Electromagnetic Pulse (9 page)

There is little doubt that efforts by the United States to harden its utilities against EMP — and its ability to manage critical infrastructure manually in the event of an EMP attack — have been eroded in recent decades, as the Cold War ended and the threat of nuclear conflict with Russia lessened. This is also true of the U.S. military, which has spent little time contemplating such scenarios in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union. The cost of remedying the situation, especially retrofitting older systems, is immense. As with any issue involving massive amounts of money, the debate over guarding against an EMP attack has become quite politicized in recent years.

Gauging the Threat of an Electromagnetic Pulse Attack

To determine whether the threat is real, we must discuss the tactical elements involved in an EMP attack and which nation-states are capable of launching such an attack. The following is our assessment of the likelihood of an EMP attack against the United States.

The effects of an EMP have the potential to be quite significant, but they are also quite uncertain. Despite the meaningful amount of testing undertaken in the late 1950’s into the early 60’s, test data from high-altitude nuclear explosions is extremely limited. The U.S. and the Soviet Union conducted less than twenty atmospheric nuclear tests above twelve miles. The widespread effects of a high-altitude nuclear detonation above this height are unknown.

In 1963, after the Partial Test Ban Treaty went into effect, prohibiting its signatories from conducting aboveground test detonations and ending atmospheric tests — scientists still questioned the effects of a high-altitude EMP. The Starfish Prime test of 1962 was not designed to study HEMP, and the effect on Hawaii, which was so far from ground zero, startled U.S. scientists. High-altitude nuclear testing effectively ended before the parameters and effects of HEMP were well understood. The limited body of knowledge that was gained from these tests remains highly classified in both the U.S. and Russia.

Despite these uncertainties, the importance of the EMP threat should not be understated. There is no doubt that the impact of a HEMP attack would be significant. But any nation-state plotting such an attack would be dealing with immense uncertainties — not only about the ideal altitude at which to detonate the device, based on its design and yield to maximize its effect, but also about the nature of those effects and just how devastating they would be.

Non-nuclear devices that create an EMP-like effect, such as high-power microwave devices, and radio frequency weapons, are now available to several countries, including the U.S. The most capable of these devices are portable and have significant tactical utility. The technology is still developing, and more powerful variants may be able to achieve greater effects on specific targets.

But at present, non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse weapons do not appear to be able to create an EMP effect large enough to affect an entire city, much less a country. Because of this, we will confine our discussion of the EMP threat caused by a high-altitude nuclear detonation, which also happens to be the most prevalent scenario causing concern in Washington.

Components of a Credible HEMP Threat

For there to be a credible HEMP threat, five things are needed:

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The delivery mechanism to reach the required altitude

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A sophisticated nuclear warhead for the missile to deliver

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A motive for conducting an EMP attack

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A suitable target for maximum desired effect

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The absence of a deterrent or responsive counter-attack

The question then becomes: Who is capable of carrying out the threat?

Plausible HEMP Attack Scenarios

To have the best chance of causing the type of widespread EMP damage to the continental U.S., a nuclear weapon carrying a one megaton payload would need to be detonated approximately twenty miles above the Earth’s surface, somewhere over the central part of the country. Modern commercial aircraft normally cruise at a third of this altitude. To achieve the desired height, a nation-state would require both the requisite warhead design and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability, to conduct such an attack from their territory. The UK, France, Russia and China have all possessed this ability for decades. Although shorter range missiles can achieve this altitude, the center of the U.S. is still a thousand miles from the east or west coast. One of the biggest concerns of the Pentagon, is the use of a shorter range missile fired from a freighter that enters the Gulf of Mexico. In recent years, North Korea has passed several large commercial vessels, through the Panama Canal towards Cuba, virtually undetected with nuclear missiles in their hold. It is less than eight hundred miles from the Gulf of Mexico to St. Louis, Missouri—the heartland of America.

The HEMP threat has existed since the early 1960s, when nuclear weapons were first paired with ballistic missiles, and necessarily grew to be an important component of the U.S. nuclear strategy. The doctrine of
Mutually Assured Destruction
has prevented the use of HEMP in modern warfare.

Despite the limited understanding of its effects, undoubtedly the U.S., China, and Russia, almost certainly included the use of weapons to create HEMPs in both defensive, and especially offensive scenarios.

However, nuclear weapons have not been employed in an attack anywhere, since 1945. Some pundits believe that a HEMP attack might be considered less destructive, and therefore, less likely to provoke a devastating retaliatory response. Such an attack against the United States would inherently and conclusively represent a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland, and the idea that the United States would not respond in kind is absurd. The United States continues to maintain the most credible and survivable nuclear deterrent in the world, and any country or terrorist group contemplating a HEMP attack, would have to assume that a reprisal would be full, swift, and devastating. The idea that Washington will interpret the use of a nuclear weapon to create a HEMP, as somehow less hostile than the utilization of a nuclear weapon to physically destroy an American city, is not something a country is likely to gamble on.

Countries that build HEMP weapons invest vast amounts of capital in their nuclear programs. A successful nuclear weapons program is the product of decades of scientific research and development. U.S. nuclear weapons are maintained as a deterrent to an attack, not with the intention of using them offensively. Over the years, the U.S. has achieved an initial first-strike capability. The focus of the Department of Defense is to establish a survivable deterrent that can withstand first, a conventional, and then, a nuclear first strike. Under this policy, the nuclear arsenal can serve its primary purpose as a deterrent, and then a means of counter-attack.

It is comforting to know that the countries capable of carrying out a HEMP attack, still govern themselves by the
Mutually Assured Destruction
doctrine. The principles of nuclear deterrence, and the threat of a full-scale retaliatory strike, continue to hold and govern post-Cold War.

The Threat from Rogue Actors

One of the scenarios that concern Washington is that the EMP threat stems from a rogue state or a terrorist group like ISIS that does not possess ICBMs, but who will use deception to accomplish its mission. A rogue state, like North Korea or Iran, or even a terrorist group, could load a nuclear warhead and missile launcher aboard a cargo ship or tanker. The missile could be launched from our coastal waters, placing the warhead in position for a targeted HEMP strike. This scenario, without leaving any fingerprints, would involve either a short-range ballistic missile to achieve a localized metropolitan strike or a longer-range—but not necessarily intercontinental—ballistic missile to reach the necessary position over the central U.S. to deliver a continental strike.

This threat scenario faces the same obstacles as any other potential nuclear weapon employed in a terrorist attack. It is unlikely that a terrorist group like al Qaeda or Hezbollah can develop a nuclear weapons program. Their organizations do not have the requisite financial or personnel resources to do soit.

It is also highly unlikely that a nation like Iran or North Korea, who have devoted significant resources to developing a nuclear weapon, would entrust such a weapon to an outside terrorist organization. There have been great strides made in the last decade in the field of nuclear forensics. The use of a nuclear weapon would be vigorously investigated, and the nation that produced the weapon would be identified.

A group like ISIS, however, would likely use a nuclear device, if it could obtain one. The risk of a terrorist group acquiring a nuclear capability of any kind, crude or sophisticated is possible, but not likely. Here’s why:

The development of a HEMP nuclear weapon requires significant financial resources, scientific talent, and time. An attack scenario from a rogue actor requires a sophisticated nuclear warhead capable of being mated with a ballistic missile. There are considerable technical barriers that separate a crude nuclear device from a sophisticated nuclear warhead.

The engineering expertise required to construct such a warhead is far greater than that needed to build a radio frequency weapon, for example. A warhead must be far more compact than a simple device. It must also have a trigger mechanism and electronics capable of withstanding the force of an ICBM launch, the journey into the cold vacuum of space and the heat and force of re-entering the atmosphere — and still function as designed. Designing a functional warhead takes considerable advances in several fields of science, including physics, electronics, engineering, metallurgy, and explosives technology. Overseeing it all must be a high-end quality assurance capability.

But even if a terrorist organization were able to obtain a functional warhead and compatible fissile core, the challenges of mating the warhead to a missile that it was not designed for, and then getting it to launch and detonate properly, would be far more daunting than it would appear at first glance. Additionally, the process of fueling a liquid-fueled ballistic missile at sea and then launching it from a ship, using an improvised launcher, would also be very challenging. Experts say that North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan all rely heavily on Scud technology, which uses highly volatile, corrosive, and toxic fuels.

Such a scenario is challenging enough, even before the uncertainty of achieving the desired HEMP effect, is taken into account. This is just the kind of complexity and uncertainty that well-trained terrorist operatives seek to avoid in an operation. A ground-level nuclear detonation in a city, such as New York or Washington, would be more likely to cause the type of terror, death, and physical destruction that is sought in a terrorist attack, than could be achieved by a non-lethal EMP. Because of this, it would be far simpler for a terrorist group looking to conduct a nuclear attack to do so using a device such as a Radio Frequency Weapon, than it would be using a sophisticated warhead.

Make no mistake: the threat of an EMP attack is real. Modern civilization depends heavily on electronics and the electrical grid for a broad range of vital functions, and this is truer in the United States, than in most other countries. A HEMP attack or a substantial geomagnetic storm could have a dramatic impact on modern life in the affected area. However, as we've discussed, the EMP threat has been around for more than half a century. Despite the fact that there are some technical and practical variables that make a HEMP attack using a nuclear warhead highly unlikely, rogue nations are working diligently to obtain the technology. When considering the EMP threat, it is important to recognize that it exists as one of many threats, including related threats such as conventional nuclear warfare and targeted, small-scale RFW attacks. The world is a dangerous place, full of potential threats. Some things are more likely to occur than others. As a nation, there is only a limited amount of funding to monitor, harden against, try to prepare for, and manage them all. It is easy to fall into the trap of attempting to defend against everything, although the practical result is that Washington’s ineptitude will end up defending against nothing. Focused and rational prioritization of the threats we face as a nation is essential to the country’s defense.

Hardening national infrastructure against an EMP—whether man-made or naturally occurring solar flares, is undoubtedly necessary. The country is beginning to open its eyes to the fact that there are very real weaknesses and vulnerabilities in America's critical infrastructure — not to mention in our society overall. Our political leaders must strike a delicate balance between focusing on this very real threat, and spending resources on other potential collapse events.

Chapter Nine
The Players

Who is capable of carrying out the threat?

We have now established that the nuclear EMP threat is not merely theoretical–it is a clear and present danger. A nuclear EMP attack is the perfect asymmetric weapon for state actors who wish to level the battlefield by neutralizing the great technological advantage enjoyed by the U.S. military forces. EMP is also the only means whereby rogue states or terrorists could use a single nuclear weapon to destroy the United States, and prevail with a single blow.

Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran have already incorporated EMP attacks into their military doctrines, and openly describe making EMP attacks against the United States.

Rogue states and terrorists could use any type of missile, including short-range missiles that can deliver a nuclear warhead, to exact a catastrophic EMP attack on the United States. Iran has tested ship-launched EMP attacks using Scud missiles. Scud, a series of tactical ballistic missiles developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, is now in the possession of a dozen countries, including Vietnam, Syria, Libya, and Yemen.