September 10, 2019—Ignore the Erroneous EPRI EMP Report!

“Critical infrastructure keeps our food fresh, our houses warm, our trade flowing, and our citizens productive and safe. The vulnerability of U.S. critical infrastructure to cyber, physical and electromagnetic attacks means that adversaries could disrupt military command and control, banking and financial operations, the electrical grid and means of communication.” ~President Donald Trump, identifying the most serious existential threats to Americans in his Dec. 18, 2017 National Security Strategy statement

Regrettably, there are formidable bureaucratic forces blocking progress toward protecting the American People against the existential threat from such man-made and natural electromagnetic pulse (EMP) events. This impedance opposes the President’s March 26, 2019 Executive Order on Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Threats, which is intended to direct the “powers that be” to provide a “whole of government” response to this existential threat.

Not the least of these activities is posed by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a nonprofit organization, claiming over 450 participants from more than 30 international members, that is funded by the electric power industry to conduct research and testing intended to develop an independent perspective for participants that generate approximately that generate approximately 90% the electricity in the United States.

Unfortunately, EPRI is way off base when it comes to addressing the existential EMP threat. Click here for its badly flawed April report, High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse and the Bulk Power System: Potential Impacts and Mitigation Strategies.

Click here for my May 7, 2019 message that highlighted the release of an obviously badly flawed EPRI report that misrepresented the nature of the threat from a technical perspective and basically claimed that everything is under control — not to worry.

Click here for Bill Gertz’s Washington Free Beacon article that I included, “General: America’s Power Grid Vulnerable to Electronic Attack,” which laid out in considerable detail criticisms of the EPRI report that were presented on the margins of an important Electromagnetic Defense Task Force (EDTF) conference hosted by Air University on Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Air University, is a key component of the Air Force Education and Training Command, then commanded by USAF Lt. General Steven Kwast, who is committed to addressing this critically important threat.

Regrettably, General Kwast was retired on September 1, 2019 — no doubt because his views (while consistent with President Trump’s interest in a separate Space Force and his March 26, 2019 Executive Order on Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Threats) were not in line with some of his most influential Air Force superiors — most notably former Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson. This situation has sent a terrible message to the junior and middle grade officers previously under his command — especially those who share his views.

Meanwhile, Air University has provided an excellent comprehensive critique of the EPRI Report. Click here for that August 27, 2019 Over the Horizon’s Report, Electromagnetic Pulse Threats to America’s Electric Grid: Counterpoints to Electric Power Research Institute Positions.

This Air University report elaborates and reinforces positions than were taken on the margin of our meeting at Air University, as presented in a press conference arranged by Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy’s Secure the Grid Coalition, as provided in two approximately 30-minute videos. Click here for the first of comments by several informed NDTF participants, and click here for the follow-up Question and Answer period.

While I urge you to review this important recent report, I would just emphasize that, whatever may be its merits and faults, the EPRI report by its own clear terms is most definitely not an credible assessment of the EMP threat.

For example, the Bulk Power Grid consists of Generation Plants and a Transmission Grid to deliver electricity to High Voltage “Step-Down” Transformers in important substations that connect to the Distribution Grid, through which electricity flows to hospitals, water-wastewater infrastructure, emergency managers, communications, factories, businesses and homes.

But the EPRI report dealt only with the Transmission lines of the electric power grid, illustrated in blue below — hardly the full story, whatever might be associated with the details.

Thus, EPRI’s report left out consideration of the generation plants — perhaps most notably the nuclear power plants that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has observed have not been hardened. Click here for my August 27, 2019 discussion of this important recent finding, stimulated by the EDTF activities.

EPRI also left out consideration of the Distribution Grid that composes over 90-percent of the nation’s electric Grid.

Obviously, there can be no comfort taken in EPRI’s false claims. One has to wonder about the origin of its bogus claims.

We hope our SC Lake Wylie Pilot Study in York County, in conjunction with Duke Energy — which provides electricity via their Generation Power Plants and Transmission Grid — will enable us to export our “lessons-learned” on these matters throughout the nation.

We are considering all components of the Grid, unlike EPRI that has considered only the Transmission Grid — and purports to give, or at least imply, conclusions for the entire Grid. This is hardly sound practice or good science.

But EPRI claims its report is the “most significant collaborative research in this area to date, with funding and active support from more than 60 U.S. utilities, and collaboration with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy (including the three nuclear weapons laboratories), and the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC), which provides national coordination of government and utility preparation and response to disasters affecting the power system.”

Whatever, EPRI’s report obviously is far from complete, and certainly EPRI is not the most competent authority on either the EMP threat or how to counter it.

Clearly, the most authoritative information on the EMP Threat has been provided by the Congressional EMP Commission that first reported on the existential threat in 2004.

While classified matters were briefed to a closed session of congress (and of course the George W. Bush administration), click here for the unclassified port that was included in the Congressional Record. It made clear — 15 years ago — that a High Altitude EMP (HEMP) attack is an existential threat to the nation that can be posed by Russia, China, and others.

But our leaders have refused to respond effectively to the EMP Commission’s findings.

Indeed, neither the George W. Bush administration nor the electric power industry did anything after the Commission’s 2004 presentation to Congress, no doubt because many key technical details were kept under highly classified constraints.

So, Congress reinstated the EMP Commission to provide more information. Click here of that much more complete unclassified 2008 report, published toward the end of the George W. Bush administration and calling for a number of specific actions to protect our critical civil infrastructure.

But, again, little if anything was done to deal with the existential threat, either by any government agency or in the private sector. So, the EMP Commission was again reinstated by congress, and was stalled for a year by the Defense Department, which was charged with supporting the commission. It then met on an accelerated schedule to produce several important reports.

Click here for these reports that are the most authoritative current basis for further efforts to protect our electric power grid. In particular, click here for the Chairman’s July 2017 Executive Summary. (Publication was actually delayed until April 2018 while the Defense Department stalled via its security review).

I encourage you to review the credentials of the Commissioners and the Commission staff, and ask yourself, “Why have current authorities ignored their recommendations and outrageously implied, if not actually stated, that the current less qualified and less experienced folks are somehow preferred as authoritative experts?”

These concerns remain largely unaddressed today. Instead, EPRI’s incomplete and erroneous report suggests the existence of a dangerous charade that threatens the viability of the nation.

Hopefully, those responsible for executing President Trump’s March 26, 2019 Executive Order on Electromagnetic Pulses will knock heads among the dysfunctional federal establishment and bring constructive order out of this situation.

But while the President’s Executive Order is surely gratifying to those of us who have advocated for protecting our critical civil infrastructure, we can’t pause in our efforts to actually deal with the threat.

And I remain convinced that the wisest approach is from the bottom-up. Click here for my May 4, 2017 testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to that effect. Moreover, I am persuaded from our Lake Wylie Pilot Study experience that we can quite affordably harden the electric power grid by using the same EMP hardening procedures that we have used for decades to design, deploy, assess and upgrade our most important military systems.

Click here for the completely unclassified Military Standard that was formulated by experts who had serious experience from the days when we actually tested our military systems to assure they can survive these nuclear weapon effects.

Dr. George Baker, who was actively involved in preparing these military standards three decades ago, worked with York County officials and engineers and Duke Energy engineers to assess the Distribution Grid and to estimate the costs of fully protecting the Distribution Grid — based on those military standards.

The bottom line from our effort is that these costs are obviously affordable; so the claims of extraordinarily expensive costs of hardening the grid are bogus! Equally bogus is the claim that we need to do a great deal of research to provide affordable means to harden the grid and protect the American people.

Hopefully, President Trump’s March 26, 2019 Executive Order on Electromagnetic Pulses marks a major change in a more positive direction.. Leaders within the White House National Security Council staff have an enormously important role to assuring a “whole of government” response to this Executive Order to counter the threat. However, they must contend with several realities of the DC Swamp that I’ve previously discussed over the past several years — repeated below:

The Department of Energy (DOE) — and its predecessor Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) — was historically most interested in designing, testing and building nuclear weapons and not in understanding their effects and how to protect against them. That task was assigned to the DoD, and particularly to the predecessor organizations of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), beginning in the early 1960s with the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA) that morphed into the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA), which abandoned its leadership role in the early 1990s with the alleged end of the Cold War and eventually morphed into the DTRA.
Now, there are very few remaining experts from that era, leading former DNA Director Retired VADM Robert Monroe to advocate a return to that capability, including the needed nuclear testing to guide the educational process—as well as for designing a modern nuclear arsenal as well as training a new cadre of nuclear weapons effects experts. Click here for one of his recent articles that reviews pertinent past history pertinent to EMP matters. Into this vacuum is emerging a charlatan class of experts, like the authors of the EPRI EMP Report, that allege an unproven expertise.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has long had a “whole of government” responsibility, but has thus far placed the priority on dealing with the existential EMP threat near the bottom of their list of threats to which they are also supposed to respond. Current DHS leaders show little serious interest in applying our known expertise, learned and still applied to protect our most important military systems, to protect our electric power grid.

For my part, I welcome everyone becoming aware of this threat and how to counter it.

But the President’s Executive Order, which is a positive step, contains numerous recipes for months and even years of delays fostered by additional studies to relearn lessons mastered decades ago — and kept secret from the American people for much of the time since then. I hope the Senate and House Armed Services Committees will make positive corrections in their upcoming conference. As the President often says, “We’ll see.”

This situation continues in spite of the fact that the existential EMP threat was made public by congressional actions almost 20-years ago, by establishing a Congressional EMP Commission that issued its findings and recommendations in 2004, 2008 and most recently in 2016-17. Nothing was done to counter the threat during successive administrations, and it remains to be seen whether and how the Trump administration will farer in the face of continuing opposition from organizations such as EPRI and those who support them, particularly in the Washington “Swamp.”

The Commissioners deserve thanks from the American People in spite of the actions of an ungrateful congress that abolished its operations in 2017, without even giving any thanks to the commissioners — some of whom had served without compensation for 17-years. Such has been the resistance to recognizing and responding to this existential threat.

I’ll close this message with a summary statement by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) that expresses his frustration with the past performance of the Federal response to the existential EMP threat:

“We have known about the existential threat posed by electromagnetic pulses (EMP) and geomagnetic disturbances (GMD) for decades. Because most people are either unaware of the danger, or view these as very low probability events, there has not been sufficient public pressure to take effective action to mitigate these threats. Instead, we establish commissions and study panels, conduct research, and develop plans to develop strategies. It is way past time to stop admiring this problem, and actually begin to do something concrete to protect our vulnerable electrical grid, control systems, and the ever-increasing array of electronic devices our society has become dependent upon.”

To which I again say: “Amen!!!!”

Bottom Lines.

The EPRI EMP Report is not only disappointing, it is dangerous if anyone in authority gives it any credibility.

The EDTF effort should be continued and heeded — as should be the recommendations of the Congressional EMP Commission.

Our Lake Wylie Pilot Study has demonstrated how to accomplish a viable assessment and make valid hardening improvements, with affordable associated costs to assure “from the bottom-up” a viable Distribution Grid to deliver electric power to the citizens of Rock Hill and York County. This same methodology can be used in assessing the Generation and Transmission portions of the grid.

This approach is an appropriate model to be pursued in responding to President Trump’s Executive Order directing the executive branch “powers that be” to protect the nation’s electric power grid.

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org, for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages.

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