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America's Ultra-Secret Weapon
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| arj1o1 |
SUMMARY @ BOTTOm!
| quote: | America's Ultra-Secret Weapon
By MARK THOMPSON
Posted Sunday, January 19, 2003; 10:31 a.m. EST
Every war has its wonder weapon. In Afghanistan, it was the Predator, the unmanned drone that would loiter, invisibly, over the battlefield before unleashing a Hellfire missile on an unsuspecting target. The Gulf War marked the debut of precision-guided munitions, and in Vietnam helicopters came of age. World War II gave us the horror of nuclear weapons, and World War I introduced the tank. If there's a second Gulf War, get ready to meet the high-power microwave.
HPMs are man-made lightning bolts crammed into cruise missiles. They could be key weapons for targeting Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. HPMs fry the sophisticated computers and electronic gear necessary to produce, protect, store and deliver such agents. The powerful electromagnetic pulses can travel into deeply buried bunkers through ventilation shafts, plumbing and antennas. But unlike conventional explosives, they won't spew deadly agents into the air, where they could poison Iraqi civilians or advancing U.S. troops.
The HPM is a top-secret program, and the Pentagon wants to keep it that way. Senior military officials have dropped hints about a new, classified weapon for Iraq but won't provide details. Still, information about HPMs, first successfully tested in 1999, has trickled out. "High-power microwave technology is ready for the transition to active weapons in the U.S. military," Air Force Colonel Eileen Walling wrote in a rare, unclassified report on the program three years ago. "There are signs that microwave weapons will represent a revolutionary concept for warfare, principally because microwaves are designed to incapacitate equipment rather than humans."
HPMs can unleash in a flash as much electrical power—2 billion watts or more—as the Hoover Dam generates in 24 hours. Capacitors aboard the missile discharge an energy pulse—moving at the speed of light and impervious to bad weather—in front of the missile as it nears its target. That pulse can destroy any electronics within 1,000 ft. of the flash by short-circuiting internal electrical connections, thereby wrecking memory chips, ruining computer motherboards and generally screwing up electronic components not built to withstand such powerful surges. It's similar to what can happen to your computer or TV when lightning strikes nearby and a tidal wave of electricity rides in through the wiring.
Most of this "e-bomb" development is taking place at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M. The Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland has been studying how to deliver varying but predictable electrical pulses to inflict increasing levels of harm: to deny, degrade, damage or destroy, to use the Pentagon's parlance. HPM engineers call it "dial-a-hurt." But that hurt can cause unintended problems: beyond taking out a tyrant's silicon chips, HPMs could destroy nearby heart pacemakers and other life-critical electrical systems in hospitals or aboard aircraft (that's why the U.S. military is putting them only on long-range cruise missiles). The U.S. used a more primitive form of these weapons—known as soft bombs—against Yugoslavia and in the first Gulf War, when cruise missiles showered miles of thin carbon fibers over electrical facilities, creating massive short circuits that shut down electrical power.
Although the Pentagon prefers not to use experimental weapons on the battlefield, "the world intervenes from time to time," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says. "And you reach in there and take something out that is still in a developmental stage, and you might use it." |
summary: USA has designed big microwave bombs which sends 20000 watt what all electricity will destroy |
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| kirbtastic |
| i guess its not so ultra secret anymore |
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| Psy-Trancer |
| aw well....i like microwaved popcorn...so ill cook some when they decide to use the bomb..lol |
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| tranceman78 |
America's real secret weapon:
.
She'll hunt down and smother all the rich terrorists single-handidly |
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| jinxed84 |
| yeah i saw this on tech TV..pretty nifty, but far from "secret" |
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| Furel |
| Is this some sort of super-dooper-ultra-enhanced EMP? |
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| Prototrance |
Yeah it sounds like an enhanced EMP. But I thought the only way to get an EMP shockwave of that magnitude was to detonate a nuclear warhead. Must be some serious capacitors on the missiles.
Great idea if it works, it takes away the enemy's ability to fight a successful war with no human casualties from its use. |
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| KoreanDJ |
suuuhhhhhhh wwwwweeeeeeeeeeeet
Stevek :toocool: |
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| FuzzyGreen |
I wonder what all the anti-war idiots think of technology like this.
Sounds like a great way to defeat an Army without hurting too many people. Imagine if they dropped these all over Iraq then afterwards dropped pappers saying that the war is over and America has destroyed Saddam's regime and all Iraqi army personal shall turn in their weapons at the nearest surrender station. Since the Iraqi army wouldn't be able to communicate they would have no idea if this is true or not and would most likely surrender and the war would end with very little bloodshed.
I was actually thinking of another chemical weapon. What if we were to cover Baghdad in a blanket of concentrated, pure, 100% government made MDMA with time release? You would have a bunch of people rolling balls out and you could just march the American army in and deal with these people on a emotional basis rather then a physical basis. A new type of weapon, "emotional weapons". Nothing like beating an enemy by making them feel good about you beating them. I bet the Army Psy ops already have tried something like this before. |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
EMPs have been used in NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. So this is nothing revolutionary, just an improvement of the currently existing weapons.
| quote: | | Imagine if they dropped these all over Iraq then afterwards dropped pappers saying that the war is over and America has destroyed Saddam's regime and all Iraqi army personal shall turn in their weapons at the nearest surrender station. Since the Iraqi army wouldn't be able to communicate they would have no idea if this is true or not and would most likely surrender and the war would end with very little bloodshed. |
Yeah, well in reality things would be different. It would definitely disrupt their communications, but they aren't going to be that naive. |
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| oceanlab |
| it can't be that ultra-secret if it was in todays Post |
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| TiestoInTheMix |
that's so cool... those must be some pretty freakin' huge capacitors...
i don't care if they use them in the middle east, as long as they stay away from my brand new digicam :D :D :D :D |
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