Boeing's CHAMP Missile Uses Radio Waves To Remotely Disable PCs 341
Dupple writes "During last week's test, a CHAMP (Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project) missile successfully disabled its target by firing high power microwaves into a building filled with computers and other electronics. 'On Oct. 16th at 10:32 a.m. MST a Boeing Phantom Works team along with members from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate team, and Raytheon Ktech, suppliers of the High Power Microwave source, huddled in a conference room at Hill Air Force Base and watched the history making test unfold on a television monitor. CHAMP approached its first target and fired a burst of High Power Microwaves at a two story building built on the test range. Inside rows of personal computers and electrical systems were turned on to gauge the effects of the powerful radio waves. Seconds later the PC monitors went dark and cheers erupted in the conference room. CHAMP had successfully knocked out the computer and electrical systems in the target building. Even the television cameras set up to record the test were knocked off line without collateral damage.'"
And the missile? (Score:2, Interesting)
So what happened to the missile? Did it land in the yard in front of the building to be taken apart and sold on the black market?
Re:Faradays cage (Score:5, Interesting)
Excuse my ignorance on this one, but if the missile disrupts electrical systems, how is a Faraday cage going to help? Assuming that your generation is not self contained, would such a disruption take out the electrical system outside of the Faraday cage? And if there is a sufficient spike, still do damage to devices inside the cage? Yea, I imagine with sufficient surge protection and battery backup you might be able to withstand the attack, but in all seriousness, only a really hardened target would have a chance. In the era of asymmetric warfare, the U.S. would be unlikely to face an enemy with this type of planning and resources. And if it were symmetric conflict, I doubt the United States would be worried about such a target attack. Instead they would cripple infrastructure or simply take out the building.
The more likely use case would be conducting a targeted raid and using a weapon like this to ensure that all security systems and communications systems were disabled right before the raid. Think Bin Laden compound.
The even more likely scenario is that this is a way of making some companies very rich and this weapon will never see use.
Its long known you can do this using microwaves... (Score:4, Interesting)
...with antennas to remotely disable machines. I've known people make them. However the issue was that 2.4GHz* would cause people to go blind if you hit them with it (due to the clear liquid in your eyes turning milky). As such I don't think this will ever be used in anything other than a war setting, and even then, if you're going to cook the occupants to death, you might as well hit them with a conventional explosive, probably a nicer way to go.
TFA doesn't mention which microwaves they use, perhaps they other other ones which do not affect humans so much.
Re:"Even the television cameras..." (Score:5, Interesting)
how are you supposed to record electromagnetic radiation when you are shielding against electromagnetic radiation? (optical filters and/or faraday cage?)
Waveguides are excellent high pass filters with great ultimate attenuation. If you don't believe me, do two experiments and look down the center of a straight section, and then wave a 9-volt battery on one end and a voltmeter on the other. I can't be bothered to look up circ waveguide cutoff freqs vs a standard c-mount inner diameter, but right off the top of my head a cmount hole is probably small enough to stick inside a piece of rectangular WR-42 waveguide so just tune your master blaster missile to somewhere lower than 25 or so GHz and the attenuation thru a cmount is likely to exceed 100 dB or so. Best ask a EE to model it to make sure you haven't built a coupling iris instead of a waveguide. In fact put a tiny little CCD with a pinhole lens in a small metal box that is way too small to resonate at the master blaster freq. Talk to an optician about designing the longest narrowest possible lens system aka a submarine periscope and make the tube outta metal aka a long narrow circ waveguide operating way below cutoff.
Re:Faradays cage (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you're confusing "interferes with" which merely requires ruining the signal to noise ratio by enough that you can't demod without errors, with vaporizes.
You're talking about a temporary impairment, they're talking about the equivalent of putting your bluetooth gear in the microwave and turning it on until smoke is emitted.
Or another analogy is the geometry of sunlight on my deck railings makes shadows aka ugly black bars on the deck, but that's a far cry from using a giant magnifying glass to burn permanent ugly black bars into my deck.