christofire wrote:
"Jim Lux" wrote in message
...
Mike Luther wrote:
A friend of mine cited a claim in a brand new book, "The Lost Symbol" by
Dan Brown. So said, in it is a claim of a new weapon of choice that is
installed in some USA military helicopters which is cable of aiming an
actual EMP pulse at a target below that destroys computer and electronic
equipment of focus to the pulse! Same as a 'normal' 30Megavolt/Meter EMP
pulse from a nuclear device, or even a huge Solar Burst. As told me they
used it recently to silence an Email production site they had to quickly
do so that they couldn't do any other way, per this book....

Duhh .....

Few people seem to recall the last huge Solar Burst we got here in the
USA in the mid-1800's about the time of the Golden Spike. So history
says, it completely took out most of all the at-the-time telegraph
systems which all had to be rebuilt or replaced.

At any rate, can anyone here conjecture, or better still, teach me how it
would be possible to create and focus an EMP pulse that could be used as
described in an airborne delivery machine? What might the antenna be
like?

Just curious.

W5WQN

Gyrotron, driven by a Flux Compression Generator.

basically a very high power microwave transmitting tube at a high enough
frequency where a moderate sized antenna gives a narrow beamwidth (e.g. at
10GHz, a 2 meter antenna has about a 1 degree beamwidth.. 100GHz with a 20
cm antenna does the same.) , with a HV pulse generator that uses the
mechanical energy from an explosion to generate the HV high current pulse
to run the tube.


Now.. 30 MV/m at a distance of say, 200 meters..



... but how much damage is a pulse of 10 GHz RF going to do? The
effectiveness of a nuclear EMP much to do with its very broad bandwidth (as
well as its rise time).




Actually, I was thinking more like 100GHz, so the beamwidth would be
small for a reasonable sized reflector.

But, you've also identified the key thing when evaluating EMP vulnerability.