"A significant threat to our communications systems exist. Reports by the Congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States of Attack by Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) (EMP Commission), available at www.empcommission.org, finds that EMP from solar storms or human-caused attacks against critical infrastructure will be devastating to our nation's telecommunications networks and efforts to protect and mitigate such infrastructure are strongly needed. Likewise, a report from the Congressional Research Service Updated July 21, 2008, on High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) and High Power Microwave (HPM) devices: Threat Assessment at link http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32544.pdf, finds such treats credible, worthy of investing in prevention and mitigation efforts, and with selected high priority mitigation dramatically decreasing the economic costs and time for recovery.
In building a dedicated digital communications network for our nation's first responders we should work to make that system of systems as disaster resilient as possible. It is estimated that the cost for protecting systems to be in the range of 3 percent to 10 percent of a total system project cost, and which is a small fraction of the total system costs when compared to the property and lives lost for not investing in the 'insurance' such mitigation efforts provide. Since we are building a new national system from scratch, now is the time to incorporate the latest EMP mitigation and prevention measures into the design and operation of the new system."
