Posted on 05/24/2015 10:08:16 AM PDT by lbryce
Boeing's "CHAMP" (Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project) is a one-missile, flying blackout.
Born into Generation X, I grew up with the threat of nuclear war -- and all its corollaries, from visions of mushroom clouds to "duck and cover" drills in high school to Terminator movies, and of course, the ever-present worry that one day a sneaky Soviet satellite would detonate way up in the sky and fry all of our electronics with an "electromagnetic pulse."
So imagine my surprise when the U.S. Air Force confirmed last week that it's developed an electromagnetic pulse weapon of its own, and that Boeing is helping to build it.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory maps the areas likely to be blacked out in the event of a high-altitude nuclear EMP attack on the United States. Boeing's area of effect will be considerably smaller.
(Excerpt) Read more at nasdaq.com ...
I was ducking and covering in the 50’s.
That being said the threat continued to grow over the following decades as weapons got more numerous, more powerful, and more precise.
One does not win a war without breaking the enemy’s will.
I swear I read that as “one does not win a war without breaking the enemy’s wii. Had to take a second look.
The 50s and the 60s was the height of nuclear war fears for the public, you could see that in the public actions.
For a couple of decades nuclear survival was a part of normal with daily raid alarms at noon, and routine drills in schools and families constructing their own shelters and preparations, and the Civil Defense programs being serious, and being taken seriously.
By the time the genx reached consciousness, taking nuclear war seriously was being mocked in the popular culture and media, and Civil Defense had wasted away.
By the way, precision is good, it means that entire cities don’t have to be swamped under a cloud of massive bombs to get what the military wanted to destroy.
Hmmmmmm, in this context one could do both...
next question.....
is it currently being used and that fact being known by our enemies is the reason for making it known?
A hand grenade is an explosive weapon, i.e., it affects unprotected targets within a small radius of its detonation point, as opposed to projectile weapons which only affect a point target.
Nuclear weapons and chemical effect weapons are weapons of mass destruction because they affect rather wide areas.
Hand grenades, nuclear weapons and chemical weapons are also area affect weapons, i.e., their weapons effects take place within an area as opposed to a only a point target.
So, if hand grenades are area affect weapons just like nukes, hand grenades are also weapons of mass destruction.
Boeing's EMP weapon affects only a small area (less than half a kilometer). A nuclear EMP weapon detonated at sufficient altitude can, depending on its explosive yield, knock out almost all digital electronics, and even electrical generators, within an area of several hundred square miles radius to entire continents.
If you ignore the math and the actual size of the area they affect, you can have hysterics. Plus you should give me all your money because you'll lose it anyway, and I'd rather you lose it to me.
And as you say, as the actual risk increased, the perceived risk plummeted.
Yep...... something like this?
I like it, build more. It can be very useful in attacking embedded terrorists or rogue govts without hurting the surrounding citizens. I’d start with North Korea.
“Slightly Terrifying” sounds as silly as a “little bit pregnant”, what a dumb headline.
The appearance does give me pause. I acknowledged that it might sound like idiot lib talk in my original reply and I suppose in some ways it does, but some of those aircraft are downright creepy.
Does that mean I want enemies to have them? No. Does it mean that I don't want the US military to have them? No. I just have misgivings over the white hats looking like the black hats. Maybe it's nonsensical, but I do.
“I suppose it’s radar absorbing, but I dislike all the black military craft”
Lol.
Yeah, and that camo stuff, that’s sneaky and icky too.
Likewise the LRL tests stopped then late-model cars on Highway 280 in the Livermore Valley and produced similar complaints. The LRL moved the tests to the hills south of 280 where they stopped cars in the Del Puerto Canyon area, and sometimes in the southbound lanes of I-5. That hasn't happened for about the past ten years.
Camouflage is camouflage.
Understood.
Perception is reality. Dress up cops like the military, and pretty soon they start acting like military occupiers.
Another in a long list of reasons to support whoever the eventual Republican nominee turns out to be.
And as piasa pointed out at post #21, due to the peculiarities of the visual perception process, a bubblegum pink is even better (at night anyway).
Put X in the center square.
Vacuum tubes rock - bump for later...
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