Electric grid, emergency communications vulnerable to EMPs

By Mary Rose Roberts

Gale Nordling, president and CEO of Emprimus, recently testified before the Congressional Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, Science and Technology about how electromagnetic devices can be used against public infrastructure, specifically the electric grid. Such devices can disable systems controlled by computers and significantly disrupt emergency-response operations from fire protection to homeland security, Nordling said.

“When terrorists intentionally use electromagnetic interference they are able to interfere with security systems, communication systems and operation systems,” Nordling said in an interview with Urgent Communications.

Every year, U.S. infrastructure becomes increasingly dependent on integrated, circuit-based electronic control systems, computers and electronically stored data. As a result, Nordling said a growing use of non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse/intentional electromagnetic interference (EMP/IEMI), including radio-frequency weapons, poses a danger to the national electric grid, manufacturing control and distribution systems, corporate data and emergency-response operations. In addition, communication between first responders would be negligible because the cell and repeater towers would go down because they rely on the energy from the grid.

“It would depend on the kind of facility that would be hooked to the power grid that would determine the degree of harm that would occur, such as if it was a hospital or a 911 communication call center,” he said.

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