The NCS is responsible for assessing and addressing threats to our national communications infrastructure. I would suspect that that particular group would be less than eager to admit that America has developed an Achilles heal in regards to any major threat to our communications systems. That would be like asking a corporate CFO to comment on the accuracy and honesty of his company’s numbers.
Combining that obvious observation with the fact that you chose to prove your ‘paranoia’ allegation by linking to an evaluation of the EMP threat that was written more than twenty years ago kind of dilutes your argument, don’t you think?
Even though we would still be contending with a ‘corporate CFO/company numbers’ type issue, let’s look at a much more recent statement by Dr. Peter Fonash, the current acting director of the NCS, presented just a few months ago in an address before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security:
Just last year [2004] the NCS actively participated in the congressionally-chartered ‘Commission to Assess the Threat from High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse’ that examined and evaluated the state of the EMP threat at present and looking fifteen years into the foreseeable future. The Commission’s report, delivered last July, concludes that EMP presents a less significant direct threat to telecommunications than it does to the National Power Grid, but would nevertheless disrupt or damage a functionally significant fraction of the electronic circuits in the nation’s telecommunications systems in the region exposed to EMP (which could include most of the United States). The NCS concurs with this assessment.
He then goes on in great detail describing future plans to harden our communications infrastructure.
Kinda like a CFO saying that only a small percentage of the books are cooked, and that small percentage, in turn, affects most of the bottom-line figures … but that’s okay … we’re working really hard to find the broken calculator.
Your comment ‘… those gamma rays traveling toward the earth’s atmosphere are stopped by collisions with atmospheric molecules at altitudes between 20 and 40 kilometers. These collision generate Compton recoil elections which interact with the earth’s magnetic field to produce a downward traveling electromagnetic wave’ is also included in an essay by Major M. Cajohn, USMC, entitled ‘EMP: From Chaos to a Manageable Solution’.
Not only was this essay also written nearly twenty years ago (when our EMP hardening was far more widespread and reliable than it is today), but its purpose was to awaken our national leadership to the fact that manageable solutions to the EMP threat do indeed exist. The essay served as an exhortation to focus on those solutions before it is too late. When Maj. Cajohn penned it, the Reagan administration was indeed in agreement with him and was funneling finances and manpower into doing just that. In the sixteen years since, as last year’s report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack concluded, The end of the Cold War relaxed the discipline for achieving EMP survivability within the Department of Defense, and gave rise to the perception that an erosion of EMP survivability of military forces was an acceptable risk.
That you are citing two twenty-year-old documents, the first of which was written by anything but unbiased authors, and the second of which is taken from an essay which warns of our unpreparedness for an EMP attack doesn’t exactly make for an air-tight argument that there is nothing to fear.
As for your references to Starfish, a fairly recent article written by Dr. Michael Bernardin of the Theoretical Institute for Thermonuclear and Nuclear Studies at Los Alamos, stated:
It is clear that EMP is a real effect and that damage is virtually certain. To establish that the problem is well understood, one must begin with a model of, say, Starfish, and demonstrate that the predicted EMP environments, EMP coupling, and effects match observation. Then, one must be able to establish that the model retains its fidelity when the warhead model is changed, when the burst location is moved over land and changed in elevation, when the electromagnetic coupling paths change, when the vintage of electronics changes, and with the incorporation of EMP test simulator data, that the results are reliable.
Using what you perceive as the implications of Starfish as an infallible model amounts to a refusal to consider the affects of a number of variables, the instances and numbers of which have multiplied dramatically in the forty-plus years since that relatively small nuclear experiment.
Try moving out of the sixties/eighties. It might provide you a better perspective from which to view both the science and the politics involved.
~ joanie
"That you are citing two twenty-year-old documents, the first of which was written by anything but unbiased authors"
Your original post cites many sources that could be less than defensible when you consider how gov't funded research dollars are handed out.
Which premise would get more money for a gov't funded lab:
1. EMP is a disaster waiting to happen
2. EMP is a concern, but it is likely that modern design methods will mitigate it significantly
I'm not impugning the entire premise, just pointing out that your own sources are potentially biased - Defense and gov't labs can hardly be seen as squeaky clean in your "CFO scenario".
It is quite possible that any EMP hardening would amount to making sure that our power and telecommunications infrastructure implements the electrical code with respect to grounding and lightning protection. I concede the point that some may not properly implement their design, even though sufficient grounding/ESD/lightning protection was called for in the design specs. That is worth checking for.
An EMP has nothing over close proximity lightning, and/or ESD - The physics of which have changed little over the past 50 years.
The Ham radio paper is relevant - as anything connected to an antenna will be more apt to absorb the energy from an EMP.
One item of note, the ionization of the atmosphere following a nuclear attack will raise the noise floor of any communications system - those not designed to compensate will be useless for the time that it takes atmospheric ionization to dissipate.
Regarding the power grid, as I have stated before - EMP hardening may require little more than prepositioning an additional inventory of fuses and breakers, and reviewing lightning protection. Procedures for quickly bringing a cold power grid back up in a stable fashion could also be useful (note the recent Northeast US blackout)
The paranoia is real - fueled by hollywood and less-than-impartial gov't and defense types.
I believe we would certainly survive it, and would still have the capability to respond overwhelmingly, but I believe we would be hurt severely by it and that in all probability would be followed up immediately with nuclear mssiles targeting our cities and installations, and military movement abroad to attempt to capitalize on the surprise.
Still, as I said, I believe at this point, that a devestating response would be forthcoming from our Trident subs particularly, and from our other forces as well. You can bet any enemy is factoring all of that in when contemplating such a move. It is what keeps them at bay. They are not likely to act and play to this glaring strength unless they have discovered something or intend something to also reduce that reality. I rpay they never do.