John Wohlstetter - Sleepwalking with the Bomb

Emergency servicesare provided in the United States by some 2 million firefighters, police, and emergency medical personnel. Emergency communications have enhanced backup, but they depend upon other infrastructures functioning. (A minor east coast earthquake in 2011 generated such a huge surge in cellphone traffic that congestion prevented most callers from getting through. An EMP strike would be far worse.)

Space systemsorbiting at low altitudes are vulnerable to EMP (as well as to other radioactive elements dispersed by a nuclear explosion, should their orbit take them through an affected zone). However, many vital satellites—such as communications and broadcasting satellites in their geosynchronous orbits, 22,300 miles above earth in deep space—are EMP safe.

Governmentdepends upon all the above services, and is thus vulnerable. It would need to handle public dissemination of information following an attack. People may panic in the face of remote but unexplained dangers: after the 2001 anthrax attacks people took precautions against the disease, despite the astronomical odds of their becoming victims. After an attack, people would want to know about their family, understand what had transpired, and be assured that the authorities were managing the situation. Otherwise panic, or even posttraumatic stress, could result. After Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami megadisaster caused several partial nuclear plant meltdowns and released locally lethal radiation, Americans on the West coast bought iodine tablets, fearing that they otherwise would get thyroid cancer. Many people ignored statements from public health authorities that such precautions were unnecessary (because by the time the iodine crossed the Pacific its toxicity would have been drastically reduced).

THE COMMISSION concludes that while an EMP attack on civilian infrastructure is “a serious problem,” it can be managed by public and private cooperation. This may prove optimistic. America may well need other countries to serve as “edge communities” and come to our aid.

A modest investment along the lines indicated in the commission’s report—hardening of key facilities and stockpiling of critical infrastructure components—would surely represent a small fraction of potential exposure and could add a lot to America’s security. The panel listed a set of remedial measures that appear to cost in aggregate perhaps $5 billion. At many times that amount the investment is a bargain.

Hardening vital infrastructures would also protect our lives and trillions in economic value from one phenomenon against which a deal with Moscow will not help: geomagnetic storms from the sun, which interact with the Earth’s magnetic field as does EMP. In 1859 a powerful geomagnetic storm inflicted major damage worldwide. With today’s vast infrastructures global catastrophe could result if another such storm occurred.

Missile defense—intercepting missiles before they reach detonation altitude—could amplify this protection. The threat is hardly theoretical; as indicated above, Iran has successfully tested a missile in EMP mode. A big and unanswered question is when Iran will have an ICBM ready, to cover the 6,350-mile distance between Tehran and Washington, D.C. One report has Iran already having purchased a pair of Chinese DF-31 ICBMs, whose range is 5,000 miles. These have sufficient range to cover all of Europe.

Iran has already launched small satellites into space. Doing so requires accelerating a rocket to an orbital velocity of five miles per second, faster than the four-mile-per-second velocity achieved by ICBMs that traverse space en route to their targets. Iran’s ICBM quest awaits two milestones: when it miniaturizes nuclear warheads, so they are small and light enough to be carried by Iran’s ballistic missiles; and when it achieves sufficient accuracy to put those missiles close to intended targets. Because Iran’s likely targets will be cities, the ICBMs they deploy need not have the pinpoint accuracy, within the radius of several football fields, achieved by U.S. ICBMs.

Currently Iran has the intermediate-range Shahab-3, with a 1,200-mile reach. To reach the continental United States, a Shahab-3 would have to be launched from a base inside the Western Hemisphere. And as it happens, Iran has found just such a base in Venezuela, courtesy of Venezuela’s anti-American president Hugo Chavez. From Caracas to Miami is 1,000 miles, well within the range of the Shahab-3. But being smaller than an ICBM, Shahab missiles will require warheads of greater miniaturization than those for an ICBM. Chavez may succumb to cancer before 2012 ends, but if his followers seize power, then Iran’s basing option will remain open. Meanwhile, six Persian Gulf states have indicated interest in deploying a missile defense shield backed by the U.S., to counter the growing Iranian threat.

Currently deployed missile defense systems can shoot down intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), which travel at about two miles per second. At twice that speed ICBMs are far too fast for existing defense systems to reliably track and destroy. America’s current deployment is minimal, and not effective against an EMP launch.

Such launches pose an additional as yet unmet challenge: they follow a steep trajectory that today’s missile defense systems are not designed to intercept. Existing systems intercept warheads as they descend. But an EMP warhead is detonated at maximum altitude, and will have done its work before today’s systems can perform their defensive mission.

What is ultimately needed is a system like the recently cancelled Airborne Laser, which was carried on a Boeing 747 aircraft and aimed at missiles as they rose off the launch pad or in early stages of flight. The ABL was ended because its technology was considered not good enough. We must put American ingenuity to work anew on this vital task. New directed energy systems—especially those based on ships, which would draw from the vast electric power produced aboard ships (far greater than that generated in any aircraft)—offer promise for improved missile defense in the medium and longer term.

Missile defense needs were examined in the Rumsfeld Commission report, which presented four unanimous broad conclusions:

1. Nuclear missile threats posed by hostile nations to America and its allies are growing.

2. Emerging offensive missile capabilities are “broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly” than realized in the intelligence community.

3. The ability of our intelligence to provide “timely and accurate” estimates of these threats is eroding.

4. Warning times are shrinking and may in some cases be minimal.

Given emerging perils, it is essential that missile defense technology be unleashed, not retarded, by existing arms accords, including New START, and that development on multiple types rapidly proceed. The need for this technology is urgent.

Which makes all the more worrisome President Obama’s identification of missile defense as of “particular” interest in accommodating Moscow’s desires after the November election.

The danger of EMP may seem remote. But failure to protect against it—by hardening essential infrastructure and strengthening missile defense—greatly increases the payoff for surprise attacks, and thus the chance they will be carried out and succeed. The potentially catastrophic consequences of EMP underscore the importance of nuclear-age history’s Eleventh Lesson: NEVER ALLOW SINGLE OR LOW-NUMBER POINTS OF CATASTROPHIC VULNERABILITY.