Archive for the ‘EMP Strike – Electro Magnetic Pulse’ Category

U.S. NORTHERN COMMAND BEING MOVED TO PROTECT AGAINST POSSIBLE EMP STRIKE

Thursday, April 16th, 2015

High Frontier, by Henry F. Cooper, April 13, 2015:

The Pentagon recently announced that Raytheon is receiving a $700 million contract to prep the Cheyenne Mountain base in Colorado for the return of US Aerospace Command, built in the 1960s to respond to a Soviet nuclear strike; this new plan is to help counter a possible EMP attack by a rogue nation. This explicit acknowledgement of the EMP threat is a most welcome development. Hopefully, the U.S. “powers that be” will also take complementary steps to assure the survival of the American people in case of such an attack—and here are some hopeful signs this may be possible.

Several recent reports apparently stem from a very informative Pentagon press conference by the Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), Adm. Bill Gortney. (Click here for the transcript). They reinforce a well-known assessment that the first step to solving any problem, is to understand and define the problem.

So far the essence and importance of these comments have not reached the mainstream press, but many have been picked up and reliably elaborated by the defense publications, Defense News and Defense One. From my perspective, their most important observations are:

The shift to the Cheyenne Mountain base in Colorado is designed to safeguard the command’s sensitive sensors and servers from a potential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.
In 2006, officials decided to move the Cold War operations to Petersen Air Force base in Colorado Springs, but retained the Cheyenne bunker as an alternative command center if needed. That move followed hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-worth of modernization work at Cheyenne after 9/11 that can now be exploited by supplementing pertinent communications gear, hardened to withstand EMP, which can occur naturally or result from a high-altitude nuclear explosion. The suggestion is that communications is the primary concern, associated with providing accurate, timely and unambiguous Integrated Tactical Warning/Attack Assessment (ITW/AA) of air, missile and space threats. Air Force Space Command is responsible for these operations.
Under the 10-year contract, Raytheon is supposed to deliver “sustainment” services and also unspecified work at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
In June 2013, then-U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, speaking on the roadway leading into the mountain, stated, “These facilities and the entire complex of NORAD and NORTHCOM represent the nerve center of defense for North America.” (more…)

Posted in Dept of Defense, EMP Strike - Electro Magnetic Pulse, Military, Missle Defense, Nuclear Energy/Weapons | 2 Comments »

VIDEO – JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR, EMP STRIKING OUR ELECTRICAL GRID

Saturday, March 7th, 2015

Here are two links to the same video interview. If one doesn’t work, try the other link.

VIDEO – James Woolsey, former CIA Director – the effects of an attack on our electrical grid by an EMP strike. The government could prevent many millions of people here in the U.S. from drying by spending up to $ 20 billion to protect our grid. The money that is wasted by the government on non life threatening imagined problems should be diverted to this top priority issue. What are they waiting for as this very real threat has been known for years ?

www.foxnews.com/on-air/happening-now/index.html#/v/4097630242001

video.foxnews.com/v/4097630242001/woolsey-threat-to-electric-grid-keeps-me-awake-at-night/?#sp=show-clips

Posted in Arab Winter, Big Government, EMP Strike - Electro Magnetic Pulse, Foreign Policy, Government Waste and Fraud, International Affairs, Iran, Radical Islam, Technology, Videos | No Comments »

AFTERMATH OF AN EMP ATTACK – ONE SECOND AFTER, THE BOOK

Friday, August 15th, 2014

:

www.americanthinker.com/assets/3rd_party/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/11/one_second_after.html

November 2, 2013

One Second After

By Jon N. Hall

Back in July, I wrote an article that examined the post-apocalyptic genre in fiction and in film. In that piece, I committed (at least) one sin in that I mentioned a book that I had not read. Having just corrected that failing, I’m here to tell you that everyone in America should read William R. Forstchen’s novel One Second After. Forstchen’s novel takes place in post-9/11 America. And into that very real America, he introduces “the event” — an electromagnetic pulse attack. EMP is not science fiction; it’s been known about for decades. The Sun emits EMPs in solar flares, which have caused power blackouts.

An EMP attack involves detonating nuclear bombs high up in the atmosphere. With an EMP attack there is no radioactive fallout, nor bombed-out cities. But what a successful EMP attack would do is knock out our entire electric grid and fry all our electronic devices. An EMP attack would turn the lights out across America.One Second After follows one community, the real town of Black Mountain, North Carolina, for one year after a devastating EMP attack. The town is left like all towns in America: utterly cut off from the outside. That’s because an EMP attack would not only destroy the electrical grid and everything attached to it, the electrical systems of all vehicles built in the last few decades would also be destroyed. The only vehicles that would work would be antiques, such as Edsels and VW bugs. So the teeming millions in our cities would either be stuck, or have to walk out.

Beyond transportation and communication, the novel also looks at all the other systems that depend on electricity, like food and medicine. Diabetics, for instance, whose insulin must be kept cool, would not be long for this world. One of the more disturbing scenes occurs soon after the attack when the central character visits the local nursing home and finds it in total chaos. The food situation soon becomes dire and the town declares martial law. (Disabuse yourself of the idea that you’d be able to live off the land; in a nation of more than 300 million, game would quickly disappear.) (more…)

Posted in 9/11, Book Reviews, EMP Strike - Electro Magnetic Pulse, Missle Defense, National Defense, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Radical Islam, Terrorism | No Comments »

EMP ATTACK, THE GROWING THREAT

Thursday, August 14th, 2014

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

THE GROWING THREAT FROM AN EMP ATTACK

R. James Woolsey And

Peter Vincent Pry Mr. Woolsey is chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former director of the CIA.Mr. Pry served on the EMP Commission, in the CIA, and is the author of “Electric Armageddon” (CreateSpace, 2013).

Aug. 13, 2014

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: What would a successful EMP attack look like? The EMP Commission, in 2008, estimated that within 12 months of a nationwide blackout, up to 90% of the U.S. population could possibly perish from starvation, disease and societal breakdown

What to do?

Surge arrestors, faraday cages and other devices that prevent EMP from damaging electronics, as well micro-grids that are inherently less susceptible to EMP, have been used by the Defense Department for more than 50 years to protect crucial military installations and strategic forces. These can be adapted to protect civilian infrastructure as well. The cost of protecting the national electric grid, according to a 2008 EMP Commission estimate, would be about $2 billion—roughly what the U.S. gives each year in foreign aid to Pakistan

In a recent letter to investors, billionaire hedge-fund manager Paul Singer warned that an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, is “the most significant threat” to the U.S. and our allies in the world. He’s right. Our food and water supplies, communications, banking, hospitals, law enforcement, etc., all depend on the electric grid. Yet until recently little attention has been paid to the ease of generating EMPs by detonating a nuclear weapon in orbit above the U.S., and thus bringing our civilization to a cold, dark halt.

Recent declassification of EMP studies by the U.S. government has begun to draw attention to this dire threat. Rogue nations such as North Korea (and possibly Iran) will soon match Russia and China and have the primary ingredients for an EMP attack: simple ballistic missiles such as Scuds that could be launched from a freighter near our shores; space-launch vehicles able to loft low-earth-orbit satellites; and simple low-yield nuclear weapons that can generate gamma rays and fireballs.

The much neglected 2004 and 2008 reports by the congressional EMP Commission—only now garnering increased public attention—warn that “terrorists or state actors that possess relatively unsophisticated missiles armed with nuclear weapons may well calculate that, instead of destroying a city or a military base, they may gain the greatest political-military utility from one or a few such weapons by using them—or threatening their use—in an EMP attack.”

Bloomberg (more…)

Posted in Congress, Dept of Defense, EMP Strike - Electro Magnetic Pulse, Missle Defense, National Defense, Nuclear Energy/Weapons, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Terrorism | No Comments »

EARLY WARNING: THE CONTINUING NEED FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE

Sunday, April 13th, 2014

HILLSDALE COLLEGE www.hillsdale.edu

March 2014

Early Warning: The Continuing Need for National Defense
Brian T. Kennedy
President, The Claremont Institute
BRIAN T. KENNEDY is president of the Claremont Institute and publisher of the Claremont Review of Books. He has directed the Institute’s Golden State Center in Sacramento and its National Security Project. A member of the Independent Working Group on Missile Defense and co-author of Shariah: The Threat to America, his articles on national security affairs and public policy issues have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Investor’s Business Daily.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on March 4, 2014, at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C.

Harold Rood, a professor of international relations at Claremont McKenna College who died in 2011, was not as well known as he was influential. A soldier in Patton’s army in World War II, he taught his students that war is permanent to the human condition, and that in war it is better to win, for no one ever had to accommodate a loser. America will always have enemies, he told them, and those enemies will forever be planning and expending resources to place themselves in a position to defeat us. It would be nice if it was otherwise, he was fond of saying, but it is not otherwise. It is the way the world works.

During the Cold War, Dr. Rood would demonstrate in his classes–often by reading stacks of clippings from newspapers from around the world—that the leaders of the Soviet Union understood the world in these stark terms, and that they acted consistently on that basis. He would also lecture on technology, from German steel production before 1914, to the state of Japanese fighter aircraft before 1941, and even, curiously, to maps of America’s electrical transmission lines and power plants. It was important, he thought, to understand the strengths and vulnerabilities of a nation. His classes served as an antidote for students who had grown up in post-war America—a much needed antidote, because citizens of free nations in peacetime do not historically think in such terms. We today, and our elected leaders—in whose hands we place the responsibility for national defense—are in urgent need of such an antidote, because the U.S. is increasingly and dangerously vulnerable, and our elected leaders appear oblivious.

One would think the attack on September 11, 2001, would have awakened Americans for the foreseeable future to the need to prepare for unexpected dangers. Surprisingly, its effect was short-lived. Two relatively recent attacks show the problem. The first I’ll discuss took place on April 16, 2013, on an electric-transmission substation owned by Pacific Gas & Electric in California. One reason it did not get much notice was that the other—the Boston Marathon bombing that killed or injured 260 people—had occurred the day before.

The San Jose Attack
Last April 16, just outside of San Jose, California, a group of terrorists or soldiers, operating on American soil, attacked the Metcalf transmission substation in a military action aimed at disabling a part of America’s electrical infrastructure. The operation began at 1:00 a.m., when the attackers cut underground fiber optic cables, disabling communications and security systems. Thirty minutes later, using high-powered rifles, they began a 20-minute assault on the substation’s extra-large transformer and the cooling system that supports it. Police arrived at 1:50, but the shooters disappeared into the night. To this day there is no trace of them.

John Wellinghoff, then chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, would call this attack “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving [America’s electrical] grid that has ever occurred.” Obviously it was a professional operation by skilled marksmen—estimates of the number of gunmen range from two to six—with training in reconnaissance, stealth, and evasion. That the plan went undetected, the casings from the spent shells bore no fingerprints, and the perpetrators have not been caught, suggests a high degree of intelligence. Damage to the facility forced electricity to be rerouted to maintain the integrity of power transmission to the Silicon Valley, and repairs took several months.

The political response to the attack ranged from an immediate dismissal by the FBI of the idea that it was a terrorist act—puzzling given its sophistication and its proximity in time to the Boston bombing—to recognition by a bipartisan but small group of U.S. Senators and Representatives that defending America’s electrical grid is an urgent priority. Although there are over 100,000 transformers of all sizes throughout the grid, the destruction of less than two dozen key large transformers—which weigh hundreds of tons, are transported on special rail cars, and are mostly produced in Korea—would cause a catastrophic failure that would blackout the United States. Such is the vulnerability of the system.

America’s electrical grid is vulnerable not only to San Jose-style attacks, but to an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack—a nuclear explosion in the high atmosphere, creating an electro-magnetic pulse that destroys electrical wiring and hardware across the affected area. Such an explosion placed over the center of the U.S. could destroy the infrastructure that distributes electricity to consumers and industrial users in every state except Alaska and Hawaii. This phenomenon has been well understood since the 1960s, and Cold War–era nuclear strategy assumed that a nuclear attack on population centers would be accompanied by an EMP attack in order to disable an enemy’s command and control system. (more…)

Posted in 9/11, Congress, EMP Strike - Electro Magnetic Pulse, Energy, Foreign Policy, Missle Defense, National Defense, Radical Islam, Terrorism | No Comments »

‘TRANSFORMING’ AMERICA BECOMES DISARMING AMERICA

Friday, August 9th, 2013

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

LYONS: ‘Transforming’ America becomes disarming

America

Chipping away at the military jeopardizes security

By James A. Lyons

Retired Adm. James A. Lyons was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations.

Monday, July 29, 2013

Illustration by Greg Groesch for The Washington Times

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: Strategically, our main military threats emanate from China and Russia, but we cannot overlook their proxies, North Korea and Iran. Further, we cannot fail to address the Islamic threat represented by the Muslim Brotherhood’s “silent jihad,” in which they have been able to penetrate virtually every key government agency involved in national security, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Such penetration has enabled influencing our policies and war-fighting strategy to the net disadvantage of our fighting forces…… Both China and Russia have considered “limited” nuclear-attack options, including employing electromagnetic pulse as the primary means of attack.

It was not clearly understood by many Americans what President Obama had in mind when he stated in his 2009 inaugural that the time had come to start “remaking America,” in effect, “transforming America.” As we have now seen, one of the key transformations is the unilateral disarmament of our military forces.

Is it a belief held by Mr. Obama, based on his Marxist upbringing that views American power as historically regressive because it is capitalistic, hence imperialistic; therefore, the erosion of American power should be seen as historically progressive. Clearly, eroding U.S. military capabilities at a time when we are being challenged by a multitude of increasing military threats is unconscionable. With the Middle East in turmoil, the potential for hostilities breaking out in the Western Pacific between our allies and China owing to China’s imperialistic actions in the South and East China seas is real. These threats are magnified by the decline in U.S. military power brought about primarily by our self-imposed draconian budget cuts. (more…)

Posted in China, Defense Budget, Dept of Defense, EMP Strike - Electro Magnetic Pulse, Foreign Policy, International Affairs, Iran, Liberalism, Marxism, Military, Missle Defense, Muslim Brotherhood, National Defense, North Korea, Nuclear Energy/Weapons, Obama, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Radical Islam, Russia, Spending | No Comments »

THE POSSIBILITY OF AN EMP STRIKE BY NORTH KOREA

Friday, May 24th, 2013

May 22, 2013

How North Korea Could Cripple the U.S.

A single nuke exploded above America could cause a national blackout for months.

By R. JAMES WOOLSEY And PETER VINCENT PRY

Mr. Woolsey, a former CIA director, is chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a venture partner with Lux Capital. Mr. Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and served on the congressional EMP commission.

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: An EMP attack would collapse the electric grid and other infrastructure that depends on it—communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water—necessary to sustain modern civilization and the lives of 300 million Americans.

EMP effects can be made more powerful and more catastrophic by using an Enhanced Radiation Warhead. This is a low-yield nuclear weapon designed not to create a devastating explosion, but to emit large amounts of radiation, including the gamma rays that generate the EMP effect that fries electronics.

Over the past three days, North Korea has launched six short-range guided missiles or projectiles in tests that landed in the Sea of Japan. The launches were of a piece with Pyongyang’s springtime custom of muscle-flexing, undertaken to extract concessions from the West in exchange for stopping the provocations. The Obama administration would do well to ignore these minor fireworks and focus on the much greater threat of a long-range North Korean missile carrying a nuclear warhead.

So far President Obama has seemed content to parry North Korea’s thrusts, much as his White House predecessor did. The George W. Bush administration did not distinguish itself in recognizing, or acting on, the danger from North Korea. Last month, in a worrying sign of similar detachment, Mr. Obama essentially dismissed the Defense Intelligence Agency conclusion that North Korea has probably been able to fit a nuclear warhead on a missile. He certainly did not suggest that he would consider a pre-emptive strike to halt the North Korean nuclear program.

The president may want to rethink that position.

Much has happened since 2006, when former Secretary of Defense William Perry and now-Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter urged President Bush to pre-emptively destroy North Korea’s long-range Taepodong 2 missile on its launch pad in a surgical strike with conventional weapons. Writing in the Washington Post, they advocated drawing “a line in the sand” against North Korea’s test of a missile designed to deliver nuclear weapons against the United States. (more…)

Posted in China, Dept of Defense, EMP Strike - Electro Magnetic Pulse, Foreign Policy, George W. Bush, Missle Defense, National Defense, North Korea, Nuclear Energy/Weapons, Obama, Obama Administraiton and Policy | No Comments »

TERRORIST ATTACK ON POWER GRID COULD CAUSE BLACK OUTS IN THE U.S.

Friday, November 16th, 2012

NEW YORK TIMES

Terrorist Attack on Power Grid Could

Cause Broad Hardship, Report Says

By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: November 14, 2012

WASHINGTON — Terrorists could black out large segments of the United States for weeks or months by attacking the power grid and damaging hard-to-replace components that are crucial to making it work, the National Academy of Sciences said in a report released Wednesday.

By blowing up substations or transmission lines with explosives or by firing projectiles at them from a distance, the report said, terrorists could cause cascading failures and damage parts that would take months to repair or replace. In the meantime, it warned, people could die from the cold or the excessive heat, and the economy could suffer hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.

While the report is the most authoritative yet on the subject, the grid’s vulnerability has long been obvious to independent engineers and to the electric industry itself, which has intermittently tried, in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security, to rehearse responses.

Of particular concern are giant custom-built transformers that increase the voltage of electricity to levels suited for bulk transmission and then reduce voltage for distribution to customers. Very few of those transformers are manufactured in the United States, and replacing them can take many months.

In a preparedness drill in March, technicians shipped three specially designed transformers from St. Louis to Houston and rapidly installed them in a marathon effort. The transformers were the electrical equivalent of a Swiss Army knife, with multiple attachments so that they can be used in a variety of jobs.

They are functioning well, said one of the experiment’s supervisors, Richard J. Lordan, a senior technical expert at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit consortium based in Palo Alto, Calif. But follow-up steps — like figuring out how many such transformers should be stockpiled as well as developing storage depots, financing purchases of the equipment and planning how to allocate it in an emergency — have yet to be taken. (more…)

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GINGRICH AND EMP STRIKE

Tuesday, December 27th, 2011

Newt Gingrich, N.C. author cause a stir with doomsday theory

By Jim Morrill / McClatchy Newspapers (MCT) | Monday, December 26, 2011 | www.bostonherald.com | South

CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ Airliners falling from the sky. Mass starvation. Roving gangs in lawless cities. Highways transformed into “nightmare paths of exile.”

That’s the American Armageddon envisioned by Bill Forstchen, a history professor at Montreat College in Black Mountain, about 110 miles west of Charlotte.

It’s also a doomsday threat invoked by Forstchen’s longtime friend, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.

Their apocalyptic scenario: EMP, an electromagnetic pulse triggered by a nuclear explosion high in the atmosphere, crippling electrical grids, infrastructure and society as we know it.

“Newt’s been the only candidate to aggressively point out there is a national security threat with EMP,” Forstchen said.

Gingrich and Forstchen have co-authored nine books since a publisher brought them together in 1994, just before Gingrich was elected House speaker. Most of their books are historical novels set during the Revolution, the Civil War or World War II. A novel about the Battle of Yorktown is due out next year.

But recently they’ve drawn attention _ and criticism _ not for a collaboration, but rather for the theory explored in Forstchen’s 2009 book, “One Second After,” and extolled by Gingrich.

The book, set at Montreat College, is a science-fiction account of an EMP attack and its aftermath. (more…)

Posted in American History, EMP Strike - Electro Magnetic Pulse, Newt Gingrich, Nuclear Energy/Weapons, Radical Islam, Terrorism | No Comments »

AN EMP (ELECTRO MAGNETIC PULSE) STRIKE AND GINGRICH

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

DECEMBER 19, 2011

Gingrich’s Worthy Brain Pulse

An electromagnetic pulse attack is not a fanciful notion.

Newt Gingrich’s rise in the polls has brought attention to his various “big ideas,” and plenty of derision from other GOP Presidential hopefuls and the media. Among the most undeserved targets is the former Speaker’s concern about an electromagnetic pulse (or EMP) attack.

In speeches and articles over many years, Mr. Gingrich has sounded the alarm about this vulnerability. A single nuclear explosion high in the Earth’s atmosphere would create an electromagnetic pulse that could do enormous harm by destroying electronic circuits on the ground. “Such an event would destroy our complex, delicate high tech digital society in an instant and throw all our lives back to an existence equal to that of the Middle Ages,” he wrote in an introduction to “One Second After,” a 2009 science-fiction novel by William Forstchen. He has returned to this theme during the campaign.

The usual media suspects have recently run skeptical stories on his “doomsday vision” and “silly science.” They claim that terrorists aren’t close to getting a nuclear weapon and that no country would dare try an EMP attack. But then few imagined a terror attack using airplanes against the twin towers or anthrax in letters.

A single nuclear weapon detonated above the U.S. might not kill anyone immediately. But in the worst case millions could subsequently die from a lack of modern medical care or possibly food, since farmers couldn’t harvest crops nor distributors get food to market. Access to drinking water could be cut if many of America’s dams, reservoirs and water-treatment facilities were shut down. The U.S. would also then be more exposed to a secondary attack by conventional weapons.

These scenarios aren’t Mr. Gingrich’s inventions. They come from a commission created by Congress in 2000. In a 2008 report, the commission called EMP “one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences.”

Mr. Gingrich deserves credit for bringing EMP to public attention. The commission recommended better intelligence, especially in coastal waters from which a Scud missile with a nuke could be launched, robust missile defenses, and hardened protection for the civilian electrical power grid. Denial of EMP, or scorn for the messenger, offers no protection

Posted in Biodefense, Border Security, Cyber Warfare, EMP Strike - Electro Magnetic Pulse, Foreign Policy, National Defense, National Emergency Preparedness, Newt Gingrich, Nuclear Energy/Weapons, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Radical Islam, Russia, Technology, Terrorism | No Comments »