Total Blackout-USAF tests defences against EMP attacks amid fears that ONE weapon could wipe out entire power grid

[Batcat]

I suspect one reason Trump created the Space Force ..

President Trump didn't 'create' Space Force'. He changed the hierarchy of Space Command, established in the 1980's, under President Reagan, to make it a stand-alone service.

Do you think President Truman 'created' The Air Force in 1947?

You win. What Trump did was similar to what Truman did. Congrats.

And yet ... President Trump was excoriated and mocked in the press for doing so. Truman was never criticized for what is, essentially, nothing more than an administrative re-organization.

The people of our nation elected a man who was not part of the political establishment.

Despite the fact that our nation is supposed to be a representative democracy in most cases the Globalists in power really don’t care which of the two candidates for president wins as they control both. Trump set their agenda back a decade and they will do everything in their power to insure that Trump or another nationalist like him ever gets to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office.

 

[whitehall]

The Military is full of smart people but they are mostly civil servants who plod along every day often using antiquated technology and following antiquated leaders and guide lines. It has become obvious that our "intelligence network" personnel aren't much better at their job when foreign agents hijacked an oil pipeline and a food supply network and the U.S. had to pay a hefty ransom. I don't have the solution but having the media use the problem for political gain only makes it worse.

 

[fncceo]

It has become obvious that our "intelligence network" personnel aren't much better at their job when foreign agents hijacked an oil pipeline and a food supply network and the U.S. had to pay a hefty ransom.

There is no incentive for them to be better.

Let's say you're a middle-level manager at CIA or NSA. You run a team of analysts and who work in cubicles in a windowless building somewhere in Virginia. Your path to promotion is making some vital (or at least interesting) discovery or connecting the intelligence dots to arrive at a previously unknown conclusion.

However, your team and it's raw data are compartmentalized (for security reasons). Like the seven blind men and the elephant, you can only touch your part of the elephant. To come up with any actionable intel, you would have to combine the data of other data to get a bigger picture.

But, if you do that, you lose control of the process and the next level managers, or those above them, will take credit for whatever is discovered. You are still stuck in your crappy, little cubicle with disgusting carpet at Langley.

This is precisely what led to the intelligence failures of 9-11.

 

[whitehall]

Thanks to LBJ's faked crisis in the Tonkin Gulf American troops were sent to Vietnam but this would be a new kind of war. The generals would sit on the sidelines and clerks and kids barely out of college would run the Vietnam war from the CIA in Washington. LBJ and the CIA set the rules so that American troops could win every battle but still lose the freaking war. The media and the CIA managed to blame the whole thing on Nixon.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

So

1. the US will die from within long before any foreign attack
2. who's capable of delivering those weapons? you would need long bombers, yes? so the initial defense would be the Navy, USAF, EWS, AWACS, etc

How about a nuke onboard a satellite?

Satellites make really poor nuclear platforms. They're next to impossible to hide. They can't be re-targeted easily, and they can't be hardened against attack.

They share the disadvantages of missile silos with the impossibility of defending them against attack.

You probably would never have to re-target a nuke onboard a satellite designed to be an EMP weapon.

North Korea's Satellites Could Unleash Electromagnetic Pulse Attack - Center for Security Policy

Originally published by Newsmax: North Korea reportedly is rebuilding its Sohae satellite launch facility, widely...

centerforsecuritypolicy.org

I am sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about. Satellites have a ground track that varies with the orbit. They are rarely geostationary because of the distance involved.

I am aware of that. Are you aware that a nuke on a satellite can be detonated at any point chosen by the controlling nation. For example North Korea could explode a satellite nuke when it was above our nation.

For example:

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States​

ByKen J.Updated on04/08/2013
50 Comments

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2 “satellite” this week from APR 8 – APR 16, which coincidentally just so happens to orbit along the eastern half of the U.S.

Some believe or suspect that this “satellite” may actually be a Super-EMP nuclear device…

No one knows for sure of course, but people like Dr. Peter Vincent Pry with credentials from the USAF Weapons Laboratory believes that North Korea indeed may have the capability or may even posses Super-EMP nuclear weapons.

On December 12, 2012, the Kwangmyongsong 3-2 (KMS 3-2) was launched into space on a polar orbit, and is said to be an “Earth observation satellite”. The satellite was not placed perfectly and is evidently tumbling every 17 seconds while it orbits the earth. From an EMP nuclear weapon perspective, the tumbling is apparently irrelevant.

The altitude of orbit is approximately 500 km, or about 300 miles, the perfect altitude for EMP detonation for maximum range and damage. Coincidence?

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2

modernsurvivalblog.com

Do you have any clue as to how large this Super-EMP device would have to be to have any effectiveness? Apparently not!

Do you read links? The links I provided were full of info. Just because I am patient I will give you a couple more links.

High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse and High Power Microwave Devices: Threat Assessments

Congressional Research Service Report for Congress Clay Wilson Specialist in Technology and National Security Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress Order Code RL32544 Updated August 20, 2004 Summary Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) is an...

www.history.navy.mil

Nuclear electromagnetic pulse - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So tell me, when did any other country develop a yield sufficient to produce an EMP capable of have widespread impact? How can such a heavy payload get on a satellite in orbit?

I was a nuclear weapons officer in the Navy. Your sources are exaggerating the capability.

Despite your background you seem to be believe that an EMP weapon must be HUGE, POWERFUL and HEAVY.

There haven’t been many tests of EMP weapons so there are disagreements on the size of the weapon but most experts do not believe you must have let’s say a 100 megaton blast.

*****

The most routinely cited estimates come from a pair of assessments put together by the Congressional EMP Commission in 2004 and 2008. The commission had access to classified research and was allowed to conduct some testing of its own in a laboratory environment. Its findings weren’t optimistic.

According to the 2008 report on critical infrastructure: “The cascading effects from even one or two relatively small weapons exploded in optimum location in space at present would almost certainly shut down an entire interconnected electrical power system, perhaps affecting as much as 70 percent or possibly more of the United States, all in an instant.… Should significant parts of the electrical power infrastructure be lost for any substantial period of time, the Commission believes that the consequences are likely to be catastrophic, and many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities.”

The following year, the chairman of the EMP Commission told Congress that the damage in areas within the blast radius would be an order of magnitude worse than what Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the Gulf Coast in 2005—and that a 90% fatality rate nationwide within a year due to starvation and systems breakdown was plausible. (emphasis added).

Since then, public officials, including a former CIA director, have routinely given credence to the 90% figure. But experts in the scientific community have dismissed this figure, along with a number of other commission findings, as speculative and/or contingent on factors that are basically impossible to model.

The EMP Threat: How It Works and What It Means for the Korean Crisis - Geopolitical Futures

Given the uncertainty surrounding the crisis, the threat of a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse attack can’t be dismissed completely.

geopoliticalfutures.com

********


EMP Threat from Satellites

While most analysts are fixated on when in the future North Korea will develop highly reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles, guidance systems, and reentry vehicles capable of striking a US city, the present threat from EMP is largely ignored. An EMP attack does not require an accurate guidance system because the area of effect, having a radius of hundreds or thousands of kilometers, is so large. No reentry vehicle is needed because the warhead is detonated at high-altitude, above the atmosphere. Missile reliability matters little because only one missile has to work to make an EMP attack.

For instance, North Korea could make an EMP attack against the United States by launching a short-range missile off a freighter or submarine or by lofting a warhead to 30 kilometers burst height by balloon. While such lower-altitude EMP attacks would not cover the whole US mainland, as would an attack at higher-altitude (300 kilometers), even a balloon-lofted warhead detonated at 30 kilometers altitude could blackout the Eastern Grid that supports most of the population and generates 75 percent of US electricity.

Moreover, an EMP attack could be made by a North Korean satellite. The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth. The south polar trajectory of KMS-3 and KMS-4 evades US Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radars and National Missile Defenses, resembling a Russian secret weapon developed during the Cold War, called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that would have used a nuclear-armed satellite to make a surprise EMP attack on the United States.(emphasis added).

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

I disagree. Your links show that in order to be effective, the weapon must have a significant yield. No other nuclear power other than Russia or China has demonstrated the ability to even have weapons much much powerful than those we used in WWII.

My links did not show that at all. For example from one of my links:

The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

Have a good day. I see no good reason to carry on this discussion.

That will produce an EMP, but because the yield is so small, it will be a very relatively small EMP. You keep asking me to ignore the laws of physics. TRy looking at the formulae and try coming to a conclusion that smaller yield produces just the same effect as a larger yield. The reason your articles don't show examples is that the truth defeats the effects of fearing the potential of these weapons.

I loved your stating that a satellite tumbling would not matter as far as the EMP. That ignores the fact that a satellite is out of control could be employed for any real purpose. Think about that for just a minute and you might see how ridiculous that sounds..

 

[Batcat]

So

1. the US will die from within long before any foreign attack
2. who's capable of delivering those weapons? you would need long bombers, yes? so the initial defense would be the Navy, USAF, EWS, AWACS, etc

How about a nuke onboard a satellite?

Satellites make really poor nuclear platforms. They're next to impossible to hide. They can't be re-targeted easily, and they can't be hardened against attack.

They share the disadvantages of missile silos with the impossibility of defending them against attack.

You probably would never have to re-target a nuke onboard a satellite designed to be an EMP weapon.

North Korea's Satellites Could Unleash Electromagnetic Pulse Attack - Center for Security Policy

Originally published by Newsmax: North Korea reportedly is rebuilding its Sohae satellite launch facility, widely...

centerforsecuritypolicy.org

I am sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about. Satellites have a ground track that varies with the orbit. They are rarely geostationary because of the distance involved.

I am aware of that. Are you aware that a nuke on a satellite can be detonated at any point chosen by the controlling nation. For example North Korea could explode a satellite nuke when it was above our nation.

For example:

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States​

ByKen J.Updated on04/08/2013
50 Comments

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2 “satellite” this week from APR 8 – APR 16, which coincidentally just so happens to orbit along the eastern half of the U.S.

Some believe or suspect that this “satellite” may actually be a Super-EMP nuclear device…

No one knows for sure of course, but people like Dr. Peter Vincent Pry with credentials from the USAF Weapons Laboratory believes that North Korea indeed may have the capability or may even posses Super-EMP nuclear weapons.

On December 12, 2012, the Kwangmyongsong 3-2 (KMS 3-2) was launched into space on a polar orbit, and is said to be an “Earth observation satellite”. The satellite was not placed perfectly and is evidently tumbling every 17 seconds while it orbits the earth. From an EMP nuclear weapon perspective, the tumbling is apparently irrelevant.

The altitude of orbit is approximately 500 km, or about 300 miles, the perfect altitude for EMP detonation for maximum range and damage. Coincidence?

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2

modernsurvivalblog.com

Do you have any clue as to how large this Super-EMP device would have to be to have any effectiveness? Apparently not!

Do you read links? The links I provided were full of info. Just because I am patient I will give you a couple more links.

High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse and High Power Microwave Devices: Threat Assessments

Congressional Research Service Report for Congress Clay Wilson Specialist in Technology and National Security Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress Order Code RL32544 Updated August 20, 2004 Summary Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) is an...

www.history.navy.mil

Nuclear electromagnetic pulse - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So tell me, when did any other country develop a yield sufficient to produce an EMP capable of have widespread impact? How can such a heavy payload get on a satellite in orbit?

I was a nuclear weapons officer in the Navy. Your sources are exaggerating the capability.

Despite your background you seem to be believe that an EMP weapon must be HUGE, POWERFUL and HEAVY.

There haven’t been many tests of EMP weapons so there are disagreements on the size of the weapon but most experts do not believe you must have let’s say a 100 megaton blast.

*****

The most routinely cited estimates come from a pair of assessments put together by the Congressional EMP Commission in 2004 and 2008. The commission had access to classified research and was allowed to conduct some testing of its own in a laboratory environment. Its findings weren’t optimistic.

According to the 2008 report on critical infrastructure: “The cascading effects from even one or two relatively small weapons exploded in optimum location in space at present would almost certainly shut down an entire interconnected electrical power system, perhaps affecting as much as 70 percent or possibly more of the United States, all in an instant.… Should significant parts of the electrical power infrastructure be lost for any substantial period of time, the Commission believes that the consequences are likely to be catastrophic, and many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities.”

The following year, the chairman of the EMP Commission told Congress that the damage in areas within the blast radius would be an order of magnitude worse than what Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the Gulf Coast in 2005—and that a 90% fatality rate nationwide within a year due to starvation and systems breakdown was plausible. (emphasis added).

Since then, public officials, including a former CIA director, have routinely given credence to the 90% figure. But experts in the scientific community have dismissed this figure, along with a number of other commission findings, as speculative and/or contingent on factors that are basically impossible to model.

The EMP Threat: How It Works and What It Means for the Korean Crisis - Geopolitical Futures

Given the uncertainty surrounding the crisis, the threat of a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse attack can’t be dismissed completely.

geopoliticalfutures.com

********


EMP Threat from Satellites

While most analysts are fixated on when in the future North Korea will develop highly reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles, guidance systems, and reentry vehicles capable of striking a US city, the present threat from EMP is largely ignored. An EMP attack does not require an accurate guidance system because the area of effect, having a radius of hundreds or thousands of kilometers, is so large. No reentry vehicle is needed because the warhead is detonated at high-altitude, above the atmosphere. Missile reliability matters little because only one missile has to work to make an EMP attack.

For instance, North Korea could make an EMP attack against the United States by launching a short-range missile off a freighter or submarine or by lofting a warhead to 30 kilometers burst height by balloon. While such lower-altitude EMP attacks would not cover the whole US mainland, as would an attack at higher-altitude (300 kilometers), even a balloon-lofted warhead detonated at 30 kilometers altitude could blackout the Eastern Grid that supports most of the population and generates 75 percent of US electricity.

Moreover, an EMP attack could be made by a North Korean satellite. The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth. The south polar trajectory of KMS-3 and KMS-4 evades US Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radars and National Missile Defenses, resembling a Russian secret weapon developed during the Cold War, called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that would have used a nuclear-armed satellite to make a surprise EMP attack on the United States.(emphasis added).

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

I disagree. Your links show that in order to be effective, the weapon must have a significant yield. No other nuclear power other than Russia or China has demonstrated the ability to even have weapons much much powerful than those we used in WWII.

My links did not show that at all. For example from one of my links:

The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

Have a good day. I see no good reason to carry on this discussion.

That will produce an EMP, but because the yield is so small, it will be a very relatively small EMP. You keep asking me to ignore the laws of physics. TRy looking at the formulae and try coming to a conclusion that smaller yield produces just the same effect as a larger yield. The reason your articles don't show examples is that the truth defeats the effects of fearing the potential of these weapons.

I loved your stating that a satellite tumbling would not matter as far as the EMP. That ignores the fact that a satellite is out of control could be employed for any real purpose. Think about that for just a minute and you might see how ridiculous that sounds..

The statements about the yield of a weapon designed to be used for EMP and about the weapon tumbling come from links I referenced.

You remind me of a co-worker I knew back in the 1970s. We had an argument over whether EMP actually existed. He insisted based on his classes in physics that there was no such thing,. No matter how much evidence I presented he refused to believe it.

You also seemed locked in on the bigger is better theory. Now if you are Rocket Man from North Korea you may have a hard time getting a 10 megaton nuke in orbit but you may be able to put a ten kiloton nuke or maybe even a 1 megaton weapon in orbit.

However you may also be able to use a nuke especially designed as an EMP weapon.

In 2004, the Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission was warned by a delegation of Russian generals that Russia had developed a “Super-EMP” nuclear warhead, and that design information for this weapon had leaked to North Korea.
A Super-EMP warhead is a nuclear weapon specially designed to produce an enormous burst of gamma rays that generates an extraordinarily powerful electromagnetic pulse, capable of destroying even the best protected electronics, thereby paralyzing military forces and blacking out power grids and collapsing critical infrastructures everywhere–across an entire nation the size of the United States.

Apparently, one of the signatures of a Super-EMP weapon is that it has a very low explosive yield, just several kilotons because the weapon is converting the energy of the nuclear warhead into gamma rays.

In 2004, the Russian generals told the EMP Commission that North Korea was getting help developing a Super-EMP nuclear weapon from contractors from Russia, China, Pakistan and elsewhere, and could probably test such a weapon “in a few years.” A few years later, in 2006, North Korea tested its mysterious “nuclear device” that produced an explosive yield of only several kilotons, and so was derided by the Western press as a failure–but hailed as a success by North Korea.
In 2012, a military commentator for the People’s Republic of China told a Hong Kong journal that North Korea has Super-EMP nuclear warheads.

One nuclear EMP warhead attack could collapse the national electric grid and other critical infrastructures–communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water–that sustain modern civilization and the lives of millions.

A Super-EMP attack on the U.S. would cause much more damage than a primitive nuclear weapon, and will likely result in catastrophic consequences that will be irreversible. A Super-EMP attack would inflict maximum damage and virtually ensure a world without America.

North Korea Super-EMP Weapon

North Korea may possess, or may be in the advanced stages of developing a Super EMP weapon. As the U.S., pundits and media continue to downplay every

modernsurvivalblog.com

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

So

1. the US will die from within long before any foreign attack
2. who's capable of delivering those weapons? you would need long bombers, yes? so the initial defense would be the Navy, USAF, EWS, AWACS, etc

How about a nuke onboard a satellite?

Satellites make really poor nuclear platforms. They're next to impossible to hide. They can't be re-targeted easily, and they can't be hardened against attack.

They share the disadvantages of missile silos with the impossibility of defending them against attack.

You probably would never have to re-target a nuke onboard a satellite designed to be an EMP weapon.

North Korea's Satellites Could Unleash Electromagnetic Pulse Attack - Center for Security Policy

Originally published by Newsmax: North Korea reportedly is rebuilding its Sohae satellite launch facility, widely...

centerforsecuritypolicy.org

I am sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about. Satellites have a ground track that varies with the orbit. They are rarely geostationary because of the distance involved.

I am aware of that. Are you aware that a nuke on a satellite can be detonated at any point chosen by the controlling nation. For example North Korea could explode a satellite nuke when it was above our nation.

For example:

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States​

ByKen J.Updated on04/08/2013
50 Comments

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2 “satellite” this week from APR 8 – APR 16, which coincidentally just so happens to orbit along the eastern half of the U.S.

Some believe or suspect that this “satellite” may actually be a Super-EMP nuclear device…

No one knows for sure of course, but people like Dr. Peter Vincent Pry with credentials from the USAF Weapons Laboratory believes that North Korea indeed may have the capability or may even posses Super-EMP nuclear weapons.

On December 12, 2012, the Kwangmyongsong 3-2 (KMS 3-2) was launched into space on a polar orbit, and is said to be an “Earth observation satellite”. The satellite was not placed perfectly and is evidently tumbling every 17 seconds while it orbits the earth. From an EMP nuclear weapon perspective, the tumbling is apparently irrelevant.

The altitude of orbit is approximately 500 km, or about 300 miles, the perfect altitude for EMP detonation for maximum range and damage. Coincidence?

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2

modernsurvivalblog.com

Do you have any clue as to how large this Super-EMP device would have to be to have any effectiveness? Apparently not!

Do you read links? The links I provided were full of info. Just because I am patient I will give you a couple more links.

High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse and High Power Microwave Devices: Threat Assessments

Congressional Research Service Report for Congress Clay Wilson Specialist in Technology and National Security Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress Order Code RL32544 Updated August 20, 2004 Summary Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) is an...

www.history.navy.mil

Nuclear electromagnetic pulse - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So tell me, when did any other country develop a yield sufficient to produce an EMP capable of have widespread impact? How can such a heavy payload get on a satellite in orbit?

I was a nuclear weapons officer in the Navy. Your sources are exaggerating the capability.

Despite your background you seem to be believe that an EMP weapon must be HUGE, POWERFUL and HEAVY.

There haven’t been many tests of EMP weapons so there are disagreements on the size of the weapon but most experts do not believe you must have let’s say a 100 megaton blast.

*****

The most routinely cited estimates come from a pair of assessments put together by the Congressional EMP Commission in 2004 and 2008. The commission had access to classified research and was allowed to conduct some testing of its own in a laboratory environment. Its findings weren’t optimistic.

According to the 2008 report on critical infrastructure: “The cascading effects from even one or two relatively small weapons exploded in optimum location in space at present would almost certainly shut down an entire interconnected electrical power system, perhaps affecting as much as 70 percent or possibly more of the United States, all in an instant.… Should significant parts of the electrical power infrastructure be lost for any substantial period of time, the Commission believes that the consequences are likely to be catastrophic, and many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities.”

The following year, the chairman of the EMP Commission told Congress that the damage in areas within the blast radius would be an order of magnitude worse than what Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the Gulf Coast in 2005—and that a 90% fatality rate nationwide within a year due to starvation and systems breakdown was plausible. (emphasis added).

Since then, public officials, including a former CIA director, have routinely given credence to the 90% figure. But experts in the scientific community have dismissed this figure, along with a number of other commission findings, as speculative and/or contingent on factors that are basically impossible to model.

The EMP Threat: How It Works and What It Means for the Korean Crisis - Geopolitical Futures

Given the uncertainty surrounding the crisis, the threat of a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse attack can’t be dismissed completely.

geopoliticalfutures.com

********


EMP Threat from Satellites

While most analysts are fixated on when in the future North Korea will develop highly reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles, guidance systems, and reentry vehicles capable of striking a US city, the present threat from EMP is largely ignored. An EMP attack does not require an accurate guidance system because the area of effect, having a radius of hundreds or thousands of kilometers, is so large. No reentry vehicle is needed because the warhead is detonated at high-altitude, above the atmosphere. Missile reliability matters little because only one missile has to work to make an EMP attack.

For instance, North Korea could make an EMP attack against the United States by launching a short-range missile off a freighter or submarine or by lofting a warhead to 30 kilometers burst height by balloon. While such lower-altitude EMP attacks would not cover the whole US mainland, as would an attack at higher-altitude (300 kilometers), even a balloon-lofted warhead detonated at 30 kilometers altitude could blackout the Eastern Grid that supports most of the population and generates 75 percent of US electricity.

Moreover, an EMP attack could be made by a North Korean satellite. The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth. The south polar trajectory of KMS-3 and KMS-4 evades US Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radars and National Missile Defenses, resembling a Russian secret weapon developed during the Cold War, called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that would have used a nuclear-armed satellite to make a surprise EMP attack on the United States.(emphasis added).

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

I disagree. Your links show that in order to be effective, the weapon must have a significant yield. No other nuclear power other than Russia or China has demonstrated the ability to even have weapons much much powerful than those we used in WWII.

My links did not show that at all. For example from one of my links:

The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

Have a good day. I see no good reason to carry on this discussion.

That will produce an EMP, but because the yield is so small, it will be a very relatively small EMP. You keep asking me to ignore the laws of physics. TRy looking at the formulae and try coming to a conclusion that smaller yield produces just the same effect as a larger yield. The reason your articles don't show examples is that the truth defeats the effects of fearing the potential of these weapons.

I loved your stating that a satellite tumbling would not matter as far as the EMP. That ignores the fact that a satellite is out of control could be employed for any real purpose. Think about that for just a minute and you might see how ridiculous that sounds..

The statements about the yield of a weapon designed to be used for EMP and about the weapon tumbling come from links I referenced.

You remind me of a co-worker I knew back in the 1970s. We had an argument over whether EMP actually existed. He insisted based on his classes in physics that there was no such thing,. No matter how much evidence I presented he refused to believe it.

You also seemed locked in on the bigger is better theory. Now if you are Rocket Man from North Korea you may have a hard time getting a 10 megaton nuke in orbit but you may be able to put a ten kiloton nuke or maybe even a 1 megaton weapon in orbit.

However you may also be able to use a nuke especially designed as an EMP weapon.

In 2004, the Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission was warned by a delegation of Russian generals that Russia had developed a “Super-EMP” nuclear warhead, and that design information for this weapon had leaked to North Korea.
A Super-EMP warhead is a nuclear weapon specially designed to produce an enormous burst of gamma rays that generates an extraordinarily powerful electromagnetic pulse, capable of destroying even the best protected electronics, thereby paralyzing military forces and blacking out power grids and collapsing critical infrastructures everywhere–across an entire nation the size of the United States.

Apparently, one of the signatures of a Super-EMP weapon is that it has a very low explosive yield, just several kilotons because the weapon is converting the energy of the nuclear warhead into gamma rays.

In 2004, the Russian generals told the EMP Commission that North Korea was getting help developing a Super-EMP nuclear weapon from contractors from Russia, China, Pakistan and elsewhere, and could probably test such a weapon “in a few years.” A few years later, in 2006, North Korea tested its mysterious “nuclear device” that produced an explosive yield of only several kilotons, and so was derided by the Western press as a failure–but hailed as a success by North Korea.
In 2012, a military commentator for the People’s Republic of China told a Hong Kong journal that North Korea has Super-EMP nuclear warheads.

One nuclear EMP warhead attack could collapse the national electric grid and other critical infrastructures–communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water–that sustain modern civilization and the lives of millions.

A Super-EMP attack on the U.S. would cause much more damage than a primitive nuclear weapon, and will likely result in catastrophic consequences that will be irreversible. A Super-EMP attack would inflict maximum damage and virtually ensure a world without America.

North Korea Super-EMP Weapon

North Korea may possess, or may be in the advanced stages of developing a Super EMP weapon. As the U.S., pundits and media continue to downplay every

modernsurvivalblog.com

Oh, please! You have now moved on to stone-cold stupid and insulting. The North Koreans have virtually no capability to even produce a viable nuke. The highest estimated yield is still in the kiloton range at 280.

 

[Dayton3]

Thanks to LBJ's faked crisis in the Tonkin Gulf American troops were sent to Vietnam but this would be a new kind of war. The generals would sit on the sidelines and clerks and kids barely out of college would run the Vietnam war from the CIA in Washington. LBJ and the CIA set the rules so that American troops could win every battle but still lose the freaking war. The media and the CIA managed to blame the whole thing on Nixon.

LBJ didn't fake a crisis in the Gulf of Tonkin. The August 4th attack on the U.S.S. Maddox and Turner Joy never happened and LBJ himself doubted it.

But the August 2nd attack on the U.S.S. Maddox DID HAPPEN and the North Vietnamese openly admitted it. Both at the time and later.

Gulf of Tonkin incident - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Batcat]

So

1. the US will die from within long before any foreign attack
2. who's capable of delivering those weapons? you would need long bombers, yes? so the initial defense would be the Navy, USAF, EWS, AWACS, etc

How about a nuke onboard a satellite?

Satellites make really poor nuclear platforms. They're next to impossible to hide. They can't be re-targeted easily, and they can't be hardened against attack.

They share the disadvantages of missile silos with the impossibility of defending them against attack.

You probably would never have to re-target a nuke onboard a satellite designed to be an EMP weapon.

North Korea's Satellites Could Unleash Electromagnetic Pulse Attack - Center for Security Policy

Originally published by Newsmax: North Korea reportedly is rebuilding its Sohae satellite launch facility, widely...

centerforsecuritypolicy.org

I am sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about. Satellites have a ground track that varies with the orbit. They are rarely geostationary because of the distance involved.

I am aware of that. Are you aware that a nuke on a satellite can be detonated at any point chosen by the controlling nation. For example North Korea could explode a satellite nuke when it was above our nation.

For example:

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States​

ByKen J.Updated on04/08/2013
50 Comments

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2 “satellite” this week from APR 8 – APR 16, which coincidentally just so happens to orbit along the eastern half of the U.S.

Some believe or suspect that this “satellite” may actually be a Super-EMP nuclear device…

No one knows for sure of course, but people like Dr. Peter Vincent Pry with credentials from the USAF Weapons Laboratory believes that North Korea indeed may have the capability or may even posses Super-EMP nuclear weapons.

On December 12, 2012, the Kwangmyongsong 3-2 (KMS 3-2) was launched into space on a polar orbit, and is said to be an “Earth observation satellite”. The satellite was not placed perfectly and is evidently tumbling every 17 seconds while it orbits the earth. From an EMP nuclear weapon perspective, the tumbling is apparently irrelevant.

The altitude of orbit is approximately 500 km, or about 300 miles, the perfect altitude for EMP detonation for maximum range and damage. Coincidence?

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2

modernsurvivalblog.com

Do you have any clue as to how large this Super-EMP device would have to be to have any effectiveness? Apparently not!

Do you read links? The links I provided were full of info. Just because I am patient I will give you a couple more links.

High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse and High Power Microwave Devices: Threat Assessments

Congressional Research Service Report for Congress Clay Wilson Specialist in Technology and National Security Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress Order Code RL32544 Updated August 20, 2004 Summary Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) is an...

www.history.navy.mil

Nuclear electromagnetic pulse - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So tell me, when did any other country develop a yield sufficient to produce an EMP capable of have widespread impact? How can such a heavy payload get on a satellite in orbit?

I was a nuclear weapons officer in the Navy. Your sources are exaggerating the capability.

Despite your background you seem to be believe that an EMP weapon must be HUGE, POWERFUL and HEAVY.

There haven’t been many tests of EMP weapons so there are disagreements on the size of the weapon but most experts do not believe you must have let’s say a 100 megaton blast.

*****

The most routinely cited estimates come from a pair of assessments put together by the Congressional EMP Commission in 2004 and 2008. The commission had access to classified research and was allowed to conduct some testing of its own in a laboratory environment. Its findings weren’t optimistic.

According to the 2008 report on critical infrastructure: “The cascading effects from even one or two relatively small weapons exploded in optimum location in space at present would almost certainly shut down an entire interconnected electrical power system, perhaps affecting as much as 70 percent or possibly more of the United States, all in an instant.… Should significant parts of the electrical power infrastructure be lost for any substantial period of time, the Commission believes that the consequences are likely to be catastrophic, and many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities.”

The following year, the chairman of the EMP Commission told Congress that the damage in areas within the blast radius would be an order of magnitude worse than what Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the Gulf Coast in 2005—and that a 90% fatality rate nationwide within a year due to starvation and systems breakdown was plausible. (emphasis added).

Since then, public officials, including a former CIA director, have routinely given credence to the 90% figure. But experts in the scientific community have dismissed this figure, along with a number of other commission findings, as speculative and/or contingent on factors that are basically impossible to model.

The EMP Threat: How It Works and What It Means for the Korean Crisis - Geopolitical Futures

Given the uncertainty surrounding the crisis, the threat of a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse attack can’t be dismissed completely.

geopoliticalfutures.com

********


EMP Threat from Satellites

While most analysts are fixated on when in the future North Korea will develop highly reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles, guidance systems, and reentry vehicles capable of striking a US city, the present threat from EMP is largely ignored. An EMP attack does not require an accurate guidance system because the area of effect, having a radius of hundreds or thousands of kilometers, is so large. No reentry vehicle is needed because the warhead is detonated at high-altitude, above the atmosphere. Missile reliability matters little because only one missile has to work to make an EMP attack.

For instance, North Korea could make an EMP attack against the United States by launching a short-range missile off a freighter or submarine or by lofting a warhead to 30 kilometers burst height by balloon. While such lower-altitude EMP attacks would not cover the whole US mainland, as would an attack at higher-altitude (300 kilometers), even a balloon-lofted warhead detonated at 30 kilometers altitude could blackout the Eastern Grid that supports most of the population and generates 75 percent of US electricity.

Moreover, an EMP attack could be made by a North Korean satellite. The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth. The south polar trajectory of KMS-3 and KMS-4 evades US Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radars and National Missile Defenses, resembling a Russian secret weapon developed during the Cold War, called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that would have used a nuclear-armed satellite to make a surprise EMP attack on the United States.(emphasis added).

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

I disagree. Your links show that in order to be effective, the weapon must have a significant yield. No other nuclear power other than Russia or China has demonstrated the ability to even have weapons much much powerful than those we used in WWII.

My links did not show that at all. For example from one of my links:

The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

Have a good day. I see no good reason to carry on this discussion.

That will produce an EMP, but because the yield is so small, it will be a very relatively small EMP. You keep asking me to ignore the laws of physics. TRy looking at the formulae and try coming to a conclusion that smaller yield produces just the same effect as a larger yield. The reason your articles don't show examples is that the truth defeats the effects of fearing the potential of these weapons.

I loved your stating that a satellite tumbling would not matter as far as the EMP. That ignores the fact that a satellite is out of control could be employed for any real purpose. Think about that for just a minute and you might see how ridiculous that sounds..

The statements about the yield of a weapon designed to be used for EMP and about the weapon tumbling come from links I referenced.

You remind me of a co-worker I knew back in the 1970s. We had an argument over whether EMP actually existed. He insisted based on his classes in physics that there was no such thing,. No matter how much evidence I presented he refused to believe it.

You also seemed locked in on the bigger is better theory. Now if you are Rocket Man from North Korea you may have a hard time getting a 10 megaton nuke in orbit but you may be able to put a ten kiloton nuke or maybe even a 1 megaton weapon in orbit.

However you may also be able to use a nuke especially designed as an EMP weapon.

In 2004, the Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission was warned by a delegation of Russian generals that Russia had developed a “Super-EMP” nuclear warhead, and that design information for this weapon had leaked to North Korea.
A Super-EMP warhead is a nuclear weapon specially designed to produce an enormous burst of gamma rays that generates an extraordinarily powerful electromagnetic pulse, capable of destroying even the best protected electronics, thereby paralyzing military forces and blacking out power grids and collapsing critical infrastructures everywhere–across an entire nation the size of the United States.

Apparently, one of the signatures of a Super-EMP weapon is that it has a very low explosive yield, just several kilotons because the weapon is converting the energy of the nuclear warhead into gamma rays.

In 2004, the Russian generals told the EMP Commission that North Korea was getting help developing a Super-EMP nuclear weapon from contractors from Russia, China, Pakistan and elsewhere, and could probably test such a weapon “in a few years.” A few years later, in 2006, North Korea tested its mysterious “nuclear device” that produced an explosive yield of only several kilotons, and so was derided by the Western press as a failure–but hailed as a success by North Korea.
In 2012, a military commentator for the People’s Republic of China told a Hong Kong journal that North Korea has Super-EMP nuclear warheads.

One nuclear EMP warhead attack could collapse the national electric grid and other critical infrastructures–communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water–that sustain modern civilization and the lives of millions.

A Super-EMP attack on the U.S. would cause much more damage than a primitive nuclear weapon, and will likely result in catastrophic consequences that will be irreversible. A Super-EMP attack would inflict maximum damage and virtually ensure a world without America.

North Korea Super-EMP Weapon

North Korea may possess, or may be in the advanced stages of developing a Super EMP weapon. As the U.S., pundits and media continue to downplay every

modernsurvivalblog.com

Oh, please! You have now moved on to stone-cold stupid and insulting. The North Koreans have virtually no capability to even produce a viable nuke. The highest estimated yield is still in the kiloton range at 280.

I am providing information from links by people considered to be experts some who have testified in front of Congress.

You have presented your own views without any support. As far as I know you could be a fat teenager in his mom’s basement.

Here for you is some more expert opinion


In 2015, Admiral William Gortney, commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD, commented, “I agree with the intelligence community that we assess that they have the ability, they have the weapons, and they have the ability to miniaturize those weapons, and they have the ability to put them on rockets that can range the homeland.” That same year, General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, and Admiral Cecil Haney, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, also testified that they believed North Korea has already miniaturized at least some of its nuclear weapons.

In 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper publicly stated that the intelligence community concluded years earlier that North Korea had the capability to reach parts of the United States with nuclear weapons. The U.S. intelligence community concluded in 2017 that that North Korea had produced 30-60 warheads and can create fissile material for seven to 12 warheads per year.

UN Report Underlines North Korea’s Continuing Nuclear Ambitions

The new report affirms U.S. assessments of North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

thediplomat.com

You mentioned the highest yield of a North Korean nuke is around 280 kilotons and insinuated that was hardly a viable nuke.

Well if you are right then our Trident subs may be carrying nukes which are so low powered as to be unviable.

The Trump Administration developed a new low-yield version of the W-76 warhead for existing submarine-launched Trident II (D-5) missiles. Unclassified sources state that the existing W76-1 warhead has an explosive yield of around 100 kilotons. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has said the low-yield version, the W76-2, would be configured “for primary-only detonation.” This could mean a yield of less than 10 kilotons.

Summary of Low-Yield Nuclear Warhead Debate - USNI News

The following is the Jan. 5, 2021 Congressional Research Service In Focus report, A Low-Yield, Submarine-Launched Nuclear Warhead: Overview of the Expert Debate. From the report The Low-Yield D-5 Warhead The Trump Administration developed a new low-yield version of the W-76 warhead for existing...

news.usni.org

Plus people in Japan might consider a 280 kiloton weapon to be viable.


A deterministic estimate of the nuclear radiation fields from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear weapon explosions requires the yields of these explosions. The yield of the Nagasaki explosion is rather well established by both fireball and radiochemical data from other tests as 21 kt [one kiloton equals the explosive power of 1,000 tons of TNT]. There are no equivalent data for the Hiroshima explosion. Equating thermal radiation and blast effects observed at the two cities subsequent to the explosions gives a yield of about 15 kt [at Hiroshima]. The pressure-vs-time data, obtained by dropped, parachute-retarded canisters and reevaluated using 2-D hydrodynamic calculations, give a yield between 16 and 17 kt. Scaling the gamma-ray dose data and calculations gives a yield of about 15 kt. Sulfur neutron activation data give a yield of about 15 kt. The current best estimates for the yield of these explosions are the following:
Hiroshima 15 kt

Nagasaki 21 kt

What was the yield of the Hiroshima bomb?

www.warbirdforum.com

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

So

1. the US will die from within long before any foreign attack
2. who's capable of delivering those weapons? you would need long bombers, yes? so the initial defense would be the Navy, USAF, EWS, AWACS, etc

How about a nuke onboard a satellite?

Satellites make really poor nuclear platforms. They're next to impossible to hide. They can't be re-targeted easily, and they can't be hardened against attack.

They share the disadvantages of missile silos with the impossibility of defending them against attack.

You probably would never have to re-target a nuke onboard a satellite designed to be an EMP weapon.

North Korea's Satellites Could Unleash Electromagnetic Pulse Attack - Center for Security Policy

Originally published by Newsmax: North Korea reportedly is rebuilding its Sohae satellite launch facility, widely...

centerforsecuritypolicy.org

I am sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about. Satellites have a ground track that varies with the orbit. They are rarely geostationary because of the distance involved.

I am aware of that. Are you aware that a nuke on a satellite can be detonated at any point chosen by the controlling nation. For example North Korea could explode a satellite nuke when it was above our nation.

For example:

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States​

ByKen J.Updated on04/08/2013
50 Comments

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2 “satellite” this week from APR 8 – APR 16, which coincidentally just so happens to orbit along the eastern half of the U.S.

Some believe or suspect that this “satellite” may actually be a Super-EMP nuclear device…

No one knows for sure of course, but people like Dr. Peter Vincent Pry with credentials from the USAF Weapons Laboratory believes that North Korea indeed may have the capability or may even posses Super-EMP nuclear weapons.

On December 12, 2012, the Kwangmyongsong 3-2 (KMS 3-2) was launched into space on a polar orbit, and is said to be an “Earth observation satellite”. The satellite was not placed perfectly and is evidently tumbling every 17 seconds while it orbits the earth. From an EMP nuclear weapon perspective, the tumbling is apparently irrelevant.

The altitude of orbit is approximately 500 km, or about 300 miles, the perfect altitude for EMP detonation for maximum range and damage. Coincidence?

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2

modernsurvivalblog.com

Do you have any clue as to how large this Super-EMP device would have to be to have any effectiveness? Apparently not!

Do you read links? The links I provided were full of info. Just because I am patient I will give you a couple more links.

High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse and High Power Microwave Devices: Threat Assessments

Congressional Research Service Report for Congress Clay Wilson Specialist in Technology and National Security Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress Order Code RL32544 Updated August 20, 2004 Summary Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) is an...

www.history.navy.mil

Nuclear electromagnetic pulse - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So tell me, when did any other country develop a yield sufficient to produce an EMP capable of have widespread impact? How can such a heavy payload get on a satellite in orbit?

I was a nuclear weapons officer in the Navy. Your sources are exaggerating the capability.

Despite your background you seem to be believe that an EMP weapon must be HUGE, POWERFUL and HEAVY.

There haven’t been many tests of EMP weapons so there are disagreements on the size of the weapon but most experts do not believe you must have let’s say a 100 megaton blast.

*****

The most routinely cited estimates come from a pair of assessments put together by the Congressional EMP Commission in 2004 and 2008. The commission had access to classified research and was allowed to conduct some testing of its own in a laboratory environment. Its findings weren’t optimistic.

According to the 2008 report on critical infrastructure: “The cascading effects from even one or two relatively small weapons exploded in optimum location in space at present would almost certainly shut down an entire interconnected electrical power system, perhaps affecting as much as 70 percent or possibly more of the United States, all in an instant.… Should significant parts of the electrical power infrastructure be lost for any substantial period of time, the Commission believes that the consequences are likely to be catastrophic, and many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities.”

The following year, the chairman of the EMP Commission told Congress that the damage in areas within the blast radius would be an order of magnitude worse than what Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the Gulf Coast in 2005—and that a 90% fatality rate nationwide within a year due to starvation and systems breakdown was plausible. (emphasis added).

Since then, public officials, including a former CIA director, have routinely given credence to the 90% figure. But experts in the scientific community have dismissed this figure, along with a number of other commission findings, as speculative and/or contingent on factors that are basically impossible to model.

The EMP Threat: How It Works and What It Means for the Korean Crisis - Geopolitical Futures

Given the uncertainty surrounding the crisis, the threat of a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse attack can’t be dismissed completely.

geopoliticalfutures.com

********


EMP Threat from Satellites

While most analysts are fixated on when in the future North Korea will develop highly reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles, guidance systems, and reentry vehicles capable of striking a US city, the present threat from EMP is largely ignored. An EMP attack does not require an accurate guidance system because the area of effect, having a radius of hundreds or thousands of kilometers, is so large. No reentry vehicle is needed because the warhead is detonated at high-altitude, above the atmosphere. Missile reliability matters little because only one missile has to work to make an EMP attack.

For instance, North Korea could make an EMP attack against the United States by launching a short-range missile off a freighter or submarine or by lofting a warhead to 30 kilometers burst height by balloon. While such lower-altitude EMP attacks would not cover the whole US mainland, as would an attack at higher-altitude (300 kilometers), even a balloon-lofted warhead detonated at 30 kilometers altitude could blackout the Eastern Grid that supports most of the population and generates 75 percent of US electricity.

Moreover, an EMP attack could be made by a North Korean satellite. The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth. The south polar trajectory of KMS-3 and KMS-4 evades US Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radars and National Missile Defenses, resembling a Russian secret weapon developed during the Cold War, called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that would have used a nuclear-armed satellite to make a surprise EMP attack on the United States.(emphasis added).

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

I disagree. Your links show that in order to be effective, the weapon must have a significant yield. No other nuclear power other than Russia or China has demonstrated the ability to even have weapons much much powerful than those we used in WWII.

My links did not show that at all. For example from one of my links:

The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

Have a good day. I see no good reason to carry on this discussion.

That will produce an EMP, but because the yield is so small, it will be a very relatively small EMP. You keep asking me to ignore the laws of physics. TRy looking at the formulae and try coming to a conclusion that smaller yield produces just the same effect as a larger yield. The reason your articles don't show examples is that the truth defeats the effects of fearing the potential of these weapons.

I loved your stating that a satellite tumbling would not matter as far as the EMP. That ignores the fact that a satellite is out of control could be employed for any real purpose. Think about that for just a minute and you might see how ridiculous that sounds..

The statements about the yield of a weapon designed to be used for EMP and about the weapon tumbling come from links I referenced.

You remind me of a co-worker I knew back in the 1970s. We had an argument over whether EMP actually existed. He insisted based on his classes in physics that there was no such thing,. No matter how much evidence I presented he refused to believe it.

You also seemed locked in on the bigger is better theory. Now if you are Rocket Man from North Korea you may have a hard time getting a 10 megaton nuke in orbit but you may be able to put a ten kiloton nuke or maybe even a 1 megaton weapon in orbit.

However you may also be able to use a nuke especially designed as an EMP weapon.

In 2004, the Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission was warned by a delegation of Russian generals that Russia had developed a “Super-EMP” nuclear warhead, and that design information for this weapon had leaked to North Korea.
A Super-EMP warhead is a nuclear weapon specially designed to produce an enormous burst of gamma rays that generates an extraordinarily powerful electromagnetic pulse, capable of destroying even the best protected electronics, thereby paralyzing military forces and blacking out power grids and collapsing critical infrastructures everywhere–across an entire nation the size of the United States.

Apparently, one of the signatures of a Super-EMP weapon is that it has a very low explosive yield, just several kilotons because the weapon is converting the energy of the nuclear warhead into gamma rays.

In 2004, the Russian generals told the EMP Commission that North Korea was getting help developing a Super-EMP nuclear weapon from contractors from Russia, China, Pakistan and elsewhere, and could probably test such a weapon “in a few years.” A few years later, in 2006, North Korea tested its mysterious “nuclear device” that produced an explosive yield of only several kilotons, and so was derided by the Western press as a failure–but hailed as a success by North Korea.
In 2012, a military commentator for the People’s Republic of China told a Hong Kong journal that North Korea has Super-EMP nuclear warheads.

One nuclear EMP warhead attack could collapse the national electric grid and other critical infrastructures–communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water–that sustain modern civilization and the lives of millions.

A Super-EMP attack on the U.S. would cause much more damage than a primitive nuclear weapon, and will likely result in catastrophic consequences that will be irreversible. A Super-EMP attack would inflict maximum damage and virtually ensure a world without America.

North Korea Super-EMP Weapon

North Korea may possess, or may be in the advanced stages of developing a Super EMP weapon. As the U.S., pundits and media continue to downplay every

modernsurvivalblog.com

Oh, please! You have now moved on to stone-cold stupid and insulting. The North Koreans have virtually no capability to even produce a viable nuke. The highest estimated yield is still in the kiloton range at 280.

I am providing information from links by people considered to be experts some who have testified in front of Congress.

You have presented your own views without any support. As far as I know you could be a fat teenager in his mom’s basement.

Here for you is some more expert opinion


In 2015, Admiral William Gortney, commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD, commented, “I agree with the intelligence community that we assess that they have the ability, they have the weapons, and they have the ability to miniaturize those weapons, and they have the ability to put them on rockets that can range the homeland.” That same year, General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, and Admiral Cecil Haney, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, also testified that they believed North Korea has already miniaturized at least some of its nuclear weapons.

In 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper publicly stated that the intelligence community concluded years earlier that North Korea had the capability to reach parts of the United States with nuclear weapons. The U.S. intelligence community concluded in 2017 that that North Korea had produced 30-60 warheads and can create fissile material for seven to 12 warheads per year.

UN Report Underlines North Korea’s Continuing Nuclear Ambitions

The new report affirms U.S. assessments of North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

thediplomat.com

You mentioned the highest yield of a North Korean nuke is around 280 kilotons and insinuated that was hardly a viable nuke.

Well if you are right then our Trident subs may be carrying nukes which are so low powered as to be unviable.

The Trump Administration developed a new low-yield version of the W-76 warhead for existing submarine-launched Trident II (D-5) missiles. Unclassified sources state that the existing W76-1 warhead has an explosive yield of around 100 kilotons. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has said the low-yield version, the W76-2, would be configured “for primary-only detonation.” This could mean a yield of less than 10 kilotons.

Summary of Low-Yield Nuclear Warhead Debate - USNI News

The following is the Jan. 5, 2021 Congressional Research Service In Focus report, A Low-Yield, Submarine-Launched Nuclear Warhead: Overview of the Expert Debate. From the report The Low-Yield D-5 Warhead The Trump Administration developed a new low-yield version of the W-76 warhead for existing...

news.usni.org

Plus people in Japan might consider a 280 kiloton weapon to be viable.


A deterministic estimate of the nuclear radiation fields from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear weapon explosions requires the yields of these explosions. The yield of the Nagasaki explosion is rather well established by both fireball and radiochemical data from other tests as 21 kt [one kiloton equals the explosive power of 1,000 tons of TNT]. There are no equivalent data for the Hiroshima explosion. Equating thermal radiation and blast effects observed at the two cities subsequent to the explosions gives a yield of about 15 kt [at Hiroshima]. The pressure-vs-time data, obtained by dropped, parachute-retarded canisters and reevaluated using 2-D hydrodynamic calculations, give a yield between 16 and 17 kt. Scaling the gamma-ray dose data and calculations gives a yield of about 15 kt. Sulfur neutron activation data give a yield of about 15 kt. The current best estimates for the yield of these explosions are the following:
Hiroshima 15 kt

Nagasaki 21 kt

What was the yield of the Hiroshima bomb?

www.warbirdforum.com

What good are these North Korean nuclear weapons if they don't work?

Why did you waste all that time proving me correct?

The major problem is that you don't understand a word in any of those links, or you would know that none of it disagrees with what I have said except ridiculous estimates of how many nuclear weapons' North Korea has. I guess you don't realize a Chicken Little story when you hear one.

What is the altitude and corresponding yield required for an EMP to be effective coast to coast in the US? Answer that and prove you are not a dumbass.

Edited to add:

I love you quoting James "Claptrap" Clapper who has shown himself to be one of the biggest liars on planet Earth!

 

[Batcat]

So

1. the US will die from within long before any foreign attack
2. who's capable of delivering those weapons? you would need long bombers, yes? so the initial defense would be the Navy, USAF, EWS, AWACS, etc

How about a nuke onboard a satellite?

Satellites make really poor nuclear platforms. They're next to impossible to hide. They can't be re-targeted easily, and they can't be hardened against attack.

They share the disadvantages of missile silos with the impossibility of defending them against attack.

You probably would never have to re-target a nuke onboard a satellite designed to be an EMP weapon.

North Korea's Satellites Could Unleash Electromagnetic Pulse Attack - Center for Security Policy

Originally published by Newsmax: North Korea reportedly is rebuilding its Sohae satellite launch facility, widely...

centerforsecuritypolicy.org

I am sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about. Satellites have a ground track that varies with the orbit. They are rarely geostationary because of the distance involved.

I am aware of that. Are you aware that a nuke on a satellite can be detonated at any point chosen by the controlling nation. For example North Korea could explode a satellite nuke when it was above our nation.

For example:

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States​

ByKen J.Updated on04/08/2013
50 Comments

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2 “satellite” this week from APR 8 – APR 16, which coincidentally just so happens to orbit along the eastern half of the U.S.

Some believe or suspect that this “satellite” may actually be a Super-EMP nuclear device…

No one knows for sure of course, but people like Dr. Peter Vincent Pry with credentials from the USAF Weapons Laboratory believes that North Korea indeed may have the capability or may even posses Super-EMP nuclear weapons.

On December 12, 2012, the Kwangmyongsong 3-2 (KMS 3-2) was launched into space on a polar orbit, and is said to be an “Earth observation satellite”. The satellite was not placed perfectly and is evidently tumbling every 17 seconds while it orbits the earth. From an EMP nuclear weapon perspective, the tumbling is apparently irrelevant.

The altitude of orbit is approximately 500 km, or about 300 miles, the perfect altitude for EMP detonation for maximum range and damage. Coincidence?

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2

modernsurvivalblog.com

Do you have any clue as to how large this Super-EMP device would have to be to have any effectiveness? Apparently not!

Do you read links? The links I provided were full of info. Just because I am patient I will give you a couple more links.

High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse and High Power Microwave Devices: Threat Assessments

Congressional Research Service Report for Congress Clay Wilson Specialist in Technology and National Security Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress Order Code RL32544 Updated August 20, 2004 Summary Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) is an...

www.history.navy.mil

Nuclear electromagnetic pulse - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So tell me, when did any other country develop a yield sufficient to produce an EMP capable of have widespread impact? How can such a heavy payload get on a satellite in orbit?

I was a nuclear weapons officer in the Navy. Your sources are exaggerating the capability.

Despite your background you seem to be believe that an EMP weapon must be HUGE, POWERFUL and HEAVY.

There haven’t been many tests of EMP weapons so there are disagreements on the size of the weapon but most experts do not believe you must have let’s say a 100 megaton blast.

*****

The most routinely cited estimates come from a pair of assessments put together by the Congressional EMP Commission in 2004 and 2008. The commission had access to classified research and was allowed to conduct some testing of its own in a laboratory environment. Its findings weren’t optimistic.

According to the 2008 report on critical infrastructure: “The cascading effects from even one or two relatively small weapons exploded in optimum location in space at present would almost certainly shut down an entire interconnected electrical power system, perhaps affecting as much as 70 percent or possibly more of the United States, all in an instant.… Should significant parts of the electrical power infrastructure be lost for any substantial period of time, the Commission believes that the consequences are likely to be catastrophic, and many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities.”

The following year, the chairman of the EMP Commission told Congress that the damage in areas within the blast radius would be an order of magnitude worse than what Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the Gulf Coast in 2005—and that a 90% fatality rate nationwide within a year due to starvation and systems breakdown was plausible. (emphasis added).

Since then, public officials, including a former CIA director, have routinely given credence to the 90% figure. But experts in the scientific community have dismissed this figure, along with a number of other commission findings, as speculative and/or contingent on factors that are basically impossible to model.

The EMP Threat: How It Works and What It Means for the Korean Crisis - Geopolitical Futures

Given the uncertainty surrounding the crisis, the threat of a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse attack can’t be dismissed completely.

geopoliticalfutures.com

********


EMP Threat from Satellites

While most analysts are fixated on when in the future North Korea will develop highly reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles, guidance systems, and reentry vehicles capable of striking a US city, the present threat from EMP is largely ignored. An EMP attack does not require an accurate guidance system because the area of effect, having a radius of hundreds or thousands of kilometers, is so large. No reentry vehicle is needed because the warhead is detonated at high-altitude, above the atmosphere. Missile reliability matters little because only one missile has to work to make an EMP attack.

For instance, North Korea could make an EMP attack against the United States by launching a short-range missile off a freighter or submarine or by lofting a warhead to 30 kilometers burst height by balloon. While such lower-altitude EMP attacks would not cover the whole US mainland, as would an attack at higher-altitude (300 kilometers), even a balloon-lofted warhead detonated at 30 kilometers altitude could blackout the Eastern Grid that supports most of the population and generates 75 percent of US electricity.

Moreover, an EMP attack could be made by a North Korean satellite. The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth. The south polar trajectory of KMS-3 and KMS-4 evades US Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radars and National Missile Defenses, resembling a Russian secret weapon developed during the Cold War, called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that would have used a nuclear-armed satellite to make a surprise EMP attack on the United States.(emphasis added).

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

I disagree. Your links show that in order to be effective, the weapon must have a significant yield. No other nuclear power other than Russia or China has demonstrated the ability to even have weapons much much powerful than those we used in WWII.

My links did not show that at all. For example from one of my links:

The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

Have a good day. I see no good reason to carry on this discussion.

That will produce an EMP, but because the yield is so small, it will be a very relatively small EMP. You keep asking me to ignore the laws of physics. TRy looking at the formulae and try coming to a conclusion that smaller yield produces just the same effect as a larger yield. The reason your articles don't show examples is that the truth defeats the effects of fearing the potential of these weapons.

I loved your stating that a satellite tumbling would not matter as far as the EMP. That ignores the fact that a satellite is out of control could be employed for any real purpose. Think about that for just a minute and you might see how ridiculous that sounds..

The statements about the yield of a weapon designed to be used for EMP and about the weapon tumbling come from links I referenced.

You remind me of a co-worker I knew back in the 1970s. We had an argument over whether EMP actually existed. He insisted based on his classes in physics that there was no such thing,. No matter how much evidence I presented he refused to believe it.

You also seemed locked in on the bigger is better theory. Now if you are Rocket Man from North Korea you may have a hard time getting a 10 megaton nuke in orbit but you may be able to put a ten kiloton nuke or maybe even a 1 megaton weapon in orbit.

However you may also be able to use a nuke especially designed as an EMP weapon.

In 2004, the Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission was warned by a delegation of Russian generals that Russia had developed a “Super-EMP” nuclear warhead, and that design information for this weapon had leaked to North Korea.
A Super-EMP warhead is a nuclear weapon specially designed to produce an enormous burst of gamma rays that generates an extraordinarily powerful electromagnetic pulse, capable of destroying even the best protected electronics, thereby paralyzing military forces and blacking out power grids and collapsing critical infrastructures everywhere–across an entire nation the size of the United States.

Apparently, one of the signatures of a Super-EMP weapon is that it has a very low explosive yield, just several kilotons because the weapon is converting the energy of the nuclear warhead into gamma rays.

In 2004, the Russian generals told the EMP Commission that North Korea was getting help developing a Super-EMP nuclear weapon from contractors from Russia, China, Pakistan and elsewhere, and could probably test such a weapon “in a few years.” A few years later, in 2006, North Korea tested its mysterious “nuclear device” that produced an explosive yield of only several kilotons, and so was derided by the Western press as a failure–but hailed as a success by North Korea.
In 2012, a military commentator for the People’s Republic of China told a Hong Kong journal that North Korea has Super-EMP nuclear warheads.

One nuclear EMP warhead attack could collapse the national electric grid and other critical infrastructures–communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water–that sustain modern civilization and the lives of millions.

A Super-EMP attack on the U.S. would cause much more damage than a primitive nuclear weapon, and will likely result in catastrophic consequences that will be irreversible. A Super-EMP attack would inflict maximum damage and virtually ensure a world without America.

North Korea Super-EMP Weapon

North Korea may possess, or may be in the advanced stages of developing a Super EMP weapon. As the U.S., pundits and media continue to downplay every

modernsurvivalblog.com

Oh, please! You have now moved on to stone-cold stupid and insulting. The North Koreans have virtually no capability to even produce a viable nuke. The highest estimated yield is still in the kiloton range at 280.

I am providing information from links by people considered to be experts some who have testified in front of Congress.

You have presented your own views without any support. As far as I know you could be a fat teenager in his mom’s basement.

Here for you is some more expert opinion


In 2015, Admiral William Gortney, commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD, commented, “I agree with the intelligence community that we assess that they have the ability, they have the weapons, and they have the ability to miniaturize those weapons, and they have the ability to put them on rockets that can range the homeland.” That same year, General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, and Admiral Cecil Haney, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, also testified that they believed North Korea has already miniaturized at least some of its nuclear weapons.

In 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper publicly stated that the intelligence community concluded years earlier that North Korea had the capability to reach parts of the United States with nuclear weapons. The U.S. intelligence community concluded in 2017 that that North Korea had produced 30-60 warheads and can create fissile material for seven to 12 warheads per year.

UN Report Underlines North Korea’s Continuing Nuclear Ambitions

The new report affirms U.S. assessments of North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

thediplomat.com

You mentioned the highest yield of a North Korean nuke is around 280 kilotons and insinuated that was hardly a viable nuke.

Well if you are right then our Trident subs may be carrying nukes which are so low powered as to be unviable.

The Trump Administration developed a new low-yield version of the W-76 warhead for existing submarine-launched Trident II (D-5) missiles. Unclassified sources state that the existing W76-1 warhead has an explosive yield of around 100 kilotons. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has said the low-yield version, the W76-2, would be configured “for primary-only detonation.” This could mean a yield of less than 10 kilotons.

Summary of Low-Yield Nuclear Warhead Debate - USNI News

The following is the Jan. 5, 2021 Congressional Research Service In Focus report, A Low-Yield, Submarine-Launched Nuclear Warhead: Overview of the Expert Debate. From the report The Low-Yield D-5 Warhead The Trump Administration developed a new low-yield version of the W-76 warhead for existing...

news.usni.org

Plus people in Japan might consider a 280 kiloton weapon to be viable.


A deterministic estimate of the nuclear radiation fields from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear weapon explosions requires the yields of these explosions. The yield of the Nagasaki explosion is rather well established by both fireball and radiochemical data from other tests as 21 kt [one kiloton equals the explosive power of 1,000 tons of TNT]. There are no equivalent data for the Hiroshima explosion. Equating thermal radiation and blast effects observed at the two cities subsequent to the explosions gives a yield of about 15 kt [at Hiroshima]. The pressure-vs-time data, obtained by dropped, parachute-retarded canisters and reevaluated using 2-D hydrodynamic calculations, give a yield between 16 and 17 kt. Scaling the gamma-ray dose data and calculations gives a yield of about 15 kt. Sulfur neutron activation data give a yield of about 15 kt. The current best estimates for the yield of these explosions are the following:
Hiroshima 15 kt

Nagasaki 21 kt

What was the yield of the Hiroshima bomb?

www.warbirdforum.com

What good are these North Korean nuclear weapons if they don't work?

Why did you waste all that time proving me correct?

The major problem is that you don't understand a word in any of those links, or you would know that none of it disagrees with what I have said except ridiculous estimates of how many nuclear weapons' North Korea has. I guess you don't realize a Chicken Little story when you hear one.

What is the altitude and corresponding yield required for an EMP to be effective coast to coast in the US? Answer that and prove you are not a dumbass.

Edited to add:

I love you quoting James "Claptrap" Clapper who has shown himself to be one of the biggest liars on planet Earth!

I had provided you with plenty of links that estimate the necessary power to achieve am EMP burst.

I am tired of proviing links and wasting my time.

Why don’t you provide me with links that say the North Korean nukes don’t work. Do you even know how to provide a link?

 

[iamwhatiseem]

I love EMP technology and stuff.

There is nothing funny about an EMP attack.
In some ways it would be worse than a Nuclear attack. Certainly more would die from an EMP.
Death estimates are staggering in just the first week of any major U.S. city.
And it is the most likely next attack America will face.
9/11 will look like a birthday party next to an EMP

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

So

1. the US will die from within long before any foreign attack
2. who's capable of delivering those weapons? you would need long bombers, yes? so the initial defense would be the Navy, USAF, EWS, AWACS, etc

How about a nuke onboard a satellite?

Satellites make really poor nuclear platforms. They're next to impossible to hide. They can't be re-targeted easily, and they can't be hardened against attack.

They share the disadvantages of missile silos with the impossibility of defending them against attack.

You probably would never have to re-target a nuke onboard a satellite designed to be an EMP weapon.

North Korea's Satellites Could Unleash Electromagnetic Pulse Attack - Center for Security Policy

Originally published by Newsmax: North Korea reportedly is rebuilding its Sohae satellite launch facility, widely...

centerforsecuritypolicy.org

I am sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about. Satellites have a ground track that varies with the orbit. They are rarely geostationary because of the distance involved.

I am aware of that. Are you aware that a nuke on a satellite can be detonated at any point chosen by the controlling nation. For example North Korea could explode a satellite nuke when it was above our nation.

For example:

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States​

ByKen J.Updated on04/08/2013
50 Comments

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2 “satellite” this week from APR 8 – APR 16, which coincidentally just so happens to orbit along the eastern half of the U.S.

Some believe or suspect that this “satellite” may actually be a Super-EMP nuclear device…

No one knows for sure of course, but people like Dr. Peter Vincent Pry with credentials from the USAF Weapons Laboratory believes that North Korea indeed may have the capability or may even posses Super-EMP nuclear weapons.

On December 12, 2012, the Kwangmyongsong 3-2 (KMS 3-2) was launched into space on a polar orbit, and is said to be an “Earth observation satellite”. The satellite was not placed perfectly and is evidently tumbling every 17 seconds while it orbits the earth. From an EMP nuclear weapon perspective, the tumbling is apparently irrelevant.

The altitude of orbit is approximately 500 km, or about 300 miles, the perfect altitude for EMP detonation for maximum range and damage. Coincidence?

Suspect Super-EMP Orbit Over United States

Given the recent nuclear threats from North Korea directed at the United States, the satellite orbital map shown above indicates the track of the KMS 3-2

modernsurvivalblog.com

Do you have any clue as to how large this Super-EMP device would have to be to have any effectiveness? Apparently not!

Do you read links? The links I provided were full of info. Just because I am patient I will give you a couple more links.

High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse and High Power Microwave Devices: Threat Assessments

Congressional Research Service Report for Congress Clay Wilson Specialist in Technology and National Security Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress Order Code RL32544 Updated August 20, 2004 Summary Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) is an...

www.history.navy.mil

Nuclear electromagnetic pulse - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So tell me, when did any other country develop a yield sufficient to produce an EMP capable of have widespread impact? How can such a heavy payload get on a satellite in orbit?

I was a nuclear weapons officer in the Navy. Your sources are exaggerating the capability.

Despite your background you seem to be believe that an EMP weapon must be HUGE, POWERFUL and HEAVY.

There haven’t been many tests of EMP weapons so there are disagreements on the size of the weapon but most experts do not believe you must have let’s say a 100 megaton blast.

*****

The most routinely cited estimates come from a pair of assessments put together by the Congressional EMP Commission in 2004 and 2008. The commission had access to classified research and was allowed to conduct some testing of its own in a laboratory environment. Its findings weren’t optimistic.

According to the 2008 report on critical infrastructure: “The cascading effects from even one or two relatively small weapons exploded in optimum location in space at present would almost certainly shut down an entire interconnected electrical power system, perhaps affecting as much as 70 percent or possibly more of the United States, all in an instant.… Should significant parts of the electrical power infrastructure be lost for any substantial period of time, the Commission believes that the consequences are likely to be catastrophic, and many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities.”

The following year, the chairman of the EMP Commission told Congress that the damage in areas within the blast radius would be an order of magnitude worse than what Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the Gulf Coast in 2005—and that a 90% fatality rate nationwide within a year due to starvation and systems breakdown was plausible. (emphasis added).

Since then, public officials, including a former CIA director, have routinely given credence to the 90% figure. But experts in the scientific community have dismissed this figure, along with a number of other commission findings, as speculative and/or contingent on factors that are basically impossible to model.

The EMP Threat: How It Works and What It Means for the Korean Crisis - Geopolitical Futures

Given the uncertainty surrounding the crisis, the threat of a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse attack can’t be dismissed completely.

geopoliticalfutures.com

********


EMP Threat from Satellites

While most analysts are fixated on when in the future North Korea will develop highly reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles, guidance systems, and reentry vehicles capable of striking a US city, the present threat from EMP is largely ignored. An EMP attack does not require an accurate guidance system because the area of effect, having a radius of hundreds or thousands of kilometers, is so large. No reentry vehicle is needed because the warhead is detonated at high-altitude, above the atmosphere. Missile reliability matters little because only one missile has to work to make an EMP attack.

For instance, North Korea could make an EMP attack against the United States by launching a short-range missile off a freighter or submarine or by lofting a warhead to 30 kilometers burst height by balloon. While such lower-altitude EMP attacks would not cover the whole US mainland, as would an attack at higher-altitude (300 kilometers), even a balloon-lofted warhead detonated at 30 kilometers altitude could blackout the Eastern Grid that supports most of the population and generates 75 percent of US electricity.

Moreover, an EMP attack could be made by a North Korean satellite. The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth. The south polar trajectory of KMS-3 and KMS-4 evades US Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radars and National Missile Defenses, resembling a Russian secret weapon developed during the Cold War, called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that would have used a nuclear-armed satellite to make a surprise EMP attack on the United States.(emphasis added).

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

I disagree. Your links show that in order to be effective, the weapon must have a significant yield. No other nuclear power other than Russia or China has demonstrated the ability to even have weapons much much powerful than those we used in WWII.

My links did not show that at all. For example from one of my links:

The design of an EMP or even a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the US W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites that presently orbit the Earth

Should America Fear A North Korean EMP Attack In 2020?

It's the threat no one talks about.

news.yahoo.com

Have a good day. I see no good reason to carry on this discussion.

That will produce an EMP, but because the yield is so small, it will be a very relatively small EMP. You keep asking me to ignore the laws of physics. TRy looking at the formulae and try coming to a conclusion that smaller yield produces just the same effect as a larger yield. The reason your articles don't show examples is that the truth defeats the effects of fearing the potential of these weapons.

I loved your stating that a satellite tumbling would not matter as far as the EMP. That ignores the fact that a satellite is out of control could be employed for any real purpose. Think about that for just a minute and you might see how ridiculous that sounds..

The statements about the yield of a weapon designed to be used for EMP and about the weapon tumbling come from links I referenced.

You remind me of a co-worker I knew back in the 1970s. We had an argument over whether EMP actually existed. He insisted based on his classes in physics that there was no such thing,. No matter how much evidence I presented he refused to believe it.

You also seemed locked in on the bigger is better theory. Now if you are Rocket Man from North Korea you may have a hard time getting a 10 megaton nuke in orbit but you may be able to put a ten kiloton nuke or maybe even a 1 megaton weapon in orbit.

However you may also be able to use a nuke especially designed as an EMP weapon.

In 2004, the Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission was warned by a delegation of Russian generals that Russia had developed a “Super-EMP” nuclear warhead, and that design information for this weapon had leaked to North Korea.
A Super-EMP warhead is a nuclear weapon specially designed to produce an enormous burst of gamma rays that generates an extraordinarily powerful electromagnetic pulse, capable of destroying even the best protected electronics, thereby paralyzing military forces and blacking out power grids and collapsing critical infrastructures everywhere–across an entire nation the size of the United States.

Apparently, one of the signatures of a Super-EMP weapon is that it has a very low explosive yield, just several kilotons because the weapon is converting the energy of the nuclear warhead into gamma rays.

In 2004, the Russian generals told the EMP Commission that North Korea was getting help developing a Super-EMP nuclear weapon from contractors from Russia, China, Pakistan and elsewhere, and could probably test such a weapon “in a few years.” A few years later, in 2006, North Korea tested its mysterious “nuclear device” that produced an explosive yield of only several kilotons, and so was derided by the Western press as a failure–but hailed as a success by North Korea.
In 2012, a military commentator for the People’s Republic of China told a Hong Kong journal that North Korea has Super-EMP nuclear warheads.

One nuclear EMP warhead attack could collapse the national electric grid and other critical infrastructures–communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water–that sustain modern civilization and the lives of millions.

A Super-EMP attack on the U.S. would cause much more damage than a primitive nuclear weapon, and will likely result in catastrophic consequences that will be irreversible. A Super-EMP attack would inflict maximum damage and virtually ensure a world without America.

North Korea Super-EMP Weapon

North Korea may possess, or may be in the advanced stages of developing a Super EMP weapon. As the U.S., pundits and media continue to downplay every

modernsurvivalblog.com

Oh, please! You have now moved on to stone-cold stupid and insulting. The North Koreans have virtually no capability to even produce a viable nuke. The highest estimated yield is still in the kiloton range at 280.

I am providing information from links by people considered to be experts some who have testified in front of Congress.

You have presented your own views without any support. As far as I know you could be a fat teenager in his mom’s basement.

Here for you is some more expert opinion


In 2015, Admiral William Gortney, commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD, commented, “I agree with the intelligence community that we assess that they have the ability, they have the weapons, and they have the ability to miniaturize those weapons, and they have the ability to put them on rockets that can range the homeland.” That same year, General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, and Admiral Cecil Haney, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, also testified that they believed North Korea has already miniaturized at least some of its nuclear weapons.

In 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper publicly stated that the intelligence community concluded years earlier that North Korea had the capability to reach parts of the United States with nuclear weapons. The U.S. intelligence community concluded in 2017 that that North Korea had produced 30-60 warheads and can create fissile material for seven to 12 warheads per year.

UN Report Underlines North Korea’s Continuing Nuclear Ambitions

The new report affirms U.S. assessments of North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

thediplomat.com

You mentioned the highest yield of a North Korean nuke is around 280 kilotons and insinuated that was hardly a viable nuke.

Well if you are right then our Trident subs may be carrying nukes which are so low powered as to be unviable.

The Trump Administration developed a new low-yield version of the W-76 warhead for existing submarine-launched Trident II (D-5) missiles. Unclassified sources state that the existing W76-1 warhead has an explosive yield of around 100 kilotons. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has said the low-yield version, the W76-2, would be configured “for primary-only detonation.” This could mean a yield of less than 10 kilotons.

Summary of Low-Yield Nuclear Warhead Debate - USNI News

The following is the Jan. 5, 2021 Congressional Research Service In Focus report, A Low-Yield, Submarine-Launched Nuclear Warhead: Overview of the Expert Debate. From the report The Low-Yield D-5 Warhead The Trump Administration developed a new low-yield version of the W-76 warhead for existing...

news.usni.org

Plus people in Japan might consider a 280 kiloton weapon to be viable.


A deterministic estimate of the nuclear radiation fields from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear weapon explosions requires the yields of these explosions. The yield of the Nagasaki explosion is rather well established by both fireball and radiochemical data from other tests as 21 kt [one kiloton equals the explosive power of 1,000 tons of TNT]. There are no equivalent data for the Hiroshima explosion. Equating thermal radiation and blast effects observed at the two cities subsequent to the explosions gives a yield of about 15 kt [at Hiroshima]. The pressure-vs-time data, obtained by dropped, parachute-retarded canisters and reevaluated using 2-D hydrodynamic calculations, give a yield between 16 and 17 kt. Scaling the gamma-ray dose data and calculations gives a yield of about 15 kt. Sulfur neutron activation data give a yield of about 15 kt. The current best estimates for the yield of these explosions are the following:
Hiroshima 15 kt

Nagasaki 21 kt

What was the yield of the Hiroshima bomb?

www.warbirdforum.com

What good are these North Korean nuclear weapons if they don't work?

Why did you waste all that time proving me correct?

The major problem is that you don't understand a word in any of those links, or you would know that none of it disagrees with what I have said except ridiculous estimates of how many nuclear weapons' North Korea has. I guess you don't realize a Chicken Little story when you hear one.

What is the altitude and corresponding yield required for an EMP to be effective coast to coast in the US? Answer that and prove you are not a dumbass.

Edited to add:

I love you quoting James "Claptrap" Clapper who has shown himself to be one of the biggest liars on planet Earth!

I had provided you with plenty of links that estimate the necessary power to achieve am EMP burst.

I am tired of proviing links and wasting my time.

Why don’t you provide me with links that say the North Korean nukes don’t work. Do you even know how to provide a link?

Really? I have seen nothing except the formulas. Give me the ******* number, dumbass!

If you are so smart, you should already know that North Korean nukes have a tendency to fizzle and never come close to their purported yields. All six tests COMBINED have yet to yield 200 Kt. Hw much yield did you say was required? Oh, that's right! You did not.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

1. the US will die from within long before any foreign attack
2. who's capable of delivering those weapons? you would need long bombers, yes? so the initial defense would be the Navy, USAF, EWS, AWACS, etc

No you certainly would not. One could be launched from any medium sized ship like a freighter. Freight ships arrive to the U.S. obviously multiple a day. It could super easily be disguised as a freight ship and launched within a few miles if they wanted.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

I love EMP technology and stuff.

There is nothing funny about an EMP attack.
In some ways it would be worse than a Nuclear attack. Certainly more would die from an EMP.
Death estimates are staggering in just the first week of any major U.S. city.
And it is the most likely next attack America will face.
9/11 will look like a birthday party next to an EMP

One nuclear weapon used to trigger an EMP will result in the offending country being reduced to a nice glass parking lot.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

1. the US will die from within long before any foreign attack
2. who's capable of delivering those weapons? you would need long bombers, yes? so the initial defense would be the Navy, USAF, EWS, AWACS, etc

No you certainly would not. One could be launched from any medium sized ship like a freighter. Freight ships arrive to the U.S. obviously multiple a day. It could super easily be disguised as a freight ship and launched within a few miles if they wanted.

OMG. you are hilarious! You think that it would not be detected?

 

[iamwhatiseem]

1. the US will die from within long before any foreign attack
2. who's capable of delivering those weapons? you would need long bombers, yes? so the initial defense would be the Navy, USAF, EWS, AWACS, etc

No you certainly would not. One could be launched from any medium sized ship like a freighter. Freight ships arrive to the U.S. obviously multiple a day. It could super easily be disguised as a freight ship and launched within a few miles if they wanted.

OMG. you are hilarious! You think that it would not be detected?

No it would not.
You can even set off a small EMP on the roof of a tall building, arguable range is somewhere between 3 to 5 miles.
If a coordinated attack was set in just a few locations - you could bring an entire city down to it's knees... in about the same time as a camera flash.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

1. the US will die from within long before any foreign attack
2. who's capable of delivering those weapons? you would need long bombers, yes? so the initial defense would be the Navy, USAF, EWS, AWACS, etc

No you certainly would not. One could be launched from any medium sized ship like a freighter. Freight ships arrive to the U.S. obviously multiple a day. It could super easily be disguised as a freight ship and launched within a few miles if they wanted.

OMG. you are hilarious! You think that it would not be detected?

And BTW - EMP attacks were largely ignored by the last three Presidents besides Trump.
And it will certainly be ignored by Biden.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

1. the US will die from within long before any foreign attack
2. who's capable of delivering those weapons? you would need long bombers, yes? so the initial defense would be the Navy, USAF, EWS, AWACS, etc

No you certainly would not. One could be launched from any medium sized ship like a freighter. Freight ships arrive to the U.S. obviously multiple a day. It could super easily be disguised as a freight ship and launched within a few miles if they wanted.

OMG. you are hilarious! You think that it would not be detected?

No it would not.
You can even set off a small EMP on the roof of a tall building, arguable range is somewhere between 3 to 5 miles.
If a coordinated attack was set in just a few locations - you could bring an entire city down to it's knees... in about the same time as a camera flash.

Apparently you are unfamiliar with the capabilities that we have to screen shipments into the US for such materials contained in the weapon. I am so sorry about your ignorance.

An EMP device is a nuclear attack. How do you think we would respond?

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

1. the US will die from within long before any foreign attack
2. who's capable of delivering those weapons? you would need long bombers, yes? so the initial defense would be the Navy, USAF, EWS, AWACS, etc

No you certainly would not. One could be launched from any medium sized ship like a freighter. Freight ships arrive to the U.S. obviously multiple a day. It could super easily be disguised as a freight ship and launched within a few miles if they wanted.

OMG. you are hilarious! You think that it would not be detected?

And BTW - EMP attacks were largely ignored by the last three Presidents besides Trump.
And it will certainly be ignored by Biden.

That is because only two other countries are real threats and both are nuclear powers already.