Iranian EMP bomb could paralyse Britain’s power and communications, Liam Fox says – Telegraph
Solar flares could paralyse Britain’s power and communications, Liam Fox says – Telegraph.
Britain’s electrical system, financial networks and transport infrastructure could all be paralysed by a solar flare or a nuclear attack, Liam Fox will warn next week.
The Defence Secretary will next week attend a summit of scientists and security advisers who believe the infrastructure that underpins modern life in Western economies is potentially vulnerable to electromagnetic disruption.
Such disruptions, which can shut down electrical equipment and cripple orbiting satellites, can be triggered by man-made nuclear blasts or natural events on the surface of the sun.
Dr Fox will tell the conference he believes there is a growing threat, and he wants to address the “vulnerabilities” in Britain’s high-tech infrastructure.
“As the nature of our technology becomes more complex, so the threat becomes more widespread,” he will say.
“While we all benefit from the products of scientific advances so we also create vulnerabilities that can be exploited by our enemies. However advanced we become the chain of our security is only as strong as its weakest link.”
The Coalition’s Strategic Defence and Security Review is considering potential weaknesses in Britain’s defences against high-tech attack or disruption.
While conventional military units, cyberwarfare and other technology-driven capabilities are likely to get more money when the review is concluded.
Much of the Ministry of Defence’s planning focuses on the risk of a hostile state exploding a nuclear weapon in space, creating a sudden, intense burst of electromagnetic energy called a high altitude electro-magnetic pulse.
One “nightmare scenario” being privately discussed by senior defence figures involves Iran successfully detonating a nuclear device high over Europe. “They could reduce our civilisation to the dark ages,” said one insider.
Some scientists say there is a similar danger from a once-in-a-century solar flare, a disturbance on the surface of the sun that could cause geomagnetic storms on earth.
A major flare in the mid-19th century blocked the nascent telegraph system, and some scientists believe that another such even is now overdue.
The Westminister meeting is being jointly hosted by the Electric Infrastructure Security Council and the Henry Jackson Society, a think-tank.
The meeting will be addressed by Avi Schnurr, a former US government adviser who said that “super-flares” occur about once every hundred years, meaning the next is overdue.
The electrical grid, computers, telephones, transportation, water supply, food production are all vulnerable to a major flare, said Mr Schnurr, who also works for the Israel Missile Defence Association, a lobby group.
“Our electrical infrastructures are so ubiquitous that an EMP or geomagnetic storm could shatter nations all over the earth, and we cannot wait for disaster to spur us to action,” he said
The Daily Telegraph disclosed earlier this year that Nasa scientists believe Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation “space storm”.
Last week MPs were told that a “virtual team”, involving officials from the agency, Cabinet Office, Ministry of Defence and Home Office were currently investigating the “resilience and security impacts of space” and its impact on Britain.
David Williams, acting head of the UK Space Agency, told a Commons committee that any negative impacts on technology, particularly satellites, would have “severe problems both short-term and long-term” for Britain.
WarSclerotic 
September 19, 2010 at 4:01 AM
Noise is a thing of the past in modern warfare. Bang, bang shoot ’em up and blow things sky high … is, well so dangerous and old school.
Silence is golden and silence is control of the battlefield. This is how it is done. Kill alot of soldiers and you make governments mad at you.
Disable the soldiers equipement so they are wandering around with nothing to do is the way to win warfare and influence people.
EMP is not just for a big ugly and noisy atom bomb. EMP is now minaturized so to speak and is selectable on the battle field. The target is not cities or tanks. We all know the target is the circuit boards which control everything.
Today, right now if the Syrians launched a full scale tank attack, not a single tank crew would be killed and not one tank would be blown to pieces.
Just like tuning in your AM radio to your favourite rock station, every tank circuit board would be reciving an EMP broadcast that would fry their transistors. The tanks would quietly stop. The crews would get out and walk home.
The difference today is that the “feared” nuclear EMP blast in the atmosphere and all it’s nasty radio activity and fall out is just plain too messy for the politically correct armies of today or should I say one army. Why blow up a tank with a big shell and make all that horrible noise and smoke when “ha ha” you just use that big metal tank as a big receiving antennae and blow it up at the minature circuit board level.
It is much easier on the enviornment to tow the destroyed tank away in one piece rather than pick up a million pieces blown all over creation ( and the tank crew also).
The EMP blast wave was originally thought to be too difficult to control so they just thought they would blast away in outer space and send a big pulse down to earth willy nilly and destroy whatever it’s scatter pattern would hit. However like a copper wire conducts electricity that cannot be seen, the conductor for the CS EMP ( controlled space) is the laser.
The EMP pulse follows inside the laser beam and can be directed at one or many targets at once, from land or by the air.
The next war will be the quietest on record. Equipment will just stop. Cities do not need to be EMP’d to make a point. You do not need a Hiroshima and a Nagasaki.
Syria will get the point. As specific locations around Damascus “get the beam” and fall silent, Assad will take a break.
The key to this whole process was 1. Make the EMP module in various sizes including man portable.
2. Develop a carrier for the EMP pulse which is the laser. 3. Totally destroy the enemies equipment in the air ( as they fall as duds) and on the ground. Disable the soldier’s equipment and all communication.
4. Leave a big psychological impact that cities infrastructure can be selectively targeted. Not a tap will run with water.
5. Yes the dumb rockets with no guidance, just cast iron and gun powder will be a pain. But missiles of any significance will fall to earth like a shot up goose when the “EMP Cloud” stabilizes in the flight path of the incoming rocket so as it flies thru it it is killed, transistor by transistor.
Forget the big bang theory of EMP. American “HARP” and the realization that a smaller EMP jolt is just as good at killing transitors as a big nuclear blast, has turned battle field dynamics on it’s head.
When Assad checks his watch and finds it dead because of an EMP stealth demonstration just for him, and him alone, then you will see the chatter lines open up to Moscow to find out if the Russians know what is going on.
Stopwatch One is the code word.
Here today, fried today. Silence is golden.