Is China is Planning EMP Attacks Against the United States?

As tensions rise between the Obama Administration and China over a host of national security issues, defense analysts warn that China is planning a broad range of attacks against the United States using electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons.

EMP weapons can knock out all electronic systems, including those in computers and automobiles, by creating a burst of energy similar to the gamma-ray pulse produced by a nuclear blast.  The EMP effect was discovered in 1962 after an above-ground nuclear test in the Pacific disabled electronics in Hawaii.

In a report about Global Trends up to the year 2030, the National Intelligence Council, which represents the entire U.S. Intelligence Community, stated that an EMP attack on the United States is a potentially catastrophic societal threat and could lead to months-long blackouts across the entire continent. 

The U.S. military has been using EMP and related microwave weapons for decades. During the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. Joint Stars aircraft used EMP weapons to disrupt electronic command systems, giving American forces a decided advantage over the enemy. In March 1999, the U.S. used EMP weapons during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, shutting down enemy communications. EMP weapons were also used to knock out Iraqi state-run television broadcast signals in March 2003 during the Iraq War.

And now the Chinese have them. Top military analysts believe that EMP warheads have been fitted on China’s advanced DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles in order to attack large U.S. Navy ships, including U.S. aircraft carriers in the South China Sea, in the event of a conflict over Taiwan.

Taiwan separated from mainland China after communists seized power in 1949. The United States is required by a 1979 law to prevent the forcible reunification of the island with the mainland.  Should a military conflict develop over Taiwan, Chinese EMP weapons could be used to shut down the U.S. fleet’s radar, communications, computers and other critical electronics before a battle even begins.  The weapons can also be used to jam electronics of attacking aircraft and even degrade sensitive satellite electronic systems, all without inflicting large-scale human casualties.

The growing EMP threat is not limited to U.S. military targets.

Peter Vincent Pry, the Executive Director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security who has also served on the Congressional EMP Commission, the House Armed Services Committee and in the CIA, warns that China has plans for EMP strikes against civilian targets in the United States, as well as Taiwan and U.S. carrier forces, as part of its military doctrine and exercises. 

Calling the EMP strikes part of a “blackout war”, Mr. Pry cited evidence that China is developing super-EMP nuclear weapons that generate extraordinarily powerful EMP fields, based partly on design information stolen from the United States. These super-EMP weapons can destroy even the most heavily shielded U.S. military and civilian electronic systems.

In a blackout war, a hostile foreign power would use cyber attacks and physical sabotage, combined with EMP attacks, to black out the national electric grid and crash other critical infrastructures such as communications, transportation, banking and finance, and food and water.

It is largely believed that China has already begun cyber attacks against domestic U.S. targets.

Last year Attorney General Eric Holder announced the indictment of five members of China’s People’s Liberation Army on charges of economic espionage for allegedly stealing trade secrets and hacking computer systems of U.S. companies.  And earlier this year, a verbal slip by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, accusing the Chinese government of ordering the recent cyber attack on the Office of Personnel Management was widely reported. That cyber attack led to the theft of over twenty-one million classified personnel files of government workers and contractors, many with high-level security clearances.

The U.S. government has publicly acknowledged that a vast network of Chinese agents is now secretly operating in the United States.  In addition to stealing political, economic, military and industrial secrets, these Chinese operatives are part of a global campaign to capture and repatriate Chinese fugitives called Operation Fox Hunt.

Repeated demands from the Obama Administration that Beijing recall these agents ahead of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s first visit to the United States in September have been met with scorn by Chinese officials, who claim the U.S. has become an international haven for criminals.

Even more disturbing, as EMP weapons are entering a new phase of strategic importance, they are becoming smaller and easier to deploy.

The most advanced weapons in the U.S. arsenal include a type of radar called an active electronically scanned array, or AESA, which emits a beam of intense microwaves. This beam is similar to the effects of an EMP and destroys its target’s electronics without damaging the electronics on board the aircraft equipped with the AESA radar.

AESAs are light and compact enough to be mounted in the nose of jets such as the F-22 Raptor, the modified F-18 Super Hornet known as the Boeing Growler, and the F-35 Stealth joint strike fighter. The beam is powerful enough to stop air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles. Larger ground or ship-based AESAs can attack ballistic missiles and aircraft.

The People’s Liberation Army sees EMP capabilities as increasingly vital to its efforts to defeat a technologically advanced adversary such as the United States and has placed a high priority on closing the EMP gap. The Xian Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently announced a technological breakthrough that could help the Chinese People’s Liberation Army develop new types of pulse weapons to counter the EMP dominance that U.S. strike aircraft have employed in the past.

This miniaturization of EMP weapons and related microwave systems brings a growing threat of EMP strikes by domestic terrorists or foreign agents against U.S. targets using vehicle-mounted, portable EMP devices.

Although Russia and China have substantially hardened their electric grids, the United States has done little to counter this threat. Bipartisan congressional initiatives which mandate hardening the grid, such as the Secure High-Voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage (SHIELD) Act and the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (CIPA), have not been passed by both houses of Congress, leaving the United States extremely vulnerable to EMP attacks.

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