EMP SIG Tabletop Exercise Kit Now Available
InfraGard Electromagnetic Pulse Special Interest Group (EMP SIG): The first Tabletop Exercise Kit enabling anyone to learn about and begin planning for EMP events or HEMP attacks is now available. The InfraGard EMP SIG was formed in 2011 in conjunction with the FBI to assess the threat of EMP events and to develop defenses against them.
The Tabletop Exercise Kit explores a dynamic variety of threat scenarios, including extreme space weather, cyber attacks and physical attacks on the grid, HEMP attacks, and other possibilities. Included in the kit are videos of vetted experts providing a specific, fact-based background presentation that aims to provide the most current and relevant factual material to federal, state and municipal government officials, security professionals in both the public and private sectors, the States’ National Guard forces, and interested private citizens. Read-ahead materials are also provided.
According to Dr. Terry Donat, Healthcare and Public Health Sector Chief for InfraGard, the exercise provides “realistic catastrophic scenario impacts that would or are fully expected to occur in these events, most of which are not very pretty.”
The Tabletop Exercise Kit is available free to any InfraGard chapter or member, to all 338 higher-education Homeland Security programs and the 1,400 educators in the University and Agency Partnership Initiative (UAPI) through the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security.
For more information or to request the Tabletop Exercise Kit, email [email protected].
“Now, again, like airbags, it’s an expense, but it’s not a new technology,” Pressman continues, “and it’s not like traveling at the speed of light. It’s a very, very well-vetted technology. And the cost, though not trivial, isn’t earth-shattering. What does that mean? I can only guess, but maybe an increase in costs of maybe 5 to 8 percent of those new transformers. That’s not trivial — because if we’re talking about a $40 million transformer, we’re talking about $1 million to $1.6 million additional cost — but that’s the cost to begin to fully protect our grid.”
Clouds Gathering on the Horizon
Even as the tumult concerning our negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program continues, the threat to our nation’s critical infrastructure and citizenry grows. More and more of the highly volatile nation states are gaining nuclear capabilities, putting the threat of an HEMP attack within relatively easy reach. “The resources required to launch an HEMP — you need a trawler; you need a Scud; you need a small, 10-20-kiloton weapon,” Pressman says. “And all of those components are all now, certainly, available to a number of countries who are directly or indirectly sponsoring global terrorism.
“On the other hand, our country has it,” he continues. “It’s very well developed. The Israelis have it. The South Koreans are developing it rapidly. I’m sure the Indians are very, very motivated to develop it. You’re seeing that arms race. In a sense, it’s a niche component of the arms race — designer weaponry, if you will.”
Pressman is also encouraged by the shift in perception aided by changes coming from Washington. “I was so pleased with the amendment to the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act that the U.S. Senate passed unanimously … and I believe the president will sign. There’s no funding to it — fair enough. But it really begins to set the tenor of what we need to do as a country if the risk is clear and we need to start making some investments.”
But time is not on our side, Pressman suggests. “We have to move,” he says. “We have a huge economy. We have a multi-, multi-, multi-trillion-dollar economy. We are not talking about trillions of dollars to defend against this. We can begin rapidly to gain resiliency without an enormous investment. It’s not going to happen overnight. [But] if you do the investments on new infrastructure and on upgrades — five, six, seven or eight years later, we’re at a whole level of resiliency.”
William J. Broad, Science, Vol. 212, May 29, 1981.