The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has concluded a weeklong live-fire exercise that involved testing command and control, long-range maneuvers and electromagnetic warfare exercises.
The Air Force is surveying industry for high-power microwave (HPM) technologies that could be incorporated into unmanned aerial vehicles, bombs and cruise missiles.
A U.S. company has delivered antenna assemblies for U.S. military Global Positioning System satellites to detect nuclear explosions.
Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before they are used on the battlefield. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions in the international community over any possible safety concerns, according to U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne.
While long a staple of science fiction, directed energy weapons have yet to play a major role in warfare. Taylor Dinerman examines the state-of-the-art in this area and the role such weapons might eventually play in space.
The Project on Government Oversight counters a recent Washington Times article on the threat of EMP weapons, arguing that while EMP is theoretically possible, "it would be difficult for terrorists to pull off. And nation-states that would attempt such an attack would face nuclear retaliation from the United States which, during the Cold War, shielded its nuclear command and control systems from the possibility of EMP effects from an exchange with the Soviet Union."
The United States is highly vulnerable to attack from electronic pulses caused by a nuclear blast in space, according to a new book on threats to U.S. security.
For years, the U.S. military has explored a new kind of firepower that is instantaneous, precise and almost inexhaustible: beams of electromagnetic energy. Such weapons are now nearing fruition. But logistical issues have delayed their battlefield debut -- even as soldiers in Iraq encounter tense urban situations in which the nonlethal capabilities of directed energy could be put to the test.
The U.S. Navy is planning on deploying a new electrical power system aboard their ships by 2011 that will allow the use of high-energy weapons such as free electron lasers, high-powered microwaves and electromagnetic rail guns.
The author analyzes the science and the risks behind high-powered microwave weapons.