Trump, North Korea & EMP Proof Aircraft

US President, Donald Trump’s recent address at the UN regarding North Korea indicates there could be a potential war between the USA and North Korea in the nearby future…

North Korea have been playing games that are getting a bit serious after launching a missile over the Japanese island of Hokkaido - before following that up with its sixth nuclear test. Also, judging by the size of the recent earthquake detected in the country’s mountainous North, North Korea may have been telling the truth when it said it conducted what it described as its first hydrogen bomb test.

In a recent TV broadcast North Korea mentioned a different tactic: detonating an H-bomb at high altitude to create an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that could knock out parts of the US electrical grid.

An EMP would basically wipe out anything electronic within a certain radiation of the detonation. This would catapult the effected area back to the 1800s.

NBC’s sci-fi show Revolution explores what life might look like 15 years after an EMP hits North America. The government has fallen, families must survive by harvesting their own crops, and warlords and militias run rampant armed with what was previously considered outdated weaponry.

I recently read a novel discussing this possible future, One Second After by William Forstchen. A great read and really gets you thinking differently about many things. What is an EMP? How big is the threat of an EMP? What would be the impact of an EMP? How can we prevent such a catastrophe from occurring? And finally, even if we can’t prevent an EMP incident or attack, what can we do to strengthen our infrastructure to absorb its impact and mitigate the resulting harm?

The US government set-up a commission to analyse this type of scenario. The EMP Commission was established pursuant to title XIV of the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (as enacted into law by Public Law 106-398; 114 Stat. 1654A-345). Duties of the EMP Commission include assessing:

1.  the nature and magnitude of potential high-altitude EMP threats to the United States from all potentially hostile states or non-state actors that have or could acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles enabling them to perform a high-altitude EMP attack against the United States within the next 15 years;

2.  the vulnerability of United States military and especially civilian systems to an EMP attack, giving special attention to vulnerability of the civilian infrastructure as a matter of emergency preparedness;

3.  the capability of the United States to repair and recover from damage inflicted on United States military and civilian systems by an EMP attack; and

4.  the feasibility and cost of hardening select military and civilian systems against EMP attack.

 The Commission summarizes the potential impact as follows:

“Electrical power is necessary to support other critical infrastructures, including supply and distribution of water, food, fuel, communications, transport, financial transactions, emergency services, government services, and all other infrastructures supporting the national economy and welfare. Should significant parts of the electrical power infrastructure be lost for any substantial period of time, the Commission believes that the consequences are likely to be catastrophic, and many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities.”

I have found myself often having to answer the question about what would happen to aircraft in the sky if an EMP strikes?

First of all Airbuses and Boeings will not be falling out of the sky like depicted in the TV series Revolution. EMP "fries" all the electronic components within its blast zone, but will not affect the flight controls and cause the aircraft to dive.

You would just end up with a huge number of pilots suddenly sitting in a "dark" cockpit. No lights, no instruments, no fly-by wire, no displays.

Aircraft without direct mechanical control or engine-driven fuel feed will remain in its last attitude. Shifting cargo and passengers may help provide some control but the odds of landing and avoiding collisions without radio coordination will be near zero.

If the aircraft has direct controls of the control surfaces and is not fly by wire and assuming the airport control tower is not out-of-order, then it may land safely. If every control system on the airplane is electronic (fly by wire), then the airplane will glide down until it crashes. This obviously depends on the strength of the EMP and whether the airplane was within the area that was effected.

AIR Force One is probably the most famous plane in the skies but it has four shadowy 'brothers' whose roles are far more important. The super-secret E-4B 'Doomsday' 747 jets follow US President Donald Trump on his travels around the globe just in case a sudden nuclear war breaks out. There are actually four of them, it is EMP shielded and protected from radiation. The president and various political leaders including military personnel have the ability to issue nuclear launch orders and communicate during an emergency. It has a variety of communication capabilities including contacting various branches of the military, overseas communication centers and nuclear submarines.

For a while, back in the 80s, the Soviets were still equipping their aircraft and much of their military equipment with tube technology for this very purpose....Tubes being immune to EMP.

However, in the intervening years, all militaries have developed "hardened" solid-state electronics that will, we are told, resist EMP attacks.

Well. the key to an airliner (or any other vehicle) surviving a real EMP would be having engines and flight control systems that don't require any kind of computer assistance. Hydraulic control systems powered directly by the engine and not relying on a computer to operate the valves would continue to function, as would cable-driven control systems. Simple electric motors may also continue to operate (larger motors tend to be EMP-resistant, in smaller motors there's a chance the EMP could burn out the windings or arc over and destroy the brushes) which means we can assume you'd still be able to pump fuel into the engines of most jet airliners.

Thinking along those lines I imagine the remaining DC-3 fleet would be almost entirely unfazed by an EMP (save for any retrofitted avionics, radios, etc. which would likely be fried). Similarly the Boeing 707 would probably not have a problem, nor would early-generation DC-9s, 727s, 737s and 747s - you would lose any retrofitted flight management computers, but they are generally not essential to operation in the earlier-generation aircraft. There are probably several other models still in service (or hanging around various boneyards) which are at least somewhat EMP-resistent.

If we assume a Revolution-style apocalypse where absolutely nothing using electricity works you're rather worse off: only aircraft which have cable-driven controls (or hydraulic backups with manual valve actuation & direct pressurization from the ram air turbine) would have functional flight controls. That’s a much smaller subset of the fleet these days, but the planes do exist - as Terry pointed out the 727 and 747 both have non-electric control systems available.

If we assume magnetos can still generate a spark the DC-3 other planes of its generation would be the clear winner: The engines would continue to run until stopped (the engine-driven fuel pumps would continue to feed the engine fuel). Aircraft like this could even possibly be restarted (using shotgun starters or pull starters, and a little help getting fuel to the engine until the mechanical fuel pump could take up the job). If we assume magnetos would also stop working then at least you'd have flight controls and the ability to make a controlled emergency landing somewhere as you could in the other planes mentioned.

My understanding, is that if the airplane is Not hardened to the DOD HEMP specification, that the intense electric field would destroy most of the electronics by coupling to the cables and burning out the electronics.

The airplane would be lost (crash).

All military aircraft, including cargo and transports, are Hardened against HEMP.

Indeed, the KC-46A (767 variant) went through an Extensive High Altitude EMP (HEMP) modification in order to survive such an event.

The 747 Command and Control aircraft that the USAF operates all have a huge amount of modifications to account for HEMP.

It is because of HEMP that the B-2A composite bomber, actually has an aluminum crew station……

Fabrizio Poli is an independant aviation consultant specialized in aircraft sales. He is also an accomplished Airline Transport Pilot having flown both private Jets and for the airlines. Fabrizio is also a bestselling author and inspirational speaker & has been featured on Russia Today (RT), TRT World, Social Media Examiner, Bloomberg, Channel 5, Chicago Tribune, Daily Telegraph, City Wealth Magazine, Billionaire.com, Wealth X, Financial Times, El Financiero and many other Media offering insight on the aviation world. Fabrizio is also regularly featured as an Aviation Analyst on Russia Today (RT) and TRT World. Fabrizio is also aviation special correspondent for luxury magazine, Most Fabullous Magazine. Fabrizio is also considered one of the world's top 30 experts in using Linkedin for business. You can tune in weekly to Fabrizio's business Podcast Living Outside the Cube available both in video & audio. You can also follow Fabrizio's aviation videos on Biz Jet TV . Fabrizio's latest book "Health4Flyers", the first natural-health book for pilots, flights attendants and frequent flyers is now available worldwide.