Legislation before the House and Senate reveals growing worries among defense lawmakers about Chinese and other adversaries’ electromagnetic pulse weapons and the vulnerability of U.S. and allied defenses and critical infrastructure to EMP attacks, directed energy waves that could disrupt the power grid, cause massive blackouts, and damage or destroy cell phones, internet service and satellites.
Both houses of Congress focused on the potentially catastrophic effects of EMP in fiscal 2027 defense authorization bills now awaiting passage.
The Senate Armed Services Committee report on the authorization bill warns that Chinese military advances in technology-destroying electromagnetic pulse weapons now threaten Taiwan. Senators added language that would require briefings by senior Trump administration security officials on the dangers, according to the report.
In the House, the Armed Services Committee signaled its concern for future EMP attacks, warning that the Pentagon and military services have set standards for improving electronic warfare defenses but failed to comply with the rules.
Also, the Pentagon has not properly gauged the danger of an EMP or cyberattacks that could cripple large transformers used to power military bases, according to the House bill.
The transformers “may be vulnerable to physical and digital threats, including electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effects, cyber threats” that could knock out industrial supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, systems and other control networks.
Both Senate and House panels added language to the bills mandating briefings on the EMP dangers by the spring of 2027.
The draft measures were added as the threat has increased of China and Russia using nuclear weapons in space or at high altitude for EMP warfare.
The House passed its version of the bill in July; the Senate bill is awaiting action in the full Senate on the $1.1 trillion funding authorization.
The funding bill contains $3 billion for what the military calls “distributed electromagnetic warfare,” defined vaguely in budget documents as secret programs for “high-impact, emerging technology for use in electromagnetic warfare across all domains.”
The EMP sections of the bills have to pass a later House-Senate conference but the multiple provisions indicate some sections likely will be contained in the final bill.
EMP is a directed energy wave made up of high-voltage, high-speed pulses emanating from a nuclear blast.
The phenomenon was first discovered in 1962 after a high-altitude U.S. nuclear test in the Pacific Ocean, called Starfish Prime, that disrupted the electric grid and telephone service and knocked out streetlights in Hawaii — nearly 900 miles away.
A three-year study by the private Electric Power Research Institute stated that a space-based or atmospheric nuclear blast would damage significant portions of the electric grid and cause massive blackouts.
For example, a nuclear detonation 124 miles over the United States would affect an area up to 3 million square miles — about 80% of the country.
Millions of other electronic devices and systems also would be damaged or destroyed, including cellphones, internet service and other key infrastructure, such as data centers used for artificial intelligence in what some analysts are calling future “blackout warfare.”
China’s military has been studying and developing EMP weapons since the early 2000s as part of a drive to build high-technology weapons and warfare techniques, according to U.S. experts and Chinese military writings.
One section of the Senate defense bill now being worked on stated that the Senate Armed Services Committee is concerned by Chinese EMP research, development and acquisition that represents “a significant threat to Taiwan” — the island democracy 100 miles off the coast of China claimed by Beijing.
A successful high-altitude EMP strike could rapidly degrade Taiwan’s ability to sustain its population and mount an effective defense.
“Given Taiwan’s unique vulnerabilities, the committee is concerned that China may view such an attack as an attractive first strike in a conflict with the island because the effects can be catastrophic while remaining below the
threshold of conventional armed attack,” the report stated.
As part of the bill, the panel wants Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright to brief the committee before April 1 on China’s capabilities for EMP weapons, including delivery systems and deployment strategies.
The briefing would also address Taiwan’s vulnerabilities to EMP attacks against civilian and defense infrastructure, including its electric power grid, financial systems, communications, transportation, and water and healthcare systems.
Senators also want to know about any current U.S.-Taiwan cooperation on hardening the island infrastructure against EMP attacks and recommendations for bolstering other electronic defenses.
Recommendations for boosting survivability and resilience against EMP attacks also would be sought.
David Stuckenberg, former director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Electromagnetic Defense Task Force, said an EMP weapon has for decades represented a potentially devastating but unattributable strategic attack on the U.S. homeland.
“The dream of America’s strategic competitors is to use EMP in a way that leaves our nation crippled and uncertain as to who dealt the blow,” he said. “Many have been advancing solutions for decades; it’s time to close the door on this threat once and for all.”
Technology to counter the EMP threat is highly effective and costs less than a cup of coffee per American, he said. With the risk of an EMP attack higher than ever, “we owe it to ourselves and future generations to make this investment in upgrading our critical infrastructure,” Mr. Stuckenberg said.
A 2020 report by EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a congressional advisory group, revealed that China’s military has called EMP an emerging strategic weapon.
“As opposed to conventional and nuclear weapons, EMP weapons are a new type of weapon capable of causing mass destruction by instantly releasing high-intensity EMP,” the report said, quoting research from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force Engineering University in 2014.
“They can interfere, damage and overheat electronics, resulting in logic circuit dysfunctions, control malfunctions, or total failure.”
Regarding Taiwan, the task force report stated the PLA has acquired “super-EMP weapons” for use against Taiwan in a future takeover attempt.
Taiwan’s military intelligence agency believes a PLA EMP warhead would be used in the early phase of an invasion to inflict the “first, paralyzing strike of a war, paving the way for other troops to attack Taiwan,” the report said.
China has deployed an EMP missile for use against Taiwan that is described in the report as causing a “kiloton-grade” blast from a small-yield warhead.
Another Chinese military report stated that EMP bombs are among new disruptive weapons technology that can frustrate U.S. precision-guided weapons and strike aircraft carriers at sea. The carriers rely heavily on integrated circuits that can be paralyzed by an EMP attack.
China’s new ultra-high-speed hypersonic missiles also can be armed with nuclear or non-nuclear EMP weapons, the report said.
Another delivery system for a Chinese EMP attack on the United States is what the Pentagon calls a FOBS — fractional orbital bombardment system. The system was tested in 2021 with a hypersonic vehicle that traveled over 24,000 miles in space before hitting a surface target.
Russia also is working on an EMP weapon that U.S. officials say includes an orbiting nuclear bomb capable of striking satellites with a damaging electromagnetic pulse.
The satellite-directed EMP could also be targeted on land.
The Russian space weapon has yet to be deployed but officials have said a 2022 satellite launched by Moscow may be a test bed.
The House defense bill contains several sections addressing lawmakers’ concerns about EMP attacks on the United States, as well as on Taiwan.
On EMP hardening of military bases, the bill stated that the Pentagon has set standards for protecting against high-altitude EMP attacks but noted uncertainty regarding the current state of compliance with existing standards and the costs and feasibility of achieving full compliance.
That measure directs Mr. Hegseth to brief the committee by Feb. 1 on compliance with the standards, including the hardening of electronics at military bases against EMP and known “gaps and challenges” of doing so within five years.
The House report on its pending bill also states that EMP-hardened communications between the U.S. and Taiwan military are essential to coordinating during peacetime and in a crisis.
“The committee is concerned that disruption or degradation of communications infrastructure in a contested environment could significantly limit Taiwan’s ability to communicate with United States forces and partners,” the report said, urging the Pentagon to assess capabilities and close gaps.
The panel wants a report by March 1 on U.S.-Taiwan communications in contested and degraded environments, including EMP attacks and cyberattacks.
For the transformer vulnerabilities at U.S. military bases, the House bill expresses Armed Services Committee members’ concerns that the transformers supplying electricity to military bases may be vulnerable to EMP, cyber threats and attacks on other industrial controls.
The committee stated that the ability and costs of protecting large power transformed as not been systematically assessed and vulnerabilities within foreign power grids used by overseas U.S. bases present added risks.
The Pentagon, under the legislation, would direct production of a report to Congress by April 1 on steps to better protect large power transformers at bases.
Another section of the House bill stated that members are concerned about vulnerabilities in securing military command and control communications from EMP.
Adversaries are increasingly seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in civilian U.S. infrastructure to undermine military readiness without direct action.
Both the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy call for stronger command and control systems.
Hardened wireless networks will also protect against electromagnetic attacks.
“Such architectures, when combined with zero-trust security, modern software, and technology that can survive electromagnetic pulse, could significantly increase survivability, redundancy, and operational flexibility,” the House report on the bill states.
A third section of the House bill warned that the Space Force’s very low-Earth orbit satellites are vulnerable to nuclear EMP attacks and other threats.
The pending bill would call on the chief of space operations to brief the committee on very low Earth orbit systems, including “an assessment of the physical, radiological, electromagnetic pulse, and debris-related effects of a nuclear detonation in space on satellites operating” in that orbit compared to other higher orbits.
The briefing will also include information on the survivability of the low-orbiting satellites in a post-nuclear detonation.
Contact the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.