EMP and the Chinese balloon

[727Sky]

https://www.turdef.com/Article/us-analys...ttack/2799

It is understood that in 2018 China’s state television CCTV broadcast footage of a high-altitude balloon test that launched what appeared to be a hypersonic weapon.

The video shows a high-altitude balloon carrying three wedge-shaped payloads, like a hypersonic launch vehicle (HGVS), to a certain height and then dropping them.
The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) has previously reported that the HGV that crashed in a balloon was part of China’s efforts to develop warheads for hypersonic weapons.

A wedge-shaped payload similar to a design disclosed in 2017 by CCTV is believed to be linked to the DF-ZF HGV hypersonic missile. This weapon can shoot between Mach 5 to 10 and manoeuvre to avoid enemy resistance. The Dong Feng -17 (DF-17) intercontinental ballistic missile can carry the DF-ZF HGV, which has a range of 1,800 – 2,500 km.
However, hypersonic missiles may not be China’s first choice for now. There is another argument on the table. It is considered that China could use high-altitude balloons to carry out a nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack.

The biggest threat is sending one or more of these high-altitude balloons to the US with small nuclear EMP devices. The high-altitude detonation, which could knock out power and communications across the US, wreaked widespread havoc for a year or more without ground gunfire. The area affected by the EMP would live the “stone age” as anything that works with electricity would be useless unless they are EMP proof.

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https://eurasiantimes.com/catastrophic-impact-us-experts-flag-the-threat-of-emp-attack/

China’s EMP Strike Capabilities 

An American expert on EMP warfare, the late Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, [url=https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1102202.pdf]published a report in July 2020, during his tenure as the Executive Director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, in which he stated that China has long known about nuclear high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP).

It has defensive and offensive programs that are almost certainly more robust than any in the United States.

According to Dr. Pry, references to potential HEMP attacks against the US figure prominently in Chinese military writings as a means of prevailing in war. He explained that China’s military doctrine closely associates cyber-attacks with HEMP attacks as part of what it refers to as ‘Total Information Warfare.’

In this concept of Total Information Warfare, China regards cyber bugs and hacking as functional equivalents of scouts who conduct surveillance and make secret preparations for large-scale military offensives.

Therefore, China’s cyber-attacks, such as the one in June 2015 on computers in virtually every federal agency, stealing sensitive information on millions of federal employees, should be considered a possible practice for Total Information Warfare, including HEMP attacks, according to Dr. Pry.

File Image: Electromagnetic Pulse Attack

In August 2021, a Chinese defense contractor conducted an experiment in which a powerful electromagnetic pulse brought down an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flying 1,500 meters above sea level. This was possibly China’s first openly reported field test of an EMP weapon, according to Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Besides that, scientists at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) have been working on a hypersonic missile with a non-nuclear EMP warhead capable of disrupting the adversary’s electrical grids and power supply.

This missile could reportedly cruise at six times the speed of sound and cover around 3,000 kilometers in 25 minutes.

Artist’s impression of a hypersonic missile.

Chinese military experts have repeatedly made references to potential EMP attacks on American aircraft carriers, in which a missile armed with an EMP warhead could be detonated within dozens of kilometers around the aircraft carrier to unleash a strong electromagnetic pulse that can paralyze the radar and telecommunications system of the aircraft carrier and vessels around it.

If this happens, the air defense missile systems of the aircraft carrier will not function without the functioning control radars, enabling the Chinese military forces to destroy an aircraft carrier and escort warships quickly.

According to Christian D. Orr, former US President Trump’s administration has been the only one in American history to take the threat of a deliberate EMP attack seriously. Trump issued an Executive Order in March 2019, which directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop quadrennial risk assessments of EMP.

While the Biden administration has continued this Executive Order but suspended the one aimed at securing the US’ bulk power system, and because of this, the US continues to import Extra High Voltage (EHV) Transformers from China, making the US potentially more susceptible to EMP and cyber-attacks, Orr wrote citing remarks from late Dr. Pry.

Dr. Pry also noted that the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Bill had allocated millions of dollars for additional studies on protecting electric grids and other critical infrastructure from EMP. However, no measures have been taken to bolster any vital infrastructures.

China has been investing in protecting its military forces and critical infrastructures from HEMP and other effects of nuclear weapons since the Cold War era.

https://www.futurescience.com/emp/EMP-balloon.html

There are many advantages to a balloon launch for the attacker.   One is the great difficulty in detecting the launch as compared to a missile.   This is especially true if the balloon were launched at night (which is the only time that such an attack launch would make sense).   A balloon could easily reach its maximum altitude, and detonate before sunrise.   Nations without highly developed nuclear weapons programs can find that there is great difficulty in mating a nuclear weapon to a rocket.   There are no such problems dangling the weapon from a balloon.   The importance of miniaturization and reduced weight are much less important for a balloon-launched weapon.
The damage that could be done by a balloon-launched weapon would be quite considerable.   For example, a balloon launched off the coast of New Jersey in the right wind conditions could gain sufficient altitude to put a very damaging EMP over an area extending from south of Washington, D.C. to north of New York City.   The number of financial and critical data processing centers in this area would insure the worst national catastrophe since the U.S. Civil War.   In addition, many critical power grid transformers are in this region, and would be likely to be damaged beyond repair due to the geomagnetically-induced currents resulting from the explosion.   If the weapon were thermonuclear, the destruction of the power grid would be much worse.
As I have stated elsewhere, it is a common and completely untrue fallacy that going from a simple fission weapon to a thermonuclear weapon is exceedingly difficult and expensive.   New car companies do not begin by building Stanley Steamers and or the Ford Model-T.   New radio companies do not spend decades with ancient vacuum tube radio designs before putting solid-state radios on the market.   Just because the United States and the old Soviet Union had lots of difficulty in moving from simple fission weapons to much more powerful thermonuclear weapons, it doesn't mean that any other nation would have similar difficulties.   When the United States and the Soviet Union discovered the currently-used dry-fuel two-stage thermonuclear weapons, the first test in each case was so much more powerful than expected that each of those first tests actually resulted in human fatalities.