NY Post January 27, 2003
Microwave Bomb our Secret Weapon
By Niles Lathem
January 27, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - The Pentagon says its latest deadly gadget - a precision-guided lightning bolt of microwave power - would be its most important weapon in a war with Iraq. The high-power microwave, a k a HPM, has been under development for years in the black-operations programs at the National Laboratories and the Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.
Also known as the "E-bomb," the HPM is designed to zap electronics, scramble computer programs and fry communications links.
The program is so secret, the Pentagon has not released pictures involving it, nor explained precisely how it will work.
But Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumpers was recently quoted in Aviation Week as saying the HPM has the capability to "tell a SA-10 [surface-to-air missile] that [a potential target] is a Maytag washer on rinse cycle rather than a missile about to shoot somebody down."
Defense experts say the weapon can either be placed aboard a Tomahawk cruise missile or fired from a special radar gun mounted on a C-130 transport jet.
The idea is to send a single powerful magnetic pulse - 2 billion watts or more moving at the speed of light - at an underground command bunker or at a suspected weapons-of-mass-destruction facility.
John Pike, of the defense think tank GlobalSecurity.org, says the HPM weapon will be especially effective as a "D-Day, H-hour, first-strike weapon."
Copyright © 2003, NYP Holdings, Inc
