Defense News July 26, 2004
U.S. Lawmakers Warn Of Wider EMP Threat
by William Matthews
For more than 40 years, the Pentagon has known that a nuclear weapon detonated high over the United States could knock out much of the nation's electrical and electronic infrastructure.
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from the nuclear explosion could shut down power plants, silence telecommunications, cut off radio and TV broadcasts, and fry the computer chips that control everything from financial transactions to water systems to airliners in flight.
It could touch off "unprecedented, cascading failures of our major infrastructures" that would "threaten the viability of the United States," a congressional commission warned July 22. But it has been hard to generate enough concern about EMP attacks to spur defensive action.
Congressional hearings in 1997 and 1999 laid out the EMP threat, but generally were ignored. Even the U.S. military, which developed defenses against EMP attacks during Cold War, has let its guard down.
The military dramatically has increased its dependence on the electronics and information technology that are most susceptible to EMP. It also has mothballed EMP research and test facilities and abandoned requirements that systems be hardened to resist EMP attacks, the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack told the House Armed Services Committee.
'Woefully Inadequate'
"We have been woefully inadequate in designing a response," said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., who has warned of the United States' vulnerability to EMP attacks for more than a half-dozen years.
The threat is greater than ever, Weldon said. It used to be that only a few countries had the long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons needed to launch an EMP strike. But today 30 or 40 nations have Scud missiles, and a growing number of nations are on or have crossed the nuclear threshold.
North Korea has the missiles and the nuclear weapons, Weldon said. Iran has the missiles and may soon have the weapon. "If I were a terrorist, this is the kind of technology I would look at," Weldon said. With a small nuclear weapon and rudimentary missile launched from a ship loitering off the U.S. coast, terrorists "could shut down civilized society," he said.
The U.S. military discovered the power of EMP quite by chance in 1962. During a high-altitude test of a nuclear weapon, the U.S. detonated a 1.4-megaton nuclear bomb 250 miles above Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean. The electromagnetic pulse from the explosion triggered widespread electric system failures in Hawaii 800 miles away. Street lights went out, telephone service was disrupted, fuses blew, radio broadcasts ceased and communications systems failed.
Soviet scientists discovered similar side effects when they tested nuclear bombs in the atmosphere over the Soviet Union. Weldon said he learned in meetings with former Soviet officials that in a war with the United States, one of the first actions the Soviets planned was an EMP strike to greatly weaken U.S. capabilities to wage war.
Today's Vulnerability
As vulnerable as the United States might have been during the Cold War, it is many times more so today.
"Hawaii was back during the vacuum tube era," said John Pike, director of the military think tank Globalsecurity.org. "Since then, American society has come to depend on about a zillion embedded chips, and they are quite susceptible" to electromagnetic pulse.
EMP essentially causes a power surge that's strong enough to melt wires, damage transformers and destroy computer chips. The effect of an EMP attack could be devastating indeed, Pike said. The impact could be somewhere between the trillion-dollar damage done to the U.S. economy by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Great Depression, he said.
In its report released July 22, the EMP commission warned of "unprecedented cascading failure of our electronics-dependent infrastructures." That means "large-scale infrastructure failures for all aspects of the nation's life." Recovery could take "months to years," the commission said. Or, "at some point the degradation of infrastructure could have irreversible effects on the country's ability to support its population."
EMP poses a particular threat to the increasingly high-tech U.S. military. "On future battlefields our small, technically superior fighting force could be reduced to a small, vulnerable force," the commission said.
The military must do more to protect itself against EMP attacks by "hardening" some of its electronic equipment, commission members said.
Essentially, that means shielding equipment against electromagnetic pulses. Enclosing computers and other electronic equipment in metal cases is effective. Burying electronic equipment in deep tunnels also works, Pike said.
According to the EMP commission, shielding equipment adds only about 1 percent to 3 percent to the cost of equipment if it is done during manufacture. It is much more expensive if done after the fact. Preparation for EMP attacks and protection against them "can be achieved over the next few years" if the federal government makes a commitment to do so, the commission said.
Infrastructure Solutions
Among the steps the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack recommends in its report, released July 22:
-- Improve intelligence to prevent attacks.
-- Harden critical parts of the infrastructure to withstand attacks.
-- Plan for systematic recovery after attacks.
-- Define the U.S. government's responsibility and authority to act. Most of the critical infrastructure is privately owned.
-- Develop new countermeasures.
© Copyright 2004, Defense News and Army Times Publishing Co.
