Radiofrequency Weapons 377
BWJones writes "Global security is running a fairly detailed and interesting story on E-bombs (not email bombs, rather electronic microwave weapons) taken from the IEEE Spectrum Online.
We have long known (since the 1940's) about the effects that high energy weapons can have on electronic components from nuclear blasts, but this class of weapons is designed to exclusively attack electronic infrastructure. "
OLD NEWS (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Don't they have these in the Matrix? (Score:5, Informative)
And here is another nice article [popularmechanics.com] on the threat they really are.
~$400 to take out a small city? Scary.
HERF Gun (Score:5, Informative)
The main difference I see is ina HERF gun is a focused blast (like narrowband), whilst an EMP bomb will likely be area damage (ultrawideband).
A cool thing, and perhaps a balance to the technology wars (what good is a tank/fighter when one guy with a laser 10km away can down it?), but can't we already assembly things like these in a our basements (if not, somebody please point out the different, other than power)
Re:military use? (Score:3, Informative)
No, most military applications are *not* shielded against EM pulses. This tends to be quite expensive. For instance, I remember when we got a couple shielded Macs. They were hyper expensive (but also TEMPEST sheilded as well).
Wouldn't it then stand to reason that "e-bombs" would be more useful on civilian infrastructure/targets?
That is mostly the idea.
Re:Similar technology? (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the whole thing:
http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/ai
Re:Neutron Bombs are better (Score:2, Informative)
Viruses also work like this, however they are much less predictable and harder to contain since radiation does not spread. There's a specific term for this type of military strategy (slow killing versus quick casualties), but I don't know it.
Regardless, it is considered inhumane and is specifically condemned by the Geneva Convention due to it's needless infliction of suffering beyond the normal realm of warfare.
Re:rocket launcher (Score:4, Informative)
It would, however, destroy any "smart" projectiles, even those as simple as a Stinger missile -- which is valuable as well given just how prolific those things are.
Of course, if you wanted such a defense to be useful you'd want to be able to mount an emitter on potential targets (like, oh say, a commercial airliner) and have it produce a high power semi-directed impulse. I don't know if that's possible (IANAPhysicist). But you'd want to take out anything launched at you from a reasonable distance (>500') without screwing your own systems in the process (most modern commercial jets are fly-by-wire as well).
Re:Yay... (Score:2, Informative)
The coil is charged with electricity.
The explosion is a controlled one which runs from one end of the coil to the other.
The result is to "compress" the current, and thus the Magnetic field around the charged coil.
the result is to eject a very intense Magnetic field in the given direction.
Side Note:
The magnetic field ejected by the warhead causes the electrons in any metal to move extreamly fast in one direction.
this surge of electrons is what overload power grids and nuke computers, ect.
Great, and what do I do? (Score:3, Informative)
Kentucky fried theolein!
Re:Neutron Bombs are better (Score:5, Informative)
You've (both) missed the point of "neutron bombs" (a.k.a. enhanced radiation weapons).
The goal was never to drop the things on cities to "kill the people and save the buildings". The lethal radius from the burst of neutrons is on the same order of magnitude of the lethal blast radius, typically a few hundred meters. Wrong weapon for wiping out a city. (Which is fine, because wiping out cities isn't what they were designed for.)
Where neutron bombs would have had great effect would have been in wiping out large columns of tanks, presumably Russian, clustered together as they were funnelled through places like the Fulda Gap in an invasion of Eastern Europe.
In those scenarios, NATO forces didn't have sufficient conventional weapons to deliver on the tanks to make a difference. And because tanks are pretty blast-resistant things (crunchy shell, soft center), the only way to wipe them out en masse would have been to nuke them.
With 100,000 tanks bearing down on you, you've got two options:
(0) Surrender. Not an option.
(0) Fight conventionally, die anyway, because you're outnumbered and outgunned. Not an option.
(1) Blow 'em up. Carpet-bomb the countryside with 20-megaton blasts spaced 2-3 kilometers apart, because that's the kind of blast power it's going to take to crack the hard crunchy steel shells. Then discover your own troops are up to their armpits in icky long-term fallout, to say nothing of the fact that you've killed 20-30% of the civilian population living downwind, and that whoever wins the war can forget about farming for, oh, I dunno, the next decade or two.
(2) Fry 'em. Drop kiloton-yielding neutron bombs over the same area. Low explosive yield, low collateral damage, low fallout, just instant bursts of neutrons that rip through the crunchy steel shell and (in the space of minutes) incapacitate and kill the soft juicy tank crews at the center.
Once the burst of neutrons is over - literally a period of milliseconds - the mess is largely gone. (Yes, you have some neutron-activated substances near the blast site, but we're not talking huge quantities of fission daughter products, which are the real bad news to the survivors of a nuclear conflict).
Meantime, the Russian advance is stuck dead (literally :) in a traffic jam of tank-shaped coffins. Casualties in the area are pretty severe, but the affected area is pretty small. Most of the casualties are military, not civilian. Your troops can move through the bombarded area in relatively short order, and whoever wins the war can feed the surviving population, because you haven't blanketed half the arable land in Europe with long-term fallout.
None of the options in a nuclear conflict are that great. But enhanced radiation weapons were actually one of the best options available to commanders of either side during the Cold War. It's a shame that the FUD surrounding them went so out of hand. (Then again, maybe not. Deterrence turned out to be the best nuclear policy option of them all :)
Re:Neutron Bombs are better (Score:2, Informative)
America did sign various agreements about the treatment of prisoners (altough some argue they have not complied with them post 11 september 2001.)
America has not signed into the international criminal court, or the banning of antipersonnel land mines.
America did sign the original 1944 (59 year old!) treaty, but DID NOT not sign the Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977.
America DID NOT sign Protocol III (1980) or Protocol IV (1995) of the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
And from what I can tell from the treaty website, the United States has never ratified the agreements.