By William R. Graham and Peter Vincent Pry - - Tuesday, August 15, 2017
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
After massive intelligence failures grossly underestimating North Korea’s long-range missile capabilities, number of nuclear weapons, warhead miniaturization, and proximity to manufacturing a hydrogen bomb, the biggest North Korean threat to the United States remains unacknowledged. North Korea has two satellites in orbit, and more to follow, that could be nuclear-armed for a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack that would black out North America for months to years, killing millions.
An EMP attack doesn’t require accurate guidance systems because the area of effect, having a radius of hundreds of miles, is very large. No re-entry vehicle is needed because the warhead detonates at a high altitude, above the atmosphere. This point appears to be beyond the comprehension of most, including secretaries of defense, the military leadership and the usual “experts” who appear in the press.
The design of a super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight, resembling the U.S. W-79 Enhanced Radiation Warhead nuclear artillery shell of the 1980s, designed in the 1950s. Such a device could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites and pose a potential EMP threat to every nation on Earth.
Two Russian generals warned the EMP Commission in 2004 that Russia’s super-EMP warhead design was transferred accidentally to North Korea.
North Korea’s KMS-3 and KMS-4 satellites were launched to the south on polar trajectories and passed over the United States on their first orbit. The south polar trajectory evades U.S. ballistic missile early-warning radars and national missile defenses, making the satellites resemble a Russian secret weapon developed during the Cold War called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that would have used a nuclear-armed satellite to make a surprise EMP attack.
Ambassador Henry Cooper, former director of the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative, and a pre-eminent expert on missile defenses and space weapons, has written numerous articles warning about the potential North Korean EMP threat from their satellites.