I recommend this book (a B&N link because I'm minimizing the business I do with Amazon as much as possible. I suspect it's available there, too), by medically retired Navy SEAL Justin Sheffield.
It's a raw description of his evolution from trouble-making teenager through highly successful SEAL through heavily emotionally and physically (primarily brain) damaged SEAL through his eventual, in the main, recovery.
There was some subtext that greatly interested me, too: the heavy dependence on technology of the SEALs and of our military generally, both in the run-up to a fight and during the fight itself.
I have to wonder--and worry--about how effective our troops would be in a war when ASAT EMPs have been employed, and when battlefield EMPs have been employed both over the approach/engagement and over Division and Army headquarters. How well can our men and women function in a manual environment? How well can units of any size coordinate with each other without their electronic com?
And mind you: it doesn't take nuclear weapons to generate an EMP. Nor are any of our enemies, state actors or network entities, nearly as dependent on technology as we are.
Eric Hines
The EMP threat is real, at the macro level too; but it suffers from having been assigned to the 'things crank conservatives worry about' file. It's definitely one of the ways the US is vulnerable to even fairly weak enemy nations like North Korea or Iran. (Also a good reason not to have rescinded the order forbidding the PRC from being involved in our electrical grid; why not give the PRC the capacity to build in a kill switch for the USA?)
ReplyDeleteMeh. While the EMP threat is real, the use of it would invite nuclear destruction. Honestly, I can't see either Iran or NK using it (and *where* would they use it?)
ReplyDeleteThis mythical "battlefield" is just that, mythical.
While the EMP threat is real, the use of it would invite nuclear destruction.
ReplyDeleteNot so much. Nukes won't have been used yet. And it's not a done deal that with conventional forces swept from the field in a few hours and in the confusion of what's going on by the losing side, they'd decide on nuclear engagement--at that point, nukes cease to be war-fighting tools, becoming mere doomsday weapons. The loser might go that route, but it's far from guaranteed.
Eric Hines
EMP is a nuke. What are you talking about?
ReplyDeleteEMP is an electromagnetic pulse. Lots of ways to generate those without nukes. What are you talking about?
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
Not as weapons. Again, what are you talking about?
ReplyDeleteNon-nuke EMP weapons. Bing it. Lots of claptrap. Some valid.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
And none of those have the area effect of nukes, which means they are in effect, a kind of IED, and not a battle-field spanning weapon. At most, such a smaller weapon would be an inconvenience.
ReplyDeleteYeah. Because they'd be used in onesies and twosies. Like artillery rounds.
ReplyDeleteSure.
Eric Hines
So, how would they be employed by who? You're talking a state actor, and why would they do that when they could just nuke emp?
ReplyDeleteThe danger from EMPs is them being used as a first strike or as the biggest terrorist attack ever.
In answer to your first question, you're assuming our state actor enemies think like us. Their motives for an attack are their own, not ours projected onto them. One possibility, though (at the risk of my own projecting), is to win a conventional war--which today will be fought with forces in being, regardless of the weapons suite, and not with reinforcements/replacements from non-existent factory infrastructures--in the first hours, before a nuclear response even can be contemplated.
ReplyDeleteAs for network entities, EMP devices are easily enough made and so are easily enough used in a terror attack. But again, they don't think like us. The size of their attack, the targets of their attack, all stem from their own motives, not ours projected onto them. And: a terrorist EMP attack needn't be "the biggest terrorist attack ever," just the most massive outcome.
Eric Hines