As it is to most other human activities, energy is vital to defense. The Battle of the Bulge at Christmas 1944, for example, involving 600,000 US troops, of whom 19,000 were killed, might have taken a different course (though perhaps not a different outcome) if the Luftwaffe's planes had not soon been grounded by a gasoline shortage. Near the town of Stavelot an American major poured can after can of gasoline into a deep road cut and set it alight to deny the advancing German tank divisions access to a big gasoline depot. His act proved crucial: near First Army headquarters the German spearhead ground to a halt for lack of fuel within one-half mile of the army's largest fuel depot.
Energy is again playing a dominant role in the Star Shield that could protect America instead of a suicide pact with the Kremlin. The concentrated energy of lasers can disable approaching mis-siles, and "smart rocks" seeking out attacking missiles ironically use the attacker's kinetic energy to destroy them.
Alas, energy can also be turned against computers and other high technology, of which the US has far more than the Soviets. An electromagnetic wave of sufficiently high power can damage or destroy the data stored in semiconductors, or even the semiconduc-tors themselves. In principle, this can also be done by the electromagnetic wave emitted by a lightning stroke (the stroke itself can, of course, burn anything in its path to cinders), and by the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that follows a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere [AtE Feb, Nov 84]. However, this can now also be done artificially by high-powered and very short microwave pulses beamed by dish antennas up to distances of some 50 miles.
The total energy needed is not very large, because it is trans-mitted in a very short pulse (repeated many times per second). This is analogous to the short impact of a hammer as against the steady pressure of its weight. Many of the devices producing the high power microwave radiation have been known for a long time. For example, the magnetron is an electronic device that was invented in 1939 (according to some claims in the 1920s), and now usually powers a household microwave oven. However, only in recent years has it been possible to make it radiate in very short bursts (10 nanoseconds, or 1/100,000,000 of one second) at a peak power of 10 GW
¾that's 10 nuclear plants delivering power at full capacity, though not for very long.That these pulses can injure and even kill troops at distances under about 2 miles is not important in the sense that this can be done far more simply with artillery and other conventional weapons; to the contrary, it is probably possible to choose a pulse repetition frequency so low that it leaves people uninjured, but dis-ables their electronic hardware.
Similarly, these weapons now being developed would not be cost-effective against tanks and helicopters, which are easier to destroy by small guided missiles. They could, however, be effective in disabling the control electronics of missiles. A new aspect is the absence of any indication of hits and misses by which to adjust the fire, as is done with anti-aircraft fire. The only indication of a hit would be a sudden change of course to an erratic one, but the tar-get missile could simulate that as soon as it detected a high-powered microwave attack
¾playing dead, so to speak.
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Vol. 16, No. 7
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 16, No. 7 Date: December 01, 2004 02:31 PM Title: The legacy
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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