Sleepwalking With the Bomb

by John C. Wohlstetter

  Israel repeated this strategy in destroying Syria’s nascent reactor in 2007. In his memoir former President George W. Bush recounted how Israel’s then–prime minister, Ehud Olmert, telephoned and asked him to have the U.S. Air Force bomb the Syrian facility. Bush declined, preferring to pursue a combination of diplomacy and threat of force, but kept mum while Israel acted. Bush said that the 2007 intelligence finding that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program undermined his military option.

  Targeting Iran’s underground facilities is far more complex. Conventional-warhead cruise missiles are accurate enough, but cannot penetrate the hundreds of feet of rock or concrete that shelter Iran’s deepest facilities. Missile payloads likely would have to be nuclear to do the job, and neither the U.S. nor Israel is willing to resort to this choice, unless an Iranian nuclear attack takes place. Warplanes can achieve pinpoint accuracy, but in the absence of U.S. or Russian heavy bombers to carry massive penetrating bombs, smaller planes might have to drop several smart bombs into the same path to dig deep enough. An air attack would miss any undiscovered facilities. At best, the program could be delayed rather than ended. But on the other hand, a few years’ delay can buy precious time for sanctions or aid to the opposition to sink the regime.

  There is another option against deeply buried facilities that, due to the deeply-ingrained taboo against nuclear use, Israel will forgo: according to the late American bomb designer Ted Taylor, a one-kiloton bomb if properly molded into a shaped charge could bore a ten-foot wide hole 1,000 feet into solid rock.

  One dangerous consequence of the 2003 WMD intelligence debacle is that it establishes (for practical political purposes) a de facto standard of proof beyond a shadow of a doubt before the world’s governments might support military action. Closed societies conceal their programs and use periodic diplomatic “charm offensives” to cloak their intentions with ambiguity and raise hopes of peaceful resolution. Rejecting such hopes appears nearly impossible for Western societies, who value peace so highly that they assume all others must as well.

  In effect, ruthless proliferators have taken Western societies hostage in the past, and continue to do so. In a diplomatic version of the Stockholm Syndrome—the condition of hostages who come to sympathetically identify with their captors—advanced societies reflexively shrink from the unpleasant task of confronting hostile states pursuing nuclear weapons.

  Given how stark the military options are, and uncertain the prospects for success, it is understandable that the West recoils. But a nuclear Iran, even short of war, will ignite a nuclear arms race, shift the balance of power, and supplant the U.S. as potentially the preeminent Mideast regional player.

  If Israel Strikes Iran

  AS THIS book goes to press the air is rife with speculation as to whether Israel will strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. It seems increasingly apparent that President Obama will not do so, unless one of two contingencies comes to pass: Iran mines the Strait of Hormuz, or Iran attacks America—either its interests abroad or the American homeland. Israel clearly understands that it is alone.

  In an address to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu crisply summed up the absurdity of those questioning Iran’s commitment to build a nuclear weapon, noting that underground facilities and ICBMs are not designed to deliver medical isotopes:

  The Jewish state will not allow those seeking our destruction to possess the means to achieve that goal. A nuclear-armed Iran must be stopped. Amazingly, some people refuse to acknowledge that Iran’s goal is to develop nuclear weapons. You see, Iran claims that it’s enriching uranium to develop medical research. Yeah, right. A country that builds underground nuclear facilities, develops intercontinental ballistic missiles, manufactures thousands of centrifuges, and absorbs crippling sanctions—is doing all that in order to advance… medical research. So you see, when that Iranian ICBM is flying through the air to a location near you, you’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s only carrying medical isotopes.

  The prime minster put his position plainly: “As prime minister of Israel, I will never let my people live in the shadow of annihilation.”

  As to the likelihood of Iranian retaliation, perhaps ironically the severe response that Iran’s regime threatens is more likely if Israel fails than if Israel succeeds. In the Mideast, an adversary’s strength is grudgingly respected, while weakness earns contempt and incites retaliatory violence.

  The comparative histories of powers that choose to disarm versus those that scorn disarmament underscore the Tenth Lesson of nuclear-age history: DISARMING HOSTILE POWERS CANNOT BE DONE BY NEGOTIATIONS ALONE.

  __________________

  50. Two other notable nuclear-free-zone treaties are the Treaty of Rarotonga covering the South Pacific, which came into force in 1986; and the African Nuclear-Free Weapon Zone Treaty, which came into force in 2009.

  51. Argentina did not accede to the treaty until 1994, which meant that in the spring of 1982, during the Falklands War with Britain, the Argentines had no legal grounds to object to Britain’s using nuclear submarines or other nuclear-armed platforms during the conflict. On May 2, 1982, the UK nuclear submarine Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, causing the largest loss of life (323 of 993 on board) during the war. As Argentina still claims the Falkland Islands, located in the southern Atlantic Ocean about 300 miles off its eastern coast, in event of a future conflict Britain would be violating the Tlatelolco Protocols if it sent nuclear-powered, let alone, nuclear-armed, ships into the conflict. In February 2012 Britain sent a nuclear sub to the area; Argentina claimed this violated the protocols; Britain denied the charge but refused to reveal the sub’s location.

  52. For more on the detective work that found Israel the likely candidate responsible for the test, see source notes at www.SleepwalkBomb.com. Reed and Stillman argue that the Carter administration—to avoid roiling the political climate in the Mideast after the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt were signed in 1978—whitewashed the 1979 nuclear test event and produced a finding of no nuclear test.

  53. The 1953 armistice merely withdrew forces 2,000 meters (2,200 yards, 1-1/4 miles) from the 1953 front lines. Since 1953, North Korea has repeatedly violated the border, sometime even killing military personnel working in the demilitarized Joint Security Area (JSA), a four-kilometer-wide zone with one half in each Korea; the 38th parallel literally bisects the conference table within the JSA that is used for negotiations.

  13.

  INVITATION TO STRIKE: THE SMALL POWER’S NUCLEAR EQUALIZER

  Should significant parts of the electrical power infrastructure be lost for any substantial period of time … many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities….

  The Federal Government does not today have sufficiently robust capabilities for reliably assessing and managing EMP threats.

  REPORT OF THE COMMISSION TO ASSESS THE THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES FROM ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE (EMP) ATTACK, APRIL 2008

  A WORST-CASE NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE SMALL-POWER ATTACK SCENARIO is not a terrorist nuke exploding in a big American city. Such an attack would be a catastrophic event, killing hundreds of thousands and erasing trillions of dollars in economic value, while undermining social cohesion and plunging the nation—and the world—into unprecedented crisis.

  But there is a more devastating catastrophe, one that could end America’s status as a world power: an esoteric phenomenon generated by a nuclear explosion, known as “electromagnetic pulse” (EMP). If an adversary detonated a single nuclear warhead over the country’s midpoint at high altitude, the explosion would generate a series of powerful pulses that would break through surge protectors. In a worst case it could take down all or nearly all of America’s electric grid and communications fabric. In a few days, as backup power ran out, America would be returned to its energy status of 1875, with several times as many people to s
upport. The Eleventh Lesson of nuclear-age history, then, is this: NEVER ALLOW SINGLE OR LOW-NUMBER POINTS OF CATASTROPHIC VULNERABILITY.

  Historical and Scientific Background

  SHOULD AN EMP attack not only disable America’s power grid but also, in parallel attacks, disable the grids of allies who might aid us, in a worst case an estimated 90 percent of Americans could perish within one year—mostly from starvation and disease. America could never recover, as William Fortschen vividly describes in his 2009 novel, One Second After.

  Some scientists, among them physicist Howard Hayden, have sharply questioned the total-collapse scenario. They point to relatively limited damage suffered in early EMP incidents. Even if they are right, it does not take an attack of worst-case outcome to inflict horrific casualties and societal damage. Suppose that only 1 percent of Americans lose all vital life services for a year. In such event some 3 million people might perish within that period. That is roughly twice the 1.34 million total U.S. fatalities in all American wars from 1775 to mid-2012.

  Knowledge of EMP dates back to the first nuclear explosion. Enrico Fermi shielded all nearby electronics before the Trinity test in 1945 in expectation of an electromagnetic pulse. When it came, it still knocked out data, despite the shielding. But the phenomenon was at first highly localized and dwarfed by blast, heat, and lethal radiation effects, and nuclear explosions in the 17 years afterwards were either surface bursts, like Trinity, or low-altitude air bursts, like Little Boy and Fat Man.

  High-altitude EMP first revealed its surprising destructive potential in 1962, when the U.S. detonated its Starfish Prime 1.4 megaton H-bomb 250 miles over Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean. The explosion occurred in the intense bands of radiation in the ionosphere known as the Van Allen radiation belts. Discovered by James Van Allen (from data collected by America’s first successful satellite, Explorer I, launched in 1958), the belts interact with EMP and amplify its intensity. The pulse of electromagnetic energy from the test reached Honolulu, 900 miles to the east, and knocked out 300 streetlights, a telephone microwave radio link, and lots of burglar alarms.

  Russia conducted atmospheric tests over land, its leaders secure in the knowledge that its citizens dared not protest. Russian Test 184, part of a series of detonations over Kazakhstan later in 1962 called the “K Project,” knocked out a 625-mile underground electric power line, interfered with diesel generators, and started some electrical fires in damaged equipment. At 300 kilotons yield, Test 184 was one-fifth the power of Starfish Prime; it also was detonated at just over 70 miles up, less than one-third the American test’s altitude. EMP effects are not overly sensitive to explosive yield, according to EMP expert Dr. William Graham, who chaired the congressional EMP panel. But effects are far more intense over land, because EMP perturbs the Earth’s magnetic field, which is far stronger over land than water. The lower altitude of the Russian test limited EMP radius. But having been detonated over land, the Russian test caught more ground installations within reach of its footprint than did Starfish Prime.

  A chain of events causes EMP. First come the intense gamma emissions from the fissioning atoms of the bomb. These ionize the air, knocking electrons out of atoms. When the electrons hit the earth’s magnetic field, it knocks them sideways, and it is this interaction that generates the electromagnetic pulse.

  Three successive, different pulses generate the EMP effect: E1 is the superfast high-voltage pulse that bypasses surge protectors (which are designed to stop pulses that build up less rapidly) and “fries” all affected electronics. E2 is akin to the electromagnetic charge emitted as lightning strikes. This pulse is low frequency and ordinarily would not get past surge protectors, except that if the first pulse has fried the protective equipment, then the second pulse, like a burglar who enters an open door, gets in. The third pulse, E3, is akin to the geomagnetic storms generated by solar flares. This pulse is the Earth’s magnetic field being disturbed by the bomb, then settling back to normal—an extremely low frequency pulse that lasts tens, even hundreds of seconds. Though weak, because of its duration this third pulse builds up enough strength to knock out large components like electric grid power transformers, and reaches deep into the ground.

  EMP confounds some common expectations of the relative dangers of different nuclear weapons. Aside from the displacement of the Earth’s magnetic field (E3), the intensity of the phenomenon does not, as indicated above, scale with warhead yield. A Hiroshima-size blast (14 kilotons, less than 1/20th the K Project yields and 1/100th that of Starfish Prime) will do very nicely. Counter-intuitively, a hydrogen bomb with yields in the megaton range short-circuits EMP by the phenomenon of pre-ionization. The hydrogen bomb’s trigger (an A-bomb) prematurely strips electrons from the atoms of the air, so that the later, larger quantity of electrons shorts out in the atmosphere rather than interacting with the Earth’s magnetic field. H-bombs thus cause less EMP damage than A-bombs.

  EMP means that a foe does not need the massive explosive yield of an H-bomb to inflict grave damage. An A-bomb will perform the EMP task with greater effect. North Korea already has an A-bomb, and Iran is getting tantalizingly closer to one.

  Altitude is a critical factor in EMP effects—the bomb must go off at the right height to hit the Earth’s magnetic field. Deep space detonations do not cause EMP effects on earth—the gamma ray emissions from the bomb dissipate long before reaching Earth’s magnetic field. And low-altitude nuclear detonations, which generate vast blast, heat, and radiation damage, explode below most of Earth’s magnetic field and hence generate less EMP.

  An attacker could detonate an EMP weapon 300 miles over Kansas, and cover a 1,470-mile radius that would encompass the entire lower 48 states. On a smaller scale, even a ground burst weapon’s EMP effects could devastate local electric power in a radius of roughly 6 to 12 miles, potentially hugely effective over a major metropolis. EMP can create imbalances within the grid that cause the system to shut down and inflict severe damage. Because newer infrastructures rely so much on digital technologies, far fewer people are required to run them; thus, in a crisis, there are far fewer workers available to rapidly reconstitute damaged parts of the system. Infrastructures driven by modern silicon computer chips are much more vulnerable to disruption via EMP than are infrastructures built with older-generation electric power technologies.

  In 1998, Iran, which lacks strategic bombers and missile subs, test-fired a missile from a floating barge, validating its ability to launch a ballistic missile from a platform less stable than a ground launch (and thus more susceptible to inaccurate guidance). Barges could easily cruise offshore in international waters, i.e., outside the 12-mile limit.54 Iran would have to launch its missiles a few hundred miles at sea, to limit the chance of detection. Reaching 1,500 miles inside the U.S. homeland would require a missile range of about 2,000 miles. New Iranian models are approaching this range. Such missiles could be launched from either the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean, or from the Gulf of Mexico.

  In 1999, Iran tested an armed ballistic missile in an “EMP mode”: this means that the missile was fired in a steep trajectory whose angle of ascent matched that required for an EMP attack. The missile’s conventional warhead detonated at high altitude. This test validated Iran’s ability to carry out a coastal EMP strike. When newer, longer-range missiles enter service, Iran could target the lower 48 states by detonating an EMP weapon centered over the interior.

  Using shorter-range missiles Iran could target selected cities easily from offshore, with lower-level EMP bursts. Ship-launch scenarios were one threat specifically identified by the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission report on growing ballistic missile threats. Not that this threat was new: in his 1949 memoirs Dr. Vannevar Bush, wartime science adviser to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, warned of the threat posed by “atomic bombs smuggled in by innocent-appearing ships, to be detonated at the chosen moment.” The U.S. successfully launched a Polaris ballistic missile off a commercial ship in 1962.

  Infra
structure Vulnerabilities

  AMONG THE warnings issued by the congressional EMP panel in 2008, perhaps the strongest concerned the risks of infrastructure interdependency, specifically its tendency to increase the time needed to recover after an EMP attack:

  Safeguards against single point failures generally depend on the proper functioning of the rest of the national infrastructure, a plausible assumption for high reliability infrastructure systems when they experience random, uncorrelated single point failures.… Planning for multiple failures, particularly when they are closely correlated in time, is much less common.…

  No currently available modeling and simulation tools exist that can adequately address the consequences of disruptions and failures occurring simultaneously in different critical infrastructures that are dynamically interdependent.

  In other words, if neighboring communities cannot help, recovery time is much longer. “Edge” communities can bring in supplies, give shelter, and send in needed funds, but we cannot predict how much help they will be able to offer. Recovery from Hurricane Katrina included large-scale resettling of displaced residents, with some even choosing to become residents in edge communities that hosted them. A wider circle of destruction would have hindered recovery everywhere.

  The second report issued by the EMP panel examined 10 specific infrastructures and detailed their potentially greatest vulnerabilities. It should be noted that one major change in the past half century has increased societal vulnerability: the shift from vacuum tubes to silicon chips inside America’s electrical infrastructures. The latter are less resistant to EMP damage.