SECRETS+CONSPIRACIES :.

THE DAWN OF THE E-BOMB	Michael Abrams

  Posted Mar 23.04

cont ...

In the wrong hands
The scariest part of microwave weapons may be that crude forms of the technology are readily available to anyone right now. "Any nation with a 1950s technology base capable of designing and building nuclear weapons and radars" can build an e-bomb, says military analyst Kopp. Indeed, more than 20 countries now have programs to develop some type of RF weapon.

"The more widespread the technology is, the more likely that people with nefarious purposes will have access. It's just an inescapable fact," says Thompson. "I don't know what we're going to do. Nobody in Washington knows. I imagine that the way the clear thinking starts is with a catastrophe."

Criminals and pranksters have already started exploiting that weakness. In one of the more harmless applications, a Japanese scam artist rigged up a weak microwave generator inside a suitcase to rip off a pachinko parlor. When he placed the suitcase next to one of the machines (which is something like a cross between a slot machine and a pinball machine) and turned it on, the pachinko machine went haywire and disgorged a pile of coins. The perp managed the trick several times before he was caught.

Other press accounts hint at electromagnetic weapons being deployed by Chechen troops, and by an unnamed assailant trying to topple London's futures market [see "Don't Try This at Home"].

Thankfully, protecting yourself against the microwave-enabled goofballs of the world isn't too difficult. "It is analogous to existing techniques used to trap RF interference inside equipment, except that the higher power levels require special measures," Kopp notes. Rooms or equipment chassis must become electrically sealed Faraday cages, and protective devices must be added wherever cables enter the protected volume. "Optical fibers are very useful in this game."

Such protective measures are a lot cheaper to design in from the beginning than to add on afterward, says Howard Seguine. "The general rule of thumb is that if you do the hardening during the design phase, it increases the cost roughly 1 percent. If you do it afterward, it may cost as much as 30 percent more."

But maybe hardening is a waste of time. Arthur Varanelli, a Raytheon Co. engineer who has helped write several IEEE standards for electromagnetic field measurement, human exposure, and safety, is skeptical that a malicious prankster could exploit the technology.

"Some of this stuff is just so far out there," Varanelli says. "I just don't see people running around with Buck Rogers ray guns. It's great for a science fiction writer, great to prey upon people's fears." He scoffs at the suggestion that a do-it-yourselfer could build a microwave weapon potent enough to do real damage. "People can put tacks in the road. Are we worried about electronic tacks in the air?"

The wide disparity in opinions and the uncertainty about microwave weapons, from Loren Thompson on one end to Arthur Varanelli on the other, are all part of what makes them so powerful, says military analyst John Pike, who is director of GlobalSecurity.org (Alexandria, Va.). "It all depends on the complex interactions between the weapon and the target," he notes. "I can set up a strap-down chicken test that makes [an HPM weapon] look pretty good. But as soon as I start getting into real-world targets, maybe it doesn't work so well."

"Part of the story is we don't know what the story is," Pike says. "These are weapons that by their nature seek the shadows. And unlike cluster bombs or atomic bombs, they aren't going to leave behind unambiguous evidence of their use."

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