In July, General Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief who retired last month, warned that the service would have to withdraw from some science efforts amid budgets cuts, but that HPM technology would still be pursued. It “clearly has potential”, he told the trade magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology, warning that countries such as Russia could be ahead of the United States.
The microwave gap
The concern that other nations, or even terrorists, could be working on similar technology seems to have been one of the prime motivations for the US military to continue investing in microwave weaponry, despite the apparent lack of progress. According to a 2009 briefing on non-lethal technologies prepared by the Office of Naval Research and obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Russia, China and even Iran are pursuing HPM programs — and the UK Defense Science and Technology Laboratory at Fort Halstead is sponsoring a classified car-stopping program.
But such programs are not necessarily proof that the cold-war HPM arms race is still going on. At least some countries may — like the United States — be conducting research out of fear of becoming vulnerable to such weapons. Modern technologies such as mobile phones are particularly susceptible to HPMs, says Michael Suhrke, head of the electromagnetic effects and threats business unit at the Fraunhofer Institute for Technological Trend Analysis in Euskirchen, Germany.
As for HPM weapons in the hands of terrorists, many scientists regard that threat as far-fetched at best. Even if terrorist groups had the sophistication to carry out the necessary testing, says Yousaf Butt, a physicist in the high-energy astrophysics division at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, why would they? A microwave weapon of any magnitude would probably have to be powered by explosives. And if they had that kind of material, he says, “why wouldn't they just explode it?”
“Is it conceivable?” asks Philip Coyle, who in 2010–11 served as associate director for national security and international affairs in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and is now a senior fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a think tank based in Washington DC. “Barely, I think. I wouldn't take it for granted that terrorists couldn't do it. But I'd rather terrorists spent all their time working on [an HPM weapon] than car bombs.”
Experts still disagree on whether HPMs might eventually make useful weapons. But one thing is clear: the mythical e-bomb capable of stopping cars or planes has not yet materialized on the battlefield. Asked whether the Air Force had produced any operational weapons, its research lab said only: “Due to operational concerns, we are unable to respond to this question.”
The secrecy that surrounds HPM weapons research seems to have greatly exacerbated technical obstacles to the program. In 2007, for example, a report on directed-energy weapons by the Defense Science Board said that the Pentagon had not effectively used data collected by university researchers to understand microwave effects. The Air Force claims that sharing is better now. But working in a field shrouded in secrecy still affects how information is disseminated. Neuber, for example, could agree to answer questions for this article only if he replied in writing, and only after his responses had been cleared through the US Army office that sponsors his team's work.
“Working in an area that is to a large extent of military interest requires playing by a set of different rules to some extent,” he wrote. “Some flow of information is not as free as in other areas of the research endeavor.”
To John Alexander, a retired army colonel who once headed the non-lethal weapons program at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the secrecy reinforces the air of fantasy around the whole endeavor. “My point is always: chemistry and physics work the same way for everyone, and there are smart folks out there, so who are you trying to fool?” he says. “The people not getting adequate information were our own commanders.”
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIronic isn't it? Just last month you had a news blurb right in your own magazine about some physicists who sucessfully produced a MASER using a Laser pumping system I believe. Wasn't the article something like, "First Practical Maser (Microwave Laser) Is Built". Look it up with the search option on the term MASER. Maybe sometimes pre-conceptions can get in the way of innovation? Of course, there's a long way to go yet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI definitely feel it would be worth having somethings like those weapons and am in favour to carry on with the research. New ideas and materials might bring solutions. I saw a picture of the first cavity magnetron, it was as big as a desk. A few months later they made them small enough to fit them into 1940 era fighter planes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow - the "Active Denial System" - how appropriate!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn a clear day (with low atmospheric humidity) this technology might be considered threatening. What with global warming, will the future effectiveness of such weapons be increased or decreased?
Yes, by all means, lets fund some more of these stories - they're priceless!
Right, but a MASER generates a focused, coherent electromagnetic beam (not necessarily microwaves), whereas this article implies that we are looking for more of an area or theater capability and a globular radiative path.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't believe that we are talking about the same concept.
Yes, my point was (at least I intended it to be) that the military view of a MASER as a "weapons system" blinded them to any "out of the box" innovative thinking. That fact (and the fact that any military research has basically been classified for 50 years) has basically stopped any research on possible other uses and advances in MASER technology. Look at that Scientific American article I mentioned in my previous post. It appeared on 16 August 2012.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe advances mentioned in that 16 August article are:
1. The entire apparatus sits easily on a tabletop.
2. It operates at room temperature. No extreme low temperature cooling required.
3. It produces a coherent directed beam of microwave radiation at what is still a relitivly low power...but nearly a million times higher than any other Maser before.
The difference in results, in my opinion, is that this new research was simply done to see if the idea worked, all the previous military reaserach was to make a weapon.
They simply ignored anything that didn't "look like" a weapon. That pre-conception made them blind to other possible uses of a low power Maser.
Or as the saying goes, "When all you want to do is break rocks, everything looks like a hammer to you."
Nicely put, but as I recall the correct saying (one of my favorites) is: 'To a man whose only tool is a hammer, every problem appears to be a nail'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, that one doesn't quite fit here...
If they want a tactical area weapon, what is wrong with simple microwave sources from a few microwave ovens being grouped together with 1 side unshielded and run by battery? I'm not saying it would be small or low power but it should be unpleasant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe FBI stole N. Tesla's papers upon his death; they've remained hidden since the 1940's. Tesla, of course, had invented a "Death Ray" useful to, perhaps, being a winning game-changer in WW-2, Korea, Vietnam, and a few other conflicts. Where are Tesla's papers today?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this«Despite 50 years of research on high-power microwaves, the U.S. military has yet to produce a usable weapon» I found the above news extremely encouraging. Perhaps one day we will learn to devote our intellectual and economic capital to something more rewarding (if less profitable for some) than attempting to find new ways to kill or otherwise incapacitate people....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHenri