One reason military electronics cost a bomb compared with civilian gadgets is that military equipment has got to operate reliably in vastly more hostile environments than a living room or a Starbucks, places unlikely to suffer battlefield levels of heat or cold, chemical weapons or the intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation associated with a thermonuclear blast.
But now, the US Air Force hopes to build microwave radiation weapons to destroy enemy electronics.
At first glance, these weapons offer an avenue to reducing collateral damage. For example, in 2003, the US would probably have preferred to disable Iraq's electrical power stations rather than destroying them. There is some speculation that the USAF did try the non-explosive tactic during Iraqi Freedom with a weapon that dispensed tiny carbon fibres aimed at short-circuiting electrical wires.
Microwaves could do the same thing with electronics that are buried deep inside command and control bunkers, avoiding the wider death and destruction of a kinetic or explosive impact. But what if the enemy is Hezbollah and their leadership is bunkered in the basement of a civilian hospital? Frying the electronics of a latte sipper's iPod hardly counts as collateral damage - but wiping out life support machines condemns innocent civilians to death.
Electronic war is still hell.
Source: Flight International
