San francisco, Feb 15: The United States is to deploy a top-secret high-powered microwave weapon if it goes to war in s of times the electrical current of a lightning bolt while also posing virtually no harm to people, a newspaper reported Friday.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the “directed energy” weapon would immobilize enemy communications systems, jets and any other electrical equipment.

Developed at government labs in Livermore, California, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, the so-called high-power microwave weapons can be mounted on a cruise missile, suspended beneath a helicopter or even put in a more conventional explosive shell, the daily said.

“Kabammy! A huge electronic wave comes along and sends out a few thousand volts. Wham! Your cell phone or your computer dies,” Roger McCarthy, an expert who develops futuristic weaponry for the US Defence Department, told the Chronicle.

“These weapons are really about taking the energy of high explosives and converting the wallop into electromagnetic energy to disrupt electronic devices,” said McCarthy.

He estimated that a good-sized version of the weapon would produce thousands of volts and 10 million amps in a microsecond. That’s hundred of times the energy generated by lightning.

The paper quoted other experts as saying that because the intense pulse is short, measured in microseconds and in a part of the radio wave that normally wouldn’t hurt flesh, humans in the vicinity wouldn’t even notice if blasted.

A bigger worry is the effect that the weapon could have on US systems, especially if enemy countries develop similar technologies. According to the paper, US scientists are working on ways to “harden” electronic circuitry to make it invulnerable to such high power blasts. —dpa