The Russians estimated one nuclear weapon would take down the US's power grid and communications for 6 months.
Dr. ENGLE. The characterization is correct. I mean the military had word of this problem for quite a long period of time.
Quite frankly, it's been focused on our nuclear response strategy, and so the technology that we have invested in over the years to ensure ourself some capacity to respond in a nuclear war is for a limited portion of our military assets, and I guess the message there is that we can survive that kind of attack. That technology is available.
Mr. BARTLETT. Excuse me. You mean militarily we can survive that kind of attack?
Dr. ENGLE. Certain parts of our military.
Mr. BARTLETT. We hope that we will be able to launch our inter-continental ballistic missiles to an EMP. That is not a certainty.
Dr. ENGLE. Well, not a certainty, but a very high probability that we would be able to do that.
Now, that doesn't say much for the rest of our conventional force structure. And I guess the thing that we worry mostly about right now is ruining our satellite infrastructure, commercial satellite infrastructure. Some of the military satellite infrastructure is hardened and secure.
Mr. BARTLETT. Two middle star satellites.
We would probably lose with one single high altitude burst $10 billion worth of satellites. It's the softest part of our infrastructure. All of those within line of sight we'd lose from prompt effects and the others would die quickly because the Van Allen belts are pumped up. And even if you'd launch a new satellite, it would survive for a very short period of time because of the pumped up Van Allen belts.
Dr. ENGLE. That's exactly correct.
And as a result, our research is focusing on a number of different areas. One is the mitigation of the pumped up Van Allen belt energy levels, and there is some very promising work at the basic research level at this point in time that portends that we can get to some solutions in that regard. And there is a significant amount of protection of systems that we're investing in at the same time, not just the United States Air Force but more pervasively.
From the standpoint of reconstitution nationally, in our national infrastructure, this is not necessarily problematic if we do the right kinds of things in industry to protect critical data and information because you can reconstitute it. I mean it doesn't take six months to reconstitute the ground-based infrastructure. It could take six months or longer to reconstitute the space-based, which is, again, probably one of our biggest focuses at this time.
Mr. BARTLETT. If this resulted in the loss of major transformers in our power grid, for those large ones there are none on the shelf and it takes 18 months to two years to get them.
In the attack on the Pentagon, we lost four transformers. We tried to patch two together from the parts of those four because with the priority of the Pentagon it's going to take six months to get those little transformers.
Most people do not know this, but there are no large transformers on the shelf. If you need one, they will build one for you.
Mr. TRITAK. If I may, Congressman. I think one thing we have learned from 9/11 is that the implausible is not impossible, and I think that is important to keep—I mean people you talked with before 9/11 and told them you could turn airplanes into cruise missiles, it would have been hard for some people to take. Okay.
And I also think the other important point is, is that the extent to which EMP could be created, the sort of thing you described also needs to be looked at. I'm not a scientist, so I can't say. But targeted use may also have its value in connection with broader effort that's being undertaken by a terrorist.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. And I appreciate very much the answer from some of the other members. But, very quickly, following up on Dr. Bartlett's comments about our satellites. We know we can deal with our home based cyber systems with maybe software improvement. But the satellite does pose a big problem, and here's an issue of collaboration.
Can NASA play a role? And what role would NASA play in helping us with the securing and/or research regarding our satellite systems?
Dr. MARBURGER. NASA does play a role in this type of research. And, in fact, immediately after the 1962 blast that Congressman Bartlett referred to, NASA went into a major program to find alternate sources of power generation for satellites and radiation damage studies. And in the intervening 40 years, it has been possible to make strides on this. NASA has been an important contributor and, of course, NASA sits on all the panels, the crosscutting coordination panels that share in the construction of our research program for cyber security.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Although as the Chairman knows that I'm in the great State of New York, I come from Texas and we have great interest in the valuable work that NASA does. And so I wanted to make sure—and I hope, Dr. Marburger, if you take that message back that they can be valuable—they will also have the financial resources that might help them be even more successful in providing the support systems that are needed.
Let me conclude by posing this question and maybe others can answer if Dr. Marburger answers and leaves.
You did an assessment of the critical infrastructure areas that needed to be insured, if you will. Can you share with us some of the areas of vulnerabilities that we in the local community should be concerned about and should be looking to be helpful with?
Dr. MARBURGER. I wouldn't want to share too much detail about that. I think that the right response is to look at the obvious and that the systems of telecommunications and energy distribution, food distribution
From
2003
HOMELAND SECURITY: THE FEDERAL
AND NEW YORK RESPONSE
FIELD HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JUNE 24, 2002
