Iran working on assymetric EMP weapon that could cripple all U.S. electronic systems

Iran is working on a nuclear weapon-related capability that could cripple all U.S. electronic systems with a massively disrupting electromagnetic pulse over the United States or elsewhere, a specialist on EMP told Congress last week.

William Graham, head of a congressional commission that investigated EMP threat, said the United States is vulnerable to attack by electromagnetic pulse weapons from Iran, as well as North Korea, China and Russia.

"Several potential adversaries have -- and more can acquire -- the capability to attack the United States with a high altitude nuclear weapon generated electromagnetic pulse," said Graham told the House Armed Services Committee.

"A determined adversary can achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of sophistication," Graham said during a hearing last week. "EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences. A well coordinated and widespread cyber attack is another potential example."

An EMP strike would cover a wide geographic region and would cause significant damage to critical infrastructures and "thus the very fabric of society," he said.

Graham was the head of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack that first reported on the dangers in 2004.

The U.S. government needs to prepare for a future EMP attack through a combination of prevention, planning, training, maintaining situational awareness, protection and preparations for recovery.

"In so doing, the U.S. will reduce the incentives for adversaries to conduct such an attack on our homeland, our friends and allies, and our forces deployed abroad," Graham said. Among the threat scenarios are EMP attacks using a nuclear warhead detonated from a missile fired from a freight over U.S. territory, a terrorist attack sponsored by a rogue state.

Graham said Iran has conducted missile launches from a vessel in the Caspian Sean and has tested high-altitude explosions from the Shahab-3 medium-range missile.

"Iranian military writings explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States," Graham said.

Graham said there is no other explanation for Iran's high-altitude detonation tests or the freighter launch of the missile "other than to deploy an EMP type of attack."

He noted that relatively low-yield, unsophisticated nuclear weapons can be used to generate potentially catastrophic EMP effects over wide geographic areas, and designs for variants of such weapons, as well as more sophisticated weapons, appear to have been illicitly trafficked for a quarter century at least.

North Korea also reportedly has the capability to mount an advanced nuclear weapon on a missiles, he said.

Additionally, China and Russia in the past considered limited nuclear attack options that, unlike their Cold War plans, employ EMP as the primary or sole means of attack, Graham said.

"Indeed, in May, 1999 during the NATO bombing of former Yugoslavia, high-ranking members of the Russian Duma meeting with the U.S. congressional delegation to discuss the Balkans conflict raised the specter of a Russian EMP attack that would paralyze the United States," he said.

Also, two weeks ago Assistant Defense Secretary James J. Shinn told the same committee that "China's military is working on exotic electromagnetic pulse weapons that can devastate electronics systems by using a burst of energy similar to that produced by a nuclear blast," Graham said.

Rep. Rosco Bartlett, R-Md and a leader in highlighting the threat, called potential EMP attacks on the country a "real threat."

"It's my understanding that a robust lay-down, like we produced by a single weapon of 200 kilovolts per meter that made it 300 miles high over Iowa or Nebraska, would probably shut down all of our national infrastructure," Bartlett said. "There would be no electricity. The SCATA units in our substations and so forth would all be gone. The large transformers would be destroyed, and we don't make those. It would take a year and a half or so to buy them from somebody overseas who makes them."