Former CIA Director James Woolsey Woolsey has called on U.S. to defend against a devastating “Scud-in-a-bucket” attack.

“A simple ballistic missile from a stockpile somewhere in the world outfitted on something like a tramp steamer and fired from some distance offshore into an American city or to a high altitude, thereby creating an electromagnetic pulse effect … could well be one of the most damaging ways of using a nuclear weapon,” he said.

“The electromagnetic field pulses produced by weapons designed and deployed with the intent to produce EMP have a high likelihood of damaging electrical power systems, electronics and information systems upon which any reasonably advanced society, most specifically including our own, depend vitally,” said Lowell Wood, acting chairman of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack.

“Their effects on systems and infrastructures dependent on electricity and electronics could be sufficiently ruinous as to qualify as catastrophic to the American nation.”