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The United States is vulnerable to Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attacks. Unfortunately, most Americans are unaware or ignore the threat. “Nuclear device detonated high in the atmosphere above the American mainland can easily disable the country’s electrical grid,” write James Carafano and Richard Weitz in their most recent Backgrounder.

An EMP occurs when a nuclear device is detonated high in the atmosphere. The electromagnetic discharge can permanently disable the electrical systems that run nearly all civilian and military infrastructures. At altitudes between 40 to 400 kilometers, these gamma rays produce high-energy free electrons that give rise to an oscillating electric current that destroys electronic equipment. In addition, an EMP can occur during massive solar eruptions which have the potential to send a blast of radiation toward Earth and impact functioning of electronic devices. We need to devote a lot more effort to building up resistance to solar tsunamis as well as manmade threats.

In recent years, the United States has seen the rapid growth in its dependence on electronics, telecommunications, and information technology. These technological innovations have brought great benefits, but also make the United States—and its component states and localities—vulnerable to an EMP attack. Many Americans have experienced the burdens of a short blackout (e.g. in the August 2003 Northeast blackout that affected Ohio, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and parts of Canada). Because of the riots that followed the disruption, it became apparent that the United States could not survive as a unified civil nation with the long-term loss of the electrical grid.

Fortunately, there are steps that can be taken to defend the United States and Canada against EMP attacks. Ensuring a resilient U.S.–Canadian power grid is one of them. You can protect the main electric transformers for $200 million. In addition, it is within the power of private companies and individuals to “harden” the vital infrastructure. Better yet, it is less expensive to manufacture devices that are already “hardened” rather than add EMP protection later. Other essential components of mitigating the threat include an early warning system, system-situational awareness, ballistic missile defenses, and robust command and control to ensure cooperation and effective coordination between government agencies and private companies during a crisis.

In 2004, the Commission to Assess the Threat of the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) reported that “EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences.” Yet, Congress has done next to nothing to protect the U.S. from an EMP attack.

USA Today takes on the topic of electromagnetic pulse (EMT), a consequence of a nuclear bomb detonation in the atmosphere. Such a blast could result in wide-spread electrical system outages. It may sound like science fiction, but the possibility is all too real. An excerpt:

“The threat has even become political fodder, drawing warnings from former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a likely presidential contender.

‘We are not today hardened against this,’ he told a Heritage Foundation audience last year. ‘It is an enormous catastrophic threat.’
…
“The electromagnetic pulse threat is a function of simple physics: Electromagnetic pulses and geomagnetic storms can alter Earth’s magnetic field. Changing magnetic fields in the atmosphere, in turn, can trigger surging currents in power lines.
…
“In the nuclear scenario, the detonation of an atomic bomb anywhere from 25 to 500 miles high electrifies, or ionizes, the atmosphere about 25 miles up, triggering a series of electromagnetic pulses. The pulse’s reach varies with the size of the bomb, the height of its blast and design.

“Gingrich last year cited the EMP Commission report in warning, ‘One weapon of this kind that went off over Omaha would eliminate most of the electrical production in the United States.’”

Naysayers say such a scenario would be suicide for the country that launched such an attack; nevertheless, an EMP scenario definitely is possible. Heritage missile defense experts, including James Carafano, have written about EMP. Browse the blog archives under the tag “EMP” for more information.

(Hat tip: Conn Carroll at The Foundry)

An excerpt of James Carafano’s article on Security Debrief:

“As Matthew Harwood’s August 5, 2010 article in Security Management reminds us, Homeland Security has not ‘taken seriously the threat that a high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon could fry the nation’s power grid[.]‘

“As the article notes, Dr. Michael J. Frankel ‘warned the Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security that a terrorist organization or a rogue state could detonate a nuclear weapon either above the United States or close to its shores, creating an electromagnetic pulse attack that could severely damage the country’s electronic infrastructure.’

“Frankel is executive director of the EMP Commission, which was created in 2001 to study the national security threat an EMP attack could pose to the United States.

“While most of its work is classified, the commission has released two unclassified reports: one in 2004 and another in 2008. According to the article ‘Frankel believes DHS has the expertise in-house to tackle EMP preparedness but needs a Senate-confirmed leader to lead the charge. Already DHS has taken action against nuclear terrorist attack scenarios but continues to ignore the threat of an EMP attack, he said, even though the commission provided the department with 75 unclassified recommendations to mitigate vulnerabilities and promote resiliency in U.S. critical infrastructures.’”

In his latest Washington Examiner column, missile defense expert James Carafano compares a solar-induced power surge with the man-made electromagnetic pulse (EMP), caused by the detonation of a nuclear bomb in the atmosphere.

“Last week we were attacked by the sun,” Carafano writes. “For real. Huge solar eruptions sent a blast of radiation toward Earth. Thankfully, the planet’s natural magnetic shield warded off the worst effects. Life went on uninterrupted.

“That won’t always be the case. In 1859, Richard Carrington recorded what is now called the ‘Carrington Effect’ — intense solar activity that can disrupt modern life dramatically….In Carrington’s day, there were few electromechanical systems for intense solar radiation to mess with. The new fangled telegraph systems suffered the most. Solar-induced power surges knocked some operators from their chairs and set fire to the paper rolls used to record dashes and dots.

“Fortunately, no Carrington Effect has occurred since the whole world became electrified. But scientists worry about what might happen when a real solar tsunami hits.”

Preparing for a solar power surge will also prepare us for an EMP attack, says Carafano. Such an explosion would interact with the planet’s magnetic fields, creating a pulse, which in turn would cause widespread damage, devastate the economy, and result in millions of deaths.

If the U.S. experiences an EMP attack, most of “Canada would die, too. Its infrastructure is integrated with the U.S. power grid. Without the American economic engine, the world economy would quickly collapse. Much of the world’s intellectual property (half of it is in the United States) would be lost as well. The Earth would likely recede into the ‘new’ Dark Ages.”

Sounds like the plot of a science fiction novel, doesn’t it? But the possibility is all too real.

Experts Henry F. Cooper and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., wrote an 18-page white paper on electromagnetic pulse (PDF) published by the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis.

“During the Cold War, an ICBM attack from the Soviet Union could have brought us unthinkable devastation and destruction within 30-35 minutes. Although that threat has receded since the end of the Cold War, we now face the possibility that within the much shorter time (on the order of five minutes) that it takes to execute an EMP launch near our coasts, we could be put back into an pre-industrial economy facing possibly irreversible societal breakdown, as William Forstch­en so graphically describes in his recent book One Second After and as the 2004 bipartisan Congressionally-mandated EMP Commission set forth in its detailed report. Short- and medium-range missiles with nu­clear warheads could be launched from the sea against targets on land, including cities. They could also be launched with nuclear warheads to detonate at altitudes sufficient to have devastating EMP effects.

“According to the EMP Commission, the United States faces an EMP threat that could have catastrophic consequences from even a single nuclear warhead. The EMP threat arises from the ability, whether by terrorists or states, to launch even relatively unsophisticated missiles with nuclear warheads to detonate from 40 to 400 kilometers altitude above the Earth’s surface, with greater heights-of-burst exposing larg­er areas on the ground to EMP.5 Such action would provide the attack­er with high political-military payoff in the form of devastating con­sequences. An EMP attack would constitute an asymmetric strategy against the United States, which is heavily dependent on electronics, energy, telecommunications networks, transportation systems, bank­ing, the movement of inventories, and food processing and distribu­tion capabilities.

“The EMP Commission reported that EMP was an unanticipated re­sult of a nuclear detonation at an altitude of about 400 kilometers dur­ing the Starfish nuclear weapons tests above Johnston Island in the Central Pacific in 1962. Effects, felt some 1400 kilometers away in Hawaii, included “the failure of street lighting systems, tripping of circuit breakers, triggering of burglar alarms, and damage to a telecommu­nications relay facility.” The Commission also reported that 1962 high altitude nuclear tests conducted by the Soviet Union also produced damage at distances as far away as 600 kilometers to overhead and un­derground buried cables, together with surge arrester burnout, spark-gap breakdown, blown fuses, and power-supply interruption.

“The destruction and mayhem caused by an EMP explosion would be far more substantial today given the ubiquity of more fragile electronics and our greater reliance on them to run critical infrastructures. More­over, an EMP burst could directly affect the 3,000 commercial and mil­itary flights airborne over the United States at any given time, possibly causing them to crash. Most of those aircraft, equipped with electron­ic-interface fly-by-wire control systems, would become unguided mis­siles, plummeting to Earth and leading to many thousands of fatalities and enormous physical damage.”

The Heritage Foundation‘s Peter Brookes wrote an article that appeared in the August 2010 issue of Townhall magazine. An excerpt of the five-page article (PDF):

“You have probably never heard of an “EMP.” Don’t feel bad—a lot of people haven’t.

“If asked, most would probably respond it’s some sort of “Emergency Medical Something,” or maybe even a new, cool rock band. Could it have something to do with ESP, or be one of those texting abbreviations teenagers use?

“In fact, it’s actually a deadly serious matter—and something you need to know about.

“Just imagine that one bright, sunny day everything electrical just stopped working. The lights go out in your home or office. There is no cell phone or Internet service and, tragedy of tragedies, the coffeemaker won’t work.

“All the modern electrical conveniences we take for granted on a day-to-day basis in the 21st century go kaput—without an obviousexplanation. And as a result, modern life as we know it comes to a virtual standstill.

“Sure, it could be a power outage. That happens when the weather is bad, which it’s not on this particular day. The power company could be working on the lines, but they aren’t. And even if they were, that might not account for your cell phone outage or the fact your car—and the others
on the road—all died at once. Aliens from outer space? No. An electromagnetic pulse—or EMP.

OUT GO THE LIGHTS—AND MORE

“You were not aware of it, but American military, intelligence and homeland security forces had been tracking a foreign merchant vessel, operating off the East Coast of the United States.

“In fact, just before everything went dark, the ship opened the large cargo doors on its
deck and launched a ballistic missile into the sky in the direction of the American shoreline.

“Aware of the launch from high-tech, spyin-the-sky satellites, but unable to take out the missile due the lack of a comprehensive missile defense system, the U.S. military attempts to conduct a counter-strike on the freighter before it launches another missile.

“That is until the missile’s warhead explodes high in the atmosphere over the central United States, releasing an EMP—and destroying unprotected electrical and computer capacity within its effective radius.”

Last year, the Heritage Foundation‘s Matt Mayer spoke at conference on the reality and the danger of electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which can occur if a nuclear weapon is exploded above the earth’s surface. The resulting electromagnetic energy would interact with the earth’s magnetic fields, creating a pulse, which in turn would cause widespread damage, devastate the economy, and result in millions of deaths.

Last week we pointed you to an article written by James Carafano and Jena McNeill of the Heritage Foundation. They recommended that Congress establish March 23 as Electromagnetic Pulse Recognition Day, given the catastrophic effects of a nuclear weapon explosion in our atmosphere.

This explosion would interact with the planet’s magnetic fields, creating a pulse, which in turn would cause widespread damage, devastate the economy, and result in millions of deaths.

TIME magazine published a story on EMP and quoted Carafano’s and McNeill’s article. An excerpt:

“Maybe it’s America’s frontier heritage; moving west and constantly facing new bands of Indians, this nation has always seemed to have an exaggerated awareness of potential threats. The Cold War gave us warnings of missile and bomber gaps, later found to be largely mirages, that were supposedly leaving U.S. citizens vulnerable to Soviet attack. Fear of the supposed Soviet missile advantage spurred President Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars initiative and the $100 billion Washington has spent preparing to counter incoming enemy missiles even as the Soviet Union disappeared. Then, 9/11 put us in the crosshairs of Islamic terrorists, calling into being a mushrooming homeland-security industrial complex. All very well, warn the sentinels at the Heritage Foundation, but what about the EMP threat?”

Note the magazine’s barely-contained sarcasm. An EMP attack is not a mirage. The threat is real. Rogue states like Iran and North Korea are improving ballistic missile capabilities and developing nuclear weapons, and both countries know about EMP’s effects.

America has a duty to protect its citizens, and as long as EMP attacks are possible, Congress should alert the public of the danger and shore up our defenses against it, even if it sounds like science fiction.

From James Carafano and Jena McNeill at Heritage.org:

On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan gave a famous speech where he outlined his plans for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), aimed at protecting America from a nuclear missile attack using land- and sea-based missile defense systems. On the anniversary of this famous oratory, however, America faces another threat, one that requires Congress’s immediate attention: an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.

An EMP attack can begin with the explosion of a nuclear weapon high in the atmosphere. This explosion interacts with the planet’s magnetic fields, creating a pulse, which in turn causes extensive damage to electronic systems. The EMP resulting from the blast would cause widespread damage, devastating the economy and resulting in the deaths of millions of Americans. Despite repeated warnings, Congress has taken virtually no action to prepare or protect against an EMP attack. In order to facilitate a national discussion regarding the EMP threat, Congress should establish March 23 as EMP Recognition Day.

Explored by America’s Adversaries

The likelihood of an EMP attack is disconcerting. Nearly 30 countries currently possess ballistic missile capabilities. Indeed, some have extensive knowledge of EMP and its effects. North Korea currently possesses a large arsenal of missiles and has been publicly testing its ballistic weapons. It has also been reported that Russian scientists have worked with North Korea on developing an EMP weapon. Countries and non-state actors are also exploring improvised or non-nuclear EMPs as a means of harnessing the destructive power of EMP without the need for missile capabilities. EMP has even been seen to occur naturally during a solar flare event (the last of which happened in the late 1800s).

Despite such concerns and repeated warnings from the congressionally mandated EMP Commission, the President’s budget does not place a great enough emphasis on missile defense, let alone the EMP threat. For instance, the President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 budget requested $9.9 billion for missile defense, a $600 million decrease from FY 2009 (although a $900 million increase over FY 2010). Neither Congress nor the White House has looked extensively at hardening critical infrastructure against EMP or revising recovery plans or disaster planning scenarios to be reflective of this unique threat.

Time for an EMP Recognition Day

Given the increased likelihood that the U.S. could suffer an EMP attack in the near future, the time has come for Congress to recognize the danger that EMP poses and act to address this threat. If, just for one day, Congress simulated even a fraction of the impact such an attack would have, the scope of the danger would be clear. To do so, Congress should establish an EMP Recognition Day.

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Read the full web memo at Heritage.org.

In 2004, the congressionally mandated Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack released an unclassified executive report on its broader study of the U.S.’s vulnerability to EMP weapons strikes.[1] In 2008, the commission released a follow-up report that detailed the vulnerabilities of the critical infrastructures of the U.S. to EMP strikes.[2] Taken together, these two reports make it clear that an EMP attack could inflict severe damage on the U.S. As the initial report stated, “EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences.”

Congress should not let the Obama Administration ignore the commission’s findings. Instead, it should mandate an updated assessment of which countries may be pursuing EMP weapons and associated delivery systems and platforms. Further, Congress should demand that the Administration develop, test, and ultimately field defenses against EMP attacks, including improved ballistic missile defenses capable of countering short-range ballistic missiles that can carry EMP warheads.

What Is EMP?

EMP is triggered by the detonation of a nuclear weapon at a high altitude over the earth. As a result of this detonation, an electromagnetic field radiates down to the earth, creating electrical currents.

These fields cause widespread damage to electrical systems–the lifeblood of a modern society like the U.S. In turn, the damaged electronic systems can cause a cascade of failures throughout the broader infrastructure, including banking systems, energy systems, transportation systems, food production and delivery systems, water systems, emergency services, and–perhaps most damaging–cyberspace.

Effectively, the U.S. would be thrown back to the pre-industrial age following a widespread EMP attack.

What Congress Should Do

The lack of public awareness regarding the disturbing implications of an EMP attack may prompt the Obama Administration to set aside proposals for addressing this problem. Congress should not let this happen. Specifically, Congress should take the following three steps:

Step No. 1: Require the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to Produce a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) Describing Which Countries Are Capable of Launching an EMP Strike. The NIE should review not only the weapons systems themselves but the delivery systems and platforms capable of carrying the weapons. Additionally, Congress should obtain from the NIE the intelligence community’s assessment of how EMP-capable countries are incorporating those weapons into their broader military strategies.

The latter assessment would permit the President and his advisors to determine how the U.S. could respond to EMP threats as they arise. Such planning is an essential part of providing an effective defense against these threats.

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Read the full web memo at Heritage.org.