Joint Economic Committee U.S. Congress February 25, 1998
"The Design and Fabrication of a Damage
Inflicting RF Weapon by 'Back Yard' Methods"
Mr. David Shriner
Found at:
http://cryptome.org/rfw-jec.htm
". . . For many years research activities in different countries have focused on the use of radio frequency (RF) waves as a weapon. Most of this work has been titled or described under the title of High Powered Microwave (HPM). Worldwide, large amounts of money have been invested in this technology to support both the military interests but also the industrial heating needs. Like most technologies, with maturity the applications increase and the costs to use it become lower. One primary point of this paper is that as these technologies mature they also become affordable and usable by criminals and terrorists. Most military programs are classified and the general public knows little concerning their nature but as the technology becomes available to criminals and terrorists, it may be directly applied to the infrastructure elements of our society. This paper addresses the question concerning the possibility of certain types of this technology being used against the society. The primary focus of this paper will be on a different and new form of HPM called Transient Electromagnetic Devices (TED) that could, in the hands of enemies, criminals, pranksters, or terrorists pose a significant threat to much of the United States infrastructure components that are based on micro-circuits and computer or micro-processor control. This includes financial institutions, aircraft, security, medical, automotive, and other critical equipment used everyday in our society. The systems necessary for the production of this form of energy are much easier to construct and use than the earlier and more well known conventional HPM narrow-band systems that are currently in development for military use. Millions of dollars have been spent on the conventional HPM, systems and it is the type that DOD managers and their funding offices are well acquainted with. This paper will briefly speak to these but the main focus of it will be on the very different type, the TED systems, which is less well known and may be the RF weapon of choice to the modern cyber or infrastructure RF warrior.
Conventional HPM systems generate RF wavessimilar to those used for many different purposes including communications, heating, and radio location purposes. We are all very familiar with the term frequency as expressed in mega-hertz (MHz) when we tune our FM radios . . ."
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http://cryptome.org/rfw-jec.htm