Re: Using an Iranian nuke
- From: Laurence Doering <ljd@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: 21 Apr 2006 20:33:42 GMT
On 20 Apr 2006 08:30:37 -0700, dbohara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <dbohara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Although an Iranian nuke probably would not be an effective way to
produce EMP to affect the US, a nuke (even a small one) detonated at
high altitude, say 100 miles, would put fission products into space
that would affect satellites. Fission products would cause long term
failure in satellite electronics potentially destroying billions of
dollars in satellites. Many military satellites are hardened against
such but commercial ones are not. I have no idea if the GPS satellites
are hardened.
I suspect they probably are, being military satellites and all.
Even if they weren't, the orbital altitude of the GPS constellation
is quite high (12,645 statute miles) [1], so detonating a nuclear
warhead in the extreme upper fringes of the Earth's atmosphere
wouldn't get "fission products" anywhere near them. Even
in space, nuclear weapons don't magically affect everything
in line-of-sight. GPS and geosynchronous satellites would
be too far away to be affected.
To launch a successful EMP attack on the United States, you'd
need to denonate a large nuke (on the order of megatons) at
an altitude of 100 miles or so over central North America.
If the Iranians simply launched a nuke on a Scud to high altitude over
Iran and detonated it, it would cause huge economic damages to
everybody else but might not be considered an act of war.
They might be able to affect satellites in low earth orbit that
happened to be nearby, but it's hard to imagine how that sort
of attack could do damage much greater than that caused every
several years by natural events like strong solar flares.
Anyway, wouldn't that mean Iran was launching an EMP attack
against itself?
ljd
[1] http://www.how-gps-works.com/faq/q0112.shtml
.
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