

Every corner of the military community has its own boogeyman. Some lock in on bioterrorists; others, crybercriminals, or the growing Chinese Navy. For nearly ten years, a collection of Congresscritters and missilemenhave fixated on the possibility that some madman might detonate a nuclear in the skies – triggering a king-sized electromagnetic pulse that would instantly fry all of America's electronics. The country would be instantly returned back to the mid-20th Century. Or worse.

The other day, driving through Alaska, I heard one of these types on talk radio, warning that Iran was thisclose to be able to bring America on her knees with such a weapon. Previous predictions to the same haven't exactly panned out – and have often been based on fishy evidence. But Iran has made strides in missile and nuke technology, this fellow argued. And besides, remember what EMPs did in the *Matrix *trilogy?

Either way, the Navy isn't waiting around to find out. It's given L-3

Services, Inc. a $7.4 million contract to build a "state-of-the-art Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Pulser and its associated control system." Expected completion date: 2010.

The Navy doesn't want the pulser to knock out enemy electronics, Defense Industry Daily says. "Military systems are checked for their ability to survive specific EMP

levels – but to do that, one needs to generate an EMP. Since the exact fate of any one device depends on its resistance, the power of the original pulse, and its distance from the source, testing EMPs from devices like L-3’s pulser can be much smaller – and much closer – than the real thing."