The USS Wasp is sailing from its homeport in Virginia to Sasebo, Japan, to join the US Navy’s 7th Fleet and bring Washington’s most advanced fighter jets to North Korea’s backyard.
The Wasp, an Amphibious Assault Ship and lead ship of her class, doesn’t have quite as much surface area for jets to take off and land as the larger Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, but the ship will still bring a new squadron of carrier-compatible F-35B aircraft to the 7th Fleet’s area of operations.
The F-35B jets have the AV-8B Harrier’s capability of taking off vertically, as a helicopter does, while also being able to operate in the air like fighter jets.
Placing the Amphibious Assault Ship in proximity to the Korean Peninsula “ensured that our most technologically-advanced air warfare platforms are forward deployed,” USS Wasp Cmdr. Andrew Smith said in an August 30 release.
“Our capabilities, paired with the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter, increases our Navy’s precision strike capabilities within the 7th Fleet region,” Smith said. “Wasp will help America’s commitment to maritime security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific.”
The Wasp inserts a second squadron of F-35s into the region. The first arrived at Marine Corps Air Station Okinawa in March, the eight-plane squadron’s new permanent home. Another cadre of Joint Strike Fighters arrived in July, the Marine Corps said.
Up to 100 F-35 aircraft are set to fly near the Korean Peninsula over the coming years, as Seoul and Tokyo have each agreed to buy more than 40 of them from Lockheed Martin.
North Korea has, for the first time, threatened to wage an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack against the United States. Such an attack has the potential to cause catastrophic damage to North America, Canada, the West, and many of its neighbors.
North Korea threatens to wipe out the United States on a regular basis through its state media. However, this is the first time North Korea has openly threatened to use an EMP weapon.
According to the Associated Press, shortly after North Korea launched its sixth nuclear test using an H-bomb, the “Hermit Kingdom’s” leader Kim Jong-un issued a statement through its state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) claiming the weapon “is a multi-functional thermonuclear nuke with great destructive power which can be detonated even at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack according to strategic goals.”
Kim reportedly claimed that “all components of the H-bomb were homemade … thus enabling the country to produce powerful nuclear weapons as many as it wants.”
Breitbart News reported in June that “an EMP attack can be caused by the sun, by a nuclear EMP (NEMP), or a non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP).”
An NEMP is an abrupt pulse of electromagnetic radiation that occurs as a result of a nuclear explosion. An NNEMP is virtually the same except it does not include the nuclear component. The currents caused by these charges the atmosphere with electromagnetic waves that travel down onto the earth’s surface at super speeds hitting everything within their line of sight, sending high-voltage energy through the electricity grid and frying them, causing massive disarray.
Anthony Furey’s book Pulse Attack: The Real Story Behind the Secret Weapon That Can Destroy North America is the first of its kind to outline the A-Z effects of a potential EMP attack on North America. The book also presents several simple and straightforward ways North America can protect against such a devastating scenario.
Furey is a national columnist for the Toronto Sun and a fellow at True North Initiative, a Canada-based think tank dedicated to advancing sound immigration and security policies.
“I wrote the book and of course it talks about how this could be a possibility for North America,” Furey told Breitbart News. “But I would have always preferred that not be true. And then I read the statement and my jaw just dropped.”
North America’s grid is currently not protected against an EMP disruption or attack. Furey told Breitbart News that this recent statement from North Korea will likely increase public interest in the potential for an EMP attack. “And politics is, of course, downstream from culture. It will change the way we look at the issue culturally because for a long time there were people who were dismissive of it” by downplaying the probability of an EMP attack.
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