Air Force Doles Out Cash to Microwave Computers

Fried Microwave Computers


Nice work if you can get it. BAE Systems just won $150,000 to bombard computers with high-powered electromagnetic radiations to see whether they’ll fritz out. The objective: learn how to fry the other guy’s electronics while protecting your own.

Yesterday, the Air Force announced that Europe’s biggest arms company will develop the first tests for its High Power Microwave Technological Electromagnetic Susceptibility with Laboratory Applications project. Basically, much as microwave jammers stop homemade bombs by interfering with the signals sent from their remote detonators, the Air Force wants to find out how much damage it can inflict on other systems, and how much damage its own systems can handle. Or, in its words, figure out “cost effective, innovative solutions for determining the susceptibility/vulnerability of U.S. and foreign systems to high power electromagnetic (EM) environments.”

Photo: Flickr / Pyroclastichawk

Source: Wired.com