'Poseidon' Could Give Russia Strategic, Psychological Dominance

Poseidon's purported mission is to explode underwater, flooding, and contaminating the populous U.S. seaboard with radioactive tsunamis and fallout.

However, even if Poseidon could survive a nuclear exchange and penetrate the screen of U.S. aircraft and submarines hunting for this top priority target, it would be a non-optimal doomsday machine.

100-megatons would do tremendous damage by blast, tsunamis, and radioactive fallout. But their combined damage would not be enough to destroy more than a fraction of the entire east coast.

The prevailing winds and weather moves from west to east — out to sea.

So weather works against maximizing fallout effects on the U.S. east coast.

Weather moves in the right direction for maximizing fallout from the west coast. But California is not as high priority to Russian targeteers as Washington, D.C.-New York City — the locus of government, military, and industrial leadership.

Attacking across the Atlantic or Pacific is almost certain to be a suicide mission for Poseidon, that would probably be sunk before it gets far from port. The robot-sub and its 100-megaton bomb, destroyed in or near port, could pose a greater doomsday threat to Russia than to the United States.

The most militarily sensible mission for a 100-megaton warhead — high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.

100-megatons detonated in outer space would be the perfect anti-satellite weapon.

X-rays, gamma rays, neutrons, and ionized particles would sweep the heavens of satellites vital to U.S. military and commerce. EMP would destroy satellite ground stations. U.S. domination of the — "high frontier" — essential to U.S. high-tech military supremacy--would vanish at a single blow.

100-megatons detonated 400 kilometers high would deluge North America with long-wave E3 EMPs that destroy big transformers and generators. It would plunge the entire nation into protracted, perhaps permanent, blackout.

Russia already has what it calls Super-EMP weapons, designed to generate powerful short-wave E1 EMP that would destroy most electronics, and put big transformers and generators at risk indirectly. But these low-yield (1-10 kilotons) Super-EMP weapons would not make long-wave E3 EMPs as powerful as the TSAR.

The TSAR combined with Super-EMP weapons would cover the electromagnetic spectrum with redundant electronic mass destruction — EMP overkill perhaps, but historically and doctrinally mass and firepower overkill is Russia’s way of war.

An EMP attack on North America could supplement or substitute for Poseidon’s anti-submarine warfare mission. EMP could be the best anti-submarine weapon.

U.S. ballistic missile submarines at sea cannot launch without receiving Emergency Action Messages (EAMs) from the president authorizing missile launches. EAMs also include unlocking codes to arm nuclear warheads.

Thus, SSBNs cannot execute nuclear strikes without receiving EAMs.

EMP attack could destroy satellites, land-based Very-Low-Frequency (VLF) communications, TACAMO (Take Charge and Move Out) aircraft, and other redundant means of strategic command and control used to convey EAMs to submarines hiding at sea. Severing communications links would neutralize U.S. submarines, rendering them useless.

EMP could also be used to attack submarines on patrol at sea directly.

100-megatons detonated 400 kilometers over the ocean would cover a zone nearly as large as North America with E3 EMP penetrating ocean depths and possibly submarines on patrol, damaging their electronics. Submarines would be especially vulnerable when deploying VLF antennae to receive Emergency Acton Messages.

Only a few 100-megaton warheads, with their enormous E3 EMP fields, would be needed to cover the most likely oceanic patrol areas for U.S. submarines.

TSAR could be disguised as a satellite and delivered by a Space-Launch Vehicle (SLV) over the South Pole to evade U.S. National Missile Defenses — making a 100-megaton surprise EMP attack. This is exactly what Moscow planned to do during the Cold War with a secret weapon called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS).

Russian dictator Putin recently boasted that one of his new nuclear super-weapons — the Satan II heavy ICBM — is capable of making a surprise attack against the U.S. over the South Pole.

Satan-II could probably deliver TSAR to make a surprise south polar EMP attack to permanently blackout North America. Russia’s Proton-M Space Launch Vehicle is also capable of delivering a massive 30-ton 100-megaton warhead on a fractional orbit to North America. A modernized version could probably be designed weighing significantly less than the original TSAR’s 30 tons.

A surprise EMP attack could enable Russia to win a nuclear war with a single blow by paralyzing U.S. military forces and C3I — perhaps this is the real reason for the return of the TSAR.

A high-altitude EMP attack by the TSAR would also, more assuredly than an underwater detonation, be doomsday for the United States by causing a protracted blackout of U.S. life-sustaining critical infrastructures. The Congressional EMP Commission warns that a nationwide blackout lasting one year could kill 90 percent of the population through societal collapse and starvation.

Poseidon’s experimental prototype could be disinformation concealing the ultimate space weapon, while Russia still reaps diplomatic and psychological benefits from advertising Moscow has a 100-megaton doomsday bomb.

What is to be done? See "Poseidon: Russia’s New Doomsday Machine" (Amazon.com) or read my next article in Newsmax.

Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He served on the Congressional EMP Commission as chief of staff, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA. He is author of "Blackout Wars." For more of his reports, Go Here Now.