Tag Archives: electromagnetic spectrum

The Havana/China Syndrome: Who Used Directed-Energy Weapons on US Diplomats?

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 In December 2020,  U.S. scientific panel has concluded that exposure to a type of directed energy was the most likely culprit for a number of medical symptoms, including dizziness and memory loss, experienced by diplomats posted in Cuba and China. In a new assessment published on December 5, 2020  by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, scientists identified “directed, pulsed radio frequency (RF) energy” as the most likely explanation for a series of symptoms experienced by diplomats posted at U.S. facilities—a broad category of energy that can include microwave radiation.

The scientists concluded that the symptoms experienced by a number of U.S. and Canadian diplomats, which included dizziness, headache, fatigue, nausea, anxiety, cognitive difficulties and memory loss, were “unlike any disorder in the neurological or general medical literature.”… Governments, including the former Soviet Union and the U.S., have tested using directed energy as a potential weapon or a tool for espionage or crowd control in the past.

Excerpts from  Byron Tau, U.S. Diplomats’ Illnesses Likely Linked to Pulsed Energy Attack, WSJ, Dec. 7, 2020

Your Brain on Electro-Magnetic Fields

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Current cockpits are flooded with radio frequency (RF) noise from on-board emissions, communication links, and navigation electronics, including strong electromagnetic (EM) fields from audio headsets and helmet tracking technologies. Pilots often report minor cognitive performance challenges during flight, and from 1993 to 2013, spatial disorientation in US Air Force pilots accounted for 72 Class A mishaps, 101 deaths, and 65 aircraft lost. It has been hypothesized that the cockpit RF and EM fields may influence cognitive performance including task saturation, misprioritization, complacency and Spatial Disorientation. However, EM fields and radio waves in cockpits are not currently monitored, little effort has been made to shield pilots from these fields, and the potential impacts of these fields on cognition have not been assessed.

Recent DARPA-funded research has demonstrated that human brains sense magnetic fields, like those used by animals for navigation, and that this process is “jammed” (i.e., disrupted) by radio waves (RF), impacting brainwaves and behavior. Furthermore, recent findings were the first to show that even weak RF fields and “earth strength” magnetic fields have measurable, reproducible effects on human brainwaves and unconscious behavior in a controlled environment. Current tactical audio headsets project magnetic fields up to 10 times earth strength, the effects of which can now be measured experimentally in a similar controlled environment.

[Phase II of the project will involve] developing next generation sensor suite capable of measuring the ambient EM/RF conditions in a military aircraft cockpit environment or a suitably similar analogue. This system must enable measurement of RF intensity vs frequency as well as RF absorption by various tissues in the human body and brain…The goal of Phase II experimentation will be to, not only identify any impacts of the cockpit EM/RF conditions that negatively impact pilot cognitive function or physiological sensor function, but also to develop and test various mitigation strategies to protect against these effects…


If this research and development effort reveals negative impacts of cockpit EM/RF environments on human cognitive function or physiological sensor performance, it is expected to generate interest from the commercial airline industry as well as other industries in which humans are exposed to similar EM/RF conditions. 

Excerpts from Impact Cockpit Electro-Magnetics on Aircrew Neurology (ICEMAN), DARPA, 2020
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Sixth Domain of War: electromagnetic spectrum

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The electromagnetic spectrum is the sixth domain of modern warfare. The effectiveness of combat operations in the land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains depends on our ability to control and exploit the spectrum, because it is critical to our capabilities in navigation. While the spectrum is at the heart of current and  future warfare, it remains highly contested and congested, and future info-centric warfare will require more access than ever before. DARPA/’s Microsystems Technology Office is developing components to effectively operate in a dynamic, contentious spectrum, which includes research in hardware components for maximal flexibility, machine learning for spectral reasoning, and fast development cycles for fielding complex electromagnetic systems.

Excerpt from DARPA-SN-16-59, MTO Office-wide Proposers Day, September 20, 2016

Super Semiconductor Chips: Military

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Competition for scarce electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is increasing, driven by a growing military and civilian demand for connected devices. As the spectrum becomes more congested, the Department of Defense (DoD) will need better tools for managing the EM environment and for avoiding interference from competing signals. One recent DARPA-funded advance, an exceptionally high-speed analog-to-digital converter (ADC), represents a major step forward. The ADC could help ensure the uninterrupted operation of spectrum-dependent military capabilities, including communications and radar, in contested EM environments. The advance was enabled by 32 nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) semiconductor technologies available through DARPA’s ongoing partnership with GlobalFoundries, a manufacturer of highly-advanced semiconductor chips.

The EM spectrum, whose component energy waves include trillionth-of-a-meter-wavelength gamma rays to multi-kilometer-wavelength radio waves, is an inherently physical phenomenon. ADCs convert physical data—that is, analog data—on the spectrum into numbers that a digital computer can analyze and manipulate, an important capability for understanding and adapting to dynamic EM environments. Today’s ADCs, however, only process data within a limited portion of the spectrum at a given time. As a result, they can temporarily overlook critical information about radar, jamming, communications, and other potentially problematic EM signals. DARPA’s Arrays at Commercial Timescales (ACT) program addressed this challenge by supporting the development of an ADC with a processing speed nearly ten times that of commercially available, state-of-the-art alternatives. By leveraging this increased speed, the resulting ADC can analyze data from across a much wider spectrum range, allowing DoD systems to better operate in congested spectrum bands and to more rapidly react to spectrum-based threats.

How fast is fast? The new ADC samples and digitizes spectrum signals at a rate of over 60 billion times per second (60 GigaSamples/sec). …The new ADC can provide a “one-stop shop” for processing radar, communications and electronic warfare signals.

Desirable as these blazing sampling speeds are, they also pose challenges. The amount of data generated is staggering, reaching nearly a terabyte per second. This high data rate requires on-chip data-management circuitry that allows signals to be processed locally on the ADC, reducing the amount of data that must be communicated to neighboring electronics. This on-board digital signal processing burns quite a bit of power and also demands state-of-the-art transistors. The 32 nm SOI technology offered by Global Foundries, the only certified DoD supplier of this circuit technology, provided ACT with the leading-edge transistors needed to sample and process the RF spectrum without exceeding power or data-transfer limitations.

Upcoming ACT designs will go further. By using GlobalFoundries’ even more advanced 14 nm technology, ACT’s next generation of ADCs aim to reduce power requirements by an additional 50 percent and enable yet smaller and lighter systems that can sample even greater swaths of the spectrum.

Excerpts from New Chips Ease Operations In Electromagnetic Environs, Jan. 11, 2016

Surveillance – Undress People Remotely

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Officials from Guinness World Records today recognized DARPA’s Terahertz Electronics program for creating the fastest solid-state amplifier integrated circuit ever measured. The ten-stage common-source amplifier operates at a speed of one terahertz (1012 GHz), or one trillion cycles per second—150 billion cycles faster than the existing world record of 850 gigahertz set in 2012.…Developed by Northrop Grumman Corporation, the Terahertz Monolithic Integrated Circuit (TMIC) exhibits power gains several orders of magnitude beyond the current state of the art…  For years, researchers have been looking to exploit the tremendously high-frequency band beginning above 300 gigahertz where the wavelengths are less than one millimeter. The terahertz level has proven to be somewhat elusive though due to a lack of effective means to generate, detect, process and radiate the necessary high-frequency signals.  Current electronics using solid-state technologies have largely been unable to access the sub-millimeter band of the electromagnetic spectrum due to insufficient transistor performance…

According to  Dev Palmer, DARPA program manager. “This breakthrough could lead to revolutionary technologies such as high-resolution security imaging systems, improved collision-avoidance radar, communications networks with many times the capacity of current systems and spectrometers that could detect potentially dangerous chemicals and explosives with much greater sensitivity.”

DARPA has made a series of strategic investments in terahertz electronics through itsHiFIVE, SWIFT and TFAST programs. Each program built on the successes of the previous one, providing the foundational research necessary for frequencies to reach the terahertz threshold.

Excerpts from DARPA CIRCUIT ACHIEVES SPEEDS OF 1 TRILLION CYCLES PER SECOND, EARNS GUINNESS WORLD RECORD, DARPA website, http://www.darpa.mil, Oct. 28, 2014

This technology can be used for Security and Communications (including military communications): Here from Wikipedia

Security:
Terahertz radiation can penetrate fabrics and plastics, so it can be used in surveillance, such as security screening, to uncover concealed weapons on a person, remotely. This is of particular interest because many materials of interest have unique spectral “fingerprints” in the terahertz range…. In January 2013, the NYPD announced plans to experiment with the newfound technology to detect concealed weapons, prompting Miami blogger and privacy activist Jonathan Corbett to file a lawsuit against the department in Manhattan federal court that same month, challenging such use: “For thousands of years, humans have used clothing to protect their modesty and have quite reasonably held the expectation of privacy for anything inside of their clothing, since no human is able to see through them.” He seeks a court order to prohibit using the technology without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.