Electromagnetic Pulse (7 page)

Space Technologies

There are multiple applications for EMP technologies in the field of aerospace. One is the use of EMP technology to control orbiting satellites. These systems are based on the direct interactions between the vehicle's electromagnetic field and the magnetic field of the Earth. The advantages of EMP designed systems are the very precise and instantaneous control over the satellite’s responsiveness. Also, the expected electrical efficiencies are far greater than those of current chemical rockets that attain propulsion through the use of heat which results in low fuel efficiencies and significant amounts of gaseous pollutants.

Chapter Seven
Military Uses

Weapons of Electromagnetic Mass Destruction

Fighting a War Across the Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS)

Recently, the Pentagon has made a significant effort to showcase its budding cyber warfare capabilities. But the military has been less forthcoming about an essential, more substantial component of their military capabilities — electromagnetic warfare – until recently.

The use of electromagnetic pulse technology is one of the most critical operational tools in modern warfare, but its use in military operations is rapidly changing. EMS operations can be roughly broken down into communications, sensing, and electromagnetic warfare. Most people are familiar with communication and sensing systems, such as radios and radar in the radio frequency portion of the EMS. In the future, military systems will use a wider rangeswath of the EMS, including capabilities that use laser light, infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) radiation, or emitters and detectors that radiate in the X-ray and gamma-ray regions of the spectrum.

The term
electronic warfare
refers to the use of electromagnetic energy and directed energy to attack an enemy’s capabilities. The Department of Defense divides electronic warfare operations into three broad categories:

Electronic attack
, involves the use of electromagnetic pulse technology-based weaponry to attack facilities or equipment with the intent of degrading, neutralizing, or destroying enemy combat capability.

Electronic protection
, which refers to actions taken to protect personnel, facilities, and equipment from the effects of friendly, neutral, or enemy use of an EMP, as well as to naturally occurring phenomena that degrade, neutralize, or destroy friendly combat capability.

Electronic warfare support
, which includes actions to identify and locate sources of intentional and unintentional, radiated EMP energy.

The Army just publically released its first-ever Field Manual for Cyber – Electromagnetic Activities. This manual covers operations related to cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum, highlighting that electromagnetic warfare is as important as the threat of cyber warfare.

The Army’s field manual describes a variety of options in its use of electronic warfare, or EW. The tools at the military’s disposal range from sending confusing signals and messages that degrade the enemy’s communications capability on the battlefield, to finding enemy equipment and destroying it with an electromagnetic pulse. The manual does not explain how to conduct specific EW attacks, but it does guide soldiers on what these sorts of operations look like regarding protocol, terminology, command and control. The military recognizes the number of potential electronic warfare operations is growing with every new radio or internet-dependent device that the military acquires.

With its use of electromagnetic pulse weaponry, the military can impact the ability to fly a drone, use GPS, or even drop a smart bomb, but EMP technology doesn’t just represent a weapon for use by the U.S. military. It’s also a potential vulnerability. The U.S. does not have a monopoly on the use of electromagnetic pulse technology. In the last few years, off-the-shelf pieces of wireless communications equipment have allowed everyone, from hobbyists to terrorists, to access the electromagnetic spectrum efficiently, in the form of radio frequency weapons.

The importance of this technology stimulated the Army to establish a new career field dedicated to electronic warfare in 2009. Unfortunately, like so many other aspects of our military, our reliance on electromagnetic pulse technology might be growing faster than our ability to keep defending against it.

Our military is scrambling to develop new tools and techniques that will help it preserve its electromagnetic edge, but that advantage continues to shrink. Soon, our inability to completely control the spectrum might result in a different kind of war as weapons of electromagnetic mass destruction proliferate.

As stated in
Cyber Warfare
, the electromagnetic pulse capability will go hand-in-hand with newly developed cyber operations. While there are definite similarities, cyber operations have a broader range of capacities than the traditional EMP strategic role, and can support a wider range of operations. Defensively, counter-EMP techniques have a more limited scope than the huge needs to defend our military and critical infrastructure from cyber attacks.

Electronic warfare and cyber warfare are closely related and should be treated as such. The overlap between electronic operations related to drones, communications, and improvised explosive devices on the battlefield, and cyber warfare—which we commonly think of as being about ones, zeros, and hackers, shows our Pentagon is evolving in its view of both fields.

For U.S. soldiers, according to the current approach by our military, electronic and cyber warfare are the same. Eventually, the term cyber or electronic war may become obsolete. It might be time just to call it war. As Albert Einstein wrote:

I know not with what weapons WW3 will be fought, but WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones.

The Impact of Defense Department Budget Cuts

The Defense Department may be facing some of the most significant budget cuts in decades, but many are confident that the Pentagon will develop new cost-effective, and efficient, technologies to fight our enemies.

Speaking at a Bloomberg Government in 2015, research and development leaders from the U.S. Armed Forces all identified their top
game-changing
technologies.

Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, the chief of naval research, suggested that directed energy via electromagnetic pulse technology— electromagnetic railguns, lasers, and microwaves—would all be significant developments that could place the United States ahead of potential threats.

He said that the USS Ponce, which had an operational, directed energy laser cannon on board, that would fire the weapon at a cost of less than $1 per round. It could be used to take out potential threats, such as an Iranian drones and swarm boats, utilizing its lethal to non-lethal energy spectrum.

A concern of many DOD watchers is that budget cuts could cripple the U.S. military’s hopes for maintaining supremacy in research and technology. One can only hope that the Secretary of Defense will not relinquish our nation’s technological advantage and innovation to the Russians or Chinese.

Limitations of EMP Weapons

The limitations of electromagnetic weapons are determined by weapon implementation, means of delivery, and administration policy concerning rules of engagement. Weapon application will determine the electromagnetic field strength achievable at a given radius, and its spectral distribution. Means of delivery will constrain the accuracy with which the weapon can be positioned in relation to the intended target. Both constrain lethality. Rules of engagement can only be determined by a particular administration’s foreign policy and defense goals.

In the context of targeting military equipment, it must be noted that vacuum tube equipment is substantially more resilient to the electromagnetic weapons effects than solid state, transistor technology. Therefore, a hard electrical kill may not be achieved against targets using antiquated technology.

Means of delivery will limit the lethality of an electromagnetic bomb by introducing limits to the weapon's size and the accuracy of its delivery. Advanced technology, as discussed below, is addressing this issue.

Politically, the accuracy of delivery and achievable lethal radius must be considered against the acceptable collateral damage for the chosen target. Where collateral electrical damage or significant human impact is a consideration, accuracy of delivery and lethal radius are critical parameters. An inaccurately delivered weapon with a large lethal radius may be unusable against a target, should the likely collateral electrical damage be beyond acceptable limits. Collateral damage may be a major issue for nation-states constrained by restrictive rules of engagement designed to avoid unexpected loss of life.

Railgun Applications

Electromagnetic railguns -- that use electricity rather than chemical propellants to launch projectiles -- are potential game changers too. There are currently two working prototypes under consideration at the Marine Corps Base at Quantico. At $25,000 per round, the electromagnetic railgun may be capable of the same results as multimillion-dollar missiles.

Railguns are of particular interest to the military, as an alternative to current bulky artillery. Railgun ammunition, in the form of small tungsten missiles, would be relatively light, simple to transport, and easy to handle. Due to their high velocities, railgun missiles would be less susceptible to bullet drop and wind shift, than current artillery shells. Course correction would be important, but all missiles fired from railgun artillery could be guided by satellite.

It would be harder to engineer small arms railguns, mainly because of recoil. Recoil, the backward action of a firearm upon discharge, is determined by the momentum of the escaping projectile. Multiplying a projectile's mass by its velocity yields its momentum, which for high-velocity railgun projectiles, would be considerable. A portable railgun that fires very small bullets may be the solution. A small bullet would limit recoil, but still carry enough kinetic energy to inflict severe damage.

Railguns have also been proposed as important components of the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars. Star Wars is a U.S. government program responsible for the research and development of a space-based system to defend the nation from attack by strategic ballistic missiles. Railguns could fire projectiles to intercept the incoming missiles. Some scientists argue that railguns could also protect Earth from rogue asteroids, by firing high-velocity projectiles from orbit. Upon impact, the projectiles would either destroy the incoming asteroid or change its trajectory.

Railguns have some interesting non-military applications as well. For one thing, they could potentially launch satellites or space shuttles into the upper atmosphere, where auxiliary rockets would kick in. On bodies without an atmosphere, such as the moon, railguns could deliver projectiles to space without chemical propellant, which would require air to function.

Railguns could also be used to initiate fusion reactions. Fusion occurs when two small atomic nuclei combine to form a larger nucleus, a process that releases large amounts of energy. Atomic nuclei must be traveling at enormous velocities for this to happen. Some scientists propose using railguns to fire pellets of fusible material at each other. The impact of the high-velocity pellets would create immense temperatures and pressures, enabling fusion to occur.

With continued successes such as these, the railgun may one day be the weapon of choice on the battlefield and the propellant of choice on the launch pad.

MAHEM: MAgneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition

Small drones are the ultimate smart bombs. They are potentially portable, personal cruise missiles capable of putting a warhead on target, miles away. Some, like the Israeli Hero-30, are already being deployed. But the next generation of such U.S. weapons will have advanced warheads that can hit targets from tanks to buildings. These will be based on a railgun weapons technology, descriptively known as MAHEM.

With the prospect of railguns replacing heavy artillery, scientists began to focus their efforts on the use of electromagnetic pulse technology in advanced weaponry. The railgun uses electromagnetic force to drive a projectile to phenomenal speeds impossible with gunpowder-style propulsion. With MAHEM, or MAgnetoHydrodynamic Explosive Munition, you could carry the same sort of power in your hand because it weighs about five pounds.

Since 2008, the Pentagon, in conjunction with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, placed MAHEM into a weapons development program. At the time of this writing, virtually all information about the program is classified—at least, all information from the U.S. government. Unfortunately, most of the details surrounding the MAHEM program can be found online at a somewhat surprising source—China. The Chinese, known for their use of cyber warfare to steal our military secrets, may be reverse-engineering this advanced weapons technology.

The Evolution of Warheads

Explosive warheads have worked in pretty much the same way since Henry Shrapnel's 1784 artillery shell, which was designed to explode and throw out musket balls in all directions. The shaped charge was a 20th-century refinement in which the force of the explosion blasted a hollow metal cone into an armor-piercing jet, enabling low-velocity weapons like the bazooka to knock out heavy tanks. A newer technology, the explosively formed projectile, arrived on the scene. Here, the explosion folds the metal into an aerodynamic slug that is less penetrating than a shaped charge, but able to do more damage against lightly-armored targets. Since it's a larger mass at a lower velocity, it makes a bigger hole.

MAHEM is different because it combines explosives with electricity. It works in three stages. The first stage is an electronically modified explosion. The explosion creates an expanding fireball; applying an electrical pulse to the fireball, which increases the velocity and pressure of the blast wave. The addition of the electromagnetic pulse adds to the size and duration of the impact.