NYT Smears Gingrich Over EMP Threat Comment
Board and his sources admit the fact that China, North Korea, and Iran are perfecting EMP-optimized nuclear weapons, but are so short-sighted as to think they would have to be launched from those countries.
The Missile Defense Agency has every reason to claim that the scenario of an ICBM launched from halfway around the world would be an easy target for them to destroy. Unfortunately, the most likely avenues of attacks are locally launched missiles from submarines or freighters in the Gulf of Mexico or off either coast, where distance to detonation from launch is measured in seconds, and which are not the focus of our outward-facing early warning and detection systems. Such vessels could be easily scuttled after launch, and the rogue agent responsible for the attack may not be found until well after the attack is over, rendering our nuclear counterstrike abilities utterly moot.
And then there is the far more mundane, but every bit as real possibility of the threat our own sun offers to our fragile electrical grid.
The 1859 Carrington event, were it to happen today, could be even more destructive than a nuclear weapon, frying power grids worldwide.
Broad and the Times have gone out of their way to fabricate a “warmonger” theme. The article portrays Gingrich as someone angling for preemptive military strikes based off of one off-the-cuff comment by Gingrich. Gingrich has primarily advocated for nothing more than cost-effective hardening of critical infrastructure components so that our grid has a better chance of surviving any sort of electromagnetic surge that strikes our grid, be it man-made or natural in origin.
Gingrich may be the only adult in the room when it comes to discussing the steps our nation needs to take to harden an electrical grid that is showing its age, piecemeal construction, and fragility, and at a fraction of cost of the present administration’s abortive and wasteful spending binges.
Gingrich makes sense. No wonder the Times wants to smear him.
Science fiction writers have been using this concept of EMPs for decades now so it is not entirely outside the stream of public consciousness.
While I don’t discount the possibility of some mundane type of sea-going vessel being used to launch such a missile, I still think it falls into the category of Mutual Assured Destruction. Whether such a device came from a budding Third World country or a traditionally feared source such as Russia, the very real threat of the U.S. lashing out in all directions would seem to make the risk too great to use. Certainly our military has hardened protection against such an event and I’m not sure what useful aim shutting down a civilian infrastructure would produce in a military event that would occupy only hours if not minutes. A nuclear winter doesn’t work well for Iran or Islam since their poverty stricken nations would be among the first to succumb to disaster.
There has been speculation that a Chinese EMP missile was fired at a vacation cruise ship off the Western U.S. a year ago, presumably as a test. But as you know, when it comes to intelligence work, there are wheels within wheels within wheels and the amount of disinformation as opposed to plain stupidity or frankness unknown.
There have been reported cyber attacks against India by China and at Latvia from Russia but why tip one’s hand in such a manner? Are they just stupid?
David, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with a military expert about the subject. Our EMP hardening stopped when the cold war ended. As incredible as it sounds, the modern day U. S. military is far less prepared for pulse events than the military of the 1980s.
Well that’s not good news. Still, the fact remains as to the tactical use of such a technology. In other words, what good is an EMP burst without an accompanying nuclear blast as regards civilian infrastructure? Why not just do the blast? If you do a near Earth orbit blast and take out the N. American grid and other electronics, it is presumed that our missiles are at least protected from this and also by the uncertainty of the enemy that delivers such a blast as to what they could and could not depend on as far as results. It’s a lot to put on the line with uncertain tactical results and for what? Neither China or Russia feel particularly threatened by the U.S., especially not compared to the paranoia of the Cold War.
It seems to me that if nations are developing such technology conspicuously separate from nukes they are thinking along lines of conventional battlefield applications, both on land and at sea. Since such a tech race would obviously start a circuit hardening flurry, we are then back to civilian infrastructure with unknown applications. Just because a thing CAN be done doesn’t mean it WOULD be done and again, I think using an EMP burst against America has all the risk of a nuclear war without any benefits I can see to an enemy. Shooting intercontinental missiles with unknown pay loads anywhere in the world is problematic given that they are often tracked.
An enemy might suppose our military hardware is not shielded but throwing the dice on suppositions is risky and again where is the reward? For a country like Iran to do such a thing and keep the source secret is a very risky venture. If caught out, Iran would cease to exist as the nation we know it today and so we are back to the rewards.
Although people often posit insane nations that have no care for risk/reward the truth is that this has not happened in the nuclear age in the stark and quick fashion an EMP event would represent. It’s not beyond imagining that should Iran engage in such an action that Tehran would become rubble. It does an Iranian Shia agenda little good to have the largest Shia nation destroyed and other Shia populations reduced to what would be the most unfavorable scrutiny to say the least.
Please show me any evidence that the two most likely aggressors, Iran and North Korea, have ever shown anything approaching rational behavior.
Oh, they’re rational enough within their starting assumptions: in Iran’s case, that bringing down the USA would be part of their Shiite armaggedon-event; in NK’s case, that the power elite would have sufficient warning and could hide well enough, and who cares about the peasants. That’s what makes MAD a non-deterrent for these two threats.
I understand that and kinda pre-emptively addressed it below. Getting an entire cadre of men in various military units to knowingly commit what might be in effect the mass suicide of their own entire country just cuz they don’t like America is not a persuasive argument. Where’s the reward if your side is simply written out of history? Let’s not take this stereotype of N.Korean and Iranian leaders as frothing at the mouth in a padded cell too far. They like their perks or they wouldn’t be where they are. They pretend they’re disenfranchised but they are the elite.
Iran or North Korea would be betting that Obama’s response would be weak. Perhaps he would bow not quite as low. Does anyone expect that Obama would nuke Tehran if an EMP brought the United States to a halt? He’d probably apologize for having bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Did you notice this paragraph in the article, “The Missile Defense Agency has every reason to claim that the scenario of an ICBM launched from halfway around the world would be an easy target for them to destroy. Unfortunately, the most likely avenues of attacks are locally launched missiles from submarines or freighters in the Gulf of Mexico or off either coast, where distance to detonation from launch is measured in seconds, and which are not the focus of our outward-facing early warning and detection systems. Such vessels could be easily scuttled after launch, and the rogue agent responsible for the attack may not be found until well after the attack is over, rendering our nuclear counterstrike abilities utterly moot.”?
I read that and in the Considine family we always say such secrets are almost impossible to keep thus inviting the retaliation. The shooter could never be 100% sure their secret would stay secret and then kiss home country or religion good-bye.
Plus it would ignite the greatest world-wide man hunt in history.
Ahh, but what if the only people who would act on the secret no longer have television, telephone, radio, cell phone, electricity, the Internet, grocery stores with working cash registers or refrigeration, or any planes, trains or automobiles? When all the major population centers suddenly become Superdomes, revenge will get moved down the priority list pretty quickly.
I’ll tell you what good it is- a high altitude nuclear blast can knock out unhardened electronics for a thousand miles. Sure, it wouldn’t immediately kill anyone who doesn’t depend on electronics for their immediate survival, but no power and fried circuits means massive food spoilage and contamination of the water supply ensue within days. Famine, cholera, dysentery, and other third-world problems would afflict us within a week or two. Riots ensue as the criminal element begins picking fights over supplies. No electricity means no modern medical treatments more advanced than antibiotics.
Well, there are still hardened Command and Control sites thruout the US. What missle silos remain are hardened, and their command and control are hardened. BUT, realize that the PEOPLE of the US are not hardened, and neither are the power grids nor water supply. When power goes, water supply and seweage also go. As far as muslims go, if they are willing to use themselves in suicide bombings, what is the difference. They figure if only a few survive, they can start all over again and conquor the world. Don’t sell them short on what they will or will not do.
we stopped hardening sites to EMP in the 80s due to the cost verses the ability to over come that protection by just upping the size of the weapon used to create the emp. the modern military air craft are safe because they use fiber optics. Seems to me everyone is thinking only in terms of a rouge state this type of thinking ended up in the world trade center being hit by commercial aircraft. As for does EMP work? The USSR detonated a small device over one of its own city’s and killed all the electrical infrastructure in that city
Also, what is to stop al Qaeda or some other terrorist group from using an EMP device? Those devices are not so sophisticated that a non-state group couldn’t do it. Terrorists and other non-state actors will have much less concern with “mutually assured destruction” as they won’t exist primarily in a physical location and probably care little if we retaliate against nations they’ve operated in, since they can simply move.
If a group like Al-Queda could do such a thing they very well might. The problem is that the last escapade killed tens of thousands of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Given the fact of a red line American patience has shown a regard for in the past, it is then also not out of the realm of possibility that America would finally say “enough with the Muslims, already” and turn Mecca and Tehran into glass. Words kill and this de facto passive grass roots support for terrorism across the Middle East may finally exact a very heavy price on the “moderate” populace.
You actually believe that terrorist care about retalitory casualties? You actually believe the U.S. would attack a religious center in even an enemy country? Incidentally, the Saudis are officially our allies, and Mecca is in their country!
I do believe that if there were an Islamic attack on the U.S. with massive casualties, say 50,000, there is the possibility of a strike deep within Islam. Look at what we did to Iraq and Afghanistan over less than 3,000. Look at what we did to Japan over less than 3,000 at Pearl Harbor. Resolve is a rare commodity in America today compared to yesterday but it hasn’t totally disappeared. This weird and stupid bubble the Left and Rainbow Coalition live in which bears no relation to reality could pop tomorrow and for good with a hideous wake up call. Even massively stupid political correctness has its limits.
I’d like to see those stupid, stupid women on “The View” explain away 50,000 dead in a context of Islamophobia. They might be attacked in the street by people who’ve had enough.
I was a nuclear launch officer during the early ’90s. There was an interesting (unclassified) example of the destructive power of an EMP burst:
The command staff wanted to improve launch officer morale while on alert (alert = on duty, ready to launch a nuclear missile). They decided to allow officers to watch a small (12″?) television to relieve boredom. There was one major problem; every conventional vacuum tube based TV exploded during EMP burst testing. This wasn’t a typical “beyond worst case” test either. The TV was kept in a shielded area during the test. Only the antenna was exposed to the EMP source. The only viable solution was to place the TV within an armored steel case with a blast proof glass front!!
It’s a matter of perception.
The most likely suspects may simply not believe that we would retaliate, even if we had the purely technical/physical capability to do so.
The U.S. “lashing out in all directions” has been the nuclear nightmare, not of our foreign enemies, but of our domestic “enlightened progressives”, which is one of the reasons they are unalterably opposed to any and all missile-defense plans. They believe that the only thing which keeps us from conquering or destroying the world at any given moment is the prospect of being destroyed by those fine, upstanding, moral people in Moscow and Beijing.
That said, the fact is that nobody on the other side believes that the U.S. in general, and this administration in particular, would retaliate with nuclear weapons against anything short of a full-on strategic missile attack. In any lesser scenario (going back to Herman Kahn) their conclusion is that our domestic politics will paralyze us- helped along by their “earnest” efforts to support “rational” and “moderating” influences, such as Not In Our Name, Code Pink For Peace, and oh yes, the Democratic Party leadership.
National defense became a partisan issue in the Adlai Stevenson era, when our “best and brightest”, progressives all, decided that they would be happier ruling a socialistic America and letting the socialists elsewhere rule the rest of the world. Sixty years later, this is still the default position of the progressive movement, except for the deep-eco contingent who want to rule a Bronze Age world everywhere. (And BTW, they equate Islamism with revolutionary socialism- being too ignorant of history to be able to tell the difference between a French-style revolution and a Russian-style one.)
From Ted Kennedy’s “Nuclear Freeze” (unilateral disarmament) to the fact that after 9/11, half our leadership opposed actually doing anything to prevent future such attacks (and still do), our enemies have assumed that they have virtual existential freedom to act against us as long as they don’t harm our leadership.
Simply put, they conclude that our leaders are a particularly venal and self-seeking lot who can be cowed, or bought off, by simply presenting them with a fait accompli, and letting them revert to their basic instincts. Those being to preserve their power here, and the sanctity of their own precious hides. Up to now, it has worked pretty well for those who seek to destroy or conquer us.
Having a weapon isn’t worth much if nobody believes you will ever use it. The most likely suspects for an EMP attack do not believe that we can, or will, retaliate in kind or even in proportion. They believe instead that as long as they can keep us from finding out exactly who pushed the button, we will do nothing for fear of harming innocents. And that our domestic “intellectuals” will be throwing up every roadblock they can think of to prevent us from replying in kind even then- in the hope of pushing us more toward the sort of society they dream of ruling here.
In fact, they probably expect the deep-ecologists to be shouting Hosannas about us being forced to “live gently on the land”. And they are most likely 100% accurate in that assessment.
In the phrase “credible deterrence”, the operative word is the one beginning with “C”, not “D”. And our “deterrent” hasn’t been “credible” for a very long time.
9/11 made that quite clear. To anyone who was actually paying attention, that is.
clear ether
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“Having a weapon isn’t worth much if nobody believes you will ever use it.”
Or worse, having said weapon and lacking the will and/or moral conviction to use it when the time comes.
Enjoy your posts.
Knock out electricity and electronic in the United States for an extended period of time and the result will be disastrous – and end to the nation as we know it. Millions could die. Knock out electricity in North Korea and the result would be, well, North Korea.
Finally. . .. one thing I can agree with the Neuter on. . . . .
So let me get this straight. The New York Times is completely willing to embrace Global Warming, which is still just a theory which has now been discredited in the media, but the theory of an EMP attack, which has been proven to be accurate by the EMP Commission Reports detailed to the House Armed Services Committee in 2008, is considered by the New York Times to be just a lot of nonsense. Just shows you why more and more people are NOT reading the New York Times, let alone listening to them anymore.
The threat of an EMP attack is very, very, real. You can bet anything that countries like North Korea, Iran, and especially China would be working on it right now. Why? Well, why wouldn’t they? After all, if you hit a target with a nuclear bomb not only do you obliterate it, but you also make the land unusable because of the nuclear fallout. But if you could disable an enemy to such an extent that the victim would have to beg for mercy and you could STILL win the war without the problems associated with nuclear fallout, then why not? Wouldn’t that vicitim be easier to invade and conquor as a result of the attack? I would think China would especially be interested in such a device, rendering a potential enemy totaly incapable of fighting back while NOT having to destroy the land the people are on.
I live in New Jersey and have seen up close what something as simple as Mother Nature can do to our power grid. A major storm can put out the lights for thousands of people for over a week. Let’s not even talk about what an EMP blast could do to suburban America, which has all of its power lines exposed to whatever is exploded over our land.
Nope, anybody who does not take an EMP blast seriously is a fool and is gambling with our lives. Newt is very, very, correct in stating that many of our primary power grids and military facilities should be “hardened” against such a threat. He is also very brave for bringing this important issue to our attention, while idiots at the Times are worried about a non-existant threat to polar bears. But the problem is we may be running out of time, and our own military knows it.
The massive amount of sea transport necessary to invade the U.S., presumably from China, couldn’t be hidden from satellites. Then, after a burst, those transports would need days to sally from their ports and reach only one coast of the U.S. Even given no interference from our subs or anything else, how long is an EMP burst worthwhile if an army can fix itself in the meantime. No, not going to happen like that. And the enemy would have to be 100% sure no nukes, there are U.S. subs underwater, would take out their own country now revealed. Plus there are the massive American carrier groups around the world that would be unaffected by an EMP burst over N.America.
Our army lacks the capability to ‘repair itself in time’. That is what all the reports make clear. We would be in utter chaos for at least a year. With no electronic records of where those missiles were fired from and no clues as to who might have fired them we would have no clue as to whom we would retaliate against.
That’s just the first problem. The second is that our nation would be in the throws of the worst sneak attack in history with everything from transportation and energy to food storage and harvesting utterly destroyed. That is not to mention the loss of most of our medical care technology and abilities as our pharmaceuticals sat no-one-knows-where waiting for transportation that cannot run to where they are (hopefully) needed.
Police, fire, emergency systems would be unable to communicate with each other. Most vehicles would simply sit unable to run. Starvation would hit within a week at the most. Bad water sooner in some areas and nobody would be able to know who needed help or where or when.
And let’s assume that the United States a year later and beyond nightmare levels crippled in infrastructure, military, and population finds out who launched the attack. Who could we safely retaliate against? If it was one of our old enemies Russia or China great we could flog them like a dead horse (assuming they had not simply invaded six months earlier).
If it is one of a dozen small actors that could do the same, what do we do? Nuke Mecca to punish Al Qaeda? Pound the people of North Korea and presumably most of South Korea into the stone age while their leadership sits in hardened silos? Finally destroy the Iranian nuclear capabilities?
We’d be too crippled to attack Russia or China and swatting at mosquitoes with shotguns in any other cases. That is assuming that our military can function after being tasked with saving starving civilians from California to Maine without vehicles, communications, food or fuel.
Don’t down play this it is a true nightmare and tens of millions of Americans would die without an enemy directly killing even one.
You’re positing as fact that the destruction would be as desired by the enemy and that unaffected monitoring stations under our control around the world would for certain NOT be able to find out a thing. Since an enemy wouldn’t in fact have that certainty the possibility of massive retaliation is too risky.
In Re. retaliation: our assured mutual destruction 1950s strategic weapons would most likely blow up in their silos if the network of incompetents needed to activate them actually could communicate with each other and try to do so — the vast network of electronics used to activate them, from Cheyenne Mountain to the Dakotas and at the sites themselves, would be melted goo.
In Re. mortality: waves of die-offs starting with the old and sick unable to get medicines, through the food wars and into the plagues, will leave only about 10% of the U.S. population alive and living isolated from each other after less than a year. The U.S. “Homeland” will be a walkover for whomever wants to walk over it.
All of my ammunition is stored in EMP-resistant cans. The firearms don’t have electronics.
Firewood burns in a stove just fine without electronics. Hot smoke goes up, warmth radiates out.
Stored food stays stored until water and heat is added. Refrigerator/freezer food used first, feed neighbors. Make a smoker out of the kitchen refrigerator, bury the freezer as a root cellar.
Can food in water bath or pressure cooker/canner on the wood stove. G-Grandma did it.
Capture water from the sky, store and move with siphon/gravity.
Books work just fine without power. Kindle and iPad, not so well.
I bet my neighbors will learn from me and me from them.
Electricity is convenient, not required for life. Same with piped water and piped gas.
Cheers.
David, who says anybody has to come by sea? With the way Mexico is going, the entire country could collapse. So if a country, oh, say China, decides to come in and “guarantee” the safety of the Mexican government, who would throw them out? Do you think someone like Obama would actually invade Mexico to throw out the Chinese? Heck they’re already going into places like Cuba and Venezuela and Obama is doing nothing about it. So what’s to stop China from prividing “friendly” assistance if Mexico falls apart? And once the Chinese are in Mexico or even Central America, they have a land route straight into the United States. With our economy already crumbling, with our military shrinking at a dramatic pace, and with a Democratic president who just wants to concentrate on social-welfare programs here in the United States, who would really stop them?
You’re kidding me aren’t you? Even a science fiction writer would poke holes in his own story if he came up with that. First of all no American President, even Obama, would allow a giant foreign troop presence in Mexico.
And if he did, where is the blue water navy with the necessary carrier groups and submarines to protect a Chinese supply line stretching across the Pacific? China presently has no such capability and unless Obama establishes a dictatorship while at the same time extending his life span like a vampire he wouldn’t be around when China built this capability practically from scratch.
And what would our 11 carrier groups and subs be doing? Let’s get realistic: you’re talking no less than probably 200 Chinese divisions and even then the ratio of force to space would be grossly inadequate. And tactical nukes would render the whole operation impossible.
Chinese productivity is less than a quarter of ours and that’s during their boom and our bust. Throw in the fact it has copy cat tech that would dry up without the West which reduces their actual productivity even further and your near future scenario is flatly impossible. China is still loaded with peasants.
I’m afraid that you are thinking in the box. Why would anyone NEED to attack at all? The destruction to our infrastructure would be long term and vastly debilitating to all of our systems. A nation like China could use a third party to launch the weapons from sea and then watch as our nation dissolved into chaos making them the number one economic power on earth. If that were the scenario who would our subs and carriers attack? You also make the mistake of thinking that anyone who would attack us with an EMP device would want to conquer us. Did Al Qaeda want to conquer us when they attacked the WTC and Pentagon? I think you have staked out an indefensible position and are sticking with it.
If thinking outside the box is portraying Americans as clueless yokels with pitchforks and straw hats sitting on top of a wall in regard to a tech we created first then put me in the box.
Thinking outside the box is not constantly overrating low tech cultures as if their native cunning and street smarts trump superior organization and weapons platforms. In WW II Americans in the Pacific had to fight the stereotype of Japanese as wily jungle fighters when in fact they lived in cities and farms like us and the “Old Breed” in the USMC around which small units were formed did in fact have experience in the jungle and made a difference at Guadalcanal and points north.
All the cunning in the world didn’t help the Japanese against the new fast carriers and F6F with superior pilot training. You don’t fight stereotypes but rely on your training and confidence and resolve to carry the day or the battle is lost before it has begun.
Screw the Chinese and Iranians; when I start reading their literature and using their tech innovations I’ll take note. Until then they can take note of me and do my shivering for me as I’ll pit my 11 carrier groups against the 0 carrier groups of the Chinese any day, no matter how diabolically clever they are.
In the aftermath of an EMP, small arms still work, and so do our sea-based nuclear weapons.
With regard to the idea of “retaliating in all directions,’ allow me to point out that if the command, control, and communications system is fried by EMP all those missiles in hardened shelters and on SSBNs are pretty useless. After all, if the commanders in DC can’t communicate with their subs and missiles then the opponent is home free. Oh, and any conductor above the surface may carry the electromagnetic pulse underground with the wire.
Military comm systems are hardened.
The last time I read the NYT, all the news was in the op-ed comments posted by the public that had something to gripe about. The rest of the paper(?) was editorials.
The NYT ought to be fined by the U.N. for littering the planet with their trash.
An EMP weapon is as unlikely as someone commandeering airplanes and flying them into buildings. Oh, wait……
The EMP threat can also come from solar activity.
Proposals to create a “smart grid” will make us even more vulnerable to EMPs or large solar flares. I wish Gingrich always had positions as sensible as the one the Times is criticizing now.
You first comment on “Smart Grids,” comes without support, as does your backhand of Gingrich. If you wish to advance the discussion please supply contextual evidence.
A number of scientists say they consider Mr. Gingrich’s alarms far-fetched.
Electrical power engineers, however, do not. The IEEE – the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers – has done several studies on the problem. See, for instance: http://www.todaysengineer.org/2007/Sep/HEMP.asp. High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP): A Threat to Our Way of Life By William A. Radasky, Ph.D., P.E.
“A nuclear burst detonated in space over the United States would create a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) that could cause the functional collapse of the electrical power grid. As a result, major infrastructures such as communications, transportation, financial services, emergency services, energy distribution, food and water could also be disrupted or extremely impaired.”
Several other studies dispute the severity of the results, and the power companies are quietly implementing measures to mitigate the damage. In the end, though, a nuclear EMP attack could still cause immense damage to our national infrastructure, especially if the attacker used multiple weapons in a manner designed to maximize the EMP damage.
Again we’re back to the fact that any country doing such a thing would risk equal or greater damage, not to say the long lasting enmity of the rest of the world not affected. Throwing the dice in a risk-all maneuver seems vanishingly unlikely.
As for the Iranians, there has been a demonstrable limit to American patience and should Iran embark on such an adventure, it is possible this constant source of complaint would simply cease to exist. Where’s Gaddafi, Hussein and Bin Laden and look at what we did to get to them with far less provocation than an EMP burst.
Remind me never to be in a foxhole with Innes, who would likely take a nap while on guard duty because he would not believe the enemy would dare attack.
I don’t start at shadows if that’s what you mean.
Of course not, it is awfully hard to ‘start at shadows’ while you’re asleep.
It’s hard to be combat effective from lack of sleep when you’re in a foxhole with a wide-eyed jitterbug who shoots his own soldiers because he sees danger where there is none. And that’s the trick isn’t it? When it’s time to sleep you sleep and when it time to be awake you’re awake. You can’t do two unnecessary guard shifts and be useful. Not enough sleep can be as dangerous as too much. Ask dead marines who got up in the middle of the night to relieve themselves and were shot by idiots.
One detail on the damage modalities that may convince the blase: An EMP pulse, induced on long-distance transmission lines, is highly likely to permanently damage the transformers at both ends. The US doesn’t have a stock of spare transformers sufficient to replace all those that would be damaged. Thus, the MINIMUM time for the electrical network to be down would be (the time to repair local power to the factories that make transformers) + (the time to make many, many replacement transformers) + (the time to transport and install a very large number of transformers). Think about it…
Think about troop transports creeping across the vast expanse of the Pacific as slow as turtles and without a blue water navy or carriers to protect them. Chance of no interdiction by American forces not affected because they were somewhere else: none.
Why assume they would immediately launch troop transports? Why not wait until chaos and starvation made the US an utterly crippled giant? Our military could do one of two things sit and wait while the CONUS devolves into country-wide year long Katrina like disaster (with no food, fuel, power, medicine, or help of any kind) with tens of millions dead by the end of the first month) or they could withdraw to the CONUS to attempt to get food etc to people without any of the infrastructure necessary to food and transportation on that scale. Or they could without any hope of resupply or survival, be tasked to attack whomever we’ve determined is responsible (or simply most likely to attack a weakened US).
If the Navy attacks China or Russia without using nukes it will simply be a gesture as anti-ship missiles and torpedoes make scrap metal of our fleet. If they attack with nukes they invite utter annihilation followed by invasion.
Remember every day following the disaster is another day that no produce gets harvested, no produce goes to market, no food is in stores and millions will be starving in American cities. No refineries will be running. Fuel, even our strategic reserves will be rapidly depleted and to what end? Water will become dangerous to drink in many cities when available at all.
Unless the civilian government explicitly abandons American civilians our military will have plenty on its plate simply keeping Americans alive.
Wait six months while our last food, fuel, and transport runs out then invade the US. Or simply leave us to sit in our crippled state as a has-been backwater of history that will never be able to project power beyond its borders again. Either way it leaves all the bad actors in the world free to do what they want forever. We would probably never recover.
Saying we wouldn’t or couldn’t do a single thing is not much of an argument. It’s more wishful thinking than threat projection.
We would use nukes, because they launched a nuclear attack on us. We can vaporize their entire Navy in five minutes, along with most of their ICBMs.
David,
I am not saying we could do nothing. I am saying that whatever we did we would be severely curtailed and hit hard. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor sure they could win the war. Germany started WWII thinking they would be free of Stalin and rule Europe. That crazy assassin in Sarajevo probably never thought a whole generation of young men would die because he wanted a free country.
You’re assuming because we dodged the bullet with MAD we could do the same here. It’s not one other country but dozens of countries and groups that could probably field such an attack.
You’re saying it is impossible for anyone to attack us this way because ‘they’d have to be crazy, we’d wipe them out’.
Remember, after this attack we aren’t the United States anymore, we’re worse off than ‘Upper Volta with rockets’. How are we going to supply those eleven big carrier groups plus all the troops we have deployed all over the globe? We will have no money, no power grid, no working refineries, hospitals, farms, plants, manufacturing capabilities whatsoever for at least (best case scenario) a year or more.
Who will be providing for the tens of millions who will be freezing, starving, and dying of dehydration in the dark?
The bottom line is Argentina attacked England when England had nuclear weapons. Arab countries send exploding hate mail to Israel on a regular basis and Israel is nuclear armed.
Pakistan just harbored Osama Bin Laden for years and now threaten us when we took him out. They didn’t seem too scared of us. Why are you assuming that anyone else is?
What would we do besides launch nukes at whomever we’ve decided it will do the most good at? And what good will that do for us if we do launch the nukes?
TWS I disgree the Japanese thought they could defeat us. I think their thoughts were that if they could cripple our navy in the Pacific, that our wrongly supposed lack of resolve would bring us to the negotiating table. The time bought crippling us would make the Japanese position difficult to bring down and it certainly was. I don’t think there was any doubt in Japan that America could defeat the Japanese if it brought its full weight to bear. Certainly Yamamoto thought so.
Muslim countries are making the same mistake in this matter of resolve. They think we’re mud wrestling morons but the fact that Gaddafi, Hussein and Bin Laden are dead would be a wake up call for anyone but morons.
I also think that if you take a close look at the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and remember what happened only 2 decades prior, that Hitler was really counting on the collapse of the Soviets as, like the Japanese against us, he also underestimated Soviet resolve. If you look at a map and think of ratios of force to space there is no question of the Nazis ever being able to conquer the Soviet Union. In military terms they could retreat forever.
Argentina attacked a small and unimportant island not England. They tested English resolve as in the above scenarios, not their military might. Not a nuke situation.
Wow. I guess that means that, should terrorists hostile to the U.S. ever get hold of nuclear weapons, it would represent a threat to us. That’s quite a bulletin, thanks!
I read William Forstchen’s “One Second After” last year and was impressed enough by his thesis that I did some inter-net reading which included reviewing the sobering EMP Commision threat-assessment report. Among its other findings, the Commission concluded that a year after the coordinated detonation of a series of high-level atomic explosions above North America, it is conceivable that 9 out of 10 Americans would no longer be living.
Is this far-fetched? Not to the scientists who compiled the report. Not to the Iranians who reportably have been experimenting with launching missiles from the decks of freighters in the Black Sea.
It is sadly ironic that the EMP Commission report was published the same day the 9/11 Commision Report was issued which eclipsed all mention of the threat of EMP. Thus, America’s media and leadeship fixated on a past threat while ignoring what many believe to be the real future threat.
Good for Newt for opening up this issue to a national dialogue.
It seems to me that if the Isrealis decide that they have to preemptively attack IRAN, that a single EMP blast delivered with one Jericho missile would be a good way to go. In addition to incapacitating IRAN, it would cause people to take EMP weapons seriously. It would also have a restraining effect on other nations, even great powers seeking, to bully Israel.
The only problem with your post is, no EMP weapon had been strategically deployed. I had heard rumors, some years ago, of tactical use of EMP, with mixed results. This calls up questions of how much is enough, and how much is too much? While the Israelis are bold, they are not particularily foolhardy. Terrorist have little concern of over-kill, responsible governments take pains to insure that what the do to their enemy, they do not also do to their friends or themselves.
The NY Times. Theres an objective source.
EMP is a clear and present danger! Why don’t we do something? Our Government has become too corrupt to prevent. Only to react after the fact. At 100 or 1000 times the cost
You neglected to mention, the government will fix what ain’t broken (adding the TSA to harass the flying public) while leaving the cause untouched (the still incompetent FBI)! It would seem that aware and active has been the greatest increase in flying safety.
Gingrich is nuts. Doesn’t he realize that Obama can make people not want to launch an EMP attack?
That’s what the NYTIMES is really saying.
This article underscores how irrelevant and useless the “professional media” has become in this country. Everybody needs to stop paying any attention to what these outlets have to say about anything. They are irrelevant and only interested in listening to themselves talk. EMP is a real threat, Newt a real candidate with actual qualifications and experience, and our media is USELESS.
I did quite a bit of research on EMP, and it is a very real phenomenon, and a very, very cost effective, utterly game-changing way to attack the U.S.—according to Congressional hearings and reports and think tank reports as well (see for instance http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/security/has197010.000/has197010_1.HTM and http://www.empcommission.org/docs/empc_exec_rpt.pdf and http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/10/electromagnetic-pulse-emp-attack-a-preventable-homeland-security-catastrophe ), an estimated three nuclear weapons lofted over the U.S. at, say, 150 miles high or so, equidistant to cover the country, and simultaneously exploded are supposed to do the trick—and would, in an instant, generate an “electromagnetic pulse” that would reduce the U.S. to a country with something like 18-19th century technology; no functioning computers or anything with a very delicate, very vulnerable to a spike of EMP energy ”chip” in it, they’re all “fried,” as are any replacement computers or chips, unless stored in an expensive to make “Faraday cage.”
Thus, no electronic ignition systems, or control systems to control traffic lights, aircraft, automobiles, boats, train switches and routing, dams and power generation systems, electric, water, petroleum and gas pumping and distribution systems, lighting systems, air conditioning, monitoring, inventory and distribution systems in general, the banking and communications systems down, no TV or cell phones, no computer assisted machines, factories, radars or hospital equipment; aircraft in the sky just plummet to earth, pacemakers quit i.e. if you have one you’re dead, etc.
So, for the many months or even years it would take until some sort of recovery could be organized (and if one couldn’t get off the ground we would be relegated to 3rd world status, perhaps permanently)—and I’m sure all those countries around the world who we have been giving billions to will immediately come to our rescue, right?–the U.S. would no longer be a major player in the world, and be vulnerable to anyone with a functioning 20th-21st century military capacity.
As for the reassurance offered by some commenters here that our military is “hardened” well, I worked on this issue too, and I gotta tell you that even during the Cold War—because hardening was so expensive and the totality of what needed to be hardened so vast–only selected parts of our military systems were hardened. And now that the Cold War is over, those hardening efforts have apparently stopped, and our civilian leadership and the military are just looking the other way, crossing their fingers, and hoping that some one of our enemies doesn’t try to employ an EMP attack against us.
So, Newt was absolutely right to warn of the dangers of such a catastrophic, and increasingly possible (according recent news items, the Iranians are working on such EMP attack systems), game-changing attack against us, and one that no one is apparently trying to do anything to protect us from.
Each of these scenarios I read leave off other important factors that render them more like wishful thinking than a balanced view of a threat. Threat assessment is not simply assuming the worst: if we did that we’d be building titanium domes over every city in America. Money is not endless nor is our productivity. There is such a thing as a reasonable threat and then plots that wouldn’t pass muster with a science fiction author. People assume the most ridiculous things about China that have no basis in fact or wilfully leave out anything that might pop their bubble. Believe me SF authors are very tough on themselves in this regard and I think their thoughts would be very interesting as they are very good at throwing out the unlikely.
One example of your short sightedness is not looking at the minimal weapons needed to inflict years of damage to the US. You are the one suffering from wishful thinking. I can imagine only needing three weapons to almost wipe out the US’s ability to function and if the three sea launches were coordinated they would be most effective. One over the North East, one over the South East and one over California. When you stop to realize that cell phones, cars/trucks, planes, TV’s,electrical power plants, standby generators, smart weapons and anything else that is electric would be permanently disabled you get the magnitude of our problem. How would ANY messages or public service announcements get out? How would the president or the controlling force explain what happened? How would anyone call for fire or police help? How would you get money from the bank? How would you buy food? How would the stores get food? Wishful thinking my ass.
I think over exaggerating and inverting culture’s threat potential compared to ours is short sighted. America has set the standard for virtually every major field of endeavour in the world today from trivia like freeway signs to fractal geometry. Intent is not a threat assessment but the ability to carry out that intent.
And once again you simply ignore what our overseas assets would be doing.
Come on, does anyone here really expect an =objective= reaction? If this had come as a concern from the Oval Office, the NY Tripe would be gasping in astonishment at Sock Puppet’s brilliant insight and saintlike concern for His People, and chastising the Republicans for having their heads stuck up their butts, frozen in time, pining away for DENSEPACK.
This weakness will never be fixed before the fact. Consider what you would do if this happened, and be prepared! Your loved ones will not be.
Journalism in America = Revenge of the College Slackers.
I marvel at how a cadre of students who in general were academically at or below average managed to steer public opinion when they became journalists.
I guess it boils down to who owns the printing presses and who they hire.
At the risk of sounding off topic, Newt is also the only adult in the room whom is informed on,and has a realistic view of Islam. That death cult which disguises itself as a religion.
It’s amazing how even NCIS LA picked up on the non-nuclear EMP device.
It was the center of the plot last night.
In northern states, home furnaces and boilers are no longer the mechanical devices they once were. Now, in order to achieve high heating efficiency, they are run by small computers. These small computers would be damaged by an EMP blast. As a result, homeowners without fireplaces or wood burning stoves would not endure the winter well. Southern states would have a similar problem with respect to air conditioning.
The larger problem after an EMP blast will be food distribution. It will cease. In panic, grocery stores will soon be stripped of their inventory. But, even those supplies, and homeowners’ existing larders will quickly be consumed. A few well targeted EMP blasts spread across the United States at Thanksgiving would result in mass starvation by Easter.
EMPs would not send us to the stone age, but they could easily send us quickly to the pre-industrial age of say the 18th century. Most of America could not withstand such a transition.
I knew this one was coming. Gingrich cries “EMP, be afraid!” (let me guess, he knows someone who can make money protecting us against this “threat”) and the media reacts like the dog in the movie “Up” when he sees a squirrel – squirrel! – and he runs off in that direction. Is EMP a potential problem? Only maybe. But dirty bombs and chemical weapon attacks are far more likely threats. It seems that since 9-11 we have become a bunch of terrified sheep, ready to jump at the vaguest of threats. We are not a cowardly people, we are Americans.
How likely is an EMP attack?
Well, as I pointed out above, an EMP attack is hugely cost effective, and the epitome of asymmetric warfare; no armies need be equipped or fielded, no vast fleets needed to prowl the seas, no spies or saboteurs need be inserted, no tanks, or machine guns, or even uniforms to buy, just a delivery system and three nuclear weapons, and places like North Korea or Pakistan, or even Russia or China, there to provide them.
And here the U.S. sits, fat and happy and seemingly invulnerable, with its high tech, multi-trillion dollar military establishment, bases all over the world, surveillance satellites, the CIA, Homeland Security, NSA and ECHELON, technology, computer-driven, high-tech, electronic weapons, and command, control and communication systems up the ying-yang, and a technology and entire civilization that is now largely based on computers and computer chips, and just three nuclear weapons could make all that technology into a pile of useless junk, temporarily (or perhaps even permanently) severely handicap or even collapse our civilization, and render us powerless, and eliminate us as a power in world affairs.
To me, it seems like an EMP attack would be an extremely tempting “equalizing” option for our enemies to try to achieve.
You make it sound as if you just need some duct tape and tin cans. Iran has tried for a nuke for years, devoting unknown national resources and still is short.
And then there’s this maddening stereotype from movies where the low-tech guy will be more effective than the bogged down and hopelessly tech dependent American.
Let me tell you something: how many WW II low tech German tanks in movement would it require to eliminate 6 of our Abrams also on the move? Fun movies where one woman beats up 6 body builders and guys with crossbows eliminate men with automatic weapons is a fantasy.
Your whole argument is based on the premise that low tech guys cannot compete with high tech guys. The one major item you are over looking is that the low tech guys do not depend on large systems of support. If they have to use flint and steel to start a fire they will burn down the target they are after. If the high tech guys are radio based with their night vision and situational awareness computers and they lose them then they go below the low tech guys in effectiveness because they have trained and fought with all of their modern devices. Even teams like the SEALs use many high tech gadgets that will be useless. I agree with the nonsense about Hollywood and the way women can kick 6 men’s asses. Not.
You’ve been watching too many movies. Our small unit actions in Viet Nam and Afghanistan, when given tactical rein, have been superior and exemplary, clever stereotypes of a clever enemy aside.
Apply your theory to any major war in history and let me know what you come up with.
Wanting to harden our aging national electrical grid against an EMP attack (which, by the way is several orders of magnitude higher on the scale of existential threats to this nation than chem/dirty bomb) does NOT make us a nation of terrified sheep.
It makes us pragmatic as well as practical.
In the scheme of what our elected officials are spending today, hardening of the grid would be relatively cheap. About $300 million. BHO gave away $500 million on a solar company gamble. I believe that this would have made a much better investment.
An EMP attack would be your absolutely worst nightmare.
Because of the Compton effect, one or more nukes detonated high over America would result in the following,
Any non-hardened electronics would be instantly fried and rendered useless.
The entire power grid would be knocked out across the nation.
Any and all cars with electronics would become equally useless.
All communications would cease – including police, fire, ambulance and media.
There would be no or very little water as pumps would be rendered inoperative.
All supply and grocery stores would be empty within days with no re-supply.
Roving gangs and armed thugs would soon cause fear, death and destruction.
The first wrong spark and whole cities and towns would go up in flames.
And depending on the location and the time of the year, anywhere from 70-90% of our population would die within 12 months… because of violence, accidents, disease and starvation. As horrifying as it is, America simply can NOT sustain its present population size without working electricity and electronics.
And tragically, for some suicidal regime or terror network to launch one or more of these weapons somewhere off our coast… is not science fiction, no matter how deep in denial we may be.
Friends, there is only one moral to this story.
Conservatives and mainstream Americans should never EVER allow the 20% destructive leftist minority to be in charge of anything even remotely important again.
So keep passing the word… November, 2012.
Having worked the problem, I can conclude with certainty:
The NYT does not want Newt Gingrich to become President,
The NYT is not a repository of strategic military thinking, or technical expertise,
The ability of any society to successfully launch and explode a high altitude EMP weapon over the central US is a most formidable technical task. Very few nations will be able to do so in the next generation,
Such an attack would be an act of war, which would invoke a full military counter stroke from the US military,
All nations could expect collateral damage from thermonuclear weapons exploding on the planet,
In such a conflict, after every explosion, possibly numbering in the thousands, the consequences are measured in megadeaths, millions of slaughtered human beings,
These plans exist, but are not discussed in the NYT, or the WSJ,
There are some 800 large generating power plants which support the US grids. The grids are vulnerable to an EMP. All civilian infrastructure is vulnerable to war.
IMHO, the probability that our aged grid infrastructure will collapse under the new EPA regs on CO2 is much higher, and much sooner, that any damage from a foreign enemy (particularly economic damage and collapse). President Gingrich might live to see a multi year grid collapse. It may kill him, and many of us. Most Americans could not survive without electricity. However, he will die of old age before an unknown enemy rises a second sun over Kansas.
The question is whether the American voter comprehends real future risks, and who is our best leader to confront them. I judge Newt Gingrich as better than the NYT on the question of EMP threat response. One may listen to engineers, the other does not (I concur with reply above, No. 8. Paul of Alexandria).
I see some here saying that such an EMP attack would never occur, because we would retaliate against those who launched it. But, what kind of situation would we and our military be in if such an EMP attack were launched and were successful? Would we have anything like our full retaliatory potential, and the command and control capabilities to launch and aim such a blow or blows, and how to determine who to retaliate against?
I would think that not only would our civilian society and infrastructure be in ruins—with almost certain anarchy, violence, starvation, disease, and death a real possibility for a majority of our population– a monumental and unprecedented, existential emergency about to crash down upon our decision makers, I would also assume that any powers or organizations or groups that would have launched such an attack would try to do so without leaving their fingerprints on it, and would try to sow the maximum amount of confusion as to the true authors and facilitators of the successful attack and, if fingered, that they would vehemently profess innocence and deny, deny, deny.
So, here would be our President, or the highest government or military official who survived the attack –the devolution of command, I was surprised to discover, is different for our civilian government and our military—having to deal with this existential threat to our existence, while also having to determine who attacked us, and to decide what to order whatever remains of our presumably very degraded military forces to do (and them probably with a tight “use it or lose it” deadline in terms of their available power reserves, commend structure integrity, and manpower); to decide who–if anybody–to retaliate against.
Well, apparently the usual way to determine whose nuclear material it might be is by capturing and testing the radioactive residues to try to identify a particular ”signature”—apparently fissile material produced in, say, Russia has a slightly different composition, a signature that differs from the signature of material produced in in Pakistan, China, or the UK. This is a highly technology intensive and somewhat lengthy process—I believe it takes days or weeks, not hours. So, will we have the luxury or even the capability to go through this lengthy identifying process? What if we, say, identify the source of the material as Russian produced fissile material that was supposedly stored in Kazakhstan, or somehow find and identify missile parts from North Korea? These countries will obviously deny responsibility, and the material could have been stolen, or sold, or “lent” to the attackers.
Then–if it is the President deciding–there is the question of Presidential temperament and courage. Presuming that our military capabilities are not so degraded –at that point—that we can lob nukes in any and all directions, would a President, say, with the temperament of our current White House panty-waist, give the order? Would any other leader– when we faced so many existential challenges, and might need all the military force we could find to, say, repel a possible opportunistic invasion by a country that still had a 21st century military, and given that the source of the attack was not absolutely certain–give the order to retaliate against ”all the [likely and] usual suspects.”?
Then, of course, there are the Mullas of Iran, who are just bat-shit crazy enough to order such an EMP attack even if they know we could likely determine that they are its authors, and might possibly destroy them in retaliation (and thus bring about the war and chaos they see as the precondition for the return of the 13th Imam, and for the victory of Islam over all the world and all “unbelievers”).
I think it likely that such calculations of situations and odds as these figure in the calculations that various of our enemies make when they are deciding whether they want to try to create the capability and, then, whether to launch an EMP attack against the U.S.; when they try to estimate what their chances might be to “get away with it,” and to remain unscathed.
This is why we need to reassert the Kennedy doctrine. Whoever builds a nuclear weapon that is used against us is guilty and subject to full-scale retaliation, regardless of who actually launched it. If you build it, you’re responsible for securing it, and if someone steals it, it’s your fault. You need to get it back or destroy it before whoever stole it uses it.
Re. retaliating against anyone. If our electric infrastructure is fried, we might not be able to communicate with our retaliators. Or they may not be able to talk to their weapons. Or the vehicle that transports them to the silo may not work. For want of a nail…
One of the rules of warfare is porportionality. If they slimed us, and we could retaliate, would we? Would we turn them into glass for merely crippling us? Even assuming that the after effects of the EMP so crippled us that wholesale famine, disease, and death resulted? How about if they just deployed a “device” over New York, for instance? Beyond all the normal communications outages, how long would it take our financial sector to recover? In the meantime, how would we cope?
And we really don’t need to worry about anyone actually invading us, do we? Yamamoto had it right. And why would anyone want to? If our financial and military capabilities were defanged, an adversary could do as he wished…in Taiwan or Kuwait or Alaska. Or Arizona. OK, so maybe we would get invaded.
Being brutally realistic, there would still be a lot of land, a lot of mineral wealth, and a lot of plain “loot” still available here in the U.S., even if our technological infrastructure were destroyed.
The fundamental texts of Islam–the Qur’an, the Hadiths, and the Sira–focus in a major way on warfare by Muslims against all unbelievers, and on the “loot” to be obtained by this warfare i.e. Jihad–tangible items like gold, silver, and other valuable objects, but also slaves of both sexes, and on how Muslims are, by virtue of being Muslims–”the best of peoples,” as opposed to us– “accursed” unbelievers, who are “the vilest of creatures,” and “the spawn of pigs and apes”– entitled to prey on unbelievers and to steal such loot from us.
In Scandinavian countries, for instance, Imams have been quoted as preaching sermons telling young Muslim males that by virtue of their being Muslim “conquerors,” any unbeliever women are theirs to take, thus the epidemic of rapes of Christian Scandinavian women by Muslim “immigrants’ in places like Malmo.
Then, of course, it is imaginable that Mexico–if it escaped major harm form the EMP attack–would see such a situation as one in which it could take back those parts of the Southwest that were formerly part of Mexico.
I can well see several countries as candidates that might take the opportunity to pick clean the bones of a U.S. devastated by an EMP attack.
Perhaps. But to do what you posit takes boots on the ground. The wearers of which would be facing a humiliated, hungry, and extremely well armed citizenry.
Overseas invaders would have a very long and vulnerable logistic tail. Assuming we did not just let Mexico take back the southwest, is it reasonable to assume that our wounded capacity for resistance would be no less substantial than Mexico’s capacity to invade, hold, and govern/exploit? The worst case might be being occupied by “the best of peoples” as they might have no other intent but to pillage and rape. Assuming they could arrive in meaningful numbers it might be easier for us to win those battles but harder, perhaps, to win that war. As we have witnessed in the middle east.
As far as Mexico goes, you actually have to have a civilization before it can be destroyed. A fully intact Mexico doesn’t measure up to a devastated America since Mexico is already devastated and in that case practice doesn’t make perfect but is just failure. Mexico is just an American away from the Age of Copper.
An EMP attack is not “merely” crippling us. It’s a genocide in slow motion. It will kill over a hundred million people, albeit not right away, but once it’s set in motion, it can’t be stopped. Yes, we would turn a nation into glass for that.
I see that we are getting somewhat far afield here.
Suffice it to say that the threat to the U.S. from of an EMP attack is a very real one, and a very significant, a glaring vulnerability for us, one that we all ought to be informed about and aware of, and our extreme vulnerability to such a possible EMP attack ought to be high on our national list of priorities to fix on an urgent basis.
For every aspect, mechanism, node, and part of our civilian infrastructure and our military capabilities that can be hardened makes it that much less likely that such an EMP attack would succeed, and thus diminishes the chance of one being seriously contemplated or launched against us.
Newt was right to raise this issue.
What scares me the most about the EMP attack on that cruise ship off our West Coast is that someone was telling us that they have developed an EMP weapon that is tactical, rather than strategic, and that the deployment of such a weapon is no longer dependent upon a nuclear detonation. If true, that event could be a game changer.
Let us stay focused on the issues in the article. Newt Gingrich’s quoted statements are factually correct, the NYT critique is not. They are, in fact, a smear job. People twist technical words for their unrevealed purposes. Every time a common AC motor starts, e.g. your air conditioner, a tiny Electromagnetic Pulse is created. That is not what military thinkers consider; they study a high altitude H bomb exploding over the contiguous United States. That would be a game changer, the beginning of World War III.
No human being can be certain of the exact results of an EMP; much would be destroyed, some things would survive. It is complicated. Massive electrical gear, e.g. 600 ton transformers, would likely be destroyed. The replacement durations for this equipment, considering nation wide damage, would be decades. The grid will not work without this vital equipment.
There are steps that can be taken to harden our infrastructure, to accept the blow and sustain life. The cost of this work is orders of magnitude less than the EPA pogrom on coal fired power plants. The choices, and decisions made by our next President will define our future. The NYT promotes one course of action, Gingrich promotes another, in response to the possible threats to our nation. We must choose between the two world views. If we are wrong, it is possible that millions of us will die, in various ways.
Gingrich makes more sense on energy policy, than the NYT.
Okay here are facts, which are hard to come by and therefore their own argument. Other than “a lot of damage” no one knows what effect near Earth orbit triple blasts from nukes would do. You can’t risk your own nation’s survival on a reasonless winner take all I hope this works gambit.
Since nations don’t advertise their capabilities, it is unknown if 3 bombs could be accurately placed in orbit unobserved. The risk for a perpetrator is great since launches are not so common they are not observed by multiple nations. The technology to use delta-v accurately in this regard is not simple. Hizbollah just attacked one of its own villages when a rocket fell short. Could a country like Iran be absolutely confident that we have not implanted a virus that would attack their own nation? We’ve certainly tried to plant that seed of doubt.
Launches from hostile nations are under particular scrutiny. We have massive overseas assets, greater than the native assets of most nations and with semi-independent sources of re-supply or at least threat scenarios which include being on their own. There is NATO.
We study satellite imagery everyday, reading and interpreting heat blooms from a variety of potentially hostile sources. Our full capability in this is unknown to the enemy and therefore risky for them.
Even the proposed move by Iran to launch from near America on a cargo ship is not without danger due to spies and other intelligence. Exposing Iran in such a manner would risk the end of their country. Again, saying people are simply crazy and will do anything and hate us is not a threat assessment. Hate and madness won’t create and launch missiles unobserved and protect against retaliation.
It’s one thing for Hamas and Hizbollah to invite Israeli retaliation for political purposes and another to put the entire survival of the world on the table.
Lets just suppose that, say, Iran is able to develop the nuclear weapons and the delivery systems necessary for an EMP attack, or that one or more of their sponsors/facilitators –say North Korea or even Russia–believes it has sufficient deniability that it supplies them with the necessary technology and perhaps even technical help.
So, Iran takes a gamble and they launch such missiles. We track the missiles, and then what? We have no real ABM systems, and as, as of now, as a less capable substitute 10 Ground Based Mid Course Defence missiles operational at Vandenburg AFB, and a few ship-based AEGIS systems, and I don’t know if either system would be up to destroying such missiles.
Moreover, while it used to be a given that NORAD would have something like 15 minutes to identify, confirm, and develop the trajectory and detonation point of incoming Soviet ICBMs and to confer with the President on what to do, if such missiles were launched from much closer to our shores (a very often war-gamed “depressed trajectory” situation very familiar to the Pentagon) that 15 minutes suddenly shrinks to a few minutes.
So, it is really “use it or lose it” time. Would Obama, or a President like him, order retaliation before the nuclear weapons actually detonated, confirming that it was an attempted EMP attack? Would he have any capability to retaliate–after the fact–if an EMP attack were successful? Once the damage is done, it is just too late.
Better to make every effort–no matter how hard, or expensive, or how long it takes–to drastically diminish the effectiveness of EMP attacks –and thus their likelihood, by hardening.
P.S.–I note, too, several recent papers in scientific journals pointing out that such EMP spikes can, apparently, also be caused by unusually powerful Solar flares–another reason to harden against EMP.
Take a look at the hearings and reports I linked to above, according to them the damage from an EMP attack would not be just “a lot of damage,” it would be catastrophic, and severely cripple the U.S. for many years, or even destroy our current technological civilization.
From what I’ve read a depressed trajectory would inhibit the usefulness of EMP. Look, if someone launches from close in from unidentified civilian vessels we’re pretty much screwed – we’re screwed even with an enemy to retaliate against in a conventional scenario anyway. If the idea that Iran is willing to gamble its survival then that’s pretty hard to beat since deterrence is pretty much out the window. There is not a solution to everything.
Newts proposal that we harden critical infrastructure against a possible EMP event is a very reasonable precaution. And it may not even take a nuke to produce the EMP event, since as the article stated, a sufficiently bad solar event could do it. Spending some money now to protect us against such an event is much cheaper than coping with it after it happens. Its not warmongering, it is simple common sense. And many of the proposals for hardining the electrical grid might also help protect us against much more mundane power disruptions. On this point, Newt really is the adult, and his critics the children.
Fascinating. I actually read the article. By no stretch of the imagination does Broad portray Gingrich as a “loon,” let alone say such a thing explicitly. In fact, the article’s ultimate sentence makes an analogy between those discounting the danger of EMP with those who discounted the danger of a Japanese attack prior to World War II.
The debate over the reality of the threat aside (no physicists in the bunch of commenters that I can detect), the false chumming of the commentariat waters to elicit diatribes against the New York Times and Obama (and I’m no fan of either) is completely misleading. I’m further intrigued by Owens’ comment that he finds Yousaf Butt “frankly unqualified” to opine on the dangers of EMP. I see nothing in Owens’ background that would give him any expertise on such an arcane technical topic.
Clearly, Owens simply wanted to initiate a NYT/Obama hate fest, quite easy to do at PJ Media.
I recall that during the cold war a sovit pilot defected to the U.S.
in his aircraft, the much feared Mig 29.
Up on a detailed inspection it was evaluated and prnonced a “piece of junk”
The sovit aircraft did not even have solid state electronics, IT USED VACUUM TUBES. How crude, except vacuum tubes are not effected by EMF.
No matter how crude this aircraft would still be flying while ours had either fallen out of the sky or were so much junk on the ground.
Some people might be able to survive without electricity, but the elephant in the room no one talks about, would make the world uninhabitable. Once there was no more fuel to run the standby generators at the nuclear plants, they would begin to melt down, one by one. There are several hundred nuclear plants. That is reason enough to want our power grid hardened. The people in charge act as if it will never happen. They did not think such an event as 9-11 would happen either. We all should be pushing for the power grid to be hardened. That is more important than anything else. If our grids aren’t hardened and we have an EMP, whether by intentional enemies or a natural phenomenon, nothing else will matter. We, the human race, will be doomed. It will be an agonizing death for all.
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/silveira132lw.html
See the section called “Solar Flares” – there’s more than nuclear scenarios to think about here.
No matter what your opinion and what your thoughts are on this topic, I think that everyone should go to EMPact Radio to listen to former Chairman Pete Hoekstra of the HPSCI talk about EMP’s and other global threats tomorrow, Wednesday the 11th. It should be an extremely informative and interesting show to listen to; here’s the link: http://empactradio.org/pvp/episode83-congressman-pete-hoekstra/
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