프레시안에 관련된 기사가 있길래 원문을 퍼왔습니다.

 마이크로파를 이용해서 전기회로를 fry 해버리는 기술이군요. 비행기에 탑재할수도 미사일에 탑재할 수도 있다는 군요. 흐으. 미국 뿐만아니라 영국, 중국, 러시아 등이 이미 보유하고 있답니다.


 Microwave weapons: the dangers of first use
By Thomas Fuller/IHT (IHT)
Monday, March 17, 2003


KUWAIT CITY: Will they use it or not? If the United States decides to attack Iraq, military analysts say a key decision for Washington will be whether to deploy a revolutionary and secretive weapon that is designed to spare human beings but destroy computers and telecommunications equipment.

Variations of the device - which works by sending intense bursts of energy through anything electronic - have undergone advanced field testing by the U.S. military in recent years, and many experts believe the United States now has the capability to use it in combat.

Those who support use of the weapon say it is tailor-made for this looming conflict: The high-powered microwaves emitted by the device do not harm humans and thus could be used against Iraqi defenses in densely populated areas.

If the target is buried underground - as many sensitive Iraqi installations are believed to be - the microwaves can reach the equipment by traveling through electrical cables, telephone lines or even seals or seams in concrete.

But critics say rolling out the weapon for the first time could trigger an arms race not seen since the dawn of the nuclear age. By showing other nations that this highly secretive program has produced a viable and effective weapon, politicians from other countries could be convinced to beef up their own development of such devices.

"There is no doubt that these are the weapons of the future," said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons. "But it's a real Pandora's box technology."

The main danger of using a high-powered microwave weapon, say Hewson and others, is that the United States would be showing its hand in the development of a type of technology that might ultimately be most harmful to itself and other developed, wealthy nations.

The countries most vulnerable to these weapons are not Iraq or North Korea but societies where computer chips are indispensable for daily life. Some analysts have called it the perfect terrorist weapon.

By the same token, in military terms the most vulnerable army to such "chip-frying" weapons is probably that of the United States and not its mainly low-tech adversaries in the world today.

The nightmare scenario for the U.S. military - however unlikely - would be that the weapon would malfunction, fall into unfriendly hands and be taken apart and studied by an unfriendly government or terrorist group.

Skeptics also say there are basic questions about the weapon's side effects. Will the microwaves travel farther than expected and wipe out the electronics in a nearby hospital ward? What about people who have pacemakers? Would their devices stop working? In its current state of development, the device would most likely be delivered by a cruise missile, which also suggests that it is not as benign as advertised.

Three years ago a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, Eileen Walling, wrote a report saying that secret research on this new generation of so-called directed energy devices had reached the point of producing "active weapons" for the U.S. military. Walling, a former director of the air force's high power microwave program, argued for an acceleration of research in the field precisely because it could be so effective, both for defensive purposes - causing the electronics of an incoming missile to go haywire, for example - and offensive: taking out an enemy's command and control structure.

"Except for the standard rifle, gun, knife, or grenade," she wrote, "virtually all military equipment contains some electronics."

But Walling also warned of the dangers of this technology. There was a long-term threat, she said, that other governments would develop such weapons and thus be potentially able to neutralize virtually every electronics system in the U.S. arsenal.

The "more immediate problem," she said, was "the potential for fratricide or suicide from friendly microwave weapons." In layman's terms, these devices could backfire and destroy the electronics of the army that deploys them.

In the years since Walling's report, the U.S. military is reported to have stepped up testing of the devices.

According to William Arkin, a defense analyst, the U.S. military tested a microwave device last April in Maryland. The weapon's target was a truck with its engine running. When an antenna on the microwave device was switched on, it "fried the truck's ignition and air-fuel mixing system, bringing the hapless vehicle to a halt," Arkin said in an article that appeared in The Los Angeles Times.

The advantage of microwave weapons is that they can destroy or damage electronics whether they are on or off at the time of attack.

Today, even though the United States faces a vastly inferior and under-equipped Iraqi Army, military planners are eager to test the weaponry, defense experts say.

"We know there are certainly people itching to get them out of the labs and try them out as quickly as possible," said Hewson of Jane's.

The U.S. military declined to comment on whether or not the weapon might be used in Iraq. But the U.S. secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, seemed to indicate their use was possible when asked last August about the weapons. Rumsfeld said just as unmanned aerial drones had been rushed into operation in Afghanistan, so, too, could microwave devices. The military "may not plan on using something yet," Rumsfeld said. But he, added: "The real world intervenes from time to time, and you reach in there and take something out that is still in a developmental stage, and you might use it." There are several ways to deliver the high-powered microwaves to a target, including simply pointing a high-powered antenna, mounted on an aircraft or unmanned drone toward the target.

But experts say this technology is not yet perfected. A more likely scenario will be delivery of the weapon via cruise missile.

The energy from the explosion of the missile would serve to power the microwave device. The explosion would also destroy the device thus keeping the technology out of enemy hands. Among other countries believed to be working on directed energy weapons are Britain, China and Russia.

Russian scientists were at one time the leaders in the field because the Soviet Union believed the development of a device that could destroy electronic equipment was the ultimate weapon against the United States.