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U.S. Navy

In August, 2005, the U.S. Navy’s Technical Support Working Group (TSWG) and Directed Energy Technology Office (DETO) jointly authored a key report [LINK] on the growing threat of RF weapons (RFW) that can be used to create IEMI disruption and damage to our nation’s non-military infrastructure. In this report, it is revealed that, “RFWs have already been used to defeat security systems, commit robberies, disable police communications, induce fires, and disrupt banking computers.

“Improvised RFWs have been demonstrated to jam satellites, cause a catastrophic failure in a locomotive, and damage automobiles. Devices that can be used as RFWs have unintentionally caused aircraft crashes and near-crashes, pipeline explosions, large gas spills, computer damage, medical equipment malfunctions, vehicle malfunctions such as severe braking problems, weapons pre-ignition and explosions, and public water system malfunctions that nearly caused flooding.”

The Navy’s NAVSEA and DETO branches have conducted extensive IEMI threat test programs at the Naval Surface Warfare Command’s Dahlgren Test Facility in Dahlgren, VA, which demonstrate that civilian facilities employing such equipment as COTS C3I, control systems, communications, security, PCs, servers, and other commonly found equipment in data centers and similar infrastructure are extremely vulnerable to data disruption, upset, and electronics equipment damage from these growing IEMI threats.

U.S. Congress

The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (http://media.usip.org/reports/strat_posture_report.pdf) states that “the United States should take steps to reduce the vulnerability of the nation and the military to attacks with weapons designed to produce electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effects. We make this recommendation although the Commission is divided over how imminent a threat this is. Some commissioners believe it to be a high priority threat, given foreign activities and terrorist intentions.

“Others see it as a serious potential threat, given the high level of vulnerability. Those vulnerabilities are of many kinds. U.S. power projection forces might be subjected to an EMP attack by an enemy calculating - mistakenly - that such an attack would not involve risks of U.S. nuclear retaliation. The homeland might be attacked by terrorists or even state actors with an eye to crippling the U.S. economy and American society. From a technical perspective, it is possible that such attacks could have catastrophic consequences. For example, successful attacks could shut down the electrical system, disable the internet and computers and the economic activity on which they depend, incapacitate transportation systems (and thus the delivery of food and other goods), etc.

“Prior commissions have investigated U.S. vulnerabilities and found little activity under way to address them. Some limited defensive measures have been ordered by the Department of Defense to give some protection to important operational communications. But EMP/IEMI vulnerabilities have not yet been addressed effectively by the Department of Homeland Security. Doing so could take several years. The Congressional EMP commission has recommended numerous measures that would mitigate the damage that might be wrought by an EMP attack.

“The Stimulus Bill of February 9, 2009, allocates $11 billion to DOE for “for smart grid activities, including to modernize the electric grid.” Unless such improvements in the electric grid are focused in part on reducing EMP vulnerabilities, vulnerability might well increase.”

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