Boeing Electronics Destroying Missile

[BryanP]

Interesting article here.  So how do you think they're generating the microwave burst?  I figured a big honking bank of capacitors would be too heavy, but what do I know?

http://www.businessinsider.com/beoings-counter-electronics-high-power-microwave-advanced-missile-project-2012-10#ixzz2AEblFytm

Boeing Has Perfected A Missile That Wipes Out Electronics And Leaves Everything Else Intact

...

The Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), led by Boeing's Phantom works, promised to change the face of contemporary warfare, and its test was a complete success.

CHAMP flew over the Utah Test and Training Range last Tuesday, discharging a burst of High Power Microwaves onto the test site and brought down the compound's entire spectrum of electronic systems, apparently without producing any other damage at all. Even the camera recording the test was shut down.

[MillCreek]

I can only imagine how vulnerable the USA would be to this sort of mobile EMP weapon, or at least I assume it has the same effects as EMP.

[ArfinGreebly]

Hope they've found a wave band for their "microwave" burst that doesn't also cook humans.

[Tallpine]

I can only imagine how vulnerable the USA would be to this sort of mobile EMP weapon, or at least I assume it has the same effects as EMP.

Remember some spies sold the atom bomb secrets to the Russians 

[birdman]

Magnetic flux compression generators are typically used for HPM weapons if you only want one shot.

[MillCreek]

Hope they've found a wave band for their "microwave" burst that doesn't also cook humans.

Geez, isn't that a good point.  Would I have time to notice that all my electronics are dead and I am sitting in the dark, just before I explode like an apple in the microwave?

[MechAg94]

I wonder if they have tested these with modern naval ships, or at least with hardened versus unhardened devices. 

[geronimotwo]

i am guessing the steel ships offer fairly good protection.  unless the external electrical systems (lights, speakers, etc) transmit it to the interior.  prehaps there should be two separate systems to be safe (externl/internal)?

[MechAg94]

The article makes it sound like this more for disabling electronic monitoring systems as much as anything else.  It mention taking passive radar systems.

[zxcvbob]

I bet old vehicles, up to about 1972 or 73, were just fine.

Hope they've found a wave band for their "microwave" burst that doesn't also cook humans.

Not to worry, the length of the burst wouldn't be long enough.  Might be uncomfortable though.

[ArfinGreebly]

Too bad about the pacemakers and supplemental oxygen equipment.

Wonder what kind of damage it would do to batteries and, if so, which batteries would be most affected.

[Tallpine]

[Lee]

So, if you have a bunch of those...do you need the hundred million $+ stealth planes that Boeing builds?

[brimic]

Too bad about the pacemakers and supplemental oxygen equipment.

Collateral damage.

[kgbsquirrel]

So, if you have a bunch of those...do you need the hundred million $+ stealth planes that Boeing builds?

Yes.

You can only target the stuff you know about. There's some new passive detection systems out there that will still find and jack-up aircraft mighty hard. So you lob a swarm of these microwave missiles to take out the enemy AA and communications systems you know about, and then send in the stealth craft in case there's still some functional threats hiding out.


Also stealth really means reduced detection range, not completely invisible, if you were to fly a B2 directly over an SA-3 battery at a linear distance of less than a mile to the radar system, it's still probably going to see it for a moment.

[RoadKingLarry]

I can only imagine how vulnerable the USA would be to this sort of mobile EMP weapon, or at least I assume it has the same effects as EMP.

Kind of a known technology seems the only newish part is the delivery system or rather the combination of the EMP radiator and missle.
And I always figure by the time we get press releases abut stuff like this it's already not on the top of the new *expletive deleted*it list.

[CypherNinja]

birdman beat me to it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator