Everything runs off computers these days. From Toyota pickup trucks to Stealth Bombers, to toasters, microchips are such an integral part of 21st Century life as to be largely ignored or forgotten- at least until they quit.

Now, a new category of weaponry specifically targets computer chips that might be giving aid and comfort to an enemy. That category is known as DEW or "Directed Energy Weapons."

According to the Department Of Defense, Directed Energy is "relates to the production of a beam of concentrated electromagnetic energy or atomic or subatomic particles." A Directed Energy Weapon’s purpose is "designed to damage or destroy enemy equipment, facilities and personnel."

Though it is part of the definition, destruction of personnel seems to have a lower priority than killing stuff.

Shades of Buck Rogers and Mr. Spock! Isn’t this all Science Fiction? No more so than lunar travel was in the 1960’s. If you think in terms of what your microwave oven does to heat a meal, you’re on the right track. It has been known for a long time that EM (electromagnetic) pulses from a nuclear detonation will knock out anything with a microchip in it. DEW starts on that principle and works toward miniaturization and decollateralization. In other words, creating a portable weapon that does not melt a city full of civilians to knock out a command and control center.

Jamming communications has long been a tool in the military arsenal. DEW warfare allows an UAV (unmanned Aerial Vehicle such as a Predator) or a Cruise Missile, for example, to pass over a city such as Bagdad, and direct a "non-Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse Weapon to explode generating a momentary microwave blast capable of knocking out tanks, radar, control bunkers, and communications equipment contained in all but special radiation hardened bunkers.

Might DEW become a terrorist weapon of the future, directed against the United States? It’s conceivable. Our country has become heavily dependent on microchip-active devices. Our very dependency on the Internet and associated networks makes us as vulnerable to an enemy attack as Saddam is now. The ability to direct or detonate an EM generating device could cause widespread infrastructure disruption wherever it is employed, rendering killing an enemy moot.