By: Ronald Kessler, NEWSMAX
OCT 2012
Ronald Kessler reporting from Washington, D.C. — Ignored by the media, the U.S. Air Force last month successfully tested a missile that permanently zaps electronics without killing people or damaging buildings.
The Boeing missile emits high power microwaves (HPM) that fry computer chips so that no electronic devices targeted by the missile can operate. Called the Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), the missile was built by Boeing’s Phantom Works for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at a cost of $38 million.
On Oct. 16, when most of us were watching the first presidential debate, the missile flew over a two-story building on the Utah Test and Firing Range. The building in the west Utah desert was pulsing with computers and security and surveillance systems. The microwaves took down the compound’s entire spectrum of electronic systems, including video cameras filming the test, without damaging anything else.
“We hit every target we wanted to,” Boeing’s CHAMP program manager Keith Colman said in a company press release. “Today we made science fiction into science fact.”
Until the announcement on Oct. 22, the project had been shrouded in secrecy. And beyond a few trade publications, no one in the media has since seen fit to run the story.
Besides taking out the equipment directly, HPM destroys it through connections to power cables, communication lines, and antennas. Unlike any existing systems, CHAMP permanently destroys electronic equipment.
The missile renders inoperable any radar that might detect it as it flies to and from a target. Thus, a country has no way of knowing why its facilities have suddenly gone dead.
Moreover, HPM can penetrate bunkers where facilities are hidden.
That’s where Iran comes in. HPM can take out fighter planes, tanks, ships, and missile systems. But it can also wipe out facilities for developing nuclear weapons. America’s national laboratories have been working on these capabilities for decades. Unlike an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) created by detonating a nuclear weapon in the atmosphere, HPM leaves intact civilian facilities needed to sustain life.
Intelligence sources tell me CHAMP could be expected to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability. In the same way, a nuclear device obtained by terrorists could be destroyed.
While Iran may attempt to shield its equipment, U.S. officials doubt it would be effective against CHAMP. In short, the U.S. now has a powerful weapon that could change the balance of power against a rogue nation like Iran.
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. He is the New York Times best-selling author of books on the Secret Service, FBI, and CIA.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/ › News
Arutz Sheva/Israel National News 12-6-12
Doomsday for Iran? US Tests EMP Bomb
Boeing has successfully tested an EMP missile that could be doomsday for Iran; media have largely ignored the development.
By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
12/6/2012
![The Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran]()
The Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran
AFP/Mehr News/File
Boeing has successful tested an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) missile that turns “science fiction into science fact” and could be the doomsday weapon against Iran, but media have largely ignored the development.
The U.S. Air Force and Boeing demonstrated the device more than two months ago over a military site in the Utah desert, reported the VR-Zone technology website.
Boeing did not keep the test a secret, but most mainstream media and technology sites overlooked the report.
The test was codenamed CHAMP — Counter-Electronics High Power Advanced Missile Project and was the first time a real EMP missile has been tested with positive real world results.
One of the most startling developments in the research and test is that the missile system does not use any explosives, thereby limiting damage to its intended goal of directing microwave energy that can cause instant blackouts.
Keith Coleman, who serves as Boeing’s CHAMP program manager in their Phantom Works division, stated that video camera showed “images of numerous desktop computers running, and then suddenly all of them go out quickly followed by the camera going to black,” VR-Zone reported.
“We hit every target we wanted to… Today we made science fiction, science fact,” said Coleman.
An Arutz Sheva opinion article in August mentioned Israel’s possible use of an EMP bomb against Iran. The report triggered a chain reaction, allegedly influencing U.S. intelligence sources who have since been quoted in several publications with doubtful assumptions that the article reflected Israel government thinking.
The London Times subsequently reported that an EMP bomb could cripple Iran by shutting down its electronics and sending the Islamic Republic “back to the Stone Age.”
EMP causes non-lethal gamma energy to react with the magnetic field and produces a powerful electromagnetic shock wave that can destroy electronic devices, especially those used in Iran’s nuclear plants.
The shock wave would knock out Iran’s power grid and communications systems for transport and financial services, leading to economic collapse.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Report: Air Force Has New ‘Pulse’ Super Weapon, Destroys Electronics from Air
By Cathy Burke | Wednesday, 27 May 2015
The Air Force has reportedly picked Lockheed Martin’s long-range Joint Air-to-Surface Missile to carry a new “superweapon’ – a pulse-generated beam weapon capable of destroying electronics and computers from miles away.
Major Gen. Thomas Masiello of the the Air Force Research Laboratory says the technology, known as CHAMP — for Counter-electronics High-powered microwave Advanced Missile Project — can destroy electronic equipment with bursts of high-power microwave energy, Flight Global reports.
The Air Force has reportedly picked Lockheed Martin’s long-range Joint Air-to-Surface Missile to carry a new “superweapon’ – a pulse-generated beam weapon capable of destroying electronics and computers from miles away.
Major Gen. Thomas Masiello of the the Air Force Research Laboratory says the technology, known as CHAMP — for Counter-electronics High-powered microwave Advanced Missile Project — can destroy electronic equipment with bursts of high-power microwave energy,
Flight Global reports.
Story continues below video.
The technology will be “miniaturized” to fit the Lockheed missile, Flight Global reports.
This revolutionary development in weaponry, right out of a Star Trek episode, could radically change warfare, experts say, as the new revelations may spark a new arms race for such technology.
“That’s an operational system already in our tactical air force, and that is really what will make us more operationally relevant,” Masiello said at a science and technology exposition at the Pentagon earlier this month, Flight Global reports.
“Both the major commands and the combatant commands are very interested in that weapon system. It’s a non-kinetic effect.”
“We’re not quite up to the place where the Star Trek and Star Wars movies are, but this is definitely an advancement in technology to be able to give us an opportunity to something we couldn’t do before,” said lead test engineer Peter Finlay.
According to Foxtrot Alpha, the super-high-tech system will be a “first day of war” standoff weapon.
“The capability is real … and the technology can be available today,” Masiello says, according to Foxtrot Alpha.
The Daily Mail reports that in 2012 Boeing successfully tested the weapon on a one-hour flight during which it knocked out the computers of an entire military compound. The test was over the Utah Test and Training Range, the newspaper reports.
The test was so successful even the camera recording it was disabled, the newspaper reports.
Keith Coleman, Champ program manager for Boeing’s prototype arm Phantom Works, claims the technology marked “a new era in modern warfare.”
“In the near future, this technology may be used to render an enemy’s electronic and data systems useless even before the first troops or aircraft arrive,” he said during the initial test, the Daily Mail reports.
But there are also fears the project could trigger a strong reaction from U.S. competitors like China and Russia.
“Should the [United States] be known to have developed such a technology to the production stage, it would drive others to try to act similarly,” according to Trevor Taylor of the Royal United Services Institute, the Daily Mail reports.
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com ://www.newshttpmax.com/Newsfront/computer-killing-weapon-missile/2015/05/26/id/646871/#ixzz3dzkKmD3V
@ Edgar G.:
It would necessarily have been used. You would use such a weapon the first time when needed against a target with sophisticated air defenses I would think or something like the Iranian Nuclear Sites.
@ Bear Klein:
So there is a variety of reports about it and none is the same as another. So the answer is that we just don’t know what is ot nor what it scan do when operational. If it already is operationsal I would think that it ‘d have been used before all the fuss and bother..
In more reading this is still being tested by Raytheon and will be a cruise missile.
Newsweek claims this Microwave Missile is operational. They claim they are to be used with a B52 bomber. Which means most likely they need a large plane to work.
http://www.newsweek.com/us-militarys-microwave-weapon-can-fry-north-korean-missile-electronics-and-735044
I do not believe this is an operational weapon. One claim that it does not affect civilian equipment? Really?
GREAT…!!! They’ve announced it to the whole world, and since 2012 the other major powers have been frantically working out something to counter it.
Why hasn’t it been flown all over, around, up and down, Iran…..??
Is it real or is it bluff. Why broadcast it to the world, which only results in others trying to emulate and counter.
Dear Donald, Please show us simple people how this wonderful “gadget” works. Fly it across Iran-for a starter, and then across the nuclear facilities of all other nuclear powers. The suddenly non -nuclear world will elect you Emperor of the Universe…