A U.S. Air Force base in Texas has taken the first steps to guard against an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. But what, exactly, is an EMP, and how big is the threat?

Officials at the Joint Base San Antonio in Lackland, Texas, issued a request for bids to carry out a survey of a facility called the Petroleum, Oil and Lubrication Complex. The survey will identify any equipment that could be vulnerable to an EMP ahead of more detailed vulnerability testing, according to the request. After that, officials would figure out ways to keep that equipment safe in the event of an EMP attack.

What is an EMP?

An EMP is a massive burst of electromagnetic energy that can occur naturally or be generated deliberately using nuclear weapons. While many experts don’t think EMPs pose a big threat, some people argue that these types of weapons could be used to cause widespread disruption to electricity-dependent societies.

“You can use a single weapon to collapse the entire North American power grid,” said defense analyst Peter Pry, who served on the Congressional EMP Commission, which was set up to assess the threat of EMP attacks but shut down in 2017.

“Once the electric grid goes down, everything would collapse,” Pry told Live Science. “Everything depends on electricity: telecommunications, transportation, even water.”

According to the request, the testing at Lackland comes in response to a 2019 executive order issued by then-President Donald Trump for the federal government to strengthen its infrastructure against EMPs. Pry, who has consulted on the project, said the survey and resulting upgrades are part of a broader initiative by the U.S. Air Force to beef up its defenses against this type of threat.

Why EMPs are so dangerous

An EMP releases huge waves of electromagnetic energy, which can act like a giant moving magnet. Such a changing magnetic field can cause electrons in a nearby wire to move, thereby inducing a current. With such a huge burst of energy, an EMP can cause damaging power surges in any electronics within range.

These pulses can occur deliberately or naturally. Natural EMPs occur when the sun occasionally spits out massive streams of plasma, and if they come our way, Earth’s natural magnetic field can deflect them. But when the sun spits out enough plasma at once, the impact can cause the magnetic field to wobble and generate a powerful EMP. The last time this happened was in 1859 in the so-called Carrington Event, and while electronics were still rare then, it knocked out much of the recently built telegraph network.

Then, there’s the possibility of deliberate EMPs. If a nuclear weapon were to be detonated high in the atmosphere, Pry said, the gamma radiation it would release could strip electrons from air molecules and accelerate them at close to the speed of light. These charge-carrying electrons would be corralled by Earth’s magnetic field, and as they zipped around, they would generate a powerful, fluctuating electric current, which, in turn, would generate a massive EMP. The explosion could also distort Earth’s magnetic field, causing a slower pulse similar to a naturally occurring EMP.

Setting off a nuclear weapon about 200 miles (300 kilometers) above the U.S. could create an EMP that would cover most of North America, Pry said. The explosion and radiation from the bomb would dissipate before reaching ground level, but the resulting EMP would be powerful enough to destroy electronics across the region, Pry said. “If you were standing on the ground directly beneath the detonation, you wouldn’t even hear it go off,” Pry said. “The EMP would pass harmlessly through your body.”

A small EMP with a radius of under a kilometer can also be generated by combining high-voltage power sources with antennas that release this energy as electromagnetic waves. The U.S. military has a prototype cruise missile carrying an EMP generator. Called the Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), it can be used to target specific enemy facilities, and Pry said it would be within the capabilities of many militaries, or even terrorist groups, to build an EMP generator.

“We’ve arrived at a place where a single individual can topple the technological pillars of civilization for a major metropolitan area all by himself armed with some device like this,” he said.

The technology required to protect against EMPs is similar to what is already used to prevent damage from power surges caused by lightning, Pry said. These technologies would have to be adapted to deal with higher voltages, but devices such as surge protectors, which divert excess voltage into the Earth, or Faraday cages, which shield devices from electromagnetic radiation, could do the job.

Pry said the EMP Commission estimated it would cost $2 billion to $4 billion to protect the most important pieces of equipment in the national grid, but ideally, he would like to see standards changed so that EMP protection is built into devices.

EMP: Should you worry?

The threat posed by EMPs is far from settled, though. A 2019 report by the Electric Power Research Institute, which is funded by utility companies, found that such an attack would probably cause regional blackouts but not a nationwide grid failure and that recovery times would be similar to those of other large-scale outages.

Frank Cilluffo, director of Auburn University’s McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security, said that, while an EMP attack would certainly be devastating, it’s unlikely that the United States’ enemies would carry out such a brazen assault.

“There are other ways that adversaries can achieve some of the same outcomes, some of which would be cheaper and some of which would be less discernible,” Cilluffo told Live Science.

Such alternatives might include cyberattacks to take out critical infrastructure, including the electric grid, or even efforts to disrupt space-based communications or the GPS system that modern society is so reliant on. Work to protect against EMPs makes sense, particularly given the possibility of another Carrington-like event, but these upgrades shouldn’t distract from efforts to shore up defenses against more probable lines of attack, Cilluffo said.

Original article on Live Science.

Source: https://www.livescience.com/air-force-emp-attacks-protection.html

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By entering an arms control regime, China could show that it accepts the value of arms control and seeks confidence-building measures, which aids stability while demonstrating that China is a status quo power. The fact that China rejects arms control is troubling and suggests, first, it is a revisionist power, and second, that it wants to be unfettered as it expands its arsenal.

China’s expansion of nuclear weapons has not received the attention it deserves due to its threat to U.S. interests and for strategic stability. China’s actions undermine the ability of the United States to deter attacks against the United States, to extend deterrence to its allies, and to protect its interests. Strategic stability results when both or all sides in a deterrence relationship have little incentive to race for superiority. During the dénouement of the Cold War, strategic stability obtained for the United States and Russia. However, strategic stability will not obtain with respect to China for three reasons.

First, while the common estimate of China’s nuclear weapons is approximately three hundred, due to China’s lack of transparency, it is possible that China has significantly more than this estimate. This month, there have been calls within China for expanding its nuclear arsenal to one thousand strategic warheads, to say nothing of nuclear weapons on intermediate-range or other forces. While the United States has taken a “strategic holiday,” the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has used the opportunity to expand their arsenals, as well as cyber and conventional capabilities. When one reflects upon the considerable effort to create strategic systems, as well as cyber and conventional capabilities, inescapable conclusions are, first, that the causes of their expansion is rooted in their own grand strategic objectives of achieving hegemony and, second, the decision to expand their forces was sown long ago. China has used our strategic passivity to expand.  What Reagan’s Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger said in the Soviet context remains true today: “When we build, they build, when we stop, they build.”

The growth of Chinese arsenals cannot be divorced from other evidence of China’s expansion. They are expanding their bases, for example, in Djibouti and Gwadar, and alliance networks including through the Belt and Road Initiative and “debt diplomacy,” the creation of new international institutions to supplant extant ones, and aggressive intelligence operations.  These measures indicate that China is a non-status quo great power but is a revisionist—and one that seeks change immediately. This bodes ill for strategic stability.

Most concerning is that China’s build-up might allow it to race to parity or superiority with the United States, which would result in an intense arms race. China’s actions make it a threat to strategic stability. To maintain strategic stability requires modernizing U.S. strategic systems, including missile defenses, and conventional capabilities.  Not to do so invites a direct and existential strategic challenge to the security of our allies and ourselves.

Second, the form of China’s build-up is notable. Always secretive, the Chinese have occluded their nuclear expansion as they do not want to provoke a premature reaction from the United States or its allies. More damning is that the Chinese are secretly “preparing the battlefield” to ensure that they have the ability to damage the United States through other, nonnuclear, means. These nonnuclear avenues of attack include cyber, control of space, supply chain dominance, economic influence, technological mastery of 5G and increasingly artificial intelligence, soft power, and the continued legal and illegal access to America’s knowledge, intellectual property, finance, and technology to facilitate Beijing’s growth. This would ensure the United States could be damaged sufficiently—in effect, a near equivalent of a major nuclear attack—to cause U.S. political leaders to yield in a crisis or limited war without the employment of nuclear weapons. China might launch one or more cyber attacks on the electrical grid and on the ability of the United States to recover and rebuild its electrical grid after a significant cyber attack. This is likely to be a direct attack in the cyber realm but the damage might also be inadvertent due to the unintended consequences of an attack against another target. Moreover, the risks of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to the U.S. electrical grid is also a possibility. The vulnerability of America electricity to EMP—whether from deliberate EMP attack, cyber attack, or solar activity—and the ability to recover the electrical grid in the wake of an event is an issue that must be solved now.

Third, China rejects arms control in practice and in principle. Thus far, Beijing will not unilaterally reduce or limit its arsenal or enter into arms control talks. That is a worrisome sign and suggests that U.S. assumptions about the causes of stability in a great power relationship are only its own, and not shared by China. A major objective of arms control is that it can promote stability in the relations between states. The state willingly abandons or limits a class of weapons to demonstrate to other actors that its ambitions are limited and it supports strategic stability. By entering an arms control regime, China could show that it accepts the value of arms control and seeks confidence-building measures, which aids stability while demonstrating that China is a status quo power. Fundamentally, it would allow China to signal its peaceful intentions, and, in turn, have an important stabilizing effect on states concerned with China’s increasing power. The fact that China rejects arms control is troubling and suggests, first, it is a revisionist power, and second, that it wants to be unfettered as it expands its arsenal.

These developments mean that strategic stability is unlikely to obtain. China is likely to race for superiority, and that is destabilizing, and the United States must ensure this never occurs and must prepare itself for the return of an arms race. Given the PRC’s unprecedented expansion, the United States must respond by modernizing its capabilities to deter them from threatening the homeland, U.S. military, and its alliance commitments. These are critical steps to deter them from the temptation to race to parity or superiority, which could result in the collapse of U.S. credibility and alliances. Lastly, the United States must ensure that its vulnerability to non-nuclear forms of major economic and societal damage to the U.S. homeland is addressed.

Bradley A. Thayer is a professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and is the co-author of How China Sees the World: Han-Centrism and the Balance of Power in International Politics. 

Image: Reuters

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/get-ready-new-arms-race-why-nuclear-strategic-stability-won%E2%80%99t-work-china-156676

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• President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday ordering federal agencies to strengthen the resiliency of critical American infrastructure against electromagnetic-pulse attacks.
• The order is the “first ever to establish a comprehensive policy to improve resilience to EMPs,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
• The EMP threat has been a hotly debated point, with some arguing it is an existential threat, while others believe it to be a conspiracy theory.

The post Trump signs executive order to protect the US from a ‘debilitating’ EMP attack first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

With ease and using a primitive nuclear weapon, a “New Axis” of those aggressive nations could “black out” the Western world, dismantle all electricity and electronics, end water and food supply, and lead to millions of deaths in America.

“Nine of 10 Americans are dead from starvation, disease, and societal collapse. The United States of America ceases to exist,” warned the report declassified by recently decommissioned U.S. Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack.

The report, written by EMP expert Peter Vincent Pry, revealed EMP war plans drawn up by Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, and even ISIS.

In “Nuclear EMP Attack Scenarios and Combined-Arms Cyber Warfare,” Pry said that the Russians have called EMP a “revolution in military affairs.”

He explained it this way to the Washington Examiner: “This new warfare uses cyber viruses, hacking, physical attacks, non-nuclear EMP weapons, and a nuclear EMP attack against electric grids and critical infrastructures. It renders modern armies, navies, and air forces obsolete. It paves the way for asymmetric warfare by small nations and terrorists.”

Pry said that the U.S. is an easy target because virtually everything, military and civilian, relies on computers, and even the Pentagon uses the civilian Internet. “Ours is the most technologically advanced society, and therefore the most susceptible to attack,” said Pry.

The commission, the military and civilian groups have begun to take attacks on the U.S. electrical and Internet network more seriously, and they have discovered that those would be far more effective against the United States than a bomb.

“Although it is very difficult to predict exactly which electronic systems would be upset, damaged, or destroyed by an EMP attack, with certainty massive disruption and damage will be inflicted on unprotected electronics within the EMP field and, because of cascading failures, far beyond. EMP is analogous to carpet bombing or an artillery barrage that causes massive random damage that is specifically difficult to predict, but reliably catastrophic in its macro-effects,” he said.

Pry, in calling for greater Pentagon and Homeland Security attention to the issue, compared the potential for an attack to Pearl Harbor.

He also presented an “EMP World War” scenario where all the countries with EMP warfare plans join in a “New Axis” to attack the U.S., Europe, and Israel.

Pry even suggested that a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere above Omaha, Neb., could black out Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. He predicted that an attack would lead to “damage too broad and too deep to repair, requiring years, if the U.S. could survive for years.”

Without making relatively inexpensive fixes to the electric grid and military bases to protect against an EMP attack, Pry said that the end could come fast.

“There is no coming back,” said his report, adding:
“Everything is in blackout and nothing works. The EMP sparks widespread fires, explosions, all kinds of industrial accidents. Firestorms rage in cities and forests. Toxic clouds pollute the air and chemical spills poison already polluted lakes and rivers. In seven days, the over 100 nuclear power reactors run out of emergency power and go Fukushima, spreading radioactive plumes over the most populous half of the United States. There is not even any drinking water and the national food supply in regional warehouses begins to spoil in three days. There was only enough food to feed 320 million people for 30 days anyway.”

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/new-emp-warning-us-will-cease-to-exist-90-of-population-will-die

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China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are preparing nuclear electronic pulse attacks from space in a future conflict to cripple the U.S. military and plunge the United States into darkness, according to a declassified study.

“The United States critical national infrastructure faces a present and continuing existential threat from combined-arms warfare, including cyber and manmade electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, and natural EMP from a solar superstorm,” says a recently published report from the congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack.”

Once largely a concern of a Cold War surprise attack from Russia to shut down American nuclear forces communications, the spread of nuclear weapons has increased the danger of disruptive EMP attack from a nuclear burst in the upper atmosphere.

“Within the last decade, newly nuclear-armed adversaries, including North Korea, have been developing the ability and threatening to carry out an EMP attack against the U.S.,” the report said.

“Such an attack would give countries that have only a small number of nuclear weapons the ability to cause widespread, long-lasting damage to U.S. critical national infrastructures, to the United States itself as a viable country, and to the survival of a majority of its population.”

The report, containing redactions requested by the Pentagon, was written by William R. Graham, EMP commission chairman who is regarded as one of the foremost experts on EMP. Graham helped discover the phenomenon after a 1962 U.S. atmospheric nuclear test near Hawaii.

EMP is a burst of electromagnetic energy from a solar storm or nuclear blast capable of disabling or destroying electronic devices over wide areas.

The report is based on information up to June 2017 and reveals that both Russia and China are well advanced in developing plans for using EMP as part of advanced warfighting concepts that combine the use of nuclear and non-nuclear EMP with cyber and other electronic warfare capabilities.

The report also warns of vulnerabilities to the U.S. electric grid from both a nuclear blast EMP and a devastating solar storm, like the 1859 Carrington event that generated a widespread natural EMP that if it occurred today would have caused massive blackouts to electric grids and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures.

A massive solar storm narrowly missed hitting the planet in July 2012 that the report said would have caused a long-term electrical blackout worldwide with potentially catastrophic consequences.

“Recurrence of another Carrington Event is inevitable,” the report said.

Regarding nuclear EMP, the report states that China, Russia, and Iran consider the use of high-altitude nuclear blasts as “sixth generation warfare” that could cripple the ability of U.S. military to wage war using advanced electronic systems for intelligence, navigation, and precision weapons guidance.

“Nuclear EMP attack is part of the military doctrines, plans, and exercises of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran for a revolutionary new way of warfare against military forces and civilian critical infrastructures by cyber, sabotage, and EMP,” the report says.

Because damage is limited to electronic components and systems, enemy leaders do not consider an EMP attack as an act of nuclear warfare that would be bring U.S. nuclear retaliation.

“Potential adversaries understand that millions could die from the long-term collateral effects of EMP and cyber-attacks that cause protracted black-out of national electric grids and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures,” the report states.

“At least some regard this relatively easy, potentially anonymous, method of inflicting mass destruction as an attractive feature of what they describe as a Revolution in Military Affairs.”

The report urges the Pentagon to develop its own EMP weapons that can be developed from relatively low-yield nuclear arms and precision guided missiles.

The president should direct that a limited nuclear option for EMP attack be included in U.S. nuclear strike plans to deter foreign states developing EMP arms.

Of particular concern, according to the report, are two North Korean satellites currently in polar orbit over the United States. The two satellites, launched in 2012 and 2016, currently travel in trajectories that are “consistent with practice or preparation for a surprise nuclear EMP attack,” the report says.

The satellites’ polar orbits allow them to evade detection by U.S. missile defense satellites and sensors – a sign they could be used during the first stage of a North Korean long-range nuclear attack to disrupt U.S. missile defenses in Alaska and California.

The satellites, KMS-3 and KMS-4, appear to be similar to a secret Soviet-era weapon called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that Moscow planned for a surprise nuclear attack on the United States over the poles.

Two retired Russian generals testified to the EMP commission in 2004 that a design for a Russian super-EMP weapon was transferred to North Korea by Russian scientists and engineers working on North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons program.

The Russians asserted the North Koreans could test a super-EMP weapon in a few years.

Last year, after North Korea conducted its sixth underground nuclear test, North Korean state media announced that the hydrogen bomb “can be detonated even at high altitudes for a super-powerful EMP attack according to strategic goals.”

China’s EMP arms were discussed in Chinese military writings as recently as 2016.

China’s National Security Policy Committee, stated in January 2016 that “electromagnetic pulse bombs” will “change the ‘rules of the game'” by disrupting U.S. military precision warfare capabilities.

A PLA air force publication in 2014 states that EMP blasts are a new type of weapon. “On a battlefield, this new-type weapon will cause devastating damage to electronic systems, including computers, communications and control systems, and radars, resulting in immeasurable losses,” the report said.

Russian military plans for using EMP attacks were traced in the report to Gen. Vladimir Slipchenko and his book Non-Contact Wars that calls for combining cyber attacks, physical attacks, and EMP attacks against electric grids.

A Russian General Staff journal in 2011 also stated that U.S. military forces are vulnerable to electronic and EMP attacks.

“A single low-yield nuclear weapon exploded for this purpose high above the area of combat operations can generate an electromagnetic pulse covering a large area and destroying electronic equipment without loss of life that is caused by the blast or radiation,” the report said.

Iranian military writings follow Russia’s approach to warfare and the use of EMP.

A 2010 Iranian military textbook states that Iran, in a future conflict, is planning coordinated attacks by nuclear and non-nuclear EMP, cyber, and physical weapons to cause blackouts and the collapse entire nations. Iranian military doctrine sees nuclear EMP attacks as the ultimate cyber weapon.

Iran also is building defenses against EMP attacks for its infrastructure.

The report states that Iran may prefer to use the indirect method of causing mass casualties by using a nuclear EMP attack as a way to conduct nuclear war under Islamic law.

Non-nuclear EMP weapons, those that are limited to a range of a mile or less, also have been used to disrupt communications power grids, the report said.

North Korea used a radio frequency weapon purchased from Russia to attack airliners and air traffic to Seoul, South Korea.

The report also takes aim at critics who have sought to play down the danger of EMP attacks and solar superstorms as science fiction.

The report said the critics often are uninformed because they either lack knowledge of the effects of the Soviet and U.S. high altitude nuclear tests in the early 1960s, or do not know about the extensive body of testing and analysis carried out by the Pentagon over the last 55 years.

A popular myth spread by EMP skeptics is that the 1962 atmospheric nuclear test known as Starfish Prime – 900 miles from Hawaii caused only minimal disruption to Honolulu.

“In fact, the EMP knocked-out thirty-six strings of street lights, caused a telecommunications microwave relay station to fail, burned out high-frequency radio links, set off burglar alarms, and caused other damage,” the report said.

The report also criticizes the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. and the electric power industry for failing to address the EMP danger from either attack or solar storm.

Private industry also has failed to understand the threat posed by EMP to high-voltage transformers.

Peter Pry, a former EMP commission member, said the Pentagon has not published any findings of the commission since the commission was reestablished by Congress in 2016.

As a result, the new report was produced by the private EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security after a security review completed in July by the Pentagon’s Office of Prepublication and Security Review, said Pry, executive director of the task force.

Source: https://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-russia-north-korea-and-iran-set-for-electronic-pulse-attacks-on-u-s/

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China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are preparing nuclear electronic pulse attacks from space in a future conflict to cripple the U.S. military and plunge the United States into darkness, according to a declassified study.

“The United States critical national infrastructure faces a present and continuing existential threat from combined-arms warfare, including cyber and manmade electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, and natural EMP from a solar superstorm,” says a recently published report from the congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack.”

Once largely a concern of a Cold War surprise attack from Russia to shut down American nuclear forces communications, the spread of nuclear weapons has increased the danger of disruptive EMP attack from a nuclear burst in the upper atmosphere.

“Within the last decade, newly nuclear-armed adversaries, including North Korea, have been developing the ability and threatening to carry out an EMP attack against the U.S.,” the report said.

“Such an attack would give countries that have only a small number of nuclear weapons the ability to cause widespread, long-lasting damage to U.S. critical national infrastructures, to the United States itself as a viable country, and to the survival of a majority of its population.”

The report, containing redactions requested by the Pentagon, was written by William R. Graham, EMP commission chairman who is regarded as one of the foremost experts on EMP. Graham helped discover the phenomenon after a 1962 U.S. atmospheric nuclear test near Hawaii.

EMP is a burst of electromagnetic energy from a solar storm or nuclear blast capable of disabling or destroying electronic devices over wide areas.

The report is based on information up to June 2017 and reveals that both Russia and China are well advanced in developing plans for using EMP as part of advanced warfighting concepts that combine the use of nuclear and non-nuclear EMP with cyber and other electronic warfare capabilities.

The report also warns of vulnerabilities to the U.S. electric grid from both a nuclear blast EMP and a devastating solar storm, like the 1859 Carrington event that generated a widespread natural EMP that if it occurred today would have caused massive blackouts to electric grids and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures.

A massive solar storm narrowly missed hitting the planet in July 2012 that the report said would have caused a long-term electrical blackout worldwide with potentially catastrophic consequences.

“Recurrence of another Carrington Event is inevitable,” the report said.

Regarding nuclear EMP, the report states that China, Russia, and Iran consider the use of high-altitude nuclear blasts as “sixth generation warfare” that could cripple the ability of U.S. military to wage war using advanced electronic systems for intelligence, navigation, and precision weapons guidance.

“Nuclear EMP attack is part of the military doctrines, plans, and exercises of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran for a revolutionary new way of warfare against military forces and civilian critical infrastructures by cyber, sabotage, and EMP,” the report says.

Because damage is limited to electronic components and systems, enemy leaders do not consider an EMP attack as an act of nuclear warfare that would be bring U.S. nuclear retaliation.

“Potential adversaries understand that millions could die from the long-term collateral effects of EMP and cyber-attacks that cause protracted black-out of national electric grids and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures,” the report states.

“At least some regard this relatively easy, potentially anonymous, method of inflicting mass destruction as an attractive feature of what they describe as a Revolution in Military Affairs.”

The report urges the Pentagon to develop its own EMP weapons that can be developed from relatively low-yield nuclear arms and precision guided missiles.

The president should direct that a limited nuclear option for EMP attack be included in U.S. nuclear strike plans to deter foreign states developing EMP arms.

Of particular concern, according to the report, are two North Korean satellites currently in polar orbit over the United States. The two satellites, launched in 2012 and 2016, currently travel in trajectories that are “consistent with practice or preparation for a surprise nuclear EMP attack,” the report says.

The satellites’ polar orbits allow them to evade detection by U.S. missile defense satellites and sensors – a sign they could be used during the first stage of a North Korean long-range nuclear attack to disrupt U.S. missile defenses in Alaska and California.

The satellites, KMS-3 and KMS-4, appear to be similar to a secret Soviet-era weapon called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that Moscow planned for a surprise nuclear attack on the United States over the poles.

Two retired Russian generals testified to the EMP commission in 2004 that a design for a Russian super-EMP weapon was transferred to North Korea by Russian scientists and engineers working on North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons program.

The Russians asserted the North Koreans could test a super-EMP weapon in a few years.

Last year, after North Korea conducted its sixth underground nuclear test, North Korean state media announced that the hydrogen bomb “can be detonated even at high altitudes for a super-powerful EMP attack according to strategic goals.”

China’s EMP arms were discussed in Chinese military writings as recently as 2016.

China’s National Security Policy Committee, stated in January 2016 that “electromagnetic pulse bombs” will “change the ‘rules of the game'” by disrupting U.S. military precision warfare capabilities.

A PLA air force publication in 2014 states that EMP blasts are a new type of weapon. “On a battlefield, this new-type weapon will cause devastating damage to electronic systems, including computers, communications and control systems, and radars, resulting in immeasurable losses,” the report said.

Russian military plans for using EMP attacks were traced in the report to Gen. Vladimir Slipchenko and his book Non-Contact Wars that calls for combining cyber attacks, physical attacks, and EMP attacks against electric grids.

A Russian General Staff journal in 2011 also stated that U.S. military forces are vulnerable to electronic and EMP attacks.

“A single low-yield nuclear weapon exploded for this purpose high above the area of combat operations can generate an electromagnetic pulse covering a large area and destroying electronic equipment without loss of life that is caused by the blast or radiation,” the report said.

Iranian military writings follow Russia’s approach to warfare and the use of EMP.

A 2010 Iranian military textbook states that Iran, in a future conflict, is planning coordinated attacks by nuclear and non-nuclear EMP, cyber, and physical weapons to cause blackouts and the collapse entire nations. Iranian military doctrine sees nuclear EMP attacks as the ultimate cyber weapon.

Iran also is building defenses against EMP attacks for its infrastructure.

The report states that Iran may prefer to use the indirect method of causing mass casualties by using a nuclear EMP attack as a way to conduct nuclear war under Islamic law.

Non-nuclear EMP weapons, those that are limited to a range of a mile or less, also have been used to disrupt communications power grids, the report said.

North Korea used a radio frequency weapon purchased from Russia to attack airliners and air traffic to Seoul, South Korea.

The report also takes aim at critics who have sought to play down the danger of EMP attacks and solar superstorms as science fiction.

The report said the critics often are uninformed because they either lack knowledge of the effects of the Soviet and U.S. high altitude nuclear tests in the early 1960s, or do not know about the extensive body of testing and analysis carried out by the Pentagon over the last 55 years.

A popular myth spread by EMP skeptics is that the 1962 atmospheric nuclear test known as Starfish Prime – 900 miles from Hawaii caused only minimal disruption to Honolulu.

“In fact, the EMP knocked-out thirty-six strings of street lights, caused a telecommunications microwave relay station to fail, burned out high-frequency radio links, set off burglar alarms, and caused other damage,” the report said.

The report also criticizes the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. and the electric power industry for failing to address the EMP danger from either attack or solar storm.

Private industry also has failed to understand the threat posed by EMP to high-voltage transformers.

Peter Pry, a former EMP commission member, said the Pentagon has not published any findings of the commission since the commission was reestablished by Congress in 2016.

As a result, the new report was produced by the private EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security after a security review completed in July by the Pentagon’s Office of Prepublication and Security Review, said Pry, executive director of the task force.

Source: https://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-russia-north-korea-and-iran-set-for-electronic-pulse-attacks-on-u-s/

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