapons specifically. I did speak to an engineer who works for a high voltage power supply company in New Jersey a few months ago. We got into talking about some kind of high-power switch device he built specifically for EMP generation. Apparently, EMP generators (the electrical kind as opposed to the nuclear kind) also discharge a high voltage pulse via a fast switch, like a spark gap. The current pulse is delivered to an exotically-designed sort of a Tesla coil, but the device resonates at several frequencies, from a few MHz to over 100 MHz. The output from this exotic transformer is delivered to a spherical, ball-like electrode which is located in the center of a huge (30' or more?) dish antenna. He told me that the DIA discovered several years ago that EMP was the way to go as opposed to HPM, because of the wide frequency output spectrum developed by an EMP device. This means that it is much more difficult for an enemy to design their electronics to withstand a hit by EMP. HPM, on the other hand is easier to guard against, if you know the single-channel output frequency of the device. He told me that the largest EMP generator in the U.S. is located at Kirtland AFB in New Mexico. The work he did for the DIA was apparently 5-6 years ago, and his PFN (Pulse Forming Network) generated a 400-nanosecond pulse, quite a bit longer (and therefore possibly more devastating) than the 20-nsec pulse of our HPM demonstrator. He mentioned Electromagnetic Missiles were something they were developing, which used some technique called Brittingham-wave generation. Something about a paper written by a T.T. Woo of Harvard some 5-12 years ago. As far as EMP weapons at Eglin, he did confirm that that is where a significant ammount of pre-deployment testing of energy weapons is done. I asked him specifically about the possibility of shooting down UFOs with such a weapon. Although he said he had no knowledge of such an application, he did believe UFOs were real, as he saw one about 30 years ago himself. He was familliar with the Beifield-Brown effect, and did indicate to me that such a weapon could likely interfere severely with the operation of such a device. On a slightly related issue, last spring I visited a sister company, who had developed some kind of adaptive-mirror telescope imaging equipment for the (get this) BMDO (Ballistic Missile Defense Organization), the keepers of the mysterious Clementine spacecraft moon mapping mission. BMDO was plastered all around this place. This telescope is basically a reflector-type, but the reflector is made up of zillions of 1/4" hexagonal segments which move rapidly under computer control. A laser beam measures atmospheric turbulence in the viewing angle of the mirror, and adjusts its many segments rapidly, so as to cancel the effects of the intervening atmosphere. The end result is that images of space rivaling those obtainable outside the atmosphere, are obtained from the ground. Now here's the clincher: The people there told me that the equipment was being tested at Eglin! And, a little model of it in a glass case in the lobby of this company looks EXACTLY like the truck-mounted dish thing in Leah Haley's photograph! They people at this company told me that the BMDO will use this telescope to accurately track and target incomming nuclear missiles, so they can shoot them down. But wait, I thought that Star Wars was cancelled! Maybe they're tracking and targeting UFOs with this device, and then shooting them down with EMP weapons. Perhaps Leah Haley's photo is only of the telescope device site, and she did not see the actual EMP weapon, which could easily be located at a different location. RB> BTW, Hurricane Opal smashed right through Eglin/Hurlburt, and RB> even set off a tornado which took out Eglin's water tower plus RB> other damage. Gaia karma? Sounds good to me! Rich, do you have a photo in your posession of the EMP device you mention? I would really like to see it. I have a copy of the Operations and Maintenance manual for the HPM demonstrator, and would be glad to mail you a copy. Please give me your address again, and I'll send it off to you. Regards, Chris -> Posted by: g-@rochgte.fidonet.org (Glenda Stocks) ------------------------------------------------------------------ HALEY1.TXT The following is a transcript of portions of Art Bell's Dreamland radio program. Art's guest was Leah Haley, an abductee who claims she was aboard an alien spacecraft when it was apparently shot down by the Air Force near Gulf Breeze, Florida by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon. The program originally aired in the fall of 1994. AB: Art Bell LH: Leah Haley CALLER: An unidentified male who called in to speak to Ms. Haley ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- AB: ... but there's one other aspect I really have got to get covered first. And that is, it says "involved in a UFO crash." Now, are they referring to the object landing in the woods? It doesn't sound that way... LH: No... No... No, I remembered some of this consciously and some under the aid of hypnosis. I was in one of those alien craft, the chalky-colored, off-white creatures, looking out a porthole after they had finished their medical experiments. And there was water below, it looked like the ocean. I remembered seeing a military vessel below us, and as I was looking out the porthole I felt a jolt, and fell back and hit my head on something. When I came to, I crawled out an opening in the craft onto the sand, as though I was on a beach. The craft was tilted sideways on the beach, and there was a lot of military activity going on. I heard helicopters and airplanes flying overhead. I saw a man wearing a gas mask with one of those creatures slung across his shoulders, the creature was still alive at that point. I was taken out to a ship via a lifeboat. And I got the impression that a helicopter was about to land and take that alien that I saw away. When I got out to the military ship on the ocean, climbed up on the deck, there was one creature sprawled out on the deck of the ship and he was still alive. Now, there are some creatures missing, I don't know what happened to the rest of them. There were four creatures aboard the spacecraft with me before it crashed. And then I saw one on the sand, and one on the deck of the ship. However, those two entities actually could have been the same one. It's possible that the helicopter took the entity off the beach, onto the ship. And perhaps the helicopter got there before the lifeboat I was in arrived, so that could have been the same creature. There are at least two creatures missing, perhaps three. AB: Were you able at all to identify where you were? LH: Not at that point in time. I knew what the area looked like. It was a deserted area. There was a strip of beach that had white sand. The water, at that point in time, it was like right at first light. You know, right at dawn. The water was green and calm. I remembered the sparseness of the sea oats, I remember the shape of the sand dunes. There aren't many places in the United States that have sand that white. I didn't see any buildings in sight, it was a deserted area. AB: How about foliage, trees? Was it tropical, sub-tropical? LH: No, no, it wasn't. It looked like the area around Gulf Breeze, Florida. And I've since - we don't have enough time to go into everything - but I've since had some clues that the crash did occur in the Gulf - you know, near the Gulf Breeze area. And I have since gone down there investigating, and the area did look consistent with what I had remembered about the crash site. There's an air force base down there, Eglin Air Force Base. AB: That's right... LH: Just east of Gulf Breeze. And I and Donald Ware and Bob Reed, who are retired military people, we walked on that air force base, on the southern end of it, 13 miles from Navar Beach to Ft. Walton Beach. And that area did look consistent with the crash site. As we walked on that stretch of beach, we saw a strange piece of equipment that I have taken a photograph of, and I do have that photograph. And we since found out that that device is an electromagnetic pulse beam weapon. AB: Uh... Leah, is there any chance that I could get a copy of that photograph? LH: Yes, yes, I'll be glad to take your address and I'll mail you a copy. AB: I would heartedly appreciate it, and I'll provide that to you when we get off the air, OK? LH: Great. AB: Alright, so you've identified that piece of equipment then? LH: Yes, and there were some articles in Aviation Week and Space Technology that confirmed that there is an electromagnetic pulse beam weapon at Eglin Air Force Base, and that those devices are capable of downing aircraft without causing loss of life. So there are some people who have kept up with my case, and are currently investigating my case, who believe that the craft did not just fall down by itself, that it may have been shot down by our Air Force. (later, a caller asks Ms. Haley) CALLER: How did you identify the pulse beam (weapon) as being a pulse beam, that type of a weapon? I mean that's probably something you wouldn't see a picture of. AB: That thing you found on the beach... LH: Oh yeah, OK, when Don Ware and Bob Reed and I walked on the beach that day I took a photograph of this piece of equipment, and at that point in time I didn't know what it was. In the meantime, we showed photographs of that device to people, and Donald Ware was out lecturing in California, in San Diego. And a person who heard his lecture came up to him afterwards and said that he was the engineer who had drawn the specifications for that device. And that it was an electromagnetic pulse device. CALLER: ... Yeah, I was just curious because that's not something you'd see in any book anywhere. LH: Oh no, it wasn't in any book. I took a picture of it and it was on Eglin Air Force Base, and I must tell you that we were not supposed to have been on that base either. When I went back to see if I could get a closer picture of it - my husband and I went a few months ago - Marc Davenport and I went. And we got kicked off that base. We were ushered off the base before we could get close enough to the weapon to take a picture. ---EOF ------------------------------------------------ Hi-tech US weaponry could be used in conflict with Iraq BY JEAN-MICHEL STOULLIG Agence France Presse January 1, 2003 Military experts say the Pentagon has developed a series of accurate and powerful new weapons, including a microwave bomb, that could be used in a war against Iraq. But they point out that it is the round-the-clock reliance on precision-guided munitions known as JDAMs and unmanned drones that is expected to make a difference in the war against the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The electromagnetic E-bomb, designed to destroy electronic nerve centers, could already be in the US arsenal, although Washington has not announced it publicly. While it does not kill people, it is capable of causing burns. On top of that, the E-bomb "could sever communications between Saddam Hussein and troops that might be ordered to use chemical and biological weapons," said John Pike, a military affairs expert. "It could freeze weapons of mass destruction, at least that would be the hope," he added. Similarly, the blackout bomb BLU-114B, which can be delivered by planes or cruise missiles, is capable of disrupting electricity grids in urban areas. However, cutting off electricity could be a bad idea in the event that US military should want to broadcast to the Iraqi people the death of their president. The defense industry was also improving deep-penetration weapons that could be used against underground bunkers or mountain caves. Some of these weapons have already been used in the 1990-1991 Gulf War and in Afghanistan. Last March in Afghanistan, the US army used the thermobaric bomb BLU-118S, which is often referred to as a air-fuel weapon capable of knocking down walls and sucking out oxygen from enclosed spaces. In September, aerospace giant Lockheed-Martin tested, in the state of New Mexico, the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), a cruise missile launched from F-16 fighter jets that is capable of penetrating the hardest surfaces and finding its target even through fog and cloud cover. "We will throw everything at him that we have ... including thermobaric and bunker buster weapons designed to get at buried arsenals of chemical and biological weapons," said Chris Hellman of the Center for Defense Information, in a reference to Saddam Hussein. "As long as we suspect they are there and that Saddam may resort to using them we will throw the kitchen sink at him, short of weapons of mass destruction," he added. But first and foremost, military experts count on using proven systems like JDAMs and other precision-guided munitions that rely on global positioning satellites to home in on their targets. Precision-guided weapons represented only seven percent of all munitions used against Iraqi troops in the Gulf War, according to retired military officer Mike Vickers. Their share rose to 30 percent in the 1999 Kosovo campaign, to 60 percent in Afghanistan and was expected to reach 80 percent in Iraq, Vickers said. "The air drop will be almost entirely precision-guided, and the bulk of it will be satellite instead of laser-guided," Pike pointed out. To quietly monitor enemy movements, the pilotless drones Predator and Global Hawk are already in the arsenal. The Marines Corps has a prototype of Dragon Eye, a mini-drone that can spot snipers in urban environments like Baghdad. The US Army has just unveiled its future spy plane called Shadow 200. But ultimately, despite all technological progress, it is armored ground units that will bring about the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, according to Pike. Iraqis may be accustomed to air strikes but not to seeing M-1A2 Abrams tanks at the gates of Baghdad. These tanks, as well as the armored, tank-like Apache helicopters, have also been modernized. Copyright © 2003 Agence France Presse ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STILL MORE PRETTY MUCH INCOMPREHENSIBLE, INCONCLUSIVE GOSSIP ABOUT RADIO FREQUENCY WEAPONS: Dept. of Defense civil servants and one salesman go before Congressmen to discuss the chupacabras of information space. Victor von Doom: a.k.a Dr. Doom, an arch villain in the Marvel Comics universe often portrayed handcrafting a variety of directed energy weapons -- ray guns -- with which to smite enemies; now used by Crypt Newsletter as a catch-all designation for computer security snake-oil salesmen and assorted crackpots spreading freaky tales of non-existent electronic death rays. Usage: Victor von Doom, a faculty member at the University of Gobble-Wallah in Brisbane, Australia, warned frightened businessmen that a raygun capable of surreptitiously smashing networked corporate computers from a distance of half a mile could be easily fashioned from parts including a cattle prod, two potato knishes, one satellite TV dish and four car batteries. CRYPT NEWSLETTER 47 March 1998 Editor: George Smith, Ph.D. INTERNET: 70743-@compuserve.com           cry-@sun.soci.niu.edu http://www.soci.niu.edu/~crypt Mail to: Crypt Newsletter 1635 Wagner St. Pasadena, CA 91106 ph: 626-568-1748 Who reads Crypt Newsletter: ========================== The great majority of Crypt Newsletter readers do it on company time. While there are accesses at all hours, heaviest usage and downloading of current issues occurs during U.S. business hours, beginning at around 7:30 EST and continuing to 4:40 Pacific time. Readers of Crypt Newsletter log in monthly from organizations like Mercedes Benz, Lucent Technologies, Loral, Lockheed, MITRE Corporation, MITRE Technology, NASA-JPL, Midwest Research Institute, Electronic Data Systems, Digital, CSIRO, Science Applications, Unisys, the World Bank, Fujitsu, DuPont, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Boeing, FermiLab, the US Dept. of the Treasury, the Department of Energy, the US Naval Undersea Warfare Center, the EPA [?!], Disney [?!?], Oak Ridge National Lab, Argonne Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley, Vandenberg AFB, China Lake Naval Weapons Research, the SPAWAR Submarine Command Office, the Pentagon and many anonymous U.S. military Internet domains that refuse open telnet connections and "finger" queries. Others log in from media organizations like the BBC, The Bloomberg Business News Service, New York Times, the Sacramento Bee, various newspapers from the hinterlands, Federal Computer Week, The Net magazine, and The Age, too. Crypt Newsletter articles may not be copied or reproduced in or on other media, on CD-ROM collections of data, or offered - in part or in toto - as part of any database, data survey, information or research service without prior consent of the editor. Rates based on word count are reasonable. Queries by e-mail are welcome. ------------------------------------------------------------ February 24, 2002 © New York University. All Rights Reserved. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Iraq attack: "Code Black" An E-Bomb, the Pentagon's newest gadget, is intended to fry electronics. Unfortunately it will do as much damage to civilians as it does to Saddam's military By Conn Hallinan Global Beat Syndicate (KRT) SANTA CRUZ, Calif. – When the Bush administration talks about Weapons of Mass Destruction, it means nuclear, chemical and biological devices. But the United States is preparing to use a WMD of its own that will accomplish at the speed of light what 10 years of bombing was unable to do in Southeast Asia: send a country back to the stone age. The device – called a "microwave bomb" or an "E-Bomb" – will literally bring a nation to its knees, destroying all electrical devices – permanently. Every battery, semiconductor, electrical line and power source will simply cease to function. Asked about using the weapon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently said, "You never know," then added that we "might use it." While the administration was being coy about using the E-Bomb, military analysts were rubbing their hands in anticipation. "Kabammy! A huge electronic wave comes along and sends out a few thousand volts. Wham! Your cell phone or your computer dies," says Roger McCarthy, chair of Exponent Failure Analysis Associates. But is not just cell phones and computers that will die. The E-Bomb will fry all communications cables, radio towers, phone systems and wires. Traveling through the air, or conducted along everything from railroad tracks to plumbing pipes, an enormous electromagnetic pulse – an EMP – will flash into homes, businesses and hospitals, essentially terminating the 20th century. It will also violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions, specifically, Protocol 1, Part IV, Article 48, which clearly states that warring parties "shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives." Article 51 specifically prohibits attacks employing a "method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective." Firing one of these devices over Baghdad would indeed immobilize the tanks of the Republican Guard, and its anti-aircraft missiles. But it would also shut down every hospital and ambulance. And it would destroy every generator and water pump that city of 4.5 million people. Given that some 5,000 Iraqi children die each month, according to the World Health Organization, many as a result of water-borne diseases caused by a decade of sanctions, civilians will clearly suffer the brunt of such an attack. Again, Article 54 of the Geneva Conventions explicitly forbids rendering "useless" any "drinking water installations." Iraq is one of the most urban societies in the Middle East. Some 76 percent of its population resides in cities, compared with 61 percent in Iran and 45 percent in Egypt. It is also a very young population. Over 50 percent of its population is 15 years or younger, and children are far more susceptible to water borne diseases, like cholera, than are adults. The effects of EMPs have been know since a 1958 high altitude nuclear test in the Pacific inadvertently disrupted telephones, street lights and radio transmission in Hawaii and Australia. The initial effect of a nuclear explosion is an EMP wave, and its results have been closely studied since those tests. The Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories recently produced a rather simple device with a devastating effect. Mounted on a cruise missile, or even attached to a helicopter, the "bomb" forces an explosion through a copper coil, producing what is called the "Compton effect," with electrons traveling at 186,000 miles per second. The effects are virtually instantaneous and the damage is permanent. Every electrical device it touches must be replaced, down to every bit of basic wiring. If the reconstruction cost in Iraq has been calculated, the figures are classified. Supporters of the device see it as a "humane" weapon because it is not supposed to kill people. "The electromagnetic pulse generator is emerging as one of the strongest contenders…to find effective weapons to defeat an enemy without causing loss of life," writes David Fulghum, an EMP expert. But as the Geneva Conventions make clear, this kind of attack is a violation of international law, targeting services that civilians will need to survive a war. Imagine hospitals in a war zone without electricity or backup generators, serviced by immobile ambulances, their ignition systems fused by a massive EMP. "Code Blue," hospital shorthand for emergency, will become "Code Black." The temptation to try a new "whiz bang" in war is likely to be overwhelming. "The only time you get realistic feedback on new capabilities is during wartime," says Bob Martinage of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "The military will take advantage of that time to test new systems." But that "feedback" will violate international law, derail a modern society, and put 23 million Iraqi civilians in harm's way. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Conn Hallinan is provost at the University of California at Santa Cruz and an analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus © 2000 New York University. All Rights Reserved. The Global Beat Syndicate, a service of New York University's Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, provides editors with commentary and perspective articles on critical global issues from contributors around the world. For more information, check out http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/. ---------------------------------------------------- Iraq War Could Be Won in 48 Hours: Report Blitz of high-tech weapons would devastate Iraqi forces      Copyright © 2003 About, Inc. About and About.com are registered trademarks of About, Inc. The About logo is a trademark of About, Inc. All rights reserved. After a devastating opening blitz of high-tech weapons, U.S. commanders believe a war against Iraq could be virtually won in just 48 hours. On the first night of the attack, lights in the Iraqi command center suddenly blink out, the computers shut down and the phones go dead. The detonation of American "E-bombs" low in the sky over Baghdad leaves Saddam Hussein and his military commanders helpless, cut off from their troops and just waiting to die. According to a recent Newsweek report, the above scenario describes the detonation by U.S. forces of an "E-bomb" over President Saddam Hussein's key command-and-control bunkers in and around Baghdad during the opening moments of a war against Iraq. Delivered by cruise missiles, E-bomb warheads emit lightening bolt-like electromagnetic pulses strong enough to disable all electrical equipment within range of their detonation. A state of "shock and awe" According to Newsweek's National Security Correspondent John Barry, the E-bomb will be a key element in U.S. commanders' plans to leave surviving Iraqi soldiers in a demoralized and stunned state of "shock and awe" after the first night of allied bombing. During just the first two days of the attack, combined allied forces are expected to launch over 3,000 laser-guided bombs, cruise missiles and conventional missiles against key Iraqi targets including: Air defense radar and missile sites Electronic command and control centers Weapons of mass destruction sites "Leadership targets," meaning Saddam Hussein, his sons and followers Without a single American combat boot touching Iraqi soil, U.S. commanders believe the first 48 hours of the war will leave all but the staunchest of Hussein's military ready to surrender. While some Special Forces teams may have moved into Iraq sooner, Newsweek suggests that ground troops will not be deployed until the third or fourth day of bombing, with the assault more closely resembling the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. Iraq to be the "Information Age" War Quoted in the Newsweek article, U.S. Army historian Maj. Gen. Robert Scales calls the 1990 Gulf War "the last of the machine-age wars," declaring the impending Iraq conflict -- Gulf War II -- to be the "first War of the Information Age." Maj. Scales should know. In 1997 He wrote the Army's vision of its future, titled the "Army After Next." (Bibliography) Many of the weapons-future will look the same, says Scales: Abrams main battle tanks, Apache helicopters, F-14, -15, -16, -18 warplanes. But the helicopters have a new targeting system poised over its rotor shaft, called a Longbow, that allows the chopper to target 16 enemy tanks at once. The Abrams has GPS -- Global Positioning System -- which allows every vehicle commander to know precisely where he is. And the bombs hanging from the warplanes are Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMS), equipped with minicomputers and GPS systems to steer themselves within, on average, 10 feet of their targets. Using the E-bomb blitz to seize the Iraqi airwaves, U.S. forces hope to isolate Saddam Hussein from his troops and his people. Once Saddam is either isolated or dead, America will wage a war of psy-ops (psychological operations), Newsweek reports. The goal not being to massacre Saddam's army. Saddam's soldiers will be told, in essence: we need you for the new Iraq; don't die for the old one. Saddam not defenseless Top Pentagon officials are concerned that Iraq may have the technology necessary to jam the GPS systems essential to the precision of U.S. weapons. Most Iraqi jamming devices, however, are thought to have short ranges. American EA-6B Prowler aircraft would instantly detect and home in on more powerful jamming transmissions and destroy the equipment. ---------------------------------------------------------- JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE HEARING - US House of Representatives Economic Espionage, Technology Transfers and National Security Tuesday, June 17, 1997 Witnesses: Lieutenant General Robert L. Schweitzer, U.S. Army (Retired) Expert on Weapons Proliferation. Dr. Peter M. Leitner Author of "Decontrolling Strategic Technology, 1990-1992." Mr. John J. Fialka Wall Street Journal Reporter and Author of "War By Other Means." Dr. Kenneth Flamm Author of "Mismanaged Trade? Strategic Policy and the Semiconductor Industry." Chairman Jim Saxton's Prepared Statement http://www.house.gov/jec/hearings/statemnt/06-17-7s.htm Retired Lt. Gen. Robert L. Schweitzer's Prepared Statement http://www.house.gov/jec/hearings/espionag/schweitz.htm Dr. Peter M. Leitner's Prepared Statement http://www.house.gov/jec/hearings/espionag/leitner.htm Mr. John J. Fialka's Prepared Statement http://www.house.gov/jec/hearings/espionag/fialka.htm Dr. Kenneth Flamm's Prepared Statement not available -------------------------------- "Pentagon may use new E-Bomb during war on Iraq" THE IRISH TIMES, Friday, February 21, 2003, page 12. While awareness of the U.S. planned use of an E-Bomb in its proposed offensive against Iraq has been given wide media coverage last week, Conor Cleary includes in his article on this further insights from a recent interview he held with Greg Mallo, director of a nuclear watchdog organisation called, The Los Alamos Study Group. I'll quote the relevant passage: "On January 10th, 32 senior officials dealing with US nuclear weapons met in the Pentagon to plan a secret conference at US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) headquarters in Nebraska in August. The minutes were obtained by the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear watchdog organisation and the Defense Department said they were genuine. The agenda for the August meeting revealed that 'the brakes are off' in planning for new nuclear weapons, the director of the Los Alamos Study Group, Greg Mallo, told THE IRISH TIMES. 'What is really breath-taking is the very explicit connection with nuclear testing requirements,' he said. 'We are supposed to be negotiating the end of the arms race, and it is nuclear armament rather than nuclear disarmament.' The January meeting arose from an internal Pentagon memo last October by Mr Pete Aldridge, Under-secretary of Defence, requesting that nuclear weapons laboratories examine the benefits of low-yield nuclear testing. It was chaired by Dr. Dale Klein, former vice chancellor of the University of Texas and a friend of President George Bush, and who is now an assistant to Mr Rumsfeld. 'Many of the people at this meeting have held ideas like this for a number of years and they have been waiting for their opportunity to advance those ideas,' Mr Mello said. It was impossible to overstate the challenge to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the existing nuclear test moratorium, and US compliance with the Nuclear Nonproflieration Treaty, he said. The last nuclear test in the US was in September 1992. 'These plans deserve outrage--first in the United States, and throughout the world. It may or may not e obvious that if allowed to proceed further--especially in the present jingoist atmosphere now prevailing in Washington--the process outlined here will be quite hard to stop." ---------------------------------- Statement of Dr. Ira W. Merritt Chief, Concepts Identification and Applications Analysis Division Advanced Technology Directorate, Missile Defense and Space Technology Center U. S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command before the Joint Economic Committee United States Congress Wednesday, February 25, 1998 "Proliferation and Significance of Radio Frequency Weapons Technology" Introduction       Thank you for your invitation and for this opportunity to offer testimony to the Joint Economic Committee regarding the proliferation of radio frequency (RF) weapons technology and its significance to the operability of our high value assets. I am employed by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, but some of the opinions and conclusions expressed are based upon my own past experiences and observations and are not necessarily those of the Army.       I am from the Advanced Technology Directorate (ATD) of the Missile Defense and Space Technology Center, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command. One of our principal responsibilities is to develop innovative and advanced technologies for application to Army projects, joint missile defense projects and other programs of national importance. In particular, ATD evaluates the capabilities of technologies, including radio frequency weapon technologies, to establish their significance to the operability of our sophisticated electronics. Our interest in RF weapon technologies has increased in the last several years as a result of: Rapid advances in RF sources and antennas Increased interest by other countries, and groups, in RF weapons and RF mitigation Increased susceptibility to microwaves of miniature solid state electronics Insights from our travel to Russia and from ongoing technical exchanges with Former Soviet Union scientists and co-workers in United Kingdom, Sweden, and Australia.       Our work with Russian scientists has been particularly useful in confirming that their approaches to technical problems are often very different from ours. Over the past several years we have visited laboratories developing directed energy weapon technologies, pulsed power systems, high power microwave technologies, high power lasers, and space-based neutral particle beams. In 1992, we visited the Moscow Radio Technical Institute, which was developing high-power microwave (HPM) sources and which had a large test facility for performing susceptibility and effects measurements. In 1994, we visited the Kharkov Physico-Technical Institute in Ukraine, where they were developing: high power microwave sources, such as the magnetically insulated linear oscillator (MILO); neutral particle beam sources; prime power systems; and where they were also performing susceptibility and effects tests. The MILO was invented in the U.S., but we discontinued work on it in the late 1980s. The Soviet Union (SU) picked up the technology and successfully continued its development. Russia also exploited the magnetocumulative generator (MCG) as an explosively driven power supply. The MCG was developed by Dr. Andrei Sakharov in the SU and the Russians have used MCG power supplies extensively to drive ultra wideband (UWB) and HPM sources, lasers, and railguns. In 1995 we visited: the Kurchatov Institute to discuss laser and high current problems, the All-Russian Electrotechnical Institute to discuss high voltage technology, Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg to discuss ultra fast switches, and the Institute of Problems of Electrophysics, also in St. Petersburg, to discuss pulse power and plasma technologies. My comments in the rest of this testimony are based upon the results of visits to Russian laboratories, visits to other countries, continued scientific contacts, research reports from contracts, some test results and open source literature. Background History: It has long been a concern in the scientific community that Soviet scientists led the world in development of RF weapon technologies. This concern was heightened in 1994 when Gen. Loborev, Director of the Central Institute of Physics and Technology in Moscow, distributed a landmark paper at the EUROEM Conference in Bordeaux, France. In this paper Dr. A. B. Prishchepenko, the Russian inventor of a family of compact explosive driven RF munitions, described how RF munitions might be used against a variety of targets including land mines, sea skimming missiles, and communications systems1, 2, 3. He further popularized these munitions with articles in Russian naval journals and in other professional journals and magazines4.       The Soviet Union had a large and diverse RF weapons program and remnants of this work continue today within FSU countries. The scope and results of the Soviet program are poorly understood, but ATD personnel have been at the forefront of efforts to gather information and to understand it5 and its accomplishments through Windows on Science and contracts for R&D effort. Our principal objective is to understand requirements and to identify technologies applicable for RF mitigation. Nevertheless, large uncertainties still exist concerning the status of RF weapon development and associated efforts to mitigate their effects on electronics. In spite of these uncertainties, it is clear that many nations continue to aggressively pursue the development of RF weapons and techniques to mitigate their effects6. Proliferation: Worldwide interest in RF weapons has increased dramatically in the last several years. The collapse of the Soviet Union is probably the most significant factor contributing to this increase in attention and concern about proliferation. A recent study of open source literature dealing with RF weapons6 clearly documented the worldwide interest in RF weapon technologies and my testimony is offered in the context of these conclusions. A few of the report's key judgments were that: "…construction of effective explosively-driven Flux Compression Generator devices is entirely feasible for established military powers such as Russia, China, France, Germany, et cetera,…" "There is no confirmed evidence of employment of such a device to date … available in open sources". "Modern Metal Oxide Semiconductor technology, on which most of our critical national infrastructures depend, unless deliberately protected or "hardened", is extremely vulnerable to even low–power electromagnetic pulses..." "…it is well understood that the US is disproportionately more vulnerable to RF attack than are less developed nations."       Specific examples of interest in RF weapons and the proliferation of this technology follow. The French Gramat Research Center has dedicated significant assets to study the effects of electromagnetic energy on electronics and in 1989 Thompson CSF published brochures in which they stated that they were developing RF weapons7. A 21 January, 1998 newspaper article in the Swedish newspaper SVESNSKA DAGBLADET8 reported that the Swedish National Defense Research Institute purchased a Russian "suitcase bomb" that uses high power microwaves to "knock out" computers and destroy all electronics within the radius of its "detonation". The article also reported that this device is being sold commercially and that it has been sold to the Australian military. The price was reported to be several hundred thousand Kroner, or about $100,000. Mr. Carlo Kopp, an Australian professor, who claims to have had a relationship with their military, has his own web site (http://www.cs.monash.edu.au/~carlo) and has provided detailed papers on the alleged effects of RF weapons and sketches of design concepts9. A simple search on the Internet recently identified 95 websites that referenced Mr. Kopp's work. These included 16 sites in the U.S. and 18 sites in other countries, not including Australia. The Internet is becoming a significant factor in enhancing the interest in RF weapons. Waveforms and Susceptibility: State of the art semiconductors are becoming more vulnerable to the effects of radio frequency energy as semiconductor features become smaller and smaller10, 11, 12. Commercial microelectronics make heavy use of metal oxide semiconductor devices which fail when subjected to voltages that exceed the dielectric strength of the component or when the device melts as a result of heating from currents induced by the RF pulse.       High-power microwave and ultra wideband signals differ in their pulse length and frequency content (Figure 1). HPM sources produce