A 200-foot balloon from China entered United State air space over Alaska and floated all the way across the nation and over the Carolina coastline before it was finally shot down by the U.S. military over the Atlantic Ocean. The United States says the vessel was a “high altitude surveillance balloon.” China says it was a civilian weather balloon that went off track. Information about what this device was doing or what data it was collecting has not been forthcoming.
If the object was, indeed, a weather balloon, it is odd that its off-track path took it over specific sensitive military bases. If instead, it was merely a surveillance balloon, that is relatively good news considering the alternatives. There is speculation that this device was spying on critical targets or collecting information relating to our national defense, but it could just as easily have contained a nuclear device that could have been used to deliver a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which would have destroyed our electric infrastructure, rendering most electronic devices unusable.
In fact, the very high-altitude nuclear detonation site (code name Yucca) used a “weather balloon,” much like this one, to lift a nuclear weapon to 85,000 feet in the air. It was this test that revealed EMPs can be much stronger than anticipated.
In a 2015 statement before a joint hearing before Congress , Dr. Peter Vincent Pry laid out his concerns about the nation’s vulnerability to an EMP attack:
A nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of 200 kilometers over the geographic center of the United States would create an EMP field potentially damaging to electronics over all the 48 contiguous States.
Even a meteorological balloon could be used to loft a nuclear weapon 30 kilometers high to make an EMP attack. During the period of atmospheric nuclear testing in the 1950s and early 1960s, more nuclear weapons were tested at altitude by balloon than by bombers or missiles.
America remains susceptible to an EMP attack. Our infrastructure is not hardened to withstand that level of EMP, and an attack such as this would essentially destroy every unprotected electronic component and control panel.
In January 2021, when Texas experienced Winter Storm Uri, electric power was lost for less than a week. But that loss of power caused a cascading problem with water supply companies and wastewater treatment plants. More than 200 people died, and that was the result of just a partial outage.
Imagine an event that took out the majority of the power grids in the nation. Not only would our grids be down, but all modern automobiles, telephones, communication equipment, computers, refrigerators, air conditioners, heaters, internet, and computers would be destroyed. Even if people did not panic, they would soon begin to die. First, those who are dependent on electricity for oxygen, kidney dialysis, or mechanical means to stay alive would die in a matter of hours or days. Those dependent on prescription medications would be next as the supply chain crumbled. Soon after, lack of food and shelter would begin to take its toll as people adjusted to a world for which they were unprepared.
The threat is real, and it is time that leaders in the private sector and government work together to harden the grid and implement life-saving measures.
At one point, cost was thought to be an obstacle to implementing hardening measures. However, CenterPoint Energy, a utility company in Houston, has busted the myth of excessive cost. They have taken the lead in developing and implementing new technologies to harden their substations and control center for a fraction of the predicted cost. CenterPoint has patented a unique, EMP-hardened digital substation at 25%of the cost of a traditionally constructed substation. This model can be used in new substations and also to retrofit existing substations, opening new possibilities in the quest to harden our electric grid.
Across the nation, we are facing the dual threats of both reliability and resilience. Reliability means our grid will have sufficient generation to ensure it can meet the demands put on it, and resilience means ensuring that the grid is protected against all threats, both natural and man-made, including physical, cyber, weather, EMP, or other attacks.
The U.S. desperately needs new innovations in technology to mitigate the threats and damage of EMP attacks on the grid and new policies to address the known vulnerabilities. The longer we wait, the higher the likelihood that more lives would be impacted by an EMP attack.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM RESTORING AMERICAChina just proved they have the means, and the world saw that our current military is too incompetent to even stop an illegal flight by a very capable adversary. We know what to do to protect the people, but what is lacking is a government and industry willing to do it.
Mr. Bob Hall is a state senator for Texas and chairman of the state Senate Committee on Administration.