Air Force Doles Out Cash to Microwave Computers Published on 12-24-2010 Email To Friend Print Version
Nice work if you can get it. BAE Systems just won $150,000 to bombard computers with high-powered electromagnetic radiations to see whether they’ll fritz out. The objective: learn how to fry the other guy’s electronics while protecting your own.
Yesterday, the Air Force announced that Europe’s biggest arms company will develop the first tests for its High Power Microwave Technological Electromagnetic Susceptibility with Laboratory Applications project. Basically, much as microwave jammers stop homemade bombs by interfering with the signals sent from their remote detonators, the Air Force wants to find out how much damage it can inflict on other systems, and how much damage its own systems can handle. Or, in its words, figure out “cost effective, innovative solutions for determining the susceptibility/vulnerability of U.S. and foreign systems to high power electromagnetic (EM) environments.”
Hosted by the Air Force Research Labs’ Directed Energy Directorate at Nevada’s Kirtland Air Force Base, BAE will spend nine months subjecting a “digital system, such as a Personal Computer” with high-powered electromagnetic waves to watch it short out. The idea is to build a predictive model of “when such an upset might occur.” Apparently, no “comprehensive predictive system-level models exist” for understanding digital upset.
The offensive and defensive applications are obvious. Figure out the breaking point for such electronics and you’ll learn what specifications you’ll need for directed-energy weapons like lasers to fry your opponents’ comparable systems; as well as the levels at which your own become vulnerable. Don’t want your Littoral Combat Ship’s communications or navigation systems to be shorted out by a microwave burst? Start out by learning just what size burst will short them out.
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