Cyber War Against Iraq
Charles R. Smith
Thursday, March 13, 2003
U.S. Information Warriors Wrestle With New Weapons
The U.S. Air Force has just tested its largest bomb, the 22,000-pound
MOAB, or Massive Ordnance Air Burst. While the Air Force may be able to
employ this huge weapon against Iraq in a traditional "iron on target"
method, the service is wrestling with new doctrine and new weapons never
before employed in war.
For example, Air Force information warriors recently rejected a planned
cyber attack against Iraqi financial computers. Military officials had
planned to attack the Iraqi banking and financial network during the
opening phase of the USAF campaign against Saddam Hussein. The cyber
attack is designed to shut off Saddam's supply of cash.
However, planners later rejected the idea because the Iraqi banking
network is linked to a financial communications network located in
France. According to Pentagon sources, an information warfare attack on
the Iraqi financial network might also bring down banks and ATM
machines in Europe as well.
"We don't have many friends in Paris right now. No need to make more
trouble if Chirac won't be able to get any euros out of his ATM
machine," commented one intelligence source on the rejected plan.
The Air Force frustration in designing cyber attacks against Iraq even
made a rare public appearance. USAF Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper
openly vented his feelings about cyber warfare during a recent public
interview.
"Anybody who thinks they've got their arms around information warfare
and information operations, please stand up. I'd like the briefing
right now," said Gen. Jumper.
U.S. cyber war planners intended to penetrate the Iraqi military command
and control network at the highest levels. The U.S. military wanted to
obtain Iraq's equivalent of air tasking orders, ground tasking orders
and the e-mail for the senior Iraqi leadership.
"It turns out that their computer systems extend well outside Iraq,"
stated a senior Air Force official during an interview with Aviation
Week and Space Technology.
"We're finding out that Iraq didn't do a good job of partitioning
between the military and civilian networks. Their telephone and
Internet operations are all intertwined. Planners thought it would be
easy to get into the military through the telephone system, but it's all
mixed in with the civilian traffic. It's a mess."
U.S. cyber warriors are hoping to hack into Iraq's Kari and Tiger Song
air defense networks. France sold the Kari system to Iraq during the
1980s and it continues to provide the bulk of Iraqi air defense
controls. The system relies on French-made computers linking mostly
Russian made radars through a series of local command sites.
The fiber optic Tiger Song air defense network was installed in Iraq
during the 1990s by China in violation of the U.N. ban on weapons sales
to Baghdad. The Chinese network has been bombed several times,
suffering only a slight degrade in service until Iraqi engineers could
repair it.
Tiger Song is a more widely distributed network than the French Kari
system and is similar to the Internet, allowing Iraqi mobile radars and
missile units to link into the network from pre-positioned fiber optic
sites. Both systems are linked together, with the French Kari network
providing the overall command and control.
U.S. warriors hope to be able to penetrate the Kari and Tiger Song
systems through computer links from the Internet or Iraqi phone system.
The Tiger Song network is reportedly also cross-linked with an Iraqi
oil pipeline communications network that employs microwave
communications links. U.S. forces could tap into the Tiger Song system
using the microwave links.
Another alternative is for U.S. Special Forces teams to penetrate Iraq
and plant active electronic taps into the Iraqi systems. The Tiger Song
network of fiber optic lines is much more difficult to attach hardware
electronic taps to. However, U.S. cyber warriors may be able to use the
same pre-positioned link points that Iraqi air defense units utilize.
U.S. cyber warriors also have some new hardware weapons in their
arsenals. It is rumored that the U.S. has deployed three new energy
weapon systems to the Gulf as special warheads for cruise missiles. One
such new weapon is an HPM, or High Power Microwave bomb system that
produces an extremely powerful burst of microwave radiation.
The HPM warhead is designed to strike Iraqi communication, radar,
computer and electronic networks. The HPM warhead is a "non-lethal"
system and will not harm humans located within the microwave burst area.
Another weapon is the EMG, or Explosive Magnetocumulative Generator
warhead that generates a gigantic magnetic field that can disable all
electronics within a short radius.
The process of creating the magnetic field in an EMG generator requires a
coil wrapped in a belt of explosives, shaped to create an implosion.
Before detonation, current is sent through the coil, which creates a
small magnetic field for a split second. The explosives are then
detonated to "squeeze" the coil rapidly and create an extremely high
magnetic field.
In military form, the EMG is a conventional warhead that produces a
magnetic pulsed field equal to a small nuclear bomb. EMGs can knock out
computers, radios and radars and fry a wide variety of electronic
devices. The U.S. version, an EMG warhead-equipped Tomahawk cruise
missile, was used in "non-lethal" strikes against Serbian radar and
command posts.
Another version of the Tomahawk used in the 1991 Gulf War deployed small
spools of carbon-carbon fiber thread over Iraqi power plants and
electric grids. The fiber spools unwound and fell over the live wires.
The resulting shorts blew most of the Iraqi electric power grid for the
remainder of the war. Iraqi efforts to clear the spools and restart
the electric plants were foiled by desert winds, which blew more spools
back into the live wires.
Serbian forces have also felt the Tomahawk "lights out" warhead filled
with carbon-carbon thread. The U.S. Air Force was so impressed with the
non-lethal warhead that it has installed it in a special GPS guided
version. Small "submunitions" that are deployed by the GPS bomb over
the intended target dispense the USAF carbon-carbon spools.
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از صبح یکشنبه به دلیل نامعلومی پس از خاموشی یکباره برق اینترنت نیز بلافاصله قطع و تاکنون وصل نشده است.