Microwave Termination

Just imagine, investing $40-million in a special research project that has the potential of entirely changing the face and the outcome of warfare. There has been research that produced the kind of alteration in pursuing high-target enemies like aerial satellite surveillance, like transforming war into a long-distance game where personal confrontation has been replaced by a skilled operator manipulating controls in an isolated operation centre instructing a drone to kill an enemy.

But what if a different type of destructive force was unleashed, one that sidesteps the killing of human beings and instead targets electronic devices, the electrical pulses that are responsible for operating domestic, commercial, government and military equipment that we so much rely upon? Funding and research and application to build such a device has gone through initial stages and has been put through trials to muted acclaim.

Boeing Phantom Works' Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Porject (CHAMP) was launched in the Utah desert from an aircraft a few months ago that flew over a target, sending out electromagnetic pulses designed to disable electronics. This is new technology, meant to cover a wide area, to destroy an enemy's computers and communications systems.

And it does so, completely bypassing the destruction of human life.

Boeing

Sounds like an advance in human relations, with the added compensation that any military force that has the good fortune to have such a weapon in its possession (the U.S. military, for example),would be certain to come out the victor in any force-to-force engagement. Freeze an enemy's military hardware operated by computer system and other electronics helpful in defeating an enemy, and you've got the upper hand.

The world has seen how placin soldiers on the ground in a face-to-face combat situation has evolved into unmanned drones taking out key high-profile and high-stakes personnel, to demoralize and de-activate militias. The meeting of conventional military forces against guerrilla forces that melt into a general population or withdraw to inaccessible geographic areas has, in any event, disrupted the pursuit of 'normal' warfare.

Now, with this new, more modern and infinitely more humane method of conquering an enemy's determination to wreak havoc and impress his will through conquest and domination in what should be a peaceful world, there is this additional option. Think of what a fly-over would do to disable those ubiquitous IEDs so destructive to human life.

"This technology marks a new era in modern-day warfare. It's a very attractive idea. It's a non-lethal weapon that could be extremely effective", explained Norman Friedman, a defense analyst and former deputy director of National Security Studies at the Hudson Institute.

Taking out an enemy combatant's communications and operational capability, rendering its arms inoperable while at the same time sparing the lives of other human beings may turn out to be an antidote to world strife. And it may not, if enough influential critics dun its use for whatever reasons that don't come easily to the non-military mind.

And there is also the civilian component of any strife; non-combatants that are often most seriously impacted by fall-out from war situations. If CHAMP can successfully be relied upon on destroy electronic communications relating to armaments, it can do so to more neutral infrastructures upon which society depends; the delivery of basic social services, like water, heat, light, sewage treatment. hospital care.

All of which can be rebuilt of course, and there's that old dictum that we can paraphrase to 'it's better to be alive than deprived'.