Improvised Explosive Device (IED) - Remote Destruction
~ James Dunn
IED's are used by militants and terrorists to kill people and destroy vehicles. Typically they are positioned adjacent to a roadway and either detonated by proximity sensor and/or triggered by remote control. They can be manufactured and triggered by any number of different methods.
But the ones used in Iraq usually use electrical and/or electronic components to detonate the explosives.
So, how to disrupt the electrical and/or electronic components? From a safe distance!
A Gyrotron is something similar to your microwave in the kitchen; it takes in electricity and emits microwaves. However, commercially available gyrotrons easily produce microwaves at power densities greater than 50 kilowatts per unit, instead of the 1 kilowatt per kitchen microwave. Gyrotrons are available in the tens of megawatts.
http://www.psfc.mit.edu/wab/pdfs/2005/EMChoi_Jphy.pdf
Couple a collimator with a gyrotron and you create a MASER. Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emissions of Radiation. Microwaves behave similarly as Lasers; almost all of the propagating energy follows a narrow diameter beam. Thus concentrating the +50 kW on a small area or volume.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maser
Ever hear of what happens when metal is put into a microwave. Metal can act like an antenna and the microwave energy excites the electrons in the metal to flow back and forth in the metal, exciting a charge; lightning like phenomena and intense heating of the metal.
In a 1 kilowatt kitchen microwave, a wire tie becomes red hot in a small fraction of a second. Think of the volume of energy in the microwave being focused just on the wire tie; many hundreds of times more energy focused on the wire tie.
I propose that if a substantial portion of the microwave energy of a 100 kilowatt gyrotron is confined to a square centimeter, that the time duration needed to destroy small metal conductors would be very small.
I understand that a collimator reduces the effective power of a maser by some margin.
The laser like microwave could then be directed at any suspect device from a safe distance and disrupt and/or detonate the IED. Electronic packages neutralized and wires fused.
Robotic aerial vehicles could pace and lead convoys/trains to scan suspect targets adjacent to roadways and disrupt any electrical pathways.
An infrared sensor could automatically search the target area and prevent accidental injury of people and animals.
