US Military's Microwave Weapon Can Fry North Korean Missile Electronics
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
This is reassuring propaganda plain and simple.
If the US and allies could take down a rocket they'd shoot down every NK test missle just to make a point.
Absolutely delusional saying this system can take down consumer drones and then extrapolate that out to a missle that is travelling at speeds measured in machs.
Even with drones I don't see how this is more effective than radio signal and gps hijacking which can control a malicious drone rather than destroy it in place. Various companies already do this incredibly well, shoutout to D13.
EM interference is why launch complexes use fiber. You don't want a lighting strike near a 2km cable to cause a squib to fire somewhere. Lighting protections also protect against EM attack.
I don't see how a b52 with a kerosene powered engine is anywhere near capable of delivering that same level of radiation.
Seems like the weapon can be put in cruise missiles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compre...
The electrical load (output) can be a high power microwave source, or just blast out a massive EMP.
If you always shoot down test missiles, then NK just has to keep firing test missiles until they build one that doesn't get shot down.
It's just not reliable enough to risk and as such is still a last resort measure.
Defending against a nuclear ICBM is not possible to do reliably. It's a sad reality.
And with NK slaves showing up in Polish shipyards, that is highly unlikely.
As long as they don't rely on foreign supply for their missiles[1], they can manufacture them forever without having to pay anything to anybody.
[1]: it may sound like a bold hypothesis, but I doubt anyone would ship missile materials to North Korea. China could, of course, but that would be a bit risky diplomatically.
Historically, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan cooperated on nuclear and missile tech, though I think that was engineering rather than parts.
I'm not sure that news is true, shooting down a missile with something that doesn't fly and is not a laser would require an immense power, but anyway, using it on test missiles would be a really bad move: if you have a countermeasure you never use it until when it's really necessary (war) both to keep the surprise element and to give minimum information to the enemy about what you can or -even more important- cannot do.
But in reality any strikes with RF weapons will be accompanied by significant conventional strikes.
I think there is still zero chance that there will be any sort of war between the US and NK. NK holds all the cards and has played them quite effectively. The only question is how much longer our president will continue to bluster embarrassingly before he realizes his actual strategic reality.
One other possibility is that the US would be willing to undertake a strike on NK even if there was a decent chance of NK launching a successful attack on Seoul. In that scenario, the goal of the PR is to help Americans feel that every "high tech" thing possible was done to stop NK and that the casualties were sad but ultimately worthwhile.
US bluster over NK reveals both the failure of power projection toward China and China's full knowledge that the US has more to lose from failed negotiations than China does. China will let this play out slowly and let our leaders act foolish as long as they wish.
It's funny how even in spite of the widespread mockery of our president, there is much less mockery of the foolishness underlying US "tough talk" aimed at NK. I think we believe that the tough talk is aimed at NK and not at the American people.
I fear that the ethos of tell-a-lie-often-enought-and-it-becomes-the-truth has permeated very deeply into the U.S. government. That approach often works in politics. In physics, not so much.
'You can look into the microwave safely because the holes in the grate are smaller than the amplitude and thicker than the frequency of the microwave.'
The correct understanding of Faraday cages is that their holes must be small relative to the wavelength: this is easy to remember because on a very large wavelength scale you would expect the tiny holes to not be very noticeable, and on a very short wavelength scale you're essentially talking about the light that you can see your food with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light#/media/File:Light-wave.s...
...the more likely you are to misremember things and mislead people, apparently. Leadership, hooo!
A satellite dish is actually a mirror telescope for microwaves, with its receiving antenna located at the real image of the distant satellite. But unlike the smooth, shiny mirror of a light telescope, a typical satellite dish is made of dull metallic mesh. Microwaves reflect almost perfectly from this mesh because
Answer: (A) its holes are much smaller than the wavelength of the microwaves.
On the other hand, one does not want North Korea armed with hundreds of atomic weapons and the ability to end civilization single-handedly. How about this as an opening offer to North Korea? We will accept you with 10 warheads and end the embargo. You allow full inspections of any location at any time, so the number of warheads can be verified. Seems like new approaches to the North Korea problem are needed as they now have detonated a ~100kT device.
"those Germans — and particularly those German generals — who might have been ready to throw Hitler over, and were able to do so, were discouraged from making the attempt by their inability to extract from the Allies any sort of assurance that such action would improve the treatment meted out to their country."
> Thornley also argued that Germany was almost defeated and, if Hitler were assassinated, he would become a martyr to some Germans, and possibly give rise to a myth that Germany might have won if Hitler had survived. Since the idea was not only to defeat Germany but to destroy Nazism in general, that would have been a highly undesirable development.
Hitler was an eloquent and persuasive person who effectively represented/exploited Nazi philosophy. There were certainly (secret) critics of his policies and goals, but he was not some kind of sorcerer with a spell over the German population as if, on his assassination, the Axis powers would shake their heads and blink their eyes and say "wait a minute, are we the baddies?"
The same applies even more to modern politics because modern states are not as totalitarian in their removal of critics - they must therefore have stronger supporters. You cannot blame only Donald Trump or Theresa May or Xi Jinping or Angela Merkel or whoever your opponents figurehead may be; they have huge political parties behind them and are backed by huge numbers of constituents who identify with their message. There are surely strong effects from having these leadership positions, but you also need to reach their base with your message.
Obviously we will never know but I think at the present taking out Kim Jong Un should be worth consideration.
And even if Hitler was removed, there was the remaining SS to contend with.
They all went home immediately after Hitler's death. By 1944 almost nobody wanted to fight anymore.
After the bombing, they rounded up some 5000 people, and executed most of them. And others were forced to take their own like, like Rommel.
It will be interesting to see if not blowing him and the missile up will be considered a mistake..
Hmm. Somehow, I doubt it.
Isn't it interesting that this article is written to imply the microwave weapons will specifically target Nork military hardware when it could be used upon other "enemies" and civilian populations too?