Emp

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
From Skywatcher blog a good summary of what is this new EMP device is for
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CHINA'S NEW MICROWAVE WEAPON CAN DISABLE MISSILES AND PARALYZE TANKS


AN ELECTRONICS-KILLING RAY HAS A VARIETY OF USES IN WAR.

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Yesterday at 2:49pm
high_power_microwave_weapon.jpg

Chinese Internet via Hongjian

This weapon, which can pump out high-powered microwaves from a relatively small platform, could be the start of a new chapter in Chinese electronic warfare.

For over 6 years, Huang Wenhua and his team at the Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology in Xi'an have been working on a potent microwave weapon. This one, which recently won China's National Science and Technology Progress Award, is small enough to fit on a lab work bench, making it theoretically portable enough for land vehicles and aircraft.

Said another way: it's small enough to be convenient, but powerful enough to totally down enemy electronics. A microwave weapon like this could even be fitted to a missile (like the U.S. CHAMP electronic warfare missile) or drone.

Generally, microwave weapons shut down electronic systems (even those with traditional shielding against EMP) by bombarding the target with energy pulses between 300 and 300,000 megahertz. This amount of directed energy interferes with and overloads electronic circuits, causing them to shut down. The higher the energy produced by the system, the greater the disruption (and even physical damage for some very high-powered microwave weapons) of the targeted electronic systems like engines and communications systems.

China can find a wide variety of uses for an electronics killing ray. Defensively, microwave weapons could be part of electronic warfare booby traps, ambushing and disabling enemy vehicles and robots. At close ranges, it can be mounted on vehicles, warships, and even aircraft, to disable and distract missiles, small UAVs and even the personal and vehicular electronics of hostile forces.

But the real combat potential of the microwave weapon comes in offense. Carried in by a stealthy drone or cruise missile, it would be able to disable sophisticated enemy defenses like SAM and anti-ship missile batteries; fry enemy radars, communications, and control systems; paralyze tank battalions; and even neutralize other EW platforms.

champ_missile.jpg

Boeing

Computer Killer

EMP/high powered microwave cruise missiles, like the CHAMP, built by Boeing for DARPA, can sneak into enemy airspace to disable a wide range of C4ISR, air defense, missile and armored targets, even in some cases destroying electronic systems permanently. Such systems will become a necessary part of 21st-century warfare.
 

Blackstone

Brigadier
From Skywatcher blog a good summary of what is this new EMP device is for
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

CHINA'S NEW MICROWAVE WEAPON CAN DISABLE MISSILES AND PARALYZE TANKS


AN ELECTRONICS-KILLING RAY HAS A VARIETY OF USES IN WAR.

By
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
Yesterday at 2:49pm
Lin and Singer are on top of the game and their articles are always enjoyable, but can China's microwave weapon really paralyze missiles and tanks of first-class militaries like US or Japan? Maybe, but I'm not prepared to accept that without more evidence.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Tanks I highly doubt, tank armor doubles as a Faraday cage.Same for most vehicles. Tests on cars showed that EMP effects on vehicles were limited due to metal cage construction in the frame, it's the same reason the safest place to be when struck by lightning is a car.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
The electrical system is integrated into the turret of modern tanks the optics are normally housed in there own armored housings those should also act as Faraday boxes. Communications might be susceptible or maybe a momentary jamming effects.​
 

Skywatcher

Captain
Comm systems, and they don't necessarily have to be modern tanks, mind you. A lot of the early/mid Cold War tanks have surprising exposed electronics (and in some cases, the computer in some modern tanks aren't always well shielded, according to anecdotal Internet evidence).
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Except the effect is 1 directed meaning it has to be aimed at the tank and 2 momentary IE Rather than killing the tank forever the effect only lasts until the attack is terminated at which point the system is restored. and again the armor of the tank which is normally a metal structure would serve as the shielding.
Furthermore "Early to mid Cold war tanks" Which I can only guess as 1940-1960s would likely be using an older technology base Radio tubes and fuses are generally considered immune to EMP unless the tank is heavily modernized but even then the computers are inside the tank.
 

Skywatcher

Captain
Some tanks have very thin shielding (or just a screen) over the diesel engine, which are often computer controlled (often, one of the first things modernized on a tank is the engine, due to a lot of commercial options that you could retool if you're cheap or desperate).

Allegedly, some of the HPM weapons on the drawing boards can permanently fry electronics.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
The electrical system is integrated into the turret of modern tanks the optics are normally housed in there own armored housings those should also act as Faraday boxes. Communications might be susceptible or maybe a momentary jamming effects.​

Faraday cages stop working when you penetrate it.

If you were standing inside a Faraday cage, and the cages is subject to high electric voltage, you will be fine. However, if you stick a piece of wire out the cage when the electric surge comes, you are going to have a very bad day.

In this example, the comma antenna of the tanks will be the wire sticking out of the Farady cage giving the electrical surge direct access into the cage.

As such, if tank or any similar military vehicle was hit but a weaponised EMP pulse, the damage to its communicates systems will be far more significant that momentary jamming.

If the Chinese EMP is as powerful as claimed, then at a minimum your tank crew needs to reset automated circuit breakers or maybe even replace fuses.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
I doubt it, The US has tested the Abrams for this repeatedly not just the Us versions but export as well and the armor and build is such that you would have to hit the Tank with enough Radiation to kill the Crew to knock the tank out with EMP.
Remember Abrams and NATO as well as Russian tanks were designed for the Cold war Post apocalyptic World where Both sides of a conflict in Europe had unloaded Tactical Nuclear weapons across the Eurasian Plain and left only a radioactive moonscape, During that nightmare scenario Nuclear events with high EMP emissions would have been unleashed on a regular basis.
 
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