A question about Iran - update and a scenario
Ran into a
thoughtful article from Joseph Farah about what Iran may be planning with its missiles based on the operational tests that it has already done:
Gingrich sees Iran threat to U.S. like Nazi Germany
Ex-speaker latest official to raise alarm on threat of nuclear EMP attack by Tehran
The threat posed to the national security of the United States by Iran was likened only to the one posed by Nazi Germany in the 1930s, by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who suggested Tehran could be planning for a pre-emptive nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack on America that would turn a third or more of the country "back to a 19th century level of development."
Gingrich made the stunning statements, which echo warning of other congressional leaders and national security experts, in testimony before a subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last week.
And a bit more:
Gingrich pointed with alarm at a report first published in G2 Bulletin that Iran had tested the firing of ballistic missiles from a merchant ship in which warheads were detonated in midair over the Caspian Sea rather than at a land or sea target. National security experts and scientists commissioned by Congress to study the threat of electromagnetic pulse attacks on the U.S. concluded that Iran was preparing for just such a scenario. So does Gingrich.
Detonation at apogee will minimize property damage and fatalities but it will fry every unshielded electronic device in a 30-50 mile radius.
All they would have to do is sail a merchant ship to about 300 miles away from NYC or Washington DC and we would be spending a long time digging out.
The Scenario was written in 2003 and refers to Korea but we have this technology and should use it if needed:
Playing Poker with Korea
One of the meta-reasons America won the Cold War is that Russians play chess, while Americans play poker. Chess demands great skill and intelligence, particularly at developing complex long-range strategies and anticipating your opponent's moves. But it bears little resemblance to life in the real world. It is completely static and open. Nothing is hidden. Poker is very different. You have to guess what your opponent has and the extent to which he is bluffing.
In business, in politics, in life in general, the folks who know how to play poker will almost always fare better than those who know how to play chess.
Ronald Reagan never played chess with Mikhail Gorbachev. He played political poker. At the 1986 Reykjavik summit, Reagan bluntly told Gorbachev he was going to build and deploy a space-based missile defense (SDI). Then came the clincher. "Mikhail," he said, looking the Soviet leader in the eye, "we both know that America can afford to do this, and the Soviet Union cannot. There is no way you can compete with us in military spending. So you are going to lose." Gorbachev did not know if the US could actually create a workable missile defense in space. But he did know it could afford to do so, while he could not. So he didn't call for Reagan's cards. He, and thus the Soviet Union, folded their own.
In the real world, good poker beats good chess every time. One of the great geopolitical puzzles of our day is why America has been outplayed at poker by a collection of primitive Stalinists in North Korea. The guys in Pyongyang are the best experts in the world at military bluffing and nuclear blackmail. They easily took Clinton to the cleaners. Now they have decided to raise the ante against his successor.
This may prove to be a fatal miscalculation. No one plays better poker than a Texan, especially one so smart and ruthless as GW. A good poker player always looks for "tells" in his opponents, unintended clues and tipoffs in their demeanor. GW has undoubtedly noticed that Pyongyang has created a huge nuclear crisis at the precise time when it should have done the opposite: just when South Korea is experiencing such a spasm of anti-American resentment that it elected a new president pledged to appease North Korea. Such a blatant "tell" informs GW that Pyongyang is holding a weak hand and is playing it badly out of hand-shaking desperation. Given such a "tell," a good poker player knows it's time to go for the jugular. In examining his options, GW may decide the best way to go for Pyongyang's jugular is with a spear.
And the spear in question:
Far better to destroy it quietly, safely, stealthily, and mysteriously. With a spear. A steel rod forty feet long and four inches in diameter, fin-stabilized, with a needle-sharp tungsten-carbide tip, equipped with a small JDAM guidance package including a GPS.
It is non-explosive; there is no warhead.
You've heard of smart bombs. This is a smart spear.
You take a half-dozen of these Smart Spears up in a high-altitude bomber, like a B2 or B52. and drop them over Yongbyon at 50 or 60,000 feet. The Smart Spears have such a big sectional density that it will be like a vacuum drop - with no wind resistance, they will be going faster than the speed of sound when they hit their target. Going so fast and with almost no radar signature, the GPS-guided Smart Spears will punch through the Yongbyon reactor and keep right on going, burying themselves in the earth several hundred feet deep. The North Koreans won't know what happened, and all there will be is some holes in the ground - plus a melted-down reactor.
There was once talk of launching a ring of these into orbit. To go from orbit to target would be about 15 minutes and virtually undetectable and completely unstopable. And non-nuclear.
Posted by DaveH at December 16, 2005 5:10 PM