Today, in Lakehurst, NJ, the Navy announced it allegedly launched an F18 using electromagnetism. Recently, it also announced using electromagnetism to fire a projectile at nearly Mach 8.
In less than 5 seconds, the F18 was airborne. The electric catapult, manufactured by General Atomics, must be delivered to the Newport News Shipyard by this upcoming May, in order to meet the production schedule of the new Gerald Ford class aircraft carrier due to be christened in 2015. Failure of this test, would have caused a redesign to allow the re-installation of the now inefficient old fashioned steam catapults.
With the growing reliance upon electromagnetic technology, comes renewed concern over it’s its functionality in the event of an EMP. The Iranian nuclear crises, exposes this vulnerability. One Iranian missile launch, coupled with a crude nuclear device exploded over it’s own airspace, could blind our Mid-East operations for months to come.
With out capacitors, we could no longer launch planes into the air.
Courtesy of US Navy and General Atomics
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January 3, 2011 at 3:42 pm
Duffy
“One Iranian missile launch, coupled with a crude nuclear device exploded over it’s own airspace, could blind our Mid-East operations for months to come.”
Amadinnerjacket is crazy but I don’t think he’s dumb enough to explode a nuke over his own country.
Any EMP attack would be considered a WMD attack and would be met with a nuclear response. Unless Barry is still in office in which case a strong frown and a full blast of Telepromptery badassery would follow.
January 4, 2011 at 2:57 am
kavips
One would hope we were prepared for such an attack, and … actually had the electrical capacity… … to retaliate. lol..
January 4, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Duffy
We are in no way prepared for an EM attack. IMNHO it would be much worse than a nuclear strike. The only facilities hardened against EM attacks are nuclear warheads, the plurality of nuclear power plants (at least the bits governing the reactors) and some of the stronger core IT functions at the major players. The last one is somewhat conjecture as I have some familiarity with the industry but many of them rely on co-location and those locations are seldom far enough apart to allow for resiliency.
In short, if there’s an EM attack here you and I will probably starve and whomever attacked us will burn.