The next Pearl Harbor will not announce itself with a searing flash of nuclear light or with the plaintive wails of those dying of Ebola or its genetically engineered twin. You will hear a sharp crack in the distance. By the time you mistakenly identify this sound as an innocent clap of thunder, the civilized world will have become unhinged. Fluorescent lights and television sets will glow eerily bright, despite being turned off. The aroma of ozone mixed with smoldering plastic will seep from outlet covers as electric wires arc and telephone lines melt. Your Palm Pilot and MP3 player will feel warm to the touch, their batteries overloaded. Your computer, and every bit of data on it, will be toast. And then you will notice that the world sounds different too. The background music of civilization, the whirl of internal- combustion engines, will have stopped. Save a few diesels, engines will never start again. You, however, will remain unharmed, as you find yourself thrust backward 200 years, to a time when electricity meant a lightning bolt fracturing the night sky. This is not a hypothetical, son-of-Y2K scenario. It is a realistic assessment of the damage that could be inflicted by a new generation of weapons--E-bombs.
Anyone who's been through a prolonged power outage knows that it's an extremely trying experience. Within an hour of losing electricity, you develop a healthy appreciation of all the electrical devices you rely on in life. A couple hours later, you start pacing around your house. After a few days without lights, electric heat or TV, your stress level shoots through the roof. But in the grand scheme of things, that's nothing. If an outage hits an entire city, and there aren't adequate emergency resources, people may die from exposure, companies may suffer huge productivity losses and millions of dollars of food may spoil. If a power outage hit on a much larger scale, it could shut down the electronic networks that keep governments and militaries running. We are utterly dependent on power, and when it's gone, things get very bad, very fast.
2.What is an E-Bomb?
An electromagnetic bomb or E-bomb is a weapon designed to disable electronics with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that can couple with electrical/electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges by electromagnetic induction. The effects are usually not
noticeable beyond 10 km of the blast radius unless the device is nuclear or specifically designed to produce an electromagnetic pulse. An e-bomb (electromagnetic bomb) uses an intense electromagnetic field to create a brief pulse of energy that affects electronic circuitry
without harming humans or buildings. At low levels, the pulse temporarily disables electronics systems; mid-range levels corrupt computer data. Very high levels completely destroy electronic
circuitry, thus disabling any type of machine that uses electricity, including computers, radios, and ignition systems in vehicles. Although not directly lethal, an e-bomb would devastate any target that relies upon electricity
3. history
The theory used in electromagnetic bombs was first put forward by A.H. Compton in 1925 for the study of atoms. The development of electromagnetic bombs for warfare was based on his findings. The first test was carried out in 1958 when hydrogen bombs were ignited over the Pacific Ocean. This resulted in gamma rays being emitted, which upon striking oxygen and nitrogen molecules produced electrons that shot hundreds of kilometres away. This resulted in the disruption of radio communication in both the nearby Hawaii islands and the distant Australia. Street lights in the Hawaii too bore the brunt of the electromagnetic bomb.
The United States military then tried finding out ways to protect electronic equipment from such pulses and worked on the development of more efficient electromagnetic bombs. Britain developed their first e-bomb in 2000 which could shut down electronics within a range of
many miles. Some reports have suggested that the US military used an electromagnetic bomb to disable the Iraqi TV station in 2003, although this has not been officially confirmed.
4.Basic principle-emp effect
The Basic Idea of an e-bomb -- or more broadly, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon -- is pretty simple. These sorts of weapons are designed to overwhelm electrical circuitry with an intense electromagnetic field. For our purposes, the most important thing to understand about
electromagnetism is that electric current generates magnetic fields and changing magnetic fields can induce electric current.a simple radio transmitter generates a magnetic field by fluctuating electrical current in a circuit. This magnetic field, in turn, can induce an electrical current in another conductor, such as a radio receiver antenna. If the fluctuating electrical signal represents particular information, the receiver can decode it.
A low intensity radio transmission only induces sufficient electrical current to pass on a signal to a receiver. But if you greatly increased the intensity of the signal (the magnetic field), it would
induce a much larger electrical current. A big enough current would fry the semiconductor components in the radio, disintegrating it beyond repair…………….this is the principle used in e bombs Researchers concluded that the electrical disturbance created by e-bomb in the circuitry was due to the Compton effect, theorized by physicist Arthur Compton in 1925. Compton's assertion was that photons of electromagnetic energy could knock loose electrons from atoms with low atomic numbers.
In the 1958 test, researchers concluded, the photons from the blast's intense gamma radiation knocked a large number of electrons free from oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere. This flood of electrons interacted with the Earth's magnetic field to create a fluctuating electric current, which induced a powerful magnetic field. The resulting electromagnetic pulse induced intense electrical currents in conductive materials over a wide area.
5.working procedure of weapon
From previous section we can conclude that if an e-bomb is able to produce changing magnetic fields of very high intensity which induces high electric currents in another conductors can easily damage them……………so e-bombs will be manufactured to generate these fields. In late September 2001, Popular Mechanics published an article outlining the possibility of manufacture of E-BOMB. The article focused on flux compression generator bombs (FCGs), which date back to the 1950s. The explosively pumped FCG is the most mature technology applicable to
bomb designs. The FCG was first demonstrated by Clarence Fowler at Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) in the late fifties Since that time a wide range of FCG configurations has been built and tested, both in the US and the USSR. The FCG is a device capable of producing electrical energies of tens of MegaJoules in tens to hundreds of microseconds of time, in a
relatively compact package. With peak power levels of the order of TeraWatts to tens of TeraWatts.
The central idea behind the construction of FCGs is that of using a fast explosive material to rapidly compress a magnetic field, transferring much energy from the explosive into the magnetic field. The initial magnetic field in the FCG prior to explosive initiation is
produced by a start current. The start current is supplied by an external source, such as high voltage capacitor bank (Marx bank). In principle, any device capable of producing a pulse of electrical current of the order of tens of kiloAmperes to MegaAmperes will be suitable.
In a typical coaxial FCG , a cylindrical copper tube forms the armature. This tube is filled with a fast high energy explosive. A number of explosive types have been used, ranging from B and C-type compositions to machined blocks of PBX-9501. The armature is surrounded by a helical coil of heavy wire, typically copper, which forms the FCG stator,and a sturdy jacket surrounds the entire device.
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The stator winding and the armature cylinder are separated by empty space. The bomb also has a power source to produce initial current, such as a bank of capacitors, which can be connected to the stator.
Here's the sequence of events when the bomb goes off:
ïƒ A switch connects the capacitors to the stator, sending an electrical
current through the wires.
ïƒ This generates an intense magnetic field.
A fuze mechanism ignites the explosive material. an electric current flowing through the bridge wire heats the wire and the adjacent igniter mixture.as soon as the mixture particles have
absorbed the necessary quantity of heat,a reaction accompanied by the necessary of heat is begun.as more and more of the igniter mixture get involved in this reaction ,the quantity of heat released increases and,after a certain time reaction proceeds without an external heat supply i.e even in the absence of current through the bridge wire.this instant is regarded as instant of ignition.for a certain time after ignition the mixture reacts(burns),leading to the ejection of tongue of flames.
The explosion travels as a wave through the middle of the armature cylinder,distorting it
into a conical shape (typically 12 to 14 degrees of arc). Where the armature has expanded to the full diameter of the stator, it forms a short circuit between the ends of the stator coil, shorting and thus isolating the start current source and trapping the current within the device. The propagating short has the effect of compressing the magnetic field, whilst reducing the inductance of the stator winding. The result is that such generators will producing a ramping current
pulse, which peaks before the final disintegration of the device. The moving short circuit compresses the magnetic field, generating an intense electromagnetic burst.
The intense fluctuating magnetic field could induce a massive current in just about any other electrically conductive object - for example phone lines, power lines and even metal pipes. These unintentional antennas would pass the current spike on to any other electrical components down the line (say, a network of computers hooked up to phone lines). A big enough surge could burn out semiconductor devices, melt wiring, fry batteries and even explode transformers.
6.EFFECTS OF AN E-BOMB:
The ElectroMagnetic Pulse (EMP) effect was first observed during the early testing of high altitude airburst nuclear weapons [GLASSTONE64]. The effect is characterised by the production of a very short (hundreds of nanoseconds) but intense electromagnetic pulse, which propagates away from its source with ever diminishing intensity, governed by the theory of electromagnetism. The ElectroMagnetic Pulse is in effect an electromagnetic shock wave.
This pulse of energy produces a powerful electromagnetic field, particularly within the vicinity of the weapon burst. The field can be sufficiently strong to produce short lived transient voltages of thousands of Volts (ie kiloVolts) on exposed electrical conductors, such as wires, or conductive tracks on printed circuit boards, where exposed.
It is this aspect of the EMP effect which is of military significance, as it can result in irreversible damage to a wide range of electrical and electronic equipment, particularly computers and radio or radar receivers. Subject to the electromagnetic hardness of the electronics, a measure of the equipment's resilience to this effect, and the intensity of the field produced by the weapon, the equipment can be irreversibly damaged or in effect electrically destroyed. The damage inflicted is not unlike that experienced through exposure to close proximity lightning strikes, and may require complete replacement of the equipment, or at least substantial portions thereof.
Commercial computer equipment is particularly vulnerable to EMP effects, as it is largely built up of high density Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) devices, which are very sensitive to exposure to high voltage transients. What is significant about MOS devices is that very little energy is required to permanently wound or destroy them, any voltage in typically in excess of tens of Volts can produce an effect termed gate breakdown which effectively destroys the device. Even if the pulse is not powerful enough to produce thermal damage, the power supply in the equipment will readily supply enough energy to complete the destructive process. Wounded devices may still function, but their reliability will be seriously impaired. Shielding electronics by equipment chassis provides only limited protection, as any cables running in and out of the equipment will behave very much like antennae, in effect guiding the high voltage transients into the equipment.
Computers used in data processing systems, communications systems, displays, industrial control applications, including road and rail signalling, and those embedded in military equipment, such as signal processors, electronic flight controls and digital engine control systems, are all potentially vulnerable to the EMP effect.
Other electronic devices and electrical equipment may also be destroyed by the EMP effect. Telecommunications equipment can be highly vulnerable, due to the presence of lengthy copper cables between devices. Receivers of all varieties are particularly sensitive to EMP, as the highly sensitive miniature high frequency transistors and diodes in such equipment are easily destroyed by exposure to high voltage electrical transients. Therefore radar and electronic warfare equipment, satellite, microwave, UHF, VHF, HF and low band communications equipment and television equipment are all potentially vulnerable to the EMP effect.
It is significant that modern military platforms are densely packed with electronic equipment, and unless these platforms are well hardened, an EMP device can substantially reduce their function or render them unusable
A widespread EMP attack in any country would compromise a military's ability to organize itself. Ground troops might have perfectly functioning non-electric weapons (like machine guns), but they wouldn't have the equipment to plan an attack or locate the enemy. Effectively, an EMP attack could reduce any military unit into a guerilla-type army.
While EMP weapons are generally considered non-lethal, they could easily kill people if they were directed towards particular targets. If an EMP knocked out a hospital's electricity, for example, any patient on life support would die immediately. An EMP weapon could also neutralize vehicles, including aircraft, causing catastrophic accidents.
In the end, the most far-reaching effect of an e-bomb could be psychological. A full-scale EMP attack in a developed country would instantly bring modern life to a screeching halt. There would be plenty of survivors, but they would find themselves in a very different world.
7.DELIVERY AND LIMITATIONS
A limitation in all such applications is the need to carry an electrical energy storage device, eg a battery, to provide the current used to charge the capacitors used to prime the FCG prior to its discharge. Therefore the available payload capacity will be split between the electrical storage and the weapon itself.
In wholly autonomous weapons such as cruise missiles, the size of the priming current source and its battery may well impose important limitations on weapon capability. Air delivered bombs, which have a flight time between tens of seconds to minutes, could be built to
exploit the launch aircraft's power systems. In such a bomb design, the bomb's capacitor bank can be charged by the launch aircraft enroute to target, and after release a much smaller onboard power supply could be used to maintain the charge in the priming source prior to weapon initiation.
8.Defence Against Electromagnetic Bombs
The most effective defence against electromagnetic bombs is to prevent their delivery by destroying the launch platform or delivery vehicle, as is the case with nuclear weapons. This however may not always be possible, and therefore systems which can be expected to suffer
exposure to the electromagnetic weapons effects must be electromagnetically hardened.
The most effective method is to wholly contain the equipment in an electrically conductive enclosure, termed a Faraday cage, which prevents the electromagnetic field from gaining access to the protected equipment. However, most such equipment must communicate with and be fed with power from the outside world, and this can provide entry points via which electrical transients may enter the enclosure and effect damage. While optical fibres address this
requirement for transferring data in and out, electrical power feeds remain an ongoing vulnerability.
CONCLUSION
An e-bomb when used results in substantial paralysis.
E-bomb will become a decisive capability in strategic warfare and electronic combat.
E-bombs are a non-lethal weapon.
The critical issue for the next decade is deployment of the E-bombs and hardening of fundamental infrastructure.
