Posted on 12/14/2010 11:16:55 AM PST by neverdem
A Dangerous Gap in Our Defenses?
An EMP attack is a terrible threat, but countering it is affordable.
For several days in early November, a series of U.S. government agencies were either unable or unwilling to explain what had produced a vapor trail that had illuminated the Southern California skies. Public speculation abounded, first that it was a missile, then that it was in fact the condensation trail (contrail) of a plane. Controversy continues in the blogosphere and elsewhere.
The absence of a cogent official explanation reveals a dangerous gap in our defenses, specifically in our warning systems. Our surveillance systems should be able to distinguish a missile from an airplane instantaneously. If the source of the vapor trail had been a short-range ballistic missile launched from a freighter, tanker, or container ship, or even a small vessel off our shores, we should have been able to detect it unambiguously and shoot it down quickly. Failure to do so could have produced long-lasting local and global consequences.
The 2004 Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack observed that a single nuclear weapon exploded at high altitude above the United States will interact with the Earth’s atmosphere, ionosphere, and magnetic field and can produce a damaging electromagnetic pulse over hundreds of square miles. This could shut down, for an indefinite period, telecommunications and electrical-power grids, as well as the electronics-dependent transportation systems that support the “just-in-time” marketing, manufacturing, and delivery of essentially all commodities upon which we are dependent. It could cut off water and food supplies to urban areas and create chaos that would return the United States to 19th-century life, but without the life support then provided by an indigenous agricultural society. It could also hobble banking and related business transactions, which in turn could extend the catastrophic effects into the global economy. Disabling even one of our critical infrastructure elements would have severe consequences for others — effects from which advanced, technologically interdependent societies might not easily recover.
This threat is not merely hypothetical. Several years ago, Iran tested a short-range ballistic missile in a way that indicated an interest in developing an EMP capability. Even terrorists might purchase such missiles, possibly armed with nuclear weapons. Furthermore, recent reports that Iran has agreed to install ballistic missiles in Venezuela suggest that we could face a threat via future pathways across the Caribbean. This could become a modern version of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet no national strategy addresses this threat or underwrites a serious program to counter its effects — though such a capability would be possible as an inexpensive adjunct to existing and planned missile-defense programs.
Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both have placed a top priority on preventing the smuggling of nuclear weapons to the United States. Such a program must be able to counter the maritime smuggling of nuclear weapons, including the identification and interdiction of a ship carrying short- or medium-range nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. And if such a ship escapes detection or interdiction before it approaches U.S. coasts, effective defenses could intercept a launched nuclear-armed missile in its ascent phase just after launch and before it can detonate a nuclear warhead.
Fortunately, the dangerous gap in our defenses that may have been revealed by the vapor trail in early November can be filled by technologies that are already available or presently under development. This includes countering a would-be EMP attacker, who might be deterred by an integrated U.S. system that: 1) identifies a ship carrying one or more nuclear-armed ballistic missiles and interdicts it before it reaches striking distance of the United States; 2) failing that, intercepts the attacking missile before its EMP-producing nuclear warhead is detonated; and 3) failing that, reduces casualties and provides for critical infrastructure reconstitution, including hardening to minimize EMP effects.
Such an integrated system would contain three components fashioned from ongoing missile-defense programs — Aegis ballistic-missile-defense (BMD) ships, Aegis Ashore ground-based interceptors, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capabilities. An effective command-and-control system, together with intelligence and early warning, is vitally important in preventing the smuggling of nuclear weapons into the United States, as well as for timely missile-defense operations.
Interceptors on even a single U.S. Navy Aegis cruiser or destroyer operating in a region near Norfolk, Va., could defend a large portion of the eastern seaboard. Additional ships could extend and reinforce the protective shield from New England to Florida. The five Aegis BMD-capable ships now stationed in the Atlantic will grow to 18 by 2015, and a few of these could provide an anti-EMP missile defense for the entire east coast, while still performing their other day-to-day operations. A similar number are already deployed in the Pacific, and several of these could defend Hawaii, Alaska, and the west coast. A land-based version of the Navy’s Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), deployed on military bases along the Gulf coast, could defend those who live there against an EMP attack from Venezuela or the Caribbean.
Already-deployed SM-3s can begin to counter the EMP threat almost immediately, and planned higher-velocity SM-3 improvements, along with an increase in deployed numbers, will make an EMP attack even less likely to succeed. Similarly, a land-based variant of the current SM-3 could be rapidly deployed and improved. The current Aegis Ashore program plans initial overseas land-based deployments beginning in 2015 — and improvements following in the next five years. Obviously, this same capability could be deployed as part of an anti-EMP capability to protect the United States, particularly in the Gulf-coast region, where Aegis ships seldom operate.
To help fill the November vapor-trail mystery gap, a dedicated UAV-sensor system could provide timely tracking information, which is essential to initiating defensive operations somewhere between seconds and a very few minutes after a threatening missile is launched from a ship off our coasts. Such UAVs could also carry interceptors as an additional defensive layer to Aegis. UAV-borne sensors and weapons have already demonstrated impressive capabilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, and appropriate versions could be placed in “orbits” off the U.S. coast to identify ballistic-missile launch preparations, provide warning if a ballistic missile is launched from an offshore ship, and intercept it in its boost or ascent phase.
America’s current state of essentially complete vulnerability to the EMP threat is unacceptable, especially since relatively inexpensive steps can be taken now to build missile-defense systems that would begin to counter this 21st-century threat. Existing, already-funded programs will improve possible near-term capabilities, which can begin initial operations by 2015. The confusion over what produced the vapor trail off the California coast in early November, along with the potential threat from Venezuela, should inspire action to fill a gap that, if unaddressed, could have catastrophic consequences for our security.
— Henry F. Cooper was chief U.S. negotiator at the Geneva defense and space talks with the Soviet Union (1985–1989) and director of Strategic Defense Initiative (1990–1993). Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr. is president of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, and co-chairman of the Independent Working Group.
Providing details of our defenses would be a dangerous gap in our defenses.
mark
Nothing will bring us down faster than an EMP attack.
Nothing will bring us down more surely than Socialism.
Our enemies are conspiring to do both.
20 Things TheParanoidDad learned from ONE SECOND AFTER
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/09/09/20-things-theparanoiddad-learned-from-one-second-after/
1. You cannot totally prepare for every possible disaster. There are too many variables: weather, where you are at the time it occurs, who you are with. You never know how those around you have prepared or how they will react – where will they be mentally, emotionally, and physically. Being prepared, at whatever level, just gives you better odds of survival.
2. Eventually you will have to kill somebody.
3. Eventually someone will find you no matter where you are. All you can do is pick the most strategic location possible.
4. Disease will become a part of life.
5. You’re going to run out of bullets, eventually.
6. If or when the government comes to help, they may not be very helpful, and you won’t be anywhere near their top priority.
7. Any gun is better than no gun as long as you have ammo.
Having an understanding of military battle tactics would be a good idea.
8.Children need to learn how to shoot and defend themselves early on.
9.Some medical training and knowledge would be beneficial, even if it’s just first aid.
10.Big cities will become kill zones.
11. Build a privy in your yard and use it for a week. See how bad it can get!
12.Buy an extra dose of medication whenever you can.
13. Evil people without any fear of authority or restraint will become more evil.
14. If you have more food than everyone else, stay on near-starvation rations so you don’t appear to be more healthy and become a target.
15. Be one of the first ‘looters’, but pay for what you can, however you can.
16. Having to move from one safe location to another safe location, remember you’ll be in danger the entire way.
17. Movement is dangerous.
18. White collar skills will be worthless. Blue collar skills will be more valuable.
19. People who rarely or never do any strenuous work will be in big trouble.
20. Survival will become a fulltime job.
“one second after” dittos
What I don’t get about the EMP threat is what it buys for our enemy. I know it puts us back to the stone age, but surely if,
for instance, China did it, we would retaliate in kind and they would also be the same situation.
So what does the book say about that?
Good list, buddy. I’m way out here in Bush Alaska, which will present its own set of problems, notably staying warm, storing enough dried fish, and catching enough small game, but you’ve summed it up well. I have enough food, but you’d be amazed at the number of folks, even out here, who depend on the store for their goods. You’re right about them being my biggest concern. My son, whom I love and has been spoiled by modern society, is always told to prepare. God willing neither he nor I will have to deal with it. And God help us.
Might have three days to ten days to prepare after burst. I would hope I would be correct, yet I have no idea.
That’s what makes the third-world Islamic nations so dangerous. They don’t have anything to lose because they choose to live in the stone age. They’d start a nuclear war just to bring everyone else down to thier level.
Thanks, NavyCanDo
Obama would not retaliate. He would claim that it was our fault for offending them.
Wow...the Liberal Globalist National Review finally talking about EMPs? They are about 20-25 late on the issue
I have a cousin who has amassed a good amount of survival goods including enough guns and ammo for his family.
I half joke with him that beyond food, I want lots of hydrocortizone and lice shampoo. That stuff would be more valuable than gold in an age of swamp ass and rashes from relatively poor hygiene.
“...we would retaliate in kind and they would also be the same situation.”
No way we’re retaliating. Those days ended for this country in Tokyo Bay aboard the USS Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945.
I thought about how to prepare for that for weeks after I read that book. As you said- it was fiction- but it gave me a lot to think about.
Our “civilized” world hangs by such narrow threads, particularly in a world where relatively few know how to grow and/or slaughter food.
That's the beauty of nuclear proliferation...it's going to take a while to figure out who did it. Unless of course it was some muzzie group (i.e. al-qaeda) who openly takes responsibility for it, and then who do you nuke?
If you read up on Islamic eschatology it's not about getting anything out of it...chaos is the end, not the means.
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