Intelligence sources say seaborne attack could wreak mayhem, cripple economy, from WND:
WASHINGTON — Most of the U.S. civilian population, military bases and nuclear-weapons assembly plants are within range of missile attacks by terrorists or rogue nations using merchant ships as launching platforms, warn counter-terror experts.
Both the U.S. military and foreign military forces — including Iran’s — have tested missile launches from non-military vessels.
At the top of the risk list is the Russian-made Scud family of missiles, all too often found on the weapons’ black market, and, according to counter-terror analysts, undoubtedly on the minds of terror organizations such as al-Qaida, which is known to have shown interest in the Scud maritime option.
A bird’s eye view of U.S. coastlines reveals more than 75 percent of the nation’s population, about 290 million people, resides along thousands of miles of shores and up to 200 miles inland.
According to information from the Pentagon and from independent sources, three-quarters of U.S. military assets, from naval bases to nuclear-weapons assembly plants, are within these coastlines, posing highly tempting targets, not only for possibly enemy rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran, but also for global jihadi planners, G2 Bulletin reports…
Another even more terrifying component of the threat from the sea is the possibility of a rogue nation or terrorist group successfully firing a Scud armed with a nuclear weapon and timed for detonation above a U.S. population center.
As G2 Bulletin and WND reported exclusively earlier this year, government officials are increasingly concerned about the threat of this kind of an electro-magnetic pulse attack that could cripple cities and entire regions of the U.S. by knocking out electrical grids and computer technology.
EMP attacks are generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated at altitudes above a few dozen kilometers above the Earth’s surface. The explosion, of even a small nuclear warhead, would produce a set of electromagnetic pulses that interact with the Earth’s atmosphere and the Earth’s magnetic field.
[Rep. Roscoe] Bartlett added: “Potential adversaries are aware of the EMP’s strategic attack option. Ninety-nine percent of Americans may not know very much about EMP, but I will assure you … that 100 percent of our potential enemies know all about EMP. I think that the American people need to know about EMP because they need to demand that their government do the prudent thing so that we will be less and less susceptible, less and less at risk to an EMP attack year by year. The threat is not adequately addressed in U.S. national and homeland security programs. Not only is it not adequately addressed; it is usually ignored, not even mentioned, and it certainly needs to be considered.”…