New Face of Terrorism:
Source: Hearst Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- It’s early on a Sunday morning and a
minivan prowls the streets of a major U.S. city, perhaps Washington,
D.C., or New York. In the back is a tube-like device, about two feet
in length, connected to several boxes of electronics. The vehicle
drives around its target, a building full of government computer
systems. The device fires off
electromagnetic pulses aimed at the building. Unlike the Oklahoma City
or World Trade Center attacks, there’s no explosion, no noise, no
deadly calling card, no forensic evidence. But the damage is
nonetheless severe. Electronic brains in computers in the building are
burned out or crippled for days. If the attack were to take place in
New York, electronic money transactions might be wiped clean;
confidence in the U.S. banking system could be undermined.
This hypothetic scenario, described in recent
congressional testimony by a retired three-star Army general, makes
U.S. planners nervous - because the threat isn’t science
fiction. While intrusions by ``hackers’’ - experts who can
electronically tap into computers - are a well-known threat to
computers, electromagnetic pulse weapons are relatively unknown.
According to published reports, British military
officials suspect that these devices, also known as radio frequency or
high-powered microwave weapons, already are in the arsenal of the
Irish Republican Army. In fact, the British government suspects that
radio frequency ``guns’’ may have been fired last year against
computers used by the London futures market. In Russia, mobsters
``have successfully used high-energy devices to put alarm systems out
of operation,’’ Manuel Wik, a Swedish military scientist, told a
computer warfare conference last month. ``One Russian general I know
is worried about the increasing number of cases in which terrorists
have been using electromagnetic devices,’’ Wik said.
The Swedish banking industry has asked the military to
advise banks on how to counter the weapons. Meanwhile, Swedish
scientists recently demonstrated a large-scale radio frequency weapon
by focusing a beam on a car’s electronics, stopping the vehicle at
more than 100 yards. The Pentagon is developing high-powered microwave
weapons to disable cruise missiles, aircraft or artillery fire in
mid-flight, according to a report by the Defense Research and
Engineering office. But it’s not the high-tech systems that concern
defense planners as much as it is the low-tech systems, as represented
by the van scenario.
``You could take a surplus radar transmitter and
concentrate a beam and just sit out on the street corner and blow away
virtually any computer facility that had no protection,’’ said John H.
Hall, an electromagnetic pulse expert and president of the Fremont,
Calif.,-based company Integrated Wave Technologies Inc. ``This stuff
has been around for years but nobody has talked about it. And for
every amateur saboteur, it’s a new and exciting technology,’’ Hall
added.
As the technical know-how proliferates around the
world - some Internet sites tell how to build crude variants of the
devices - scientists are worried about the consequences. ``Terrorists,
by electromagnetic means, could create chaos,’’ said Wik. ``They could
direct their weapons against computer centers, upsetting those
functions depending on computers. They could direct microwave guns
towards traffic on highways and cause malfunctions in cars.’’
There are two basic classes of these weapons. One uses
amplifiers and antennas similar to radio transmitters, but they shoot
concentrated microwaves. These transmissions destroy electrical
components by inducing voltage surges in the target. A less-known
class uses explosives wrapped in special antennas to create a much
more dense and effective electromagnetic pulse. These devices can be
made to fit in the palm of the hand.
The United States is starting to take notice of the
potential threat. Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., the chairman of the Joint
Economic Committee, which last week held a hearing about
electromagnetic pulse technology, called it ``a devastating new weapon
... currently in enhanced development today in Russia.’’ The head of
the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection,
Robert Marsh, said he was not aware that such a weapon had been used
against United States facilities but he warned: ``We have to keep our
eye on that as a potential weapon for the future.’’
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert L. Schweitzer, who was on
the Reagan administration National Security Council staff, is calling
for greater government attention. He said the government should impose
the strictest possible export controls on the technology to prevent
proliferation. ``Today, there is a new class of radically new and
important radio frequency weapons,’’ Schweitzer warned Saxton’s panel.
``And in this case, the horse is out of the barn. Transfers have
occurred and are occurring.’’ Schweitzer is working with the
Alexandria, Va.-based defense consulting firm Eagan, McAllister
Associates on a study of radio frequency weapons for the Pentagon.
While the devices are worrisome to planners, experts say
countermeasures exist, including specialized building construction
materials and unique voltage protectors. In addition, fiber optics,
which are immune to most pulses, could be used to replace cabling in
buildings. Government facilities that rely almost exclusively on
computers such as the code-breaking National Security Agency, are
believed to have countermeasures in place. But most office buildings
do not. ``There could be defenses against this, but today most people
are ignoring it,’’ Hall said.
© 1997