Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, is the New York Times Bestselling Author of ‘The Trump White House: Changing the Rules of the Game,’ The Secrets of the FBI,’ ‘The First Family Detail,’ and the ‘CIA at War.’
The U.S. Air Force has deployed at least 20 missiles that could zap the military electronics of North Korea or Iran with high-power microwaves, rendering their military capabilities virtually useless without causing any fatalities, DailyMail.com has learned exclusively.
Known as the Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), the missiles were built by Boeing’s Phantom Works for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and tested successfully in 2012. They have not been operation until now.
The microwave weapons are fitted into an air-launched cruise missile and delivered from B-52 bombers. With a range of 700 miles, they can fly into enemy airspace at low altitude and emit sharp pulses of high power microwave (HPM) energy that fry computer chips, disabling any electronic devices targeted by the missiles with causing any collateral damage.
Mary Lou Robinson, the chief of the High Power Microwave Division of the Air Force Research Lab at Kirtland Air Force Base, has confirmed to DailyMail.com that the missiles are now operational and ready to take out any target.
Graphic shows the Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) missle taking out a target. In a test in the Utah desert, the missile successfully defeated electronic targets with little to no collateral damage
The missile is equipped with an electromagnetic pulse cannon. This uses a super-powerful microwave oven to generate a concentrated beam of energy. The energy causes voltage surges in electronic equipment, rendering them useless before surge protectors have the chance to react
The project has been advancing secretly ever since the Air Force successfully tested a missile equipped with HPM in 2012.
In the test, the CHAMP missile flew over a two-story building on the Utah Test and Firing Range.
The building in the west Utah desert was crammed with computers and security and surveillance systems. The microwaves took down the compound’s entire spectrum of electronic systems, including video cameras set up to film the test, without damaging anything else.
‘We hit every target we wanted to,’ Boeing’s CHAMP Program Manager Keith Colman said in a company press release. ‘Today we made science fiction into science fact.’
Until the announcement of the successful test, the project had been top secret. When it was announced, only a few trade publications ran the story.
Since then, beyond several dozen stories in December 2017 when the missiles were still non-operational, the media have ignored the story.
Because of sequestration budget cuts, the CHAMP missiles did not become operational under the Obama administration. But after I emailed then Trump National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster in August 2017 information about CHAMP that I was about to include in my book, The Trump White House, he thanked me for letting him know about the capability, agreed to an interview, and ordered a briefing from the Pentagon.
The Pentagon eventually funded the program and ordered Air Force training worldwide to deploy and operate the missile systems.
The beauty of the HPM missile is that its microwave beam can penetrate bunkers where facilities are hidden without harming humans inside.
Mary Lou Robinson of the Air Force Research Laboratory explains the CHAMP missile. She confirmed to DailyMail.com that the missiles are now operational
Even if a bunker is buried in a mountain, HPM penetrates the facilities through its connections to power cables, communication lines, and antennas. Thus, HPM can penetrate any underground military facility and destroy its electronics.
Targeted at command and control centers, the missile could render any country’s military inoperable. And one missile can hit multiple targets in succession.
While North Korea or Iran may attempt to shield their equipment, U.S. officials doubt that would be effective against CHAMP.
Besides underground bunkers and command centers, HPM can quickly disable fighter planes, tanks, ships, and missile systems. And it can wipe out facilities for developing and testing nuclear weapons.
Most amazing of all, the missile renders inoperable any radar that might detect it as it flies to and from a target. Thus, a country cannot take out CHAMP before it strikes and has no way of knowing why its facilities have suddenly gone dead.
America’s national laboratories operated by the Department of Energy have been working on HPM capabilities for decades. Over the years, HPM devices have been deployed on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq to disable improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and drones.
One of those laboratories, Sandia National Laboratories, has been developing robots the size of insects that could assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un with deadly toxins.
These robotic weapons using nanotechnology employed in surgical operations in hospitals are being developed secretly with funding by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
After Ronald Kessler emailed H. R. McMaster information about CHAMP, the then National Security Advisor agreed to an interview and ordered a briefing from the Pentagon.
While President Ford banned political assassinations with a 1976 executive order, that order was based on the assumption that other world leaders are rational and would refrain from trying to assassinate the U.S. president unless the United States tried to assassinate them.
But we are dealing today with terrorist organizations and world leaders who are not rational and do not care if they are killed.
President Trump could reverse Ford’s executive order with the stroke of a pen. With robot-like weapons using nanotechnology, the CIA could wipe out the North Korean leader without risking American lives.
The CHAMP missiles are entirely different from cyber-warfare designed to confuse computers. Unlike a cyberattack, CHAMP permanently fries electronic equipment.
CHAMP missiles emitting HPM also differ from an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack that is created by detonating a nuclear weapon in the atmosphere. Because it is targeted, HPM leaves intact civilian facilities needed to sustain life.
An EMP attack, on the other hand, would leave millions dead because trucks, planes, cars, refrigerators, furnaces, municipal water treatment systems, phones, lights, computers, credit card and banking systems, stock exchanges, ships, and trains would all become inoperable.