Posted on 01/19/2003 6:34:27 AM PST by TheRedSoxWinThePennant
America's Ultra-Secret Weapon
By MARK THOMPSON
Posted Sunday, January 19, 2003; 10:31 a.m. EST Every war has its wonder weapon. In Afghanistan, it was the Predator, the unmanned drone that would loiter, invisibly, over the battlefield before unleashing a Hellfire missile on an unsuspecting target. The Gulf War marked the debut of precision-guided munitions, and in Vietnam helicopters came of age. World War II gave us the horror of nuclear weapons, and World War I introduced the tank. If there's a second Gulf War, get ready to meet the high-power microwave.
HPMs are man-made lightning bolts crammed into cruise missiles. They could be key weapons for targeting Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. HPMs fry the sophisticated computers and electronic gear necessary to produce, protect, store and deliver such agents. The powerful electromagnetic pulses can travel into deeply buried bunkers through ventilation shafts, plumbing and antennas. But unlike conventional explosives, they won't spew deadly agents into the air, where they could poison Iraqi civilians or advancing U.S. troops.
The HPM is a top-secret program, and the Pentagon wants to keep it that way. Senior military officials have dropped hints about a new, classified weapon for Iraq but won't provide details. Still, information about HPMs, first successfully tested in 1999, has trickled out. "High-power microwave technology is ready for the transition to active weapons in the U.S. military," Air Force Colonel Eileen Walling wrote in a rare, unclassified report on the program three years ago. "There are signs that microwave weapons will represent a revolutionary concept for warfare, principally because microwaves are designed to incapacitate equipment rather than humans."
HPMs can unleash in a flash as much electrical power—2 billion watts or more—as the Hoover Dam generates in 24 hours. Capacitors aboard the missile discharge an energy pulse—moving at the speed of light and impervious to bad weather—in front of the missile as it nears its target. That pulse can destroy any electronics within 1,000 ft. of the flash by short-circuiting internal electrical connections, thereby wrecking memory chips, ruining computer motherboards and generally screwing up electronic components not built to withstand such powerful surges. It's similar to what can happen to your computer or TV when lightning strikes nearby and a tidal wave of electricity rides in through the wiring.
Most of this "e-bomb" development is taking place at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M. The Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland has been studying how to deliver varying but predictable electrical pulses to inflict increasing levels of harm: to deny, degrade, damage or destroy, to use the Pentagon's parlance. HPM engineers call it "dial-a-hurt." But that hurt can cause unintended problems: beyond taking out a tyrant's silicon chips, HPMs could destroy nearby heart pacemakers and other life-critical electrical systems in hospitals or aboard aircraft (that's why the U.S. military is putting them only on long-range cruise missiles). The U.S. used a more primitive form of these weapons—known as soft bombs—against Yugoslavia and in the first Gulf War, when cruise missiles showered miles of thin carbon fibers over electrical facilities, creating massive short circuits that shut down electrical power.
Although the Pentagon prefers not to use experimental weapons on the battlefield, "the world intervenes from time to time," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says. "And you reach in there and take something out that is still in a developmental stage, and you might use it."
True, but there aren't any really good terms to describe pulse discharges in an understandable common language way. Take the power pottential of a handful of flashlight batteries. Not much to be iimpressed with, and most people would be more than willing to have them connected to their body (maybe not teeth though) without worry. take those same batteries, step the voltage up to about 100,000 + and charge a pulse discharge capacitor till the batteries are exhausted. Apply the same overall power of the battteries to your body in this manner and you will have a very different end result than with just the batteries hooked up directly. (an interesting demo of this is to construct the capacitor arrangement and discharge it into a hot dog, with one terminal connected to each end. But only if you are very, very familiar with working with high voltages and capacitors. Hands on experience, not book learning experience)
Reminded me of the basic electronics portion of a US Army school I attended in 65.
We'd charge up the a large capacitor to 350VDC or so,
and then toss it to another student.
The natural response is of course to catch the thrown object,
resulting in a painful discharge
into the victims hands.
Usually only once per student.
After that, "Hey Joe, catch!" resulted in the duck and weave instead
of the catch response.
Is that "hands on," enough for you? ;o)
Yup. But remember that pulse discharges at 100,000 volts and about a million amps (never figured out how to actualy measure the amps) are a bit more painful. As in, maybe, missing fingers.
Easy enough for most high school students to make one for about 50 bucks. Maybe not as powerful or sophisticated, but still effective at close range. Or, how about a device that is small enough to put in a purse that, when plugged into any electrical outlet, could destroy all the electronics in the building? Or one, mounted under a car hood or trunk, could wipe out the electronics in the car(s) in front of or behind You (any ham experimenter could make these)? All this exotic stuff isn't so exotic with todays commonly available technology and can be constructed (on a smaller than military power scale) by anyone with junk and scrap parts. The military stuff is basically the same thing, just on a very much larger scale. But keep this between you and me ... wouldn't want to give a terrorist any ideas.
You called down the thunder, well now you GOT IT.
Here is some hands on experience, very similar to your capacitor experiment that you described...
True, but there aren't any really good terms to describe pulse discharges in an understandable common language way. Take the power potential of a handful of flashlight batteries. Not much to be impressed with, and most people would be more than willing to have them connected to their body (maybe not teeth though) without worry. take those same batteries, step the voltage up to about 100,000 + and charge a pulse discharge capacitor till the batteries are exhausted. Apply the same overall power of the batteries to your body in this manner and you will have a very different end result than with just the batteries hooked up directly. (an interesting demo of this is to construct the capacitor arrangement and discharge it into a hot dog, with one terminal connected to each end. But only if you are very, very familiar with working with high voltages and capacitors. Hands on experience, not book learning experience)
About 45 years ago in high school, our physics teacher did not show up for class...and no substitute did either. I connected a single D cell ( 1.5 volt flashlight battery) to a simple 3 volt filament transformer and had the thirty students form a human chain by holding hands up and down the rows.
I gave one student at one end of the chain, one lead from the transformer and another student at the other end of the chain, the other lead, and connected the battery. I said does anyone feel anything? NOoooooo.
Then I disconnected the battery!
The collapsing magnetic field, when I disconnected the battery, brought all 30 students out of their chairs and back down into them at the same exact time. We were on the second floor of a cement school building. Has anyone else seen or heard what happens when 30 X 100 lbs hits a cement floor in a school at once?
Has anyone else heard the sound of 30 teenagers screaming at the top of their lungs in a small classroom?
Don't try this at home or at school...
There are too many lawyer around now.
And too many laws as well. Gee ... I really miss the old days. wonder what kids do for harmless fun nowdays?
http://www.haarp.alaska.edu
HAARP has two A's
g
Yes, somewhat. There is some informatioin available on various web sites. There are a number of these around the world. All they really are, from my understanding, is high altitude atmospheric heaters (they heat up a protiion of the ionosphere with focused microwaves). They are used to do everything from alter weather patterns to deep earth tomography and over the horizon radar according to some sources. I actually inquired about these things to the HARP people a number of years back and they denied anything except some rather esoteric high atmosphere studies were being conducted or even possible. All those things being attribituted to them by the tinfoil hat crowd would be apparent by now if they were true. BTW, you can hear it on a shortwave receiver when in operation. Don't remember the frequency, but is is on the lower end of the bands commonly on shortwave receivers. Just a sort of humming clicking sound, a bit like the old Russian woodpecker thing.
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"HPMs can unleash in a flash as much electrical power-2 billion watts or more-as the Hoover Dam generates in 24 hours." |
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.SCIENCE ILLITERATI BUMP! ..and power is work over time... |
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For anyone who has wondered why Simon & Schuster would award an $8M "Book Advance" for the memoirs of someone so banal that her saving grace is a feigned failing memory, I offer the following analysis:
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Buddy web sites quickly exploded in cyberspace. (Socks web sites, too, he would add.) Mrs. clinton, a long-time adherent of synergistic exploitation, "authored" an instant book about three groups favored for exploitation by the clintons: dogs, cats and children. "Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets" was published by the clintons' personal agitprop-and-money-laundering machine, Simon & Schuster. (see Is hillary clinton's $8M "book advance" a Peter-Principle artifact?) |
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