Electromagnetic Pulse (32 page)

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Industry should be prepared to cope with an EMP attack by maintaining “sufficient geographically dispersed resources to meet recovery and resumption objectives…. Backup sites should not rely on the same infrastructure components (e.g., transportation, telecommunications, water supply, electric power) used by the primary site. Moreover, the operation of such sites should not be impaired by a wide-scale evacuation at or inaccessibility of staff that service the primary site.”

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Industry should, “Routinely use or test recovery and resumption arrangements…. It is critical for firms to test backup facilities of markets, core clearing and settlement organizations, and third-party service providers to ensure connectivity, capacity, and the integrity of data transmission” against an EMP attack.

FUEL/ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

The vulnerabilities of this sector are produced by the responses of the electronic control systems that provide and utilize the near-real-time data flows needed to operate the fuel/energy infrastructure efficiently, as well as to identify and quickly react to equipment malfunctions or untoward incidents. EMP could also cause control or data-sensor malfunctions that are not easily discernible, leading to counterproductive operational decisions. Process control systems are critical to the operation and control of petroleum refineries, and little or no notice of an outage significantly increases the potential for damage during an emergency shutdown. Communications systems that are critical for operational control represent another locus of vulnerability. Communications are also critical in refineries to ensure safety of on-site personnel, the adjacent population, and the surrounding environment. The energy distribution infrastructure is also critically dependent on the availability of commercial power to operate the numerous pumps, valves and other electrical equipment that are required for a functional infrastructure.

DHS must develop a contingency plan that will provide strategy for protection and recovery for this sector, to include actions to be taken by both Government and industry. Government should establish a national inventory of parts for those items with long lead-times or that would be in demand in the event of a catastrophic event such as an EMP attack. The Energy Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAAC) should, with government funding, expand its mission to address EMP issues, and the government should work with the private sector to implement the general approach described in Strategy and Recommendations.

TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE

NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

America’s transportation sector is often addressed as a single infrastructure, but in reality its multiple modes provide for several separate infrastructures. Rail includes the freight railroad and commuter rail infrastructures; road includes the trucking and automobile infrastructures; water includes the maritime shipping and inland waterway infrastructures; and air includes the commercial and general aviation infrastructures.

As recognized by the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) Information Infrastructure Group Report:

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The transportation industry is increasingly reliant on information technology and public information-transporting networks.

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Although a nationwide disruption of the transportation infrastructure may be unlikely, even a local or regional disruption could have a significant impact. Due to the diversity and redundancy of the US transportation system, the infrastructure is not at risk of nationwide disruption resulting from information system failure. Nonetheless, a disruption of the transportation information infrastructure on a regional or local scale has potential for widespread economic and national security effects.

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Marketplace pressures and increasing utilization of IT make large-scale, multimodal disruptions more likely in the future. As the infrastructure becomes more interconnected and interdependent, the transportation industry will increasingly rely on information technology to perform its most basic business functions. As this occurs, it becomes more likely that information system failures could result in large-scale disruptions of multiple modes of the transportation infrastructure.

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There is a need for a broad-based infrastructure assurance awareness program to assist all modes of transportation.

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The transportation industry could leverage ongoing research and development initiatives to improve the security of the transportation information infrastructure.

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There is a need for closer coordination between the transportation industry and other critical infrastructures.

The imperative to achieve superior performance has also led to a tremendous increase in the use of electronics that are potentially vulnerable to EMP. The internal combustion engine provides a familiar example of this phenomenon. Modern engines utilize electronics to increase performance, increase fuel efficiency, reduce emissions, increase diagnostic capability, and increase safety.

To gauge the degree of vulnerability of transportation infrastructures to EMP, the Commission has conducted an assessment of selected components of these infrastructures that are necessary to their operations. The assessment relied on testing where feasible, surveys and analyses for equipment and facilities for which testing was impractical, and reference to similarities to equipment for which EMP vulnerability data exists.

Based on this assessment, significant degradation of the transportation infrastructures are likely to occur in the immediate aftermath of an EMP attack. For example, municipal road traffic will likely be severely congested, possibly to the point of wide-area gridlock, as a result of traffic light malfunctions and the fraction of operating cars and trucks that will experience both temporary and in some cases unrecoverable engine shutdown. Railroad traffic will stop if communications with railroad control centers are lost or railway signals malfunction. Commercial air traffic will likely cease operations for safety and other traffic control reasons. Ports will stop loading and unloading ships until commercial power and cargo hauling infrastructures are restored.

The ability of the major transportation infrastructure components to recover depends on the plans in place and the availability of resources—including spare parts and support from other critical infrastructures upon which transportation is dependent. Transportation infrastructures have emergency response procedures in place; however, they do not explicitly address conditions that may exist for an EMP attack, such as little or no warning time and simultaneous disruptions over wide areas. Restoration times will depend on the planning and training carried out, and on the availability of services from other infrastructures—notably power, fuel, and telecommunications.

STRATEGY FOR PROTECTION AND RECOVERY

RAILROADS

Railroad operations are designed to continue under stressed conditions. Backup power and provisioning is provided for operations to continue for days or even weeks at reduced capacity. However, some existing emergency procedures, such as transferring operations to backup sites, rely on significant warning time, such as may be received in a weather forecast before a hurricane. An EMP attack may occur without warning, thereby compromising the viability of available emergency procedures. Therefore, under the overall leadership of the DHS, the government and private sectors should work together to implement the general approach described in Strategy and Recommendations.

Specific actions should include:

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Heighten railroad officials’ awareness of the possibility of EMP attack without warning that would produce wide-area, long-term disruption and damage to electronic systems.

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Perform test-based EMP assessments of railroad traffic control centers and retrofit modest EMP protection into these facilities, thereby minimizing the potential for adverse long term EMP effects. The emphasis of this effort should be on electronic control and telecommunication systems.

TRUCKING AND AUTOMOBILES

Emphasizing prevention and emergency clearing of traffic congestion in this area, DHS should coordinate a government and private sector program to:

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Initiate an outreach program to educate State and local authorities and traffic engineers on EMP effects and the expectation of traffic signal malfunctions, vehicle disruption and damage, and consequent traffic congestion.

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Work with municipalities to formulate recovery plans, including emergency clearing of traffic congestion and provisioning spare controller cards that could be used to repair controller boxes.

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Sponsor development of economical protection modules—preliminary results for which are already available from Commission-sponsored research—that could be retrofitted into existing traffic signal controller boxes and installed in new controller boxes during manufacture.

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Sponsor development of automobile robustness specifications and testing for EMP. These specifications should be implemented by augmenting existing specifications for gaining immunity to transient electromagnetic interference (EMI), rather than by developing separate specifications for EMP.

MARITIME SHIPPING

The essential port operations to be safeguarded are ship traffic control, cargo loading and unloading, and cargo storage and movement (incoming and outgoing). Ship traffic control is provided by the Coast Guard, which has robust backup procedures in place. Cargo storage and movement are covered by other transportation infrastructure recommendations. Therefore, focusing on cargo operations in this area, DHS should coordinate a government and private sector program to:

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Heighten port officials’ awareness of the wide geographic coverage of EMP fields, the risk due to loss of commercial power for protracted time-intervals, and the need to evaluate the practicality of providing emergency generators for at least some portion of port and cargo operations.

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Assess the vulnerability of electric-powered loading/unloading equipment. Review the electromagnetic protection already in place for lightning, and require augmentation of this protection to provide significant EMP robustness.

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Coordinate findings with the “real-time” repair crews to ensure they are aware of the potential for EMP damage. Based on the assessment results, recommend spares provisions so that repairs can be made in a timely manner.

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Assess port data centers for the potential loss of data in electronic media. Provide useful measures of protection against EMP causing loss of function and/or data.

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Provide protected off-line spare parts and computers sufficient for minimum essential operations.

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Provide survivable radio and satellite communication capabilities for the Coast Guard and the Nation’s ports.

COMMERCIAL AVIATION

In priority order, it must be ensured that airplanes caught in the air during an EMP attack can land safely, that critical recovery assets are protected, and that contingency plans for an extended no-fly period are developed. Thus, DHS should coordinate a government program in cooperation with the FAA to perform an operational assessment of the air traffic control system to identify a “thin-line” that provides the minimal essential capabilities necessary to return the air traffic control capability to at least a basic level of service after an EMP attack. Based on the results of this operational assessment, develop tactics for protection, operational workarounds, spares provisioning, and repairs to return to a minimum-essential service level.

FOOD INFRASTRUCTURE

NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

EMP can damage or disrupt the infrastructure that supplies food to the population of the United States. Recent federal efforts to better protect the food infrastructure from terrorist attack tend to focus on preventing small-scale disruption of the food infrastructure, such as would result from terrorists poisoning some food. Yet an EMP attack could potentially disrupt the food infrastructure over a large region encompassing many cities for a protracted period of weeks to months.

Technology has made possible a dramatic revolution in US agricultural productivity. The transformation of the United States from a nation of farmers to a nation where less than 2 percent of the population is able to feed the other 98 percent and supply export markets is made possible only by technological advancements that, since 1900, have increased the productivity of the modern farmer by more than 50-fold. Technology, in the form of knowledge, machines, modern fertilizers and pesticides, high-yield crops and feeds, is the key to this revolution in food production. Much of the technology for food production directly or indirectly depends upon electricity, transportation, and other infrastructures.