EMP (was Re: Space crews and solar flares. )

> Tony Wilkinson wrote:

Los spake thusly upon matters weighty:

I had heard the US was working on a deployable technology which could do this.
I think I heard missiles (like HARMS in targeting, but using EMP for effect).
Nasty for FT.....

> Christopher Pratt wrote:
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> Christopher Pratt wrote:

> Just something that came up the other day, is there any way

I don't know if it could be turned into a weapon but there's a testing
platform out in the Desert that the US uses to test EMP hardning of systems.
I've seen pictures of it. The platform is big enough to taxi a jet liner on
to. It is surrounded by what looks like banks of stadium lights and is capable
of generating EMPs comparable to that of a nuclear weapon as you would receive
assuming you were outside of the lethal blast radius.

> At 11:52 23/10/98 -0400, you wrote:
As I understood it you dettonate the nuke (standard sort) in orbit and this
sets up the EMP without doing any damage (at least from the explosion or
radiation). I also have here somewhere a "Scientific American" article on
Enhanced Radiation Weapons (Neutron bombs and the sort) to could create all
sorts of nasty effects. One idea was for a type of ERW that couple generate a
larger EMP from orbit and be able to burn out most shielded electronics. The
American test IIRC went by the codename "Starfish". Others on the list have
been talking about solar flares.

> Christopher Pratt wrote:

> Just something that came up the other day, is there any way

Yes. MHD. Some of the larger ex-Soviet anti-ship missiles supposedly had
such options. There's even a web site somewheres giving the theory, and
some cross-section diagrams. The effect is very short ranged, but

> Alan E & Carmel J Brain wrote:

reminds me of one of my favorite cyberpunk-ish era weapons
the EMP grenade. toss one in a room before a meet and scramble all those nifty
bugs left behind. toss one in a room full of cyber wired goons and watch them
twitch. however all this talk of nuke and such made me wonder if such a small
scale weapon was possible.

later