So it's OK to carry on reading El Reg in an 'unprotected' environment then

Surely the CIS wouldn't want to let anyone near EMP weapons designs, especially since there entire military consists of droids...oh, right, wrong CIS...damned Star Wars...

A lot of Australian's think we should have pushed harder to get access to the US F-22. Yes they are expensive. But the alternative is to buy the F-18 Super Hornet (not that capable as a air superiority fighter) now and the F-35 JSF (not yet developed) later. These purchases make the F-22 (massively capable and available now) look reasonably priced.

What Australia also lacks is cruise missiles, especially a submarine launched weapon. This would replace the ability of the aging F-111 bomber to deliver a bomb into the heart of an aggressor's country. In the best tradition of inter-service rivalry, the RAAF is keen to retain the deep-strike capability, rather than let it go to the RAN. One images they hope that the Super Hornet could be re-purposed as a stand-off bomber.

The nasty people used EMP weapons to take out our heroes Range Rovers in Spooks last week. Are you trying to tell me that Spooks isn't real????

The pen is mightier than the sword and the truth about everything and the flexible nature of the reality/realities being chosen, and pushed with media, can easily destroy any target. It's "proper" use can also save any vulnerable regime.

Or would you care to disagree?

WTF? Is Australia expecting to be attacked by a gigantic modern air force? What potential enemies could they have who wouldn't be easy pickings for an F-18? For that matter, what possible enemies could they have that wouldn't be easy pickings for a P-51, for that matter? Russia isn't going to mess with you, China certainly isn't, so it's not like there will be squads of MiG-21s circling Sydney. And, really, if there were, I'm fairly certain that the fifteen or twenty AEGIS-equipped cruisers and carriers in the Pacific might be inclined to stop them before they got there.....

Lets see - 1 every 15 mins outside DVLA, all Police sites, Tax office, government, ID and Passport offices - sounds great.

Back in good old physics class, the ones that thaught anyone with a reasonable IQ just how easy the design of nuclear weapons are (its the materials that are difficult) - one of the other things we learnt is that EMPs can be generated in several different ways.

The easiest of which is discharging 2 large capacitors into each other. This does tend to also make them pop and give off the magic smoke that makes such components work. Not to mention this relatively small discharge is severely limited by the inverse square law, but still good for a radius of about 1m with 1 farad caps.

Obviously this was purely exerimental and I'm sure no one hear would want such dangerous technology falling into the hands of the Freedom Against Gatsos Society...

Ah, that explains it! Could you stop it now, please; I'm trying to tax my bike :)

What Australia actually lacks is a good reason to buy the kit mentioned in the first place.

just a thought.

The threat to Aus is Indonesia and its recent 5 billion dollar purchase of the latest russian kit including the latest generation Sukhoi's.

And whilst F/A-18's are on par with Sukhoi's (if not better) the difference is numbers. We dont have a huge airforce, Indonesia DOES! At a 20:1 ratio we need air superiority fighters that are not just slightly better but supremely better then what the Indonesian's have!

Anyway the real reason that Aussies want to get the F-22 is not so much for the air superiority role but to maintain the threat that the F-111's currently provide of being able to strike the heart of Indonesia without the need for in-flight refueling, neither the F/A-18's or F-35's have this capability... It's called maintaining the strategic balance (ie you have more forces, we have better forces - war will hurt everyone and gain neither side anything!)

I live on the edge of Salisbury Plain, in one of the houses closet to the live firing range, a few years ago, my computer, microwave and DVD player stopped working, the PC had a fried BIOS chip, as did most of my neighbours, also, when driving past Netheravon camp a year ago in my Peugeot, I lost all my Dashboard display as well as my radio, the engine continued to work though, after driving for a 100 yards, it all came back, this has happened on a number of occasions to several people in the Upavon, Rushall, Urchfont areas, but when you ring the army to complain about their new EMP weapon, they naturally deny all knowledge, however, Salisbury Plain has a number of byways you can legally drive along when there isnt live firing on, and on numerous occasions there have been strange antenna arrays set up which have got nothing to do with the Bowman trials, also, cant remember which camp had it, but there was an array that you could park a tank in, turn on the device and it would fry the tanks electronics and this is going back years, so god knows what they have now.

Plausablity measured in tin foil hats. 1 Tin foil is rated at the plausability of 9/11 being a goverment job.

1) The likely hood of the USA currently having effective EMP weapons is 2 tin foil hats.

2) Brett's comments that he had slept with Paris Hilton was rated at 40,000 tin foil hats.

Lets see - 1 every 15 mins outside DVLA, all Police sites, Tax office, government, ID and Passport offices - sounds great.

Even better aimed at the chavs who insist on parking (if you can count screeching to a halt & braking, or accelerating away later as parking manoevers, threatening law abiding citizens & young children) at the rear of the retail park backing on to my house, who generously allow us to share their taste in music all through our houses & kick footballs against the rear of Currys all weekend, whom the police are powerless to act against.

Half a dozen fried chav mobiles & accompanying stereo systems, bring it on.

Quoth Anonymous Coward:

>>>

WTF? Is Australia expecting to be attacked by a gigantic modern air force? What potential enemies could they have who wouldn't be easy pickings for an F-18? For that matter, what possible enemies could they have that wouldn't be easy pickings for a P-51, for that matter? Russia isn't going to mess with you, China certainly isn't, so it's not like there will be squads of MiG-21s circling Sydney. And, really, if there were, I'm fairly certain that the fifteen or twenty AEGIS-equipped cruisers and carriers in the Pacific might be inclined to stop them before they got there.....

>>>

Your last presumption is your biggest; that the US would honour its obligations under the ANZUS treaty to jump in should Australia find itself in a regional ruck... the precedent, as established during the Malaya insurgency crisis and the standoff with Indonesia over Irian Jaya (aka West Papua, at a time when the eastern half of New Guinea was effectively an Australian colony), would indicate that they'd point to the fine print, argue that Australian territorial integrity wasn't under threat, and stay on the sidelines, issuing statements to the press about the need for sanctions to be imposed and whatnot.

Beyond that, and setting aside that the regional militaries in southern and eastern Asia have been spending up big on the most capable military tech Russian manufacturers are prepared to sell, it's a basic principle of strategy to insist that any conflict you fight be as one-sided as possible; the enemy should not just be edged out, but routed with minimal to negligible losses to one's own side. It's much cheaper that way.

I think if the Aussies were under attack, the only question that would be asked at the Pentagon in Washington would be, "Is there any oil in Australia?"

Alas how do you think the US took down the relatively modern well designed Serbian Air Defence System when they bombed the Chinese Embassy back in the days of the Clinton Administration !

However the most effective weapon is the detonation of megaton plus bombs above the 50 mile mark , the down side means that low orbital satellites unless well shielded will be destroyed by the trapped radiation belt generated by the explosion like "Starfish Prime" test in 1962 ?

But then again also why do you think the Russians put so much time and effort in the design of their agile fighter aircraft giving them both rough strip handling and ability to withstand high EMP bursts and power to burn through ECM at ranges of up to 15 miles where as the English preferred the use of versatile concrete ballast instead in the good old first production GR1 models !

The problem with the F/A-18s isn't their capability but age. The things have at best another seven years life in them and something will have to be purchased to replace them. The JSF is going to be late, and who really knows what sort of capability this CAS-plane-turned-fighter will really deliver? (Personally I'd pick the Su-34 and 37 but I don't think that's allowed).

Also it's worth noting that, historically, the Australian Defense Force does not defend Australia. 99.9% of our military experience has been far-off fighting foreign wars in order to remain friendly with far-off foreign powers (eg, sending forces to China, South Africa, France, Palestine, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq etc). About the closest Australia has ever come to fighting for the homeland was Paupa New Guinea in WW2 (although a few Japanese bombers did venture down to Darwin).

Carlo Kopp is a nutter, but he's a very well-reasoned one and his detailled rants usually make a good read.

I'm amazed to see people holding opinions to the effect that Australia has no potential military threats of any consequence!!!

I guess it must be nice living in/near Europe where all countries are first-world democracies (albeit all of them overrun and dragged down to some extent by illegal immigrant riff-raff from the third-world).

Australia has immediately to its north a militaristic islamic dictatorship - the world's most populous muslim nation, with a history of aggressive imperialistic expansion and genocide in its conquered territory.

Beyond those ugly neighbours are sundry other unpleasant pseudo-democracies who wish Australia no particular good.

The F35s we have foolishly agreed to buy would give us some measure of air superiority, but they lack the strike capability of the F22.

With a militaristic and muslim indonesia stocking-up on up-to-date russian fighter jets, Australia now more than ever needs to ensure it is in possession of a stand-out highly capable airforce.

As for ANZUS - we embroiled ourselves in the illegal Iraq debacle for the sake of relations with our "ally", who, as pointed out above, would be 99% sure to let us down if/when we really needed them.

"Is there any oil in Australia?"

Oh a little bit, lots of LNG (including what we swindled from Timor), and a SH!t load of Uranium... Think the septics would bother turning up for that?

@anon , I suggest you check carefully for the venerable old Sukhoi SU-27 Flanker powered by Lyulka AL-31F engines which was designed back circa 1969 and prototypes started flying 1977 is a big heavy day night long range fighter whose dry weight is more then one ton heavier then the equivalent Phantom 2's !

Alas in the past three Asian War games the variant as piloted by the Indian Air Force has shot out of the sky the best graduate pilots from the US Air Force Nevada Top Gun School flying a bevy of Hornets , Falcons and late model advanced Eagles with equal aplomb !

The former East German MIG-29's export models flying in NATO war games post 1989 until sold to the Polish Air Force on almost every encounter literally shot the best planes RAF(crap aircraft or pilots?) had like the Rolls Royce powered Phantom 2's(flying bricks) , Panavia Tornado's , Sepecat Jaguar's and English Electric Lightning's right out of the sky for minimal losses and even the French Air Force had a lot of trouble trying to subdue them as well !

If the best graduate Nevada Top Gun pilots flying Hornets could not even touch the lowly old 27 model at first base then the more advanced 30 through 37 models would shoot them out of the sky before they even left home plate to come out and play !

Whilst the latest US Air Force Fighter War Game results in Alaska with the F22 , it would only just put them on par with the older SU-27 , so it would be an even money bet between the two aircraft in real combat !

OK Anonymous Coward, I'll bite: how many up-to-date Russian fighter jet does militaristic and Muslim (OMG!!) Indonesia have in stock or on order?

They're taking their bloody time. Kopp first presented this lecture ten years ago. I came across a fully annotated and detailed copy of it online back in 1999. Unsurprisingly, the website hosting it disappeared not long after 9/11.

I believe the answer is 6 in stock, 6 on order of one of Russia's (and hence the world's) most capable fighter aircraft.

Remind me how many sub-sonic Harriers were required by the UK to destroy the Argentine airforce and hence assert Air Supremacy to cover the amphibious landings on the Falklands?

As for the silly dig about Indonesia being muslim - are you incapable of analysis, or do you genuinely fail to understand what this means to a US/Israel-aligned nation such as Australia?

Good point Sven, however, consider this:

The uranium industry in Australia is kept very much in the shade of our democratic society's popular aversion to all things Nuclear.

this includes the USA's desperate attempts to have us build a high-level waste "storage" in the middle of the desert.

Think how much easier it dealing with an Australian Uranium industry which was free of the constraints imposed by the ballot box?

An Australian Uranium industry run by the notoriously corrupt TNI?

The same TNI which mass-murdered 200,000 of East Timor's 600,000 population without the USA ever raising its voice (let alone a finger) against it?

I just don't know how this went from EMP to planes..

As for the planes, please think about a war: it is not plane against plane: it is air force against air force.

If you have awacs, satellites, aegis, etc, you know where the enemy planes are BEFORE they detect you.. so with long range missiles (AMRAAM) you can shoot down them even before they detect you.

So you may take down a large and individually better airforce with minimal forces and outdated planes, you just need good missiles, good training, data transponders and a good organization.

As for the threat of indonesia.. well, you don't just need planes: you need pilots with more thna one thousand flight hours each.. and they just can't have that.

And the ammunition? it is typical of those countries to have many planes but very little ammunition.. so do not worry: they won't be able to do much damage: they will run short of ammunition, will fail to hit strategic targets and their air force will be grounded... for lack of spare parts.

Plus they have a grab-bag of F-16s, BAe Hawks etc.

Not massively terrifying, unless you're the intended target - Indonesians who may not be keen on staying Indonesian.

The Indonesian Army could, in theory, prove difficult for Australia (and New Zealand - since we'd have no choice but to support Australia) due to their vast manpower potential. However, there is rather a large stretch of that blue wet stuff between the Indonesian Army and Australia. Indonesia would have to gain air supremacy, then naval supremacy, then invade what is essentially a very, very large desert and then try to bash their way around the coast. All while suppressing insurgencies at home - most likely a great many. (Especially if Australian and NZ special forces manage to slip into Indonesia.)

All up, Indonesia is better off just trading with Australia rather than attempting to invade.

Assuming they didn't manage to cut a deal with our US friends on divvying up the non-US owned parts of Australia, of course. (Australians must be terrists' cause they have all that ooranium.)

In Neal Stephenson's book "Cryptonomicon" some hackers rig up an EMP generator in the back of a van and fry the hero's laptop by accident. I once heard an ObUL (Obligatory Urban Legend) that such a device could be made by generating a nice fat spark inside an insulating cylinder coated with a thin layer of metal - a Pringles tube.

Ob Victim: my neighbour's iPhone.

Who cares that the Aussies get F35's, as long as John McClane isnt on the enemies side you should be fine (see Die Hard 4 for more info)...

"the PC had a fried BIOS chip, as did most of my neighbours"

I'd be less worried about EMP bombs and more concerned that PC-based droids are living in your village.

Not bad. It's actually four in stock and six on MOU, which is almost the same thing as on order, but not quite. Whether or not they have any missiles for them is another question. At best they probably have Aphids, not really something you'd bet on against ASRAAMs and AMRAAMs.

As others have pointed out, having planes is one thing, you also need a competent airforce.

As for Muslims, they are not our Blood Enemy. Malaysia is a Muslim country and one of Australia's closest allies. The only time Australia has been at war with Indonesia (the dirty commies) was to defend Malaysia. Turkey is a Muslim nation and is very friendly with Israel. Saudi Arabia is about as Muslim as you can get and is the best friend America's money can buy.

Any fear Australia has of suddenly coming under foreign attack is a paranoid delusion. As a well-trained, well-equipped British-American ally ("Deputy Sheriff of the Pacific"), Australia remains a bigger threat to any country than any country does to Australia. If Australia eventually goes to war with China, it won't be because China wants to conquer Australia, but because Australia wants to supply its traditional levy to the USA.

"... a few years ago, my computer, microwave and DVD player stopped working, the PC had a fried BIOS chip, as did most of my neighbours, also, when driving past Netheravon camp a year ago in my Peugeot, I lost all my Dashboard display as well as my radio, the engine continued to work though, after driving for a..."

I'd be more concerned about your beloved frog-mobile being the source of these neighbour-frying emissions.

What Australia needs is to acknowledge the massive wrongs they have done to the aboriginal population and maybe shut down their Guantanamo Bay stylee prison on Nauru. What does an F22 cost? £65m? You could do a lot of social good with that much money.

I am massively off topic but then so is everyone else.

>I believe the answer is 6 in stock, 6 on order (Indonesian Su-27's)

>Remind me how many sub-sonic Harriers were required by the UK to destroy

>the Argentine airforce and hence assert Air Supremacy to cover the

>amphibious landings on the Falklands?

Presumably you've read the six Harriers _lost_ and assumed that there was only six?

There were about 38 available, 6 were lost to the 20 ancient Argentine Skyhawks shot down. (Although I think the Harriers were all lost to ground fire)

Air supremacy was never achieved indeed the landings at San Carlos quite clearly demonstrated that.

The Harrier isn't even a fighter aircraft, being best in the ground support role it was designed for. Even ye olde Phantoms from the recently scrapped Ark Royal would have massively changed the situation had they been available.

The argentine air force had been suffering under US sanctions for a long period and the Skyhawks were really quite shagged, the Mirage III was the real threat, but the Argentines were more worried about losing them than the war - understandable given the price of an aircraft versus a rock with a few sheep.

British submarines kept the Argentine carrier battle group safely packed away and so the AAF had to operate at a massively extended range, only allowing them a very brief period in the combat zone.

Ultimately the missiles they carry can make the biggest difference, and I think I'd rather have an american missile than a Russian one. The shiny new AIM-9L that represented the US "assistance" in the Falklands made a big impact and of course the majority of the British casualties in that war came courtesy of the equally shiny and new Exocet of French origin packed by the Mirages.

I doubt that Indonesia even have any hostility towards Australia, or that they have a massive barrage of EMP techno bombs waiting.

my favorite are recent tests using conventional explosives. One was about the size of the Mk-83, IIRC. Instead of using capacitors, it had a core of lots of wire wrapped around. Before dropping it was charged from the parent aircraft like a big capacitor. On the nose were microwave antennas. when it reached a certain altitude, the rear of the bomb would explode, rapidly compressing the core so that it's stored voltage increased dramatically and shorted out thru the antennas, producing a very powerful EM pulse in the microsecond before the device disintegrated.

Basically it had a "footprint" big enough to pulse out a large building complex or small city block (unshielded). And it went off high enough that, other than breaking windows and bomb casing debris, no collateral damage. One problem was charging the thing-current fighter bombers don't have an electrical system powerful enough, so they'd have to sling an auxiliary power source instead of carrying another bomb-not sure if the Super Hornet could handle it, and I don't think it'd fit internally in the F22.

The biggest downside however is, it is *very* easy to shield against EMP especially in military gear. EM devices are only good against civilian targets of sufficiently advanced nature. Russian (or soon to be Soviet again under Putin) Korean, American, EU..you get the picture. Nothing to offend the historically multicultural and religiously tolerant Muslim nations (choke) of course, since all the financial and royal systems are military grade and shielded.

Tinfoil hat time: Anyone, as a kid, who owned walkie talkies, remember the labels on the back, and on many other home electronics as well, that had the FCC regulation: (paraphrased) "This device must not cause interference with other devices and must accept interference from other sources"? I wonder if that was part of the MAD style agreements with the Soviets that America seemed unilaterally to follow (like agreeing *not* to put bomb shelters in with the Interstate Highways program as Civil Defense had initially designed)

WTF??? How do we go from "US EMP Weapon by 2012" to "Aussies should admit perceived Human Right's Abuses"? Am I the only puzzled?

On a more pertinent note. Anyone remember an article detailing a short range emp pulse toy (theoretical) involving injecting a reasonable energy radio signal into a coiled antenna then a highly controlled explosive charge detonating and destroying the coil? It was short range and very directional. Can't for the life of me remember. Was an entertaining idea but dubious on the science. Another Pentagon "what if special"?

Posting anon for obvious reasons *grin*.. sorry.. someone at the door... taxi to Gitmo anyone?

I once had an idea for a prank involving building a large capacitor (several farads), a huge coil, a broadband beam antenna array and a high-voltage PSU; mounting all this kit on the back of a Land Rover (with all-mechanical engine, naturally) and firing it into the engine control systems of modern cars, just to see what happened.

Never built it, but I used to know someone who was almost mad enough to try .....

Once again, the chupacabra of 'EMP Weapons' rises to spread fear, fury, dispair, and phlogiston about the internet. Predictably, paranoics and tinfoil hatters of all description leap into the fray to flog their personal pet obsessions/demons.

Bonus points to any who recognize the referents included.

Sadly, Lewis P has merged two completely different classes of device in his rambly article. EMP is easy to produce and does not suffer from the inverse square law. HMP is an order (or two) of magnitude more difficult to produce and does so suffer. There are people in UK actively researching both.

Popular media reference: in the George Clooney remake of Ocean's Eleven the English tech 'geezer' provides a brief disruption tactic by discharging an EMP 'weapon' to disrupt the electrical distribution system for a couple of blocks around the "Bellagio".

Instead of worrying about Indonesians invading Australia, you should be more concerned about Australians invading Indonesia. After all, they have everything you need - mineral resources, water, breeding stock, culture (much older than yours, and dare I say it, finer) and syncretic religion, which means something for everyone. Your excuse would be spreading cricket.

>> Mk-83, IIRC... I don't think it'd fit internally in the F22.

+1 Su-27

"how do you think the US took down the relatively modern well designed Serbian Air Defence System when they bombed the Chinese Embassy back in the days of the Clinton Administration"

I don't recall that bombing, but anyone can tell you how to take out an AAD system: destroy the radar. And how do you destroy the radar? You fire a conventional missile that seeks out and explodes on the radar dish. It doesn't even need an especially large conventional warhead to do that.

Duh.

For reference, see the AGM-88 HARM (high-speed antiradiation missile) http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/agm-88.htm

By 2020 all cinemas and train 'quiet carriages' will have a cut down version of this device installed. Any selfish patron whose mobile phone rings in said public auditoria will have their electronics and brains fried simultaneously. Severe damage will result for the hardware and the clearly limited electrical activity in the offender's brain, once interrupted, may result in an agonising death.

Two new idioms will be coined:

"Don't EMP me, bro!" and

"Pulsed out, man."

Tasers too will be modified to include an EMP setting and distributed to the police, train attendants and cinema cast members for use in appropriate situations.

Heh. I always get giggles as this is the only 'Mexican myth' that seems to have gone international.

EMP's can be made with current tech, but I think the range isn't just feasible (a few meters) for them to be practical. The only proven one would be the high-altitude nuke, it seems.

Then again, who needs EMP when we have the etherkiller?? Cheap and most effective on frying electronics ;)

Maybe the BOFH will develop the real EMP???

Don't know if anyone posting here has noticed, but just last month, the Israeli's flew into Syria and destroyed an under-construction nuke facility.

They did this with F-18s, and flew them through the latest Russian anti-aircraft radar systems that Syria had just recently installed. This wasn't just a little over-the-border excursion, they came in over the Mediterranean and flew over most of the country to get to the installation, then returned out to the Med. They were not only completely unmolested, they were only detected when the target blew up.

Needless to say, Iran, another customer of the Russian Defense Industry, is concerned.

"This wasn't just a little over-the-border excursion, they came in over the Mediterranean and flew over most of the country to get to the installation, then returned out to the Med."

The BBC Reported:

"In the early hours of 6 September a number of Israeli jets appeared to enter Syrian airspace from the Mediterranean Sea.

Later, unidentified drop tanks, which may have contained fuel from the planes, were found on Turkish soil near the Syrian border, indicating a possible exit route.

Witnesses said the Israeli jets had been engaged by Syrian air defences in Tall al-Abyad, north of Raqqa and near the border with Turkey."

Was it ever found out that they flew out through Turkey or not? Nonetheless it still makes me laugh at the air defense.

A recent $1bn purchase of russian kit goes someway to changing the strategic balance wouldnt you say?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6981026.stm

If EMP does not obey the inverse square law, what one does it obey?

There are a lot of really BIG sources of EMP out there beyond our air bubble.

@morely have not heard of the old Serbian Air Defence multiple Microwave oven trick end of that problem as more emitters then the fleet had missiles in storage available hence the use of a sticky powdered graphite bombs to destroy power supply sub stations instead !

@snow the Israeli Air Force actually used the longer ranged heavier F15 Eagles advanced models which flew in from the Med with long range drop tanks on standard international air routes using fake radar transponders corresponding to subsonic commercial jumbo jet passenger aircraft !

At the same time in northern Israel massive interference on both the C and K band Satellite TV was reported even though the aerials were pointed south to the equator away from action area .

@rob just how slow do you think modern high performance F15 jets travel when cleaned of drop ordinance we are looking at a Mach 2 exit speeds so if the given AA Missile battery from first alert if it has an acquisition target range of maximum 20 mile secure kill radius to eradicate and burn through ECM clutter! The lower the height the shorter time and target acquisition range numbers ! The time it takes for a jet fighter to traverse that range travelling at 1200 mph is traversed in under one minute for every 20 miles travelled , you would need a top notch fully alert ground crew to acquire and track multiple out bound bogeys with fake civilian radar transponders as well !

Do the maths !

@ amanfromMars: The Penis: meatier than the sword, I think you'll find. BTW. Do you manufacture work rest and play bars?

@ Brett: I thought everyone had slept with Paris Hilton.

What Australia really needs as far as aviation is concerned is more crop dusters, and some insecticide. Oh yes and more water supplied to its middle: it'll help wash away the insecticide.

"The Penis: meatier than the sword, I think you'll find." And Amen for that Discovery2.

And who knows who may have played more than just a few restful bars where that was manufactured work ........ 42 Please, Please Me with EMPathy.

The Curse of the Butterfly is to be perceived as One, is it not, whilst the Power in ITs Beauty is to be treasured for ITs KISS.

"Half a dozen fried chav" was all you needed to say.

I'll buy 12.

Meh, some of us have been strapping smartbombs on to our internet pretend Eve-Online spaceships for ages.

And it's not just EM. We can do Thermal, Explosive and Kinetic as well.

AWE Aldermaston are recruiting e.g. for an EMP engineer: https://careers.awe.co.uk/wd/plsql/wd_pds?p_web_page_id=37866 "investigating Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) effects on electronic systems and technologies, undertaking a variety of EMP experiments, sensor/equipment design and EMP code modelling/analysis whilst also contributing to a future EMP test capability at AWE."

Another advert for an EMP engineer also mentions AWE's Orion petawatt laser. Eat yer heart out, Boeing and Raytheon laser nohopers. This one'll get through your Baco foil and knock down those missiles. Or not, as it's actually subpicosecond pulses so on the whole it'll not have much military significance. Maybe. http://www.awe.co.uk/main_site/news/press_releases/PR_2007_012.html

re: Beyond those ugly neighbours are sundry other unpleasant pseudo-democracies who wish Australia no particular good.

Yeah. We poms *really* resent losing the ashes to a 5-0 hiding.......

Sorry if this loses the merkin contingent, it's a spat between _civilised_ countries.

<< "Sorry if this loses the merkin contingent, it's a spat between _civilised_ countries." >>

Really? Which ones would those be, then?