The Changing Battlefield:
Weapons developed to destroy electronics, not people
The Economist
Bullets and bombs are so 20th-century. The wars of the 21st will be dominated by ray guns. That, at least, is the vision of a band of military technologists who are building weapons that work by zapping the enemy’s electronics, rather than blowing him to bits.
Bullets and bombs are so 20th-century. The wars of the 21st will be dominated by ray guns. That, at least, is the vision of a band of military technologists who are building weapons that work by zapping the enemy’s electronics, rather than blowing him to bits.
The result could be conflict that is less bloody, yet more effective,
than what is now seen as conventional battle.
Electromagnetic weapons, to give these ray guns their proper name, are
inspired by the cold-war idea of using the radio-frequency energy released by
an atom bomb exploded high in the atmosphere to burn out an enemy’s electrical
grid, telephone network and possibly even the wiring of his motor vehicles, by
inducing a sudden surge of electricity in the cables that run these things.
That idea, fortunately, was never tried in earnest (though some tests
were carried out). But, by thinking smaller, military planners have developed
weapons that use a similar principle, without the need for a nuclear explosion.
Instead, they create their electromagnetic pulses with magnetrons, the
microwave generators at the hearts of radar sets (and also of microwave ovens).
The result is kit that can take down enemy missiles and aircraft, stop
tanks in their tracks and bring speedboats to a halt. It can also scare away
soldiers without actually killing them.
Many electromagnetic weapons do, indeed, look like radars, at least to
non-expert eyes. America’s air force is developing a range of them based on a
type of radar called an active electronically scanned array (AESA). When acting
as a normal radar, an AESA broadcasts its microwaves over a wide area.
At the touch of a button, however, all of its energy can be focused onto
a single point. If that point coincides with an incoming missile or aircraft,
the target’s electronics will be zapped.
Small AESAs—those light enough to fit on a plane such as a joint strike
fighter (F-35)—are probably restricted to zapping air-to-air and surface-to-air
missiles (the air force is understandably reticent about supplying details of
their capabilities).
Ground- or ship-based kit can draw more power. This will be able to
attack both ballistic missiles and aircraft, whose electronics tend to be
better shielded.
In the case of the F-35, then, this sort of electromagnetic artillery is
mainly defensive. But another plane, the Boeing Growler, uses electromagnetics
as offensive weapons.
The Growler, which first saw action in Iraq in 2010 and has been
extensively (though discreetly) deployed during the NATO air war against
Colonel Qaddafi’s forces in Libya, is a souped-up version of the Super Hornet.
It is fitted with five pods: two under each wing and one under the fuselage.
Some pods contain AESAs or similar electromagnetic weapons. Others have
eavesdropping equipment inside them.
soup up: [Slang] to increase the
power, capacity for speed, etc. of (an engine, etc.)
pod1 (päd)
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seeds and usually splitting along two sutures at maturity, as a legume
2 a
podlike container, as a cocoon of a locust
¤3 an
enclosure, as a streamlined housing for a jet engine attached to an aircraft
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n.
the body of an airplane, exclusive of the
wings, tail assembly, and engines
In combination, the pods can be used either to spy on enemy
communications or to destroy them; to suppress anti-aircraft fire; to disable
the electronics of ground vehicles; and to make life so hazardous for enemy
aircraft that they dare not fly (and probably to shoot them down
electronically, too, though no one will confirm this).
The Growler is able to keep its weapons charged up and humming by
lowering special turbines into the airstream that rushes past the plane when it
is flying. America has ordered 114 of the planes, and has taken delivery of 53.
Nor are aircraft the only vehicles from which destructive
electromagnetic pulses can be launched. BAE Systems, a British defence firm, is
building a ship-mounted electromagnetic gun. The High-Powered Microwave, as it
is called, is reported by Aviation Week to be powerful enough to disable all of
the motors in a swarm of up to 30 speedboats.
Ships fitted with such devices would never be subject to the sort of
attack that damaged USS Cole in 2000, when an al-Qaeda boat loaded with
explosives rammed it. A gun like this would also be useful for stopping pirate
attacks against commercial shipping.
Land vehicles, too, will soon be fitted with electromagnetic cannon. In
2013 America hopes to deploy the Radio-Frequency Vehicle Stopper. This device,
developed at the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate in Quantico, Virginia, is
a microwave transmitter the size and shape of a small satellite dish that
pivots on top of an armoured car. When aimed at another vehicle, it causes that
vehicle’s engine to stall.
This gentle way of handling the enemy—stopping his speedboats, stalling
his tanks—has surprising advantages. For example, it expands the range of
targets that can be attacked. Some favourite tricks of modern warfare, such as
building communications centres in hospitals, or protecting sites with civilian
“human shields”, cease to be effective if it is simply the electronics of the
equipment being attacked that are destroyed.
Though disabling an aircraft’s avionics will obviously cause it to
crash, in many other cases, no direct harm is done to people at all.
The logical conclusion of all this is a so-called “human-safe” missile,
which carries an electromagnetic gun instead of an explosive warhead. Such a
missile is being developed at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, and will
soon be tested at the White Sands Missile Range.
There is, however, at least one electromagnetic weapon that is designed
to attack enemy soldiers directly—though with the intention of driving them
off, rather than killing them. This weapon, which is called the Active Denial
System, has been developed by the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, in
collaboration with Raytheon.
It works by heating the moisture in a person’s skin to the point where
it feels, according to Kelley Hughes, an official at the directorate who
volunteered to act as a guinea pig, like opening a hot oven. People’s reaction,
when hit by the beam, is usually to flee. The beam’s range is several hundred
metres.
Such anti-personnel weapons are controversial. Tests on monkeys,
including ones in which the animals’ eyes were held open to check that the beam
does not blind, suggest it causes no permanent damage. But when a
vehicle-mounted Active Denial System was sent to Afghanistan in May 2010, it
was eventually shipped back home without being used.
The defence department will not say exactly why. The suspicion, though,
is that weapons like the Active Denial System really are reminiscent in many
minds of the ray guns of science fiction, and that using them in combat would
be a PR mistake. Disabling communications and destroying missiles is one thing.
Using heat-rays on the enemy might look bad in the newspapers, and put
civilians off their breakfast.
To every action there is, of course, an equal and opposite reaction, and
researchers are just as busy designing ways of foiling electromagnetic weapons
as they are developing them. Most such foils are types of Faraday cage—named
after the 19th-century investigator who did much of the fundamental research on
electromagnetism.
A Faraday cage is a shield of conductive material that stops
electromagnetic radiation penetrating. Such shields need not be heavy. Nickel-
and copper-coated polyester mesh is a good starting point. Metallised
textiles—chemically treated for greater conductivity—are also used. But Faraday
cages can be costly. EMP-tronic, a firm based in Morarp, Sweden, has developed
such shielding, initially for the Gripen, a Swedish fighter jet.
It will shield buildings too, though, for a suitable consideration. To
cover one a mere 20 metres square with a copper-mesh Faraday cage the firm
charges €300,000 ($400,000).
Shielding buildings may soon become less expensive than that. At least
two groups of scientists—one at the National Research Council Canada and the
other at Global Contour, a firm in Texas—are developing electrically conductive
cement that will block electromagnetic pulses. Global Contour’s mixture, which
includes fibres of steel and carbon, as well as a special ingredient that the
firm will not disclose, would add only $20 to the $150 per cubic metre, or
thereabouts, which ordinary concrete costs.
The arms race to protect small vehicles and buildings against
electromagnetic warfare, then, has already begun. Protecting ships, however,
requires lateral thinking. For obvious reasons, they cannot be encased in
concrete. And building a conventional Faraday cage round a naval vessel would
be horribly expensive.
Daniel Tam, of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in San Diego,
thinks he has a way to get round that. He proposes to use the electrical
conductivity of the sodium and chloride ions in seawater to create a novel type
of Faraday cage. A shroud of seawater around a ship, thrown up by special pumps
and hoses if the vessel came under electromagnetic attack, would do the trick,
he reckons.
It is an ambitious idea. Whether it works or not, it shows how much the
nature of modern belligerency is changing. Bombs and bullets will always have
their place, of course. But the thought that a cold shower could protect a ship
from attack is almost surreal.
