It isn't just "lights out" when a powerful electromagnetic pulse is set off, typically by the explosion of a nuclear warhead. An EMP doesn't just disrupt electrical signals — it essentially hijacks them and can permanently fry any unshielded electronic device. Forget turning anything back on, whether it's your computer, your furnace, or even your car. They're all going to need to be repaired or replaced.
But a nuclear warhead isn't the only way to create a smaller EMP effect, and terrorists are getting the tools to make them happen.
"Iran has rushed to supply Hezbollah with electromagnetic bombs that can paralyze communications and disable radars as the risk of the border confrontation with Israel turning into a full-scale war grows," according to a Jerusalem Post summary of an Al-Jarida report. (I have to trust JPost to translate certain Arabic-language papers for me because I prefer not to use Google Translate or anything else Google.)
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) isn't merely outnumbered — drastically so — by foes real and potential. They're also surrounded and have three different fronts to defend. Worse, Israel has almost zero strategic depth. There's almost nowhere to retreat and regroup. Despite these intractable strategic handicaps, the IDF keeps Israel as safe as possible by maintaining huge qualitative and intelligence edges over Israel's adversaries.
What that means in English is that training, doctrine, and equipment make one IDF soldier worth five Arab soldiers or terrorists. The Israeli intel community's skills probably double that factor to 10-to-one. That doesn't exactly make each IDF soldier or airman into Superman, but they do still have their Kryptonite.
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What if the IDF's electronics — from the radars that detect enemy rockets to the Iron Dome batteries that shoot them down to the F-16s and F-35s jets that exact retribution — are suddenly switched off for an hour or a day or a week?
We saw what happened on Oct. 7 when Israelis let their guard down around the Gaza Strip. 1,200 civilians were murdered and raped, and another 250 kidnapped — provoking a war that continues to this day.
Rotem Mey-Tal, CEO of Israeli defense contractor Asgard Systems, talked to JPost about how Hezbollah might attack his country with EMP bombs:
The physics are the same in any way they choose to use such capability, but I suspect the model will likely be in the form of a low-flying UAV. Much like the Iranian-Houthi attack of the upgraded Samad 3 UAV, which struck near the US Embassy in Tel Aviv last weekend, only instead of a kinetic warhead with gunpowder, the front of the UAV can be armed with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) activation mechanism, which is triggered during the UAV's flight and emits an EMP upon contact with the target.
Likely targets, Mey-Tal speculated, would include "bases, strategic facilities, desalination systems, and the Israeli power grid." That ought to make Israeli skin crawl, and yours, too.
If Hezbollah gains the ability next week or next year to effectively hit Israel with EMP weapons, it will be the week or the year after that some other terrorist organization hits the U.S. with them, too.
It's safe and easy to predict that far more people would have died after a swarm of EMP drones upon New York City than died in the Twin Towers on 9/11. That's why I clap and cheer every time I read that Israel has killed another Hezbollah leader or destroyed another Hamas unit. Every terrorist they kill over there is one less to attack us here.
Like it or not, their war is our war.
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