Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
El Paso Times
March 16, 2009
By Chris Roberts, El Paso Times
WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE -- Microwaves, including the kind that cook your food, are increasingly being used as weapons to jam U.S. military communications or fry delicate electronics.
A new research complex on this test range aims to protect soldiers and equipment by giving them the tools they need to defeat microwave threats.
The research also may create microwave weapons for U.S. soldiers, including equipment able to detect and detonate roadside bombs from a safe distance.
"We need to get (a roadside bomb detector) out as soon as possible," said John B. Foulkes, director of the Defense Department's Test Resource Management Center, which provided about $35 million to build and equip the White Sands complex. "Our troops are facing these threats right now. ... We'd like to see it hopefully in the next two or three years."
Foulkes and Brig. Gen. David L. Mann were at the complex last week for an opening ceremony.
Some of the work will be done in a new two-story warehouse called the High Powered Microwave Assets and Complex Facility. However, the new equipment is arriving in metal containers that can be put on flatbed trucks and transported to military ranges throughout the country for different kinds of experimentation.
Most of the equipment was designed to generate high-powered microwaves across a wide range of frequencies that can be directed at test items. Another piece of equipment will map the effects of those waves in space and time, then clean up the data to make analysis easier and quicker.
"The things that are going on at White Sands Missile Range are without comparison across the rest of the ranges," Foulkes said, adding that research at the new complex "will change the way war fighters engage the enemy."
A microwave beam of the proper intensity can be used to overload circuits in a radio transmitter or other electrical equipment as far as a mile away and human operators would feel nothing, said John O'Kuma, a director of the program.
Microwaves can be generated that create a burning sensation on the skin, but the White Sands facility is not involved in that area of research, O'Kuma said.
The program intends to provide detectors to U.S. soldiers that will sense when they are being targeted and to "harden" the equipment they are using, making it more resistant to radiation. Humvees, tanks, helicopters and even unmanned aerial vehicles could be so equipped, O'Kuma said.
With other specialized equipment, certain types of roadside bombs could be detected and detonated from a distance, O'Kuma said. In many cases, though, the new equipment would be used to jam the airwaves so the bombs cannot be detonated using garage door openers or cell phones, he said. That kind of technology already is in use, but insurgents adapt and more sophisticated counter-measures are necessary.
Weapons also could be developed to disable cell phone towers or other communications equipment, Foulkes said.
Not every threat to soldiers involves high technology.
Microwave generators, called klystrons, can be pulled out of inexpensive ovens and wired together to create a relatively small weapon, O'Kuma said.
"To use it against a person, you'd have to get kind of close," he said. "But you could easily get close enough to electronics that you may want to disrupt."
Such a weapon could be used by terrorists to create confusion in public places they plan to attack, officials said.
"Because it's so readily available, basically anybody can take advantage of this technology," Mann said. "If you look on the Internet, you can put things together pretty easily."
March 16, 2009
By Chris Roberts, El Paso Times
WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE -- Microwaves, including the kind that cook your food, are increasingly being used as weapons to jam U.S. military communications or fry delicate electronics.
A new research complex on this test range aims to protect soldiers and equipment by giving them the tools they need to defeat microwave threats.
The research also may create microwave weapons for U.S. soldiers, including equipment able to detect and detonate roadside bombs from a safe distance.
"We need to get (a roadside bomb detector) out as soon as possible," said John B. Foulkes, director of the Defense Department's Test Resource Management Center, which provided about $35 million to build and equip the White Sands complex. "Our troops are facing these threats right now. ... We'd like to see it hopefully in the next two or three years."
Foulkes and Brig. Gen. David L. Mann were at the complex last week for an opening ceremony.
Some of the work will be done in a new two-story warehouse called the High Powered Microwave Assets and Complex Facility. However, the new equipment is arriving in metal containers that can be put on flatbed trucks and transported to military ranges throughout the country for different kinds of experimentation.
Most of the equipment was designed to generate high-powered microwaves across a wide range of frequencies that can be directed at test items. Another piece of equipment will map the effects of those waves in space and time, then clean up the data to make analysis easier and quicker.
"The things that are going on at White Sands Missile Range are without comparison across the rest of the ranges," Foulkes said, adding that research at the new complex "will change the way war fighters engage the enemy."
A microwave beam of the proper intensity can be used to overload circuits in a radio transmitter or other electrical equipment as far as a mile away and human operators would feel nothing, said John O'Kuma, a director of the program.
Microwaves can be generated that create a burning sensation on the skin, but the White Sands facility is not involved in that area of research, O'Kuma said.
The program intends to provide detectors to U.S. soldiers that will sense when they are being targeted and to "harden" the equipment they are using, making it more resistant to radiation. Humvees, tanks, helicopters and even unmanned aerial vehicles could be so equipped, O'Kuma said.
With other specialized equipment, certain types of roadside bombs could be detected and detonated from a distance, O'Kuma said. In many cases, though, the new equipment would be used to jam the airwaves so the bombs cannot be detonated using garage door openers or cell phones, he said. That kind of technology already is in use, but insurgents adapt and more sophisticated counter-measures are necessary.
Weapons also could be developed to disable cell phone towers or other communications equipment, Foulkes said.
Not every threat to soldiers involves high technology.
Microwave generators, called klystrons, can be pulled out of inexpensive ovens and wired together to create a relatively small weapon, O'Kuma said.
"To use it against a person, you'd have to get kind of close," he said. "But you could easily get close enough to electronics that you may want to disrupt."
Such a weapon could be used by terrorists to create confusion in public places they plan to attack, officials said.
"Because it's so readily available, basically anybody can take advantage of this technology," Mann said. "If you look on the Internet, you can put things together pretty easily."