(Article by Dr. William A. Radasky and Dr. Peter Vincent Pry republished from AllNewsPipeline.com)
Significantly, because HEMP attack entails detonating a nuclear weapon at such high altitude that no blast or other prompt effects injurious to humans are delivered, only the HEMP that immediately damages only electronics, potential adversaries do not appear to regard nuclear HEMP attack as an act of nuclear warfare.
Ignorance of the military doctrines of potential adversaries and a failure of U.S. strategic imagination, as noted in military writings of potentially hostile powers, is setting America up for an HEMP Pearl Harbor.
Russia, China, North Korea and Iran appear to regard nuclear HEMP attack as the ultimate weapon in an all-out “Cyber War” aimed at defeating U.S. and allied military forces on the battlefield, in a theater of operations, and as a means of defeating entire nations by blacking-out their electric grids and other critical infrastructures.
Russia, China, and North Korea presently have the capability to make a HEMP attack that would blackout the U.S. electric power grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures. Iran may have clandestinely developed capabilities to make a HEMP attack against the U.S. or may soon be able to do so. Russia, China, and North Korea have developed “Super-EMP” nuclear weapons that can generate extraordinarily powerful HEMP, exceeding hardening standards for the best protected U.S. military forces.
Contrary to biased “junk science” studies by the electric power industry lobby, a nuclear HEMP attack on the U.S. would not affect only a few states, be quickly recoverable, comparable to localized blackouts caused by hurricanes.
HEMP attack would cause protracted blackout of electric grids and life-sustaining critical infrastructures, imperiling national existence. HEMP attack by a single nuclear weapon can collapse the U.S. national electric power grid.
A more likely scenario for HEMP attack by Russia, China, or North Korea might focus HEMP peak fields on U.S. nuclear forces and C3I to paralyze U.S. nuclear retaliatory capabilities, with blacking-out the U.S. national electric grid and other critical infrastructures an important additional objective, which would inevitably result from such an attack.
The HEMP threat is not merely theoretical, but well-established empirically, including by real world blackouts: “With few exceptions, the U.S. national electric grid is unhardened and untested against nuclear EMP attack. In the event of a nuclear EMP attack on the United States, a widespread protracted blackout is inevitable.” (EMP Commission Chairman, Dr. William R. Graham)
Nuclear HEMP attack is part of the military doctrines, plans and exercises of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran for a revolutionary new way of warfare against military forces and civilian critical infrastructures by cyber, sabotage, and HEMP. This new way of warfare is called many things by many nations. In Russia, China, and Iran it is called Sixth Generation Warfare, Non- Contact Warfare, Electronic Warfare, Total Information Warfare, and Cyber Warfare. Some U.S. analysts, the very small number paying attention, call it Cybergeddon, Blackout War, or Combined-Arms Cyber Warfare.
Significantly, because HEMP attack entails detonating a nuclear weapon at such high altitude that no blast or other prompt effects injurious to humans are delivered, only the HEMP that immediately damages only electronics, potential adversaries do not appear to regard nuclear HEMP attack as an act of nuclear warfare.
Potential adversaries understand that millions could die from the long-term collateral effects of HEMP and cyber-attacks that cause protracted black-out of national electric grids and other life- sustaining critical infrastructures. At least some regard this relatively easy, potentially anonymous, method of inflicting mass destruction as an attractive feature of what they describe as a “Revolution in Military Affairs”.
Ignorance of the military doctrines of potential adversaries and a failure of U.S. strategic imagination, as noted in military writings of potentially hostile powers, is setting America up for an HEMP Pearl Harbor. Russia, China, North Korea and Iran appear to regard nuclear HEMP attack as the ultimate weapon in an all-out “Cyber War” aimed at defeating U.S. and allied military forces on the battlefield and in a theater of operations. They also see HEMP and Combined-Arms Cyber Warfare as a means of defeating entire nations by blacking-out their electric grids and other critical infrastructures for longer periods of time than technologically developed societies, including the U.S., can tolerate without major disruption and loss of life.
Russia
For example, Russian General Vladimir Slipchenko in his military textbook Non-Contact Wars describes the combined use of cyber viruses and hacking, physical attacks, non-nuclear EMP weapons, and ultimately nuclear HEMP attack against electric grids and critical infrastructures as a new way of warfare that is the greatest Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in history. Slipchenko sees HEMP as such a departure from traditional ways and means of warfare that he describes HEMP weapons and warfare as “based on new physical principles”—a phrase that has become ubiquitous in Russian literature to describe the RMA that is HEMP: “In practically all preceding generations of wars…weapons were employed that acted against targets primarily by kinetic, chemical and thermal energy.
In addition to these arms…new ones will also appear in…wars of the future….Weapons based on new physical principles having an electromagnetic effect will see considerable development. They will represent a form of casualty and damage producing effect on targets through the energy of electromagnetic emissions of various wavelengths and levels of power generated by radio frequency and laser weapons and by means of electronic countermeasures using a conventional or high-altitude nuclear burst….Depending on the power of emission, such weapons will be capable of…suppressing practically all classic electronic equipment…causing the melting or evaporation of metal in the printed circuit boards…or causing structural changes of electronic elements…”
Like Nazi Germany's Blitzkrieg (”Lightning War”) Strategy that coordinated airpower, armor, and mobile infantry to achieve strategic and technological surprise that nearly defeated the Allies in World War II, the New Blitzkrieg is, literally and figuratively, an electronic ”Lightning War” so potentially decisive in its effects that an entire civilization could be overthrown in hours.
According to General Slipchenko, HEMP and the new RMA renders obsolete modern armies, navies and air forces. For the first time in history, small nations or even non-state actors can humble the most advanced nations on Earth.
An article in Military Thought, the flagship journal of the Russian General Staff, “Weak Points of the U.S. Concept of Network-Centric Warfare” points to nuclear HEMP attack as a means of defeating the United States:
“American forces may be vulnerable to electronic warfare attacks, in particular, an electromagnetic pulse that is a brief powerful electromagnetic field capable of overloading or destroying numerous electronic systems and high-tech microcircuits that are very sensitive to the electromagnetic field, even if transmitted from a distance. A single low-yield nuclear weapon exploded for this purpose high above the area of combat operations can generate an electromagnetic pulse covering a large area and destroying electronic equipment without loss of life that is caused by the blast or radiation.”
According to another Russian article: “Nuclear war strategy has already planned nuclear explosions at an altitude of 50-100 km to destroy enemy satellites’ electronic instruments with electromagnetic pulse”:
“There are now 683 space craft in near-earth orbit. Of these about 150 are Russian and about 400 American. In the estimation of specialists, for every 100 of our 'purely' military espionage artificial earth satellites there are 300 civilian satellites. Clearly, this discrepancy will increase both quantitatively and qualitatively (considering the state of the Russian military-industrial complex)….Nuclear war strategy has already planned nuclear explosions at an altitude of 50- 100 km to destroy enemy satellites' electronic instruments with an electromagnetic pulse.”
A 2015 article from Russia’s A.A. Maksimov Scientific Research Institute for Space Systems, alludes to “cyber weapons in the nuclear variant” as the most effective cyber weapon: “Even more effective are remote-controlled cyber weapons in the nuclear variant, but in this case a warhead is required with a capacity many times smaller by comparison with the charges of the typical strategic missiles.” The low-yield nuclear weapon described sounds like what Russians call a “Super-EMP” warhead maximally designed, not to make a big explosion, but to emit enhanced-gamma rays to generate HEMP.
Russia made a thinly veiled HEMP threat against the United States on May 2, 1999, in an apparent effort to blackmail the U.S. to stop the Balkans War. During the spring of 1999, tensions between the United States and Russia rose sharply over Operation ALLIED FORCE, the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. A bipartisan delegation from the House Armed Services Committee of the U.S. Congress met at Vienna with their Russian counterparts on the Duma International Affairs Committee, headed by Chairman Vladimir Lukin. The object of the meeting was to reduce U.S.-Russia tensions and seek Russian help in resolving the Balkans War.
On May 2, during the Vienna meeting, Chairman Lukin and Deputy Chairman Alexander Shabanov chastised the United States for military aggression in the Balkans, and warned that Russia was not helpless to oppose Operation ALLIED FORCE. LUKIN—"Hypothetically, if Russia really wanted to hurt the United States in retaliation for NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, Russia could fire a submarine launched ballistic missile and detonate a single nuclear warhead at high-altitude over the United States. The resulting electromagnetic pulse would massively disrupt U.S. communications and computer systems, shutting down everything. No internet. Nothing." SHABANOV—“And if that didn’t work, we’d just launch another missile.”
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