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Journalism of Courage
In a war where the US is trying to minimise the loss of innocent lives, defence analysts and correspondents in Iraq are watching for one of the Pentagon8217;s most secret weapons 8212; the 8216;8216;E-bomb.8217;8217;
It8217;s an electromagnetic pulse weapon that kills the enemy8217;s electronics but leaves people unharmed. The Pentagon won8217;t talk about it, but it8217;s believed these devices have left the government8217;s 8216;8216;black8217;8217; laboratories. Until war planners decide E-bombs are needed badly enough to risk disclosing their existence, 8216;8216;they are being kept under very close wraps, much like the way they debated using the F-117 in the Gulf War,8217;8217; said Daniel Goure, vice-president of Virginia8217;s Lexington Institute.
In February 2000, Col. Eileen M Walling, an Air Force analyst, described an E-weapon test that produced 20 gigawatts of power for a few billionths of a second. The surges can penetrate deep bunkers.
They can cause temporary failures and data loss, or complete meltdowns, even when devices are turned off. In the mid-1990s, Australian defence analyst Carlo Kopp dubbed the E-bomb a 8216;8216;weapon of electrical mass destruction8217;8217;. People aren8217;t injured unless they8217;re close enough to be hurt by the explosive triggers, Kopp said. But 8216;8216;their use offers a very high pay-off in attacking fundamental information processing and communication.8217;8217;
The fully developed type of E-bomb is said to be the 8216;8216;explosively pumped flux compression generator,8217;8217; or FCG, which produces 10 to 100 times the power of a lightning bolt, according to Kopp. Here8217;s how it works: Packed inside a cruise missile, aerial bomb, artillery shell or even a land mine is a cylinder of high explosive wrapped in a coil of heavy copper wire. Batteries and capacitors create an intense magnetic field in the coil. Some distance above the target, just as the magnetic field reaches peak power, the explosives are set off. The blast wave moves from one end of the bomb to the other. It short-circuits the coil and compresses the magnetic field, causing an intense, low-frequency electromagnetic pulse to surge outward as the bomb blows apart. The pulse expands at the speed of light, inducing an electrical surge in power cables, telecommunications lines and antennas it encounters. The 8216;8216;spike8217;8217; follows the wiring to the sensitive electronic components indoors, burning them out.
Damage also can occur when the expanding magnetic field 8216;8216;couples8217;8217; directly with internal wiring or cables connecting several devices. E-bombs have limited range, and it8217;s hard to measure damage after an attack. Nor can the bomb discriminate between the enemy and any 8216;8216;friendly8217;8217; electronics within its range.
Shielding those friendly devices, Goure said, is extraordinarily difficult and costly. War planners must consider the cost of replacing the damaged infrastructure once the war is over. The technology also could be turned against the US by enemy nations and terrorists. LAT-WP
