Rep. Bartlett: EMP Attack Would Wipe Out U.S. Military

By Ronald Kessler

The nation's military is largely unprotected in the event an enemy launches a nuclear bomb that would fry microchips and the power grid with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) says Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md.

Since the early 1990s, "Essentially all our new weapon systems have been built with a waiver for EMP hardening," says Bartlett, a scientist and inventor who is the ranking member of the House Armed Services' Subcommittee on Air and Land Forces.

"If an enemy used an EMP enhanced weapon - and Russian generals told our EMP commission that they had developed weapons which emit 200 kilovolts per meter weapon - I've been assured by experts in the area that everything would be down," says Bartlett, who has been the leading member of Congress fighting to recognize EMP as a threat.

In fact, "One of the first things [an enemy] would do is an EMP laydown to deny you the use of all your equipment which is not EMP hardened, which is essentially all our equipment," Bartlett says. "They don't harden against EMP any more." [more...]