Advanced Anti Electronic Weapons 99
brennanw writes "ABCNews COM has a transcript from a new story about
Russian and US research into high-frequency energy weapons.
Not really Star Wars or Star Trek stuff, closer to directed
Electromagnetic pulses that can fry computers, automobiles... Interesting stuff, esp. if you're paranoid (like me). "
It seems like that guy really likes his job. Kind of a freaky
read.
Check Out This DIY EMP (Score:1)
The Experimental Interaction Unit [eiu.org]
BTW nukes can give you 50,000 volts per meter. So a five inch bus run (12.7 cm) could give you a cool 6000-plus volts. That oughta fry most chips.
More fun energy weapons (Score:1)
wow.. (Score:1)
Seriously though, this looks like some pretty neat technology.
"It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye. Then it's just fun you can't see."
Another story.. (Score:1)
I can picture it now: all COs will have to make sure that everyone in their company has gone to the bathroom before they go out on patrol...
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This is news?? (Score:1)
And electromagnetic pulses are bad for electronics. Umm... didn't we all learn this one in "Surviving a Nuclear War 101"? (Hide under a desk or table until the shockwave has passed. Have plenty of canned food on hand. Make sure you have a manual can opener, your electric one will not work because of EMP. Do not use elevators during nuclear attacks; use the stairs instead. Do not attempt to converse with dead bodies, it only causes psychological problems...)
And what's the KBG, anyway? Is that the new politically correct spelling of "KGB"? (Dyslexics, untie! You have nothing to lose but your chinas...)
Honestly, the mainstream media these days...
Does anyone else here read The Crypt? (Score:1)
Criticism of electronic warfare, especially as portrayed by the media.
I'll tell you what scared me... (Score:1)
Please explain this: if a terrorist can get a heavy package, filled with electronics, metal, and batteries past airport security...WHY (instead of using a conventional bomb) would he/she use an untested and unproven EMP bomb?
That's scary.
What I find even scarier is the gullibility of the American public to fall for such crap like this (I believe an article in the Crypt noted that the video cameras in the *car* were unaffacted by the "ray gun". To be fair, I didn't see the segment, so I don't know).
Cheap too. Cheap weapons never help me sleep at nights. And I'm only slightly paranoid.
Instead of BS HREF gun crap like this, worry about biological warfare (IMO, an even bigger threat and proven technology too).
pager and cellular phone jammers (Score:1)
I've heard they are quite common in Japan at places like restaurants and movie theaters.
terrorist handbook (Score:1)
w8 until they come out with a new ver of the terrosist handbook that tells all the little kiddies how to build this stuff. little different then the slingshot i used;]
Blah-blah-blah - sour grapes (Score:1)
Don Negro
But the real question is (Score:1)
I'm getting real tired of the neighbor's car stereo pumping after midnight. >:)
But the real question is (Score:1)
Yep (Score:1)
I don't think too many of the 'HERF gun' guys really have any idea what they are talking about though. The power supply unit for a CW microwave HERF device would be so big and heavy you wouldn't back pack it.
Kinda reminds me of the idea of carrying a rail gun, sure you might just be able to lift it, but the recoil would liquify your skeleton.
EMP generators are practical though, I have a bit of text (hersay basically) on my homepage that talks a little about them. As a matter of fact I recently registered herf.org to put up a site to dispell some of the EM weapon rumours. (it isn't up yet)
I have a 3" round by 10" long device that can kill digital watches and other small unshielded electronics from about 1 metre. It was built from an old photo flash unit reworked to store about 20 Joules. It has an anoying effect of magnetising the shadow mask in VDUs too.
Not really latest news (Score:1)
Also, do a search for TEMPEST. It is an army standard to protect their equipment from such attacks (basically a Faraday cage, with specs of how much EMI will be detectable from inside). It used to be very secret until about 5 years ago, but now you can buy TEMPEST-certified computer cases on the street. Someone (uncle Ira?) was selling them at last two DefCons for like 500$:). Be warned, these are HEAVY
By rumours, many military buildings are TEMPEST-proof, walls/windows are covered with electroconductive solution.
the US probably has them too (Score:1)
The college that I went to was about 10 miles from a Stategic Air Command base (they even invited junior & senior engineering students for tours of the planes and simulators...I got to sit in a B-1B). A friend of mine used to be in the AF and knew some of the technicians at the base. On of them got a speeding ticket on the way to work (speed trap near the base entrance). Later, while working on one of the planes, he discovered that he could see the cop that gave him the ticket. So he decided to test the piece of electronic warfare units he was fixing to fry every piece of electronics in that police cruiser. =)
My friend also said they would often use the radar units that were in the shop to warm up coffee and lunch.
Yep (Score:1)
Scale that gadget of your up with a bigger power supply, and see what happens.
You mean you guys _don't_ know about this stuff? (Score:1)
EMP bombs (Glide bomb with lots of high energy density capacitors and lots of coil wire- a small explosive charge causes the high-discharge rate capacitors to dump into the coil when the bomb reaches it's designated target; it'll nuke any radio gear nearby and possibly take out other solid state devices as well), microwave guns designed to suppress the operation of electronics on aircraft (By either causing induced currents in the circuitry that cause a lack of syncronization within computer devices (they lose sync, quit talking with each other) or at higher power levels, burn out the electronics), etc.
Go out and surf the WWW for pages with discussions of HERF (High-Energy RF) guns, HARRP (An Ionosphere "heater" that the DOD operates up in Alaska), and EM other warfare toys. It's all out there and it's all very real.
Don't try this at home... (Score:1)
Now power one of these in a suitcase with high energy density lithium batteries and you have the weapon he's talking about.
/. this... (Score:1)
Think about this one... (Score:1)
Lets induce current in some poor fool's synapses. "Oooooweee! Lookit'im twitch". To say nothing of what "they" could do to some statesman with a pacemaker.
"Gee, we don't know why Ambassador Yaka-Yaka had a heart attack. Thats really too bad. Our sincerest condolences. Honest."
No use hiding (Score:1)
Stormtroopers (Star Wars, not Nazi) (Score:1)
The day of the foot-soldier will return, as a one-man tank, a-la Heinleins's Starship Troopers (NOT the movie).
Kewl! Where do I sign?
weaponry nerds (Score:1)
Maybe we should try and show them that there is plenty of 'nerdable stuff' outside weaponry...
This is a BS story. Check this website..... (Score:1)
The Crypt newsletter devotes itself to debunking
common military techno-myths.
It turns out that the story about Russians
stealing money from a bank by deactivating
the security system with one of these guns
was a JOKE on this website several years ago.
Now it found its way into the BS stories of
these info-terrorism experts, and is being
reported as fact.
The web site mentions the 20/20 episode
specifically at the end of the page.
How to build one. (Score:1)
(1) Explosive generators: early research was done on these in the 1950s in Russia. In 1992, I saw a videotape of the test of a unit about 10 tons in weight which had a peak output of 10 TW for a good part of a millisecond. Works by using explosives to rapidly compress a magnetic field, doing work which can be obtained by induction.
(2) Re-usable generators: there are many designs, but the Marx bank stands out. This is a stack of capacitors with a controlling diode matrix which can be charged individually and discharged in parallel. Look up Marx banks if you want to build your own.
who are the KBG? (Score:1)
"They're allowed to screw up -- they included a disclaimer..."
Heh, I tried this in school with my papers. It didn't work.
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What is the purpose of this story (Score:1)
ABC was allowed into China Lake (a sensitive DoD facility) to do this story. You can therefore conclude that the DoD wanted this story out. Why?
To get money out of congress to build lots of nasty EMP toys, that's why. You can take all the nonsense about how other countries are far ahead of the US in this area with a huge grain of salt; after all, US defense spending is far larger than the defense spending of every other country in the world, combined. And throughout the last few decades, phony stories about "gaps" (missile gap, etc) have been put out so that the US taxpayers will pay even more for cool ways to kill people.
Whining about being injured. (Score:1)
The Military states quite clearly in the rights of a soldier that adequete medical treatment is a right for every memeber of every branch of the service.
I don't know what Mongol Horde infused book you just pulled your head out of, but in the Armed Forces of the USA we don't shoot or ignore our wounded. It's our little way of insuring that the freedoms you take for granted are gauranteed by fresh waves of recruits. All of whom are promised and reasonably expect good medical care for injuries in the line of duty.
Give me a call when/if you ever pull a tour w/ any branch of the service, and we'll discuss why your comments raise the hackles of every man or woman who's served in our various forces.
~Grell
There are a lot of things that people will be able to put on my gravestone, but "Worked and Played Well with Tyrants" will not be one of them. -- C.D. Tavares
huh? (Score:1)
To digress slightly, how do you know that the gun manufacturers were NOT negligent in the New York case? I can't imagine how, but apparently a jury thought so... it mught help to see the *evidence*.
Don't police departments now have EMP disablers? (Score:1)
I remember reading about EMP generators that could disable the electrical system of an automobile. I believe that it's now small enough that some police departments have them for use in disabling cars in car chases.
Telsa (Score:1)
goldeneye (Score:1)
However, the idea of directing all that energy at one particular area is something which I don't believe is exactly possible. Please correct me if I'm wrong, though - I'm not exactly a nuclear scientist.
Luckily, international agreements outlaw space-based nuclear weapons, so we can all relax, safe in the knowledge that there are no nukes in orbit.
Uh, yeah right...
Dodge
No Subject Given (Score:1)
Lasers are short waves at high frequencies.
wavelength=(speed of light)/frequency
Anyone ever see long waves at high frequencies? Maybe physics works differently in the press.
Sawyer says:
20/20 has also learned from a well-placed Russian official that those rebels in Chechnya also used an RF weapon to knock out police communications during a hostage situation.
Let's suggest to the CIA to have Sawyer place more well-placed Russian officials. Maybe even in other countries.
I find the press to be fun entertainment.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
Anonymous Coward Posting (Score:1)
trivial? hell it's a joke (Score:1)
But everything they showed was trivial crap that most electronics majors have messed with at one time or another , depending on how demented one was.. I was rather demented.
Reinforced concrete building == good EMP defense (Score:1)
Don't forget about all the rebar that's inside of that thick concrete... makes for a nice Faraday cage I would guess.
Excellent point, but we already gave them the $$ (Score:1)
This also a part of a slightly larger scheme that includes Boing 747s equipted with lasers meant to take out missles. Maybe even a space-born satalite killer or two. We use it also. Don't let the friggin' alarmist media let you think for a minute that we don't already have viable Laser weapons. This was in a popsci circa 1997-1998, the test with the satalite happened a couple of months later.
ph43drus
Early to bed, early to rise, and you get the best cerial.
Several years ago (Score:1)
What it was, really, was a bunch of speakers that oscillated between high and low frequencies, causing severe discomfort to whoever broke in to the car. Headaches, nausea, possibly a busted liver or spleen if you didn't go away - or so I was told.
He'd also mentioned things like portable rail-guns, that would put a paperclip through a cinderblock wall; focused microwave emitters that would cook a 1 inch diameter cylinder through some poor bastards gut at 100 yards; and EM weapons that put matter into something called 'runaway mode', i.e. electro-magnetic ionization (huh?) - which on a large scale promises to make nuclear weapons look like sticks and stones... Fun stuff - very creative use of technology.
He made a point of mentioning that none of this stuff was new - it just sounded new to people who assume that weapons must spit lead, and who never took the second semester of University physics.
He also mentioned external combusion engines on something he called the 'Aurora'... SQUID devices that can read the state of a CPU from a half mile away, and cameras that will read newspaper headlines from 100,000 feet above Moscow.
But then again, he also saw aliens over Groom Lake.
Take out MAE east? Why bother? (Score:1)
Isn't MAE east the facility located in a parking garage?
In any case, this is old news. Yes, it's a risk, but so are neutron bombs. You can fit them in a grocery bag, and the charge is enough to end all life in a 40 meter radius. If you want to be safe from EMP, you'll need to use an all-optical system. An optical computer would also allow me to get rid of my thermonuclear Pentium.
Tesla (Score:1)
sound waves. I believe (it's been years since I read it) he was experimenting with what he
called an objects natural period of oscillation.
He nearly took down a building in one experiment.
Chupacabras of Information Warfare (Score:1)
http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~crypt/
First paragraph, "Electronic Pearl Harbor" should have been your first clue that the BS was about to get deep.
goldeneye (Score:1)
-Jae
I'll tell you what scared me... (Score:1)
As for planes, someone told me once that airplanes can act like faraday cages and that turning on certain devices (like portable TVs) on a plane causes the instruments to go haywire and spin randomly. But that's third hand stuff so take it with a grain of salt.
Microsoft (Score:1)
Vehicular electronic warfare (Score:1)
Just remember to push start it.
THEY got protection. YOU don't. (Score:1)
Didn't think so.
Diesels -- yeah (Score:1)
Tesla (Score:1)
Um, so, tech people give me the good news. (Score:1)
watched 20/20... I want a toy like this... (Score:1)
I only have one question:
watched 20/20... I want a toy like this... (Score:1)
I only have one question:
Where can I get one??!!
_______________________
weaponry nerds: the Dutch have spoken (Score:1)
Like it or not, military technological advancements are responsible for a great deal of the technology we take for granted.
This *could* lead to stuff like wireless power transmission, advances in scientific lab equipment, and eventually, someone will invent or perfect a technology impervious to these weapons. Yeah it sucks that they can be used to hurt, maim, destroy, and kill, but doing that's the easy part.
Once they figure out how to put this to good (as in moral or even a-moral) use, that's where the fun begins.
V-2 Rockets----*time*---->Moon Landings
Atom Bomb ----*time*---->Nuclear power
Military Radar ---*time*---> Microwave oven
ARPANet ---*time*---> The Internet
It's the nature of the beast.
And no I don't believe they "forget" what their product does to people. *Military* weapons have but one purpose....they understand or they wouldn't be working for the DOD or
Anti-electronic weapons (Score:1)
Seriously though. Much of the major bandwidth which carries the Internet is effectively shielded because it is carried in underground fiber optics and cables, and are generally immune to RF, except in the computers at the terminations. Many of these are also underground and isolated just for that reason -- a solar storm puts out enough stray frequecies to mess up communications on occasion if they don't.
EMP is a much greater danger to the global economy than single strike weapons, because it has the capacity to down all of our machines at the same time. A "single strike" RF weapon such as shown to 20/20 would be much more of a terrorist weapon, because it's ability is limited to causing local damage.
What would be a more interesting story is how a community/organization/etc. could protect themselves against such weapons.
(Yawn) Old hat... (Score:1)
laser weapons were powered by the hydrogen-
fluorine reaction and were tested by the Army
in the 60s. You could melt through tank armor so
long as a) you could keep the beam up for long
enough, and b) no one sneezed and caused your
fluorine tanks to explode. Presumably the
technology has improved but is still inferior
to good old guided missiles; high powered
lasers have serious problems in an atmosphere
due to plasma tube effects as well as simple
attenuation due to dust and smoke.
As for electromagnetics, they too have been
around for a long time. Anyone with a maser
can mess up a lot of electronics, and the
police have been trialing anti-vehicle
weapons for several years at least. If
you take apart a high-power microwave
oven (and survive the experience; be careful
out there boys and girls) you would
probably wind up with a pretty decent
anti-electronics device.
The transcript gives the impression that
these weapons are innovative and grounds
for immediate alarm when in fact they have
been used and understood for many years.
Anti-electronic weapons (Score:1)
What about the buildings that Mae West and East, AADS, and PAIX reside in? I have heard that Mae East is well underground and protected from this sort of RF attack, but what about the rest? Taking out Mae West would be enough to effectively grind the internet to a halt.
>>> YOU CAN OWN THESE COOL TOYS! (Score:1)
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The statement below is true.
Oh come on (Score:1)
you have to be really stupid to think that the US
Govt. doesn't have weapons like this and protection from those weapons I mean jeez all the money the DOD has?
Crazy? (Score:1)
Anti-electronic weapons (Score:1)
Better off with the carburator (Score:1)