Report Blasts Military For Not Being Nuke-Proof By Olivia Koski July 22, 2010

     The article below I found while perusing some other site, it does make sense to keep older antiquated equipment around for many reasons not just including EMP issues. Some older equipment has a simplicity to it that can be a teaching tool never mind the fact that you can actually work on it in the first place...Enjoy


Report Blasts Military For Not Being Nuke-Proof
By Olivia Koski July 22, 2010

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010...ng-nuke-proof/

If, by some chance, you end up surviving the nuclear apocalypse, don’t count on the U.S. military to be around to help you rebuild. Or don’t expect all its fancy electronics and communications equipment to work, at least.

That’s the strongly worded, rather ominous assessment from a joint Defense Science Board/ Threat Reduction Advisory Committee Task Force, which warns in a recent report that the military needs to wake up to its vulnerability to nuclear attack.



“Actions — both by others and of our own doing — are combining to create potentially tragic consequences on military operations involving the effects of nuclear weapons on the survivability of critical [military] systems,” notes the report, spotted by InsideDefense.com.

Since the U.S. stopped squaring off against the USSR, American military leaders haven’t been taking nuclear threats that seriously, the report implies. (Do they know something we don’t?)

“Many of the post-Cold War generation of decision-makers simply do not have this issue on their ‘radar scope,’ while others pay little or no attention to it because they fail to see is as a legitimate concern,” the report says.

The Board concluded that there is an “alarming atrophy” in understanding of nuclear issues within the military. It stems from a perceived remoteness of an attack and the cost and complexity of radiation-hardening equipment and training troops for nuclear environments.

Even if we’re past the days of “massive arsenal-exchange scenarios like those of the Cold War,” a limited nuclear engagement could still put military communications systems at serious risk, according to the report.

The American military counts more and more on its communications networks to fight. The task force is worried that infrastructure may not be nuke-proof.

Blame the semiconductor revolution for that. Back in the 1960s, 92% of the market was government contracts, meaning reliability and environmental hardening were customer priorities. Now the government makes up only 5% of the market. “Thus, instead of leading semiconductor technology development as they did in the early days of semiconductor products, the U.S. military systems now adapt what they can from leading-edge chips that target mainstream commercial applications,” says the report.

Nuclear survivability is not typically a requirement for commercial electronics, of course.

However, all satellites – both military and commercial – are hardened to protect against nuclear radiation that occurs naturally in space. Military satellites often have additional hardening requirements to withstand attack, but “even those are highly variable,” says the report. And commercial satellites that support military communications are “not hardened beyond expected natural operating environments,” it notes.

The task force has many specific recommendations – reintroduce nuclear survivability into war games, educate troops, evaluate survivability of existing hardware, amp up modeling and test capabilities, and train the next generation of experts. Overall, they think a significant cultural change is in order – a cultural change that makes everyone more wary about nukes.

So far, the advice hasn’t been heeded. A similar report with similar conclusions was issued five years ago, to little avail.