This could happen to your cell phone
Boeing has successfully tested a new missile that can take out electronic targets with little collateral damage.
http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2012/10/25/boeing-successfully-tests-microwave-missile-that-takes-out-electronic-targets/
The aerospace company tested the microwave missile last week on a building on the Utah Test and Training Range where computers and electronic systems were turned on to gauge the effects of the missile’s radio waves.
The missile, known as CHAMP (Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project), fired a burst of High Powered Microwaves at the building, successfully knocking out the electronic systems and computers, and even taking out the television cameras recording the test.
You know those metal wallets being sold that will protect your credit cards from being scanned?
Better get one for your cell phone also.
What they are not talking about is what those microwaves will do to your eyeballs and other sensitive stuff you care about. Microwaves, besides burning out electrical and electronic equipment, are very good a cooking flesh, including yours.
Cooking people to death is not considered as collateral damage?
Oh... I forget... collateral damge is something done only to buildings and property. People are not counted.
3 comments:
Yipes! That's some scarey stuff. The test was successful, except for the now blind.
Wouldn't EMP be just as effective, and cause NO collateral damage.
An effective EMP pulse requires a nuclear device to give it enough oomph to do any serious damage, and even so, the amount of damage done is dissipated - quickly - by distance.
Both an EMP pulse and microwaves are ruled by the inverse square law.
An EMP pulse created by a nucler detonation will propagate in all directions, dissipating it's energy and effectivness very quickly, while those microwave weapons can be beamed like a flashlight, focusing their energy in a narrow beam, making them far more effective with a much smaller power requirement.
The inverse-square law states that the level of energy at any given point from the source is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from that source.
Sooooo... To have an EMP pusle that could take out all the electronics in the United States at once(which some EMP enthusiasts believe is do-able) you would need a nuclear device bigger than anything ever built.
Microwaves are easily directed by antenna structures, but any structure attempting to create and direct an EMP pulse would be vaporized at the instant of detonation, several nanosecords before the EMP pulse could be developed.
So what's the point? The EMP pulse could destroy all the electronics, but the shock wave from the blast would wipe out everything else.
This new perhaps cruise-missile or drone mounted microwave weapon is a far better solution for frying electronics than a continent-destroying EMP nuke.
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