by Chris Black
There’s a narrative that the US is militarily superior to Russia (and probably also China).
Many people in the West and particularly those living in NATO countries take comfort from this.
But it may not be true.
Let’s leave aside for now the question of whether Russia has a larger, more advanced, modern and capable nuclear and anti-ballistic missile fleet (which it almost certainly does but which creates many hot collars) and touch on a subject that very few people are aware of and which the media almost never talks about.
What if Russia could effectively at will wreck the entire electrical and electronic infrastructure – every single device, every single piece of equipment – of the entire continental United States, including (almost) all of its military and including ballistic missile submarines at sea in a single strike or a series of closely co-ordinated strikes and the United States was unable to defend itself against such a strike?
As it turns out, that may well be exactly the case.
In January 2021 the US Govt published its own report on Russian High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) weapons.
Amazingly, it’s publicly available and that’s exactly what it says.
Included at the end of this article is an image of the ‘Key Judgments’ page and the link to the full report.
It makes for sobering reading.
While it’s unlikely to be deployed by Russia other than ‘in extremis’ (such a strike on the US would likely wreck the global economy for one thing), what it does tell us quite clearly is that US military capability and hard power is no form of certain guarantee (if it ever was) of Western stability and survival, even in a non-nuclear war context.
It really is time overdue for realpolitik and diplomacy on all sides.
apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1124730.pdf
