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April 21, 2006
A Little Perspective On The EMP Threat
J.R. Dunn at The American Thinker has a common sense examination of the threat posed by an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack. You've probably heard of EMP touted as a worst-case scenario for a nuclear attack against the America by a jihadist country--it involves detonating a nuclear device high in the atmosphere over the US. The resulting surge in electromagnetic radiation could in theory wipe out a large percentage of our electronic infrastructure.
But as Mr. Dunn points out, there are huge technical problems that the Iranians, or anyone else, would have to overcome. The EMP-as-weapon theory originated from a Cold War-era test the US conducted in 1962 in which a 1.5 megaton weapon was detonated at an altitude of 240 miles over the South Pacific, resulting in electrical infrastructure damage over 1000 miles away in Hawaii. The most obvious problem is the nuke itself: at 1.5 megatons, this was a thermonuclear device, i.e., a hydrogen bomb. H-bomb technology is probably another order of magnitude higher on the difficulty scale than "simple" atomic bombs; this is a distinction that all too often falls through the cracks.
Not only was the 1962 test device thermonuclear, it was miniaturized enough to fit on a missile--which requires even more cutting edge technology, both for the warhead and the missile. These problems and more are laid out very cogently by Dunn.
He by no means dismisses the threat. After all, the 9/11 hijackers managed to launch a sophisticated, well coordinated attack that surprised everyone. And it's certainly within the realm of possibility that Iran could simply buy a fully-assembled, miniaturized nuke, or at least the plans to build one. Or "borrow" a team of Soviet or Chinese nuke scientists looking for work.
But Dunn does a good job of providing a counterbalance to some of the doomsday gloom.
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