An EMP is considered a threat because it could devastate America’s power grid, returning the nation to a pre-industrial-age footing that would take years to recover from.
War planners in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea have outlined plans to use nuclear electronic pulse attacks in the event of full-scale war, according to a recently declassified report.
The report, “ Assessing the Threat from EMP Attack,” was developed from the efforts of the Congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack and updated by the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security.
An EMP is considered a threat because it could devastate America’s power grid, returning the nation to a pre-industrial-age footing that would take years to recover from.
“A long-term outage owing to EMP could disable most critical supply chains, leaving the U. S. population living in conditions similar to centuries past, prior to the advent of electric power,” the report wrote, noting that even minor damage could send the U. S. back to the 1800s for a year.
“The United States critical national infrastructure faces a present and continuing existential threat from combined-arms warfare, including cyber and manmade electromagnetic pulse attack, and natural EMP from a solar superstorm,” the report said.
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The report said an EMP attack is likely to be part of a very different war than the mass combat of the past.
“Combined-arms cyber warfare, as described in the military doctrines of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, may use combinations of cyber-, sabotage-, and ultimately nuclear EMP- attack to impair the United States quickly and decisively by blacking-out large portions of its electric grid and other critical infrastructures,” the report said.
