Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government by Paul Bedard, Washington Secrets Columnist
The cyberattack that shut down the Colonial Pipeline that delivers gas and jet fuel to the East Coast has sparked new fears among experts of a broader Russian-backed assault that could darken the U.S. electric grid in just 24 hours.
Using easy-to-build electronic weapons installed in just 20 little trucks, enough attacks on little-guarded grid transformers over 24 hours could turn the United States into a cave society, according to a leading electronic and cyber weapon expert.
Peter Vincent Pry lays it all out in his soon-to-be-released book, part of which was shared with Secrets following the Colonial Pipeline shutdown last week.
In “Blackout Warfare: An Experiment,” Pry calculated that 20 trucks armed with “directed energy weapons” and manned by 40 personnel “could in 24 hours attack 500 of 2,000 [extra high voltage] EHV transformer substations in the U.S. national electric grid. Reportedly, according to a restricted study by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an attack that sabotages just 9 out of 2,000 EHV transformer substations would result in a protracted nationwide blackout.”
It may sound exotic, but he said that examples of the weapons have been developed in Russia and are used in the U.S. and internationally to test against electromagnetic pulses.
He said that a House committee in 2000 hired an electrical engineer and some students to see if they could build one from off-the-shelf parts. They did — and stuck it in a Volkswagen bus.
He also said that companies offer “EMP Suitcases” that simulate an attack that can be weaponized against the grid to darken cities.
In past reports, Pry and others have warned of more elaborate nuclear electromagnetic weapons put on missiles and satellites, but low-budget and easy-to-use non-nuclear EMP weapons are catching on.
“Thanks to NNEMP weapons, we have arrived at a place where the technological pillars of civilization for a major metropolitan area could be toppled by a single madman,” he warned in the chapter of his book devoted to the issue.
“NNEMP devices like the ‘EMP Suitcase’ could become the Dollar Store version of weapons of mass destruction if turned against the national electric grid by terrorists. A German version of the ‘EMP Suitcase’ weighs only 62 pounds, easily deliverable by a drone or cruise missile,” he added.
And versions of the weapon have been used against the U.S. already, he said, citing the attack on the U.S. embassy in Cuba and a dog walker near the White House last November.
Add in the Russian-based hack attack of Colonial and Pry said the country should brace for more assaults.
“The Colonial Pipeline hack proves the Kremlin is not bluffing,” said Pry.
“These three seemingly unrelated stories prove that ‘someone’ is preparing for World War III. So Americans should be ready for a coming ‘electronic apocalypse.’ If water, food, petroleum and other critical infrastructures collapse, then we have lost World War III,” he said in a separate post about his book’s findings.
