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A US Air Force base in Texas took the first steps to guard against an electromagnetic pulse attack (EMP). But what exactly is an EMP and how big is the threat?
Officials at the San Antonio Joint Base in Lackland, Texas, have issued a tender to investigate a facility called the Oil, Oil and Lubricant Complex. The investigation will identify any equipment that may be vulnerable to an EMP prior to more detailed vulnerability testing, depending on demand. After that, officials would find ways to protect this equipment in the event of an EMP attack.
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What is a PEM?
A PEM is a massive explosion of electromagnetic energy which can occur naturally or be deliberately generated using nuclear weapons. While many experts don’t think PEMs pose a significant threat, some people say these types of weapons could be used to cause widespread disruption in electricity-dependent societies.
“You can use a single weapon to collapse the entire North American power grid,” said defense analyst Peter Pry, who served on the Congressional EMP Commission, which was set up to assess the threat of EMP attacks but which was closed in 2017.
“Once the power grid went down, everything would collapse,” Pry told Live Science. “Everything depends on electricity: telecommunications, transport, even water.”
According to the request, the tests carried out at Lackland follow a 2019 executive order issued by then-President Donald Trump calling on the federal government to strengthen its infrastructure against EMPs. Pry, who consulted on the project, said the investigation and resulting upgrades were part of a larger U.S. Air Force initiative to strengthen its defenses against this type of threat.
Why PEMs Are So Dangerous
A PEM releases huge waves of electromagnetic energy, which can act like a moving giant magnet. Such a changing magnetic field can cause electrons to move in a nearby wire, thereby inducing a current. With such a burst of energy, a PEM can cause damaging surges in any electronics within range.
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These impulses can occur deliberately or naturally. Natural PEMs occur when the sun occasionally spits out massive streams of plasma, and if they do come our way, the Earth’s natural magnetic field can deflect them. But when the sun spits out enough plasma at a time, the impact can flicker the magnetic field and generate a powerful EMP. The last time this happened was in 1859 in the so-called Carrington event, and while electronics were still scarce at the time, it destroyed much of the recently constructed telegraph network.
Then there is the possibility of deliberate EMPs. If a nuclear weapon were to explode high in the atmosphere, Pry said, the gamma radiation it would release could strip electrons from air molecules and accelerate them to near the speed of light. These charge-carrying electrons would be surrounded by the Earth magnetic field, and as they moved they would generate a strong and fluctuating electric current, which in turn would generate a massive EMP. The explosion could also distort Earth’s magnetic field, causing a slower pulse similar to a natural PEM.
The triggering of a nuclear weapon about 300 kilometers above the United States could create a EMP that would cover most of North America, Pry said. The bomb’s explosion and radiation would dissipate before reaching ground level, but the resulting EMP would be powerful enough to destroy electronics throughout the region, Pry said. “If you were standing on the ground directly under the bang, you wouldn’t even hear it go off,” Pry said. “EMP would pass harmlessly through your body.”
A small PEM with a radius of less than a kilometer can also be generated by combining high voltage energy sources with antennas that release this energy in the form of electromagnetic waves. The US military has a prototype cruise missile carrying an EMP generator. Called CHAMP (Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project), it can be used to target specific enemy installations, and Pry said it would be within the capabilities of many armies, if not terrorist groups, to build an EMP generator. .
“We have come to a place where one individual can overthrow the technological pillars of civilization for a great metropolitan area all alone armed with a device like this,” he said.
The technology required to protect against PEMs is similar to what is already being used to prevent damage from lightning surges, Pry said. These technologies should be adapted to cope with higher voltages, but devices such as surge protectors, which divert excess voltage to Earth, or Faraday cages, which protect devices from electromagnetic radiation, could do the trick. job.
Pry said the EMP Commission estimated it would cost $ 2-4 billion to protect the most important equipment in the national grid, but ideally he would like to see the standards changed so that EMP protection is built into devices. .
EMP: Do you have to worry?
The threat posed by EMPs is far from over, however. A 2019 report by the Electric Power Research Institute, which is funded by utility companies, found that such an attack would likely result in regional outages, but not a nationwide grid outage, and recovery times would be similar to those of other large-scale failures.
Frank Cilluffo, director of the McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security at Auburn University, said that while an EMP attack would certainly be devastating, the enemies of the United States are unlikely to lead such a brazen assault. .
“There are other ways in which opponents can achieve some of the same results, some of which would be cheaper and others less noticeable,” Cilluffo told Live Science.
Such alternatives could include cyber attacks to wipe out critical infrastructure, including the power grid, or even efforts to disrupt space communications or the GPS system on which modern society depends so much. The PEM protection work makes sense, especially given the possibility of another Carrington-type event, but these improvements should not distract from efforts to strengthen defenses against more lines of attack. probable, Cilluffo said.
Original article on Live Science.
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