The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

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FlyingBear
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The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by FlyingBear »

This is all very cool.

But isn't modern (= designed in the last 50 years) military equipment provided with increasingly effective EMP protection?

I could well be wrong, and I do not have any solid data to back it up (where is the solid data?), but my impression was that "high altitude burst disables electronics within a continent" applies to your TV and your laptop, not to modern military electronics like 21st century radar sets.

Are you sure you are modeling this accurately?
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Dysta
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RE: The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by Dysta »

Even there is such thing called auto-reboot, faraday cage, metal encased electric component, or surge protectors. The EMP that generated from >10mT nuclear detonation above 500km, can still instantly pulverize nearly all transistors, capacitors and other sensitive parts when it comes off.

Besides, it isn't the electric devices matter to EMP -- power generator and battery can also get pulsed and lost power for hardwares, and rendered them useless. The only thing that still can function are only chemical combustion, like diesel/turbine engines and firearms.
FlyingBear
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RE: The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by FlyingBear »

Yes EMP will fry all those things if they are unprotected... So will a good ESD pulse from touching them with your finger. But how susceptible is properly EMP protected equipment from a high altitude nuclear EMP pulse? "Not at all" is the current Command modeling, and that is not quite what I would have expected.
mikmykWS
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RE: The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by mikmykWS »

How should we approach it? Have you come across any information on things that are protected?

Mike

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Dysta
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RE: The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by Dysta »

ORIGINAL: mikmyk

How should we approach it? Have you come across any information on things that are protected?

Mike
It has much to consider, actually.

But I can try to simplify that by adding the "EMP Resistant Value" or some sort, be it reducing the chance of EMP jamming/blasting by 1-20% under some degrees of protections. Like DECM without tech levels.
mikmykWS
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RE: The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by mikmykWS »

ORIGINAL: Dysta
ORIGINAL: mikmyk

How should we approach it? Have you come across any information on things that are protected?

Mike
It has much to consider, actually.

But I can try to simplify that by adding the "EMP Resistant Value" or some sort, be it reducing the chance of EMP jamming/blasting by 1-20% under some degrees of protections. Like DECM without tech levels.

The how to do it isn't that hard.

We need information on the what to make a good decision. All I see is some broad statement with very little to actually go on.

Mike
AlmightyTallest
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RE: The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by AlmightyTallest »

I can't give out any concrete details but EMP protection factors big on the military equipment we manufacture. I can point you guys to this to perhaps help give an idea that a lot of thought and effort has gone into protection of U.S. military equipment during a nuclear exchange. I am unfamiliar with other countries solutions and testing to ensure mil-spec equipment meets such a specification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS-I

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ATLAS-I (Air Force Weapons Lab Transmission-Line Aircraft Simulator), better known as TRESTLE, or simply the Trestle, was the codename for a unique electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generation and testing apparatus built between 1972 and 1980 during the Cold War at Sandia National Laboratories near Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico.[1]
ATLAS-I was the largest NNEMP (Non-Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse) generator in the world, designed to test the radiation hardening of strategic aircraft systems against EMP pulses from nuclear warfare. Built at a cost of $60 million, it was composed of two parts: a powerful Marx generator capable of simulating the effects of a high-altitude nuclear explosion (HANE) of the type expected during a global nuclear war, and a giant wooden trestle built in a bowl-shaped arroyo, designed to elevate the test aircraft above ground interference and orient it below the pulse in a similar manner to what would be seen in mid-air.[2]
TRESTLE is the world's largest structure composed entirely of wood and glue laminate.[3
The Marx generator providing the EMP pulse generated 200 gigawatts of electromagnetic flux at an electrical potential of 10 megavolts,[4] powerful enough to reliably reproduce (at short range) the deleterious effects of a thermonuclear detonation on electronic circuitry as created by such examples as the HARDTACK I, ARGUS and DOMINIC I (Operation Fishbowl) high altitude nuclear tests. The generator itself was mounted at the end of a long, diagonal wooden scaffold structure, located above and to one side of the aircraft platform, with the primary receiving tower located at equal elevation on the other side of the arroyo.
Due to their higher flight altitude and nuclear payload, Strategic Air Command bombers were the primary object of the tests, but fighters, transport aircraft and even missiles were also tested for EMP hardness on TRESTLE. In addition to electronics survivability tests, numerous sensors located beneath and to the sides of the aircraft would gather additional data on the airframe's EMP permeability to be used in design considerations for future Cold War aircraft.
The advances made in EMP generation technology by Sandia during the operation of TRESTLE greatly assisted in the construction of the much more powerful 40 megavolt, 50 terawatt (50,000 gigawatt) Z Machine at Sandia during the 1990s. Technological advances during the 2000s (decade) have since boosted this output to 290 terawatts (290,000 gigawatts), high enough to actually study nuclear fusion at the point of detonation.[5]

So in the year 2000 they upgraded the system to a power level that can allow study of nuclear fusion at the point of detonation.... And they tested cruise missiles and other aircraft.



I did come across this Russian test of EMP effects data, haven't read through it yet but looks promising to help give some idea of various EMP effects on aircraft and such.

http://ed-thelen.org/EMP-ElectroMagneticPulse.html

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Above: USSR Test �184� on 22 October 1962, �Operation K� (ABM System A proof tests) 300-kt burst at 290-km altitude near Dzhezkazgan. Prompt gamma ray-produced EMP induced a current of 2,500 amps measured by spark gaps in a 570-km stretch of 500 ohm impedance overhead telephone line to Zharyq, blowing all the protective fuses. The late-time MHD-EMP was of low enough frequency to enable it to penetrate the 90 cm into the ground, overloading a shallow buried lead and steel tape-protected 1,000-km long power cable between Aqmola and Almaty, firing circuit breakers and setting the Karaganda power plant on fire.

In the Pacific nuclear high altitude megaton tests, communications using ionosphere-reflected high frequency (HF) radio were disrupted for hours at both ends of the geomagnetic field lines which passed through the detonation point. However, today HF is obsolete and the much higher frequencies involved do not suffer so much attenuation. Instead of relying on the ionosphere and conducting ocean to form a reflecting wave-guide for HF radio, the standard practice today is to use microwave frequencies that penetrate right through the normal ionosphere and are beamed back to another area by an orbital satellite. These frequencies can still be attenuated by severe ionisation from a space burst, but the duration of disruption will be dramatically reduced to seconds or minutes.



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Above: locations of test aircraft which suffered EMP damage during Operation Fishbowl in 1962. In testimony to 1997 U.S. Congressional Hearings on EMP, Dr. George W. Ullrich, the Deputy Director of the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Special Weapons Agency (now the DTRA, Defence Threat Reduction Agency) said that the lower-yield Fishbowl tests after Starfish 'produced electronic upsets on an instrumentation aircraft that was approximately 300 kilometers away from the detonations.' The report by Charles N. Vittitoe, 'Did high-altitude EMP (electromagnetic pulse) cause the Hawaiian streetlight incident?', Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM, report SAND-88-0043C; conference CONF-880852-1 (1988) states on page 3: 'Several damage effects have been attributed to the high-altitude EMP. Tesche notes the input-circuit troubles in radio receivers during the Starfish [1.4 Mt, 400 km altitude] and Checkmate [7 kt, 147 km altitude] bursts; the triggering of surge arresters on an airplane with a trailing-wire antenna during Starfish, Checkmate, and Bluegill [410 kt, 48 km altitude] ...'

Note that these are early 60's tests which prompted programs like ATLAS later on to correct for susceptibility of systems to EMP.
Dimitris
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RE: The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by Dimitris »

ORIGINAL: FlyingBear
But how susceptible is properly EMP protected equipment from a high altitude nuclear EMP pulse? "Not at all" is the current Command modeling, and that is not quite what I would have expected.

Wrong [:)]. There are different probabilities based on tech age. We're not showing everything on the message log [;)]
FlyingBear
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RE: The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by FlyingBear »

You can also get a glimpse through things like MIL-STD-188-125-1: (warning, incredibly dull! [8D])
http://www.wbdg.org/ccb/FEDMIL/std188_125_1.pdf

But the key data missing is of course: If you build to such standards, and the equipment is exposed to a HEMP event (MIL-STD-2169 showing what such an event looks like is classified), then what will happen to the equipment? I can only find anecdotal information so this is not easy to evaluate.
mikmykWS
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RE: The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by mikmykWS »

Ok thanks. The current generational model will be sufficient then?

Mike
FlyingBear
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RE: The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by FlyingBear »

Well yes of course, a generational model as such is perfect. What constitutes an accurate generational model, that is the tricky thing... If I do come across any data that looks useful I will forward it.
mikmykWS
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RE: The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by mikmykWS »

K thanks
FTBSS
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RE: The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by FTBSS »

This is one of the course I taught for the Navy back 20+ years ago,

real generically so as not to get into trouble:

Very old electronics Think old tube technology was actually better against EMP than stuff made 60's early 70's With transistors (very much affected)
IC circuits much less so and most modern military electronic equipment is shielded versus EMP.

Generational will work it just needs to be more a bell curve not a linear curve to be more accurate.
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Dysta
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RE: The EMP modeling + high altitude bursts

Post by Dysta »

Finally, DECM solution for EMP. [:D]
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