May 22, 2018—What, Me Worry?

“We who have worked in EMP for professional lifetimes are enormously frustrated to see amateurs, academics, reporters, and even some scientists untrained and uninformed posturing as experts. It is extremely dangerous when so many in the public forum deny or grossly underestimate EMP, ignorant of the vast body of scientific research and empirical evidence proving EMP is the greatest threat to our electronic civilization.” ~ Drs. William Radasky and Peter Vincent Pry

Click here for an important May 17, 2018 Newsmax article by these two experts who have served with the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. The EMP Commission, for short, was the only truly competent voice that for 17 years provided comprehensive information on EMP and how to counter it — until congress foolishly abolished it last year.

Drs. Radasky and Pry were writing specifically in response to a Zero Hedge May 14, 2018 article “EMP: Elaborate Hoax or Legitimate Threat?” (Click here.) They began by noting that even a novice should know EMP is real because the U.S. Defense Department has spent billions of dollars protecting critical military systems from EMP since 1963 — which continues.

Indeed! Click here for a Wall Street Journal article three years ago by Peter Pry and me, noting that North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) was spending about a billion dollars to harden the electronics in the Cheyenne Mountain Command Center against EMP — this effort should be nearing completion today.

What was, and is, astonishing is that in the NORAD Commander’s role also as Commander of Northern Command (NORTHCOM), this same officer — except for commanding our homeland ballistic missile defenses — plays only a supporting role to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in protecting against other threats, including EMP.

Click here for my High Frontier message slightly over two years ago explaining this aspect of the dysfunctional federal government in dealing with EMP — and also elaborating the muddying of responsibilities not limited to activities of the Departments of Defense (DoD) and DHS.

Furthermore, the Department of Energy (DOE) now seems intent on reinventing the lessons learned by the DoD a half-century ago — perhaps perceived as a jobs program by the DOE National Laboratories?

Certainly, in the 1960s as a USAF Lieutenant I begged for time on the supercomputers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories to study nuclear weapons effects — laboratory physicists and engineers were primarily interested in designing nuclear weapons, not understanding their effects on our strategic systems.

Even so, it is perplexing to note that some of these same physicists and engineers are reported to believe that EMP is not a problem, or that if we just study it a bit more we will learn that it is not a problem. They seem oblivious to past efforts and lessons learned, dating to over a half century ago. And they are notably unconcerned about the threat…like the “What, Me Worry?” image of Alfred E. Neuman on Mad Magazine years ago.

Beyond those physicists and engineers who pioneered EMP effects mentioned in the Newsmax article by Radasky and Pry, I recall vividly Drs. Bob LeLevier and Bryan Gabbard visiting me in the early 1990s while I was Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), requesting my help in gaining access to the 1962 Soviet high-altitude nuclear test data. Bob had been involved in our high altitude test series, when we learned that EMP effects were much more damaging than had been anticipated.

The Starfish Prime test damaged electrical systems 900 miles away in Hawaii and shut down half of our satellites. But it left our physicists and engineers with many questions. And Bryan had worked closely with Bob for many years on EMP and Blackout effects from such high altitude nuclear explosions.

In the 1960s, EMP effects became so highly classified that even most of the military were not given access. Eighteen years ago, the EMP Commission was instituted by congress to open the doors to others who needed to know about the effects and counter them. And still many who need that information to protect our critical infrastructure are sill relatively uninformed about the existential threat that EMP effects can produce.

Ignorance is certainly not bliss! Nevertheless, as argued by Radasky and Pry, many appear to mistake their apparent ignorance for wisdom…with a “What, me worry?” attitude.

The Soviet tests were over land and that era’s normal electrical infrastructure, and they were better instrumented than were ours. Those data, which were obtained by the Defense Nuclear Agency in reports written by Russian Scientists, were analyzed by Dr. Radasky and the EMP Commission published the results in one of the three reports at long last released last week.

Click here for that important report that, among other things, estimated low frequency (E3) amplitudes about 3.5 times those that the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) recommended for use by our electric power companies. (That correction converts to an order-of-magnitude greater energy than EPRI projections.)

This deficiency is only one of the shortcomings of the federal departments and agencies in understanding the vulnerabilities of our critical infrastructure, particularly our electric power grid. And the leaders of some of those departments and agencies seem oblivious to the facts and proceed without heeding authoritative warnings,

For example, check here forthe April 20, 2017 letter from the EMP Commission Chairman to Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, pointing out several deficiencies that fall within his areas of responsibility, perhaps most notably EPRI deficiencies and gross understatement of the EMP threat by the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Community (JAEIC), among others that had been reported months earlier to President Obama’s Secretary of Energy in a letter from the Congressional EMP Caucus. That letter from the Congressional EMP Caucus is attached to Dr. Graham’s letter to Secretary Perry.

The EMP Chairman Dr. William R. Graham — himself an EMP expert active in the field since the 1962 Starfish Prime test — received no response from Secretary Perry or his staff. Ditto for Dr. Graham’s other letters informing the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security.

“What, me worry?” You think????

It would appear that there is either great incompetence or malfeasance among the leadership and their senior staffs in the federal departments and agencies, supposedly individuals sworn to provide for the common defense.

For the sake of the American people, that attitude should change.

Consider again the conclusions and recommendations of the EMP Commission’s Executive Report:

“The critical national infrastructure in the United States faces a present and continuing existential threat from combined-arms warfare, including cyber and manmade electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, as well as from natural EMP from a solar superstorm. During the Cold War, major efforts were undertaken by the Department of Defense to assure that the U.S. national command authority and U.S. strategic forces could survive and operate after an EMP attack. However, no major efforts were then thought necessary to protect critical national infrastructures, relying on nuclear deterrence to protect them. With the development of small nuclear arsenals and long-range missiles by new, radical U.S. adversaries, the threat of a nuclear EMP attack against the U.S. becomes one of the few ways that such a country could inflict devastating damage to the United States. It is critical, therefore, that the U.S. national leadership address the EMP threat as a critical and existential issue, and give a high priority to assuring the leadership is engaged and the necessary steps are taken to protect the country from EMP.

“Protecting and defending the national electric grid and other critical infrastructures from cyber and EMP could be accomplished at reasonable cost and minimal disruption to the present systems that comprise U.S. critical infrastructure. The following six recommendations are offered to accomplish this goal.

Recommendation 1: The Commission recommends the President establish an Executive Agent with the authority, accountability, and resources to manage U.S. national infrastructure protection and defense against the existential EMP threat.
Recommendation 2: The Commission strongly recommends that implementation of cybersecurity for the electric grid and other critical infrastructures include EMP protection.
Recommendation 3: The Commission encourages the President to work with Congressional leaders to establish a joint Presidential-Congressional Commission, with its members charged with supporting the Nation’s leadership to achieve, on an accelerated basis, the protection of critical national infrastructures.
Recommendation 4: The Commission recommends that government agencies and industries adopt new standards to protect critical national infrastructures from damaging E3 EMP heave fields, with more realistic standards of 85 V/km.
Recommendation 5: The Commission recommends that the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy provide expedited threat-level, full-system testing of large power transformers in wide use within the bulk electric system and share key findings with the electric utility industry.
Recommendation 6: The Commission recommends the Director of National Intelligence circulate to all recipients of the 2014 JAEIC report the EMP Commission critique and direct a new assessment be prepared that supersedes the 2014 JAEIC EMP report.”

As I stated last week, I do not agree with Recommendation 3, because of past congressional misdirection that undermined the EMP Commission’s efforts, especially through the National Defense Authorization Act of 2018 that terminated the past EMP Commission and guaranteed additional delays during a politically charged effort to provide a new EMP Commission.

Thus, I strongly urge that President Trump preempt these plans for FY2019 that risk more of the same lethargy demonstrated by the DoD, and which are certainly not in the best interest of the American people.

Bottom Line!

President Trump should establish an office in the White House with the authority and resources dedicated solely to integrate the disparate efforts of the federal government and develop a clearly articulated plan for a future whole of government program to deal with the threats to our critical civil infrastructure, especially the electric power grid.

I urge that President Trump establish as soon as possible such an office by Executive Order, led by a full-time technically competent individual reporting to him through the National Security Advisor, to provide a “whole of government” integrated plan to protect the American people against the existential EMP threat.

They should establish a role for any of the past EMP Commissioners who wish to continue to serve, to assure continuity with the past 17-year efforts.

And indeed, we all should worry until the nation’s critical civil infrastructure, particularly the electric power grid, is protected!

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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