The Pentagon's Ray Gun Can Stall Cars (defenseone.com) 182
john of sparta quotes Defense One: The Defense Department's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program, or JNLWD, is pushing ahead with a new direct energy weapon that uses high-powered microwaves to stop cars in their tracks without damaging the vehicle, its driver, or anyone else.
The jammer works by targeting the car's engine control unit causing it to reboot over and over, stalling the engine. Like an invisible hand, the microwaves hold the car in place. "Anything that has electronics on it, these high-powered microwaves will affect," David Law, who leads JNLWD's technology division, said in March. "As long as the [radio] is on, it holds the vehicle stopped."
It weighs 400 pounds -- it's the size of a large copy machine -- and uses 300 kilowatts of power that's generated by a gasoline-powered turbine.
"To deploy it, the driver would pull out in front of the attacker and turn it on."
It weighs 400 pounds -- it's the size of a large copy machine -- and uses 300 kilowatts of power that's generated by a gasoline-powered turbine.
"To deploy it, the driver would pull out in front of the attacker and turn it on."
Won't damage the driver?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Won't damage the driver?? (Score:4, Funny)
Ah, but its nice warm fuzzy AMERICAN microwave energy, not evil terrorist radiation.
Its like the American laser 'defense' weapons that instead of burning out eyes, just gently exfoliate the facial skin in a loving caress.
Because, you know, otherwise they would be illegal blinding weapons, against conventions the US signed.
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a) Aren't cars made of metal shielding? Don't ECU's have shielding of their own?
b) Don't they have people inside them? What happens when 300kW of microwave power hits the meat?
Re:Won't damage the driver?? (Score:4, Insightful)
That shielding won't save you, and is actually the point! The shielding absorbs the energy, causing a large transient voltage spike in your car's electrical system. That causes the ECU to crash, because it isn't designed for those conditions.
One of the key things to understand here is that the car only has two electrical connections, battery + and battery -. Battery - is often called "ground," it will tend to be at local ground because it is referenced to the vehicle chassis which will likely be at ground potential when you start the car. But it doesn't have a third wire with an actual Earth connection, and the wheels are usually electrical insulators. What that boils down to is that shielding works by converting the RF interference into a short voltage spike, some of which is converted to heat in the ECU and any other electronics with voltage regulation. All the devices in the car are already expected to survive "double battery condition," which is when the tow truck driver gives you a jump start using 24V, which is really 28V+ because their engine is running and their battery is charging voltage. So there is a huge amount of voltage margin and the shielding works well without even having system-wide voltage regulation. But in the extreme case, as with this device, you eventually overload the ECU's voltage regulation, and since the circuit is designed to be robust, it simply crashes and reboots as soon as the spike dissipates. Repeated use could easily damage a vehicle, though.
For protection against this, I'd want to try something low-tech like a wire brush connected to the chassis that can drag on the ground slightly, so that voltage spikes can find a path to Earth instead of getting stuck in the circuit.
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Standard automotive tests require components to survive 60V peaks.
According to Texas Instruments, an automotive load dump for a 12V system can peak at 87V, a 24V system at 174V
It's not the power wires you need to worry about. They're well filtered, protected and low impedance.
It's the signal wires that would do the most harm. They don't have much more than ESD protection, usually diodes to each power rail. Inducing a large enough current and voltage in, for example the oxygen sensor wire, usually located on
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Standard automotive tests require components to survive 60V peaks.
According to Texas Instruments, an automotive load dump for a 12V system can peak at 87V, a 24V system at 174V
That's a nice idea, but there are warnings in my 1998 A8's manual about overvoltage during charging. Apparently it only takes something like 19V to damage the PCM. Newer vehicles are probably not actually any better.
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Perhaps they have load dump protection elsewhere in the system.
Perhaps the load dump protection in the PCM works by shunting current until a fuse blows, as it only needs to survive less than half a second at those high voltages.
Perhaps they don't care, and if your battery connections fail while the engine is running, you're fucked.
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Those load dump tests are a blast!
Reverse battery, double battery, reverse double battery, caps and diodes failing everywhere!
Modern electronics are pretty good at dealing with electrical interference. We used to test with a 25kW Marine radar to be sure it wouldn't cause problems with our systems. Once everything went to surface mount components, and 4+ layer PCBs, the robustness, and noise immunity of electrical components increased significantly.
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Right. Good work. It has nothing to do with the shielding.
It has to do with giving the voltage spike that results from successful shielding somewhere to go.
Like in a device plugged into the wall with a three-prong plug: If you dump the noise back onto neutral, it pushes noise into everything else plugged into the same supply circuit. If you dump the noise to Earth, then that doesn't happen.
So for example, take an old, simple electric kitchen blender with a metal body, and a two prong plug with no Earth conn
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Most car bodies have a gaping hole in the front
Hole yes, gaping not so much. At 2.5GHz the wavelength is 12 cm, so the amount of energy that gets through will depend pretty heavily on the grille pattern.
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That's an unusual amount of space to have in the radiator support of a fully assembled car, but that's irrelevant because the ECU is usually mounted right behind the firewall, a decently thick steel plate with just a few small openings into the cabin for wires, hoses and control linkages. It's the panel that makes up the back of the engine bay that extends from the base of the windshield to the cabin floor.
So it seems that this microwave gun is the electromagnetic equivalent of spraying bullets fast and thi
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None of that matters, the ECU itself is inside a metal box. I'd think about other theories of operation, before settling on "the microwaves have to touch the ECU."
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Not always, some have plastic or half-plastic cases.
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I'd still keep thinking about other theories of operation. ;)
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Well, if you assume that this is actually intended to work as described, then it could be induced currents in the connecting wires. But I think this really makes more sense if the intended actual target is drones.
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No, most ECUs are in a small metal box. They aren't practically invisible by any means. Of course, at high enough power, that's moot, but....
A Faraday cage works with holes that are no larger than half the wavelength. For 2.4 GHz,
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Hmmm, lets see..
No, no mention of ionising energy anywhere that I can see, moron.
Perhaps I suggest you go stick your head in a 300kW microwave, and lets see what happens, shall we?
Boiling oil is also non ionising, perhaps you should take a swim.
Driver == meat (Score:2)
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i think the point is that if it is not at 2.45GHz, then the impacts on water (and flesh) will be dramatically reduced. Microwave is a pretty broad spectrum.
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Water absorption in the RF band is actually very wide. The reason that microwaves use 2.45 GHz is because that band is free for unlicensed use.
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Actually, 2.4 GHz was chosen as the microwave oven frequency because it has close to the highest dielectric loss (heating) effect in water (as it drives the water dipole like a little motor). The very highest heat comes with a frequency that is slightly higher, but it was not chosen because it would cook too fast. They wanted penetration. So, when the first microwave oven was patented by Panasonic in 1947, the FCC created the 2.4 GHz band to accommodate it. It made a class of bands that could be used fo
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As described it also sounds nearly useless, as it should be easy to shield against. Microwaves won't penetrate a solid piece of metal, and I think even a good foil wrapper around the electronics should defeat this. I think it would spark off the sharper corners of the foil on the outside of the wrapping.
OTOH, if I reconsider this as an anti-drone weapon it makes a lot more sense.
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Microwaves are non-ionising, you backward fear mongering anti-scientific luddite. Get your head out of your ass and out of your bronze aged superstitions about magic wands and flying donkeys lol.
Did we ever work together? :-)
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Most cars electronics are shielded though, so much of this is kind of worthless, now.
They still need plenty of wires to penetrate the shielding. Of course, all the wires are EMI filtered, but only for normal levels of interference, not 300 kW aimed directly at the vehicle.
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'Focusing' is the key here...and also the danger. Is it 300kw/m^2 focused and tracked on the target ... or 300kw/100m^2 flooding an area?
For easy numbers, assume a 75kg person and fudge to 4J*g/deg C then 300KJ or 300Kw will raise your body temp by 1C every second. You are unlikely to concentrate the full power directly on an individual but this is also meant to hold a car in place so your duration is potentially minutes or more.
Very curious to know the power density impacting the target vehicle. If it's
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If it's not shielded, wire becomes ANTENNA. Do you basic radio?
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300 K is power.... the *rate* of energy being expended. So if you use that power for a very short time, it's actually not much energy.
People are, to a first approximation, a 20 kilo bag containing 40 liter of water. It takes roughly 168000 joules to raise the temperature of that water by 1 degree. So 168 kJ/300 kw == .56 seconds. So a 10 ms pulse, if delivered entirely into an average human body, would only raise the temperature of that body by one hundreths of a degree *averaged over the entire body
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If you're pulsing, you can charge and release the charge on a capacitor. You only need a 300kw generator if you're (a) continuously sending or (b) pulsing at significantly greater energies.
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Or if you want to be able to power the thing up quickly, say to take a second shot.
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"Surface" in this case would be something like the top 12cm, though, right?
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a 20 kilo bag containing 40 liter of water. ...
1kg of water is 1 liter, so you are somewhere somewhat off
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Children can be ter'rists too ya know...
But i've no clue about 40kg of shit in a 20kg bag thing
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Actually 300kw is the power supplied by the generator according to tfa. Their pulse power may be orders of magnitude higher depending on the duty cycle but your generator is going to be your average power. That leads me to conclude this isn't a one-shot-disabled but instead active, continuous interference with the vehicle computer.
Even 10% of the (assumed) average power impacting a person is enough to raise body temp to lethal levels in a minute or so. 75kg @ 4J*g/C = 300kw*s/C so 10% of that for 60 seco
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No. Also, this was demonstrated on American television 12 years ago; the demo had a driver in the car, and the journalist standing right next to it, because there is no reasonable health danger from short-term exposure.
The thing about "starting a family" tells me you watch a lot fictional television "shows," and that you don't understand what the content is.
Ship radio/radar can muck up a lot of things (Score:3)
Waiting in a port a few years ago I noticed that all my central locking had failed and the alarm was dead - had to manually open the car with the key (good luck trying that these days with so called smart keys). Luckily the car started and I could drive it away. Once parked out of the port everything was fine. Went back to the port a week later - exactly the same thing. I don't know if it was the radar or some high powered HF radio transmitter but whatever it was it nicely disabled my car systems.
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I once encountered a distraught lady with exactly that problem: her smart fob's battery was dead and it wouldn't unlock her car. I asked for her keys, opened the door with the real key, and directed her to a Radio Shack.
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No, in those days they'd have sold her a battery and put it in her clicker. Today, I'd have sent her to Ace Hardware.
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Now *THAT* makes sense. You need to wonder what the efficiency would be though. They might need one hellacious heat sink.
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The magnetron in your microwave is 60-70% efficient...and industrial applications can go higher into the 80% range. Even if you assume 50% efficiency, that's only 150kwt to handle.
Unless the magnetron is particularly temp sensitive you can cool that with a decent sized automotive radiator. In the desert. Without trying especially hard. A bit of quick digging shows most magnetron are happy up to around 250c so no worries there.
The bigger issue is *generating* 300kwe...on the moving vehicle that's suppose
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They're talking about a turbine generator to go with it, so the question perhaps is 300KW how often? They didn't say 300 KWHours. If it's 300 KW/microsecond they're going to need a really good heat sink if they've got any repetition rate, and since they're talking about forcing the electronics to repeatedly reboot...
Cage? (Score:2)
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Yes, because bullets ricochetting into traffic along with a sudden flat tire or two, on a car controlled by a driver now in a state of panic - that's so much better than a car that just stalls and drifts to a halt.
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That's when they pull out your gun and shoot your tires. Which they should have done in the first place anyway. Especially since they have big vehicle in front of you anyway (or at your side, or whatever).
Depends, are we talking civilian/LEO use or military use. For the later, yeah, blow that shit to bits. For law enforcement, no, you do not shoot at a car regardless of whatever stupid shit we see on TV, not unless you have serious circumstances to save life and limb (yours or someone else.) Once the bullet leaves the barrel you have no control where it goes, but you almost certainly have the responsibility of what/who it hits accidentally or not.
That's why there are things like spike strips and caltrops (
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Law enforcement doesn't shoot the car, they ram the car. Much safer, much more controlled.
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Law enforcement doesn't shoot the car, they ram the car. Much safer, much more controlled.
Oh, I know that. It's just the internet LEO expert who thinks LEOs shoot the shit out of cars in real life.
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Have you seen the stupidity cops in the US are capable of these days?
https://nypost.com/video/reckl... [nypost.com]
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If they pull out my gun and shoot my tires, I already stopped caring about my car when whatever happened immediately before that happened that caused me to be outside my car, and them to be holding my gun. :)
A more likely use case would probably be when a car is approaching a checkpoint and doesn't slow down or stop at the correct spot. The correct military decision is to destroy the threat, but it is more often a civilian idiot or phone zombie than some sort of attacker, and it is unpopular to shoot people
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A car is not a Faraday cage. There are plenty of holes and gaps between panels.
UFO's (Score:1, Offtopic)
A solution: "very" old tech (Score:2)
1.) gasoline engine - carburator - passive tech works not very efficient but works, with manual choke
weakness1: ignition coil, could get damaged
weakness2: transistor based ignition - solution -> back to non-transistor based iginition
but much less electronics.
2.) diesel engine - inline fuel injection pump with passive spring "controlled" injectors
no electrics at all
Start it and it runs till its out of fuel.
3.) yes K.I.T.T. had it long before this article.
Re:A solution: "very" old tech (Score:5, Interesting)
For varying degrees of "works".
It's not just efficiency, it's basically ease of operation. One of the big things about modern cars is they are "twist and go". You twist the key (or push the button nowadays) and the car goes. Doesn't matter if the engine is hot (vapor lock is not an issue), very cold, or any other thing, including poor fuel. You want it to go, it goes, and unless something is very wrong, it will go. (You can even shoot out cylinders and while it stalls the engine, you can have a V8 engine with 6 dead cylinders still barely run. It's not happy, but the computer is able to compensate and get you home, albiet slowly).
Anyhow, did you wonder why it took 300kW to do it? It's because an ECU is very well shielded to begin with - the metal body of the car already is a great faraday cage. But the ECU is also encased in a metal body because it's a very challenging environment with a lot of stray RF caused by all the high voltages around.
In fact, if you're willing to settle for post-millennium vehicles, disrupting the keyfob-car communications will generally be far easier - the windows in the passenger compartment don't generally block RF, and the signal levels are weak since keyfobs are powered by itty coin cell batteries with poor peak power performance, so they don't have much transmit power. (I had to replace the battery in my keyfob - it still measured 3V, while batteries that are generally dead used in PCs measure pretty damn close to 0.5V. Heck, even my watch which died suddenly had a battery that measured around 0.5V. No doubt the battery was low, so it couldn't supply the necessary power for the transmitter)
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For the twist and go I will install a carburator with auto-choke (passiv) and will put on a sticker into the window
1.) Turn engine for 1,5s - then stop (to have fuel in the fuel hose - passive on engine fuel pump - tends to have a backflow to the tank) ... yeah I would not sell any cars.
2.) Push gas pedal 3 Times (to trigger the accelerator pump to have enough fuel in intake)
3.) start engine
Btw. you might like this documentary especially Part2
Part1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Part2: https://www.youtub [youtube.com]
Great use of public funds! (Score:5, Funny)
Another technical achievement that can be defeated by aluminum foil. ;)
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Another technical achievement that can be defeated by aluminum foil. ;)
So you're advocating walking around wearing a tin foil hat?
Stylish!
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Got to look good while you're being a criminal.. How else are you going to make headlines.
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Foil around the engine's control unit, obviously. How would a hat help in this situation?
Posting tired. I was trying to figure out how much microwave energy you would need to get through the steel car body to affect the ECU enough for foil to make a difference, for some reason the image just popped into my head when I was imagining being in a car with it being fired at me.
I think I'd consider wrapping my testicles in foil too and watch out for sparks.
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The foil changes the temperature of your testes the whole time you wear the foil, the microwaves only heat them for a 10ms burst.
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The foil changes the temperature of your testes the whole time you wear the foil, the microwaves only heat them for a 10ms burst.
Red Underpants on the outside of his tights worked for superman, I think sparks of mini lightning coming off foil coated testicles in 10ms bursts would be really impressive.
Besides that the foil keeps them fresh.
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Another technical achievement that can be defeated by aluminum foil. ;)
True, that. Just make sure to wrap it well enough to get under the car's wheels, because the car is already shielded and the only workable theory of operation is to create a path to Earth to dump the transient.
Won't work on my car (Score:3)
My Austin Allegro is impervious to anything.
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My dad had a Maestro and there's no way some gadget like this would have stopped it, mainly because it wouldn't start in the first place.
One question (Score:4, Funny)
If you have to take along a 300kW gasoline-powered turbine and a copy machine-sized unit, isn't it easier to just throw this stuff in the path of the car you want to stop?
Re:One question (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, I had this idea a very long time ago. You don't need the full 300kw power system if you use a pulsed maser instead of a constant broadcast. That means you can use some kind of storage system with a smaller input, such as an air-coil resonant tank, or a super-capacitor array. You just need to be able to deliver the 300kw on each pulse. It takes time for the ICM to reboot; you dont have to keep roasting its ground lanes with signal. You just have to make it malfunction and restart in a reasonable interval. 1hz pulse width would be sufficient.
Assuming these tools are driving their emitter nonstop, that would let you use 1/60th of the power generation hardware, or ~5kw power system. Even less if you use a 2sec interval instead of 1.
For some variations of the pulse timing, a second alternator on the delivery vehicle would be sufficient; the bulky part would be the super capacitor array, which could be installed in the trunk, or in the rear seats.
The referenced idea I had called for a klystron resonant cavity with a pulsed electron beam, and a low power reference microwave signal produced by a small magnetron. As long as pulse duration time is some whole integer product of the reference signal frequency, it should work fine.
Hilarious that an idea I had as a teenager in the 90s is being seriously considered here though. LOL.
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I actually considered this too when I took some Navy electronics training. My biggest concern was the heat dissipation. For the exciter in the EA6B, we had a dedicated oil cooling system and it was HEAVY. Of course, more energy was being poured into that, a full jet engine's worth, than 350kw, but still, heat is an issue.
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It takes time for the ICM to reboot; you dont have to keep roasting its ground lanes with signal. You just have to make it malfunction and restart in a reasonable interval. 1hz pulse width would be sufficient.
I've seen operating engine ECMs reboot due to coding bugs. They boot incredibly fast. In milliseconds. The engine would keep running, but it would misfire when the ECU rebooted. The engine and vehicle have kinetic energy, so they don't stop dead in their tracks.
I'm not saying it won't work, but 1hz may not be fast enough. It might only slow the engine down.
Re:One question answered (Score:3)
If you have to take along a 300kW gasoline-powered turbine and a copy machine-sized unit, isn't it easier to just throw this stuff in the path of the car you want to stop?
I suggest that would mean there wouldn't be an excuse to deploy microwave weapons within civilian populations.
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If you have to take along a 300kW gasoline-powered turbine and a copy machine-sized unit, isn't it easier to just throw this stuff in the path of the car you want to stop?
I suggest that would mean there wouldn't be an excuse to deploy microwave weapons within civilian populations.
Almost everywhere the military operates already has a civilian population. Wars aren't conducted safely off-planet, or whatever. If you're well-enough educated you can tell which civilians it will be used on based on which part of the government is operating it. ;)
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If you have to take along a 300kW gasoline-powered turbine and a copy machine-sized unit, isn't it easier to just throw this stuff in the path of the car you want to stop?
I suggest that would mean there wouldn't be an excuse to deploy microwave weapons within civilian populations.
Almost everywhere the military operates already has a civilian population.
Usually not their own.
Wars aren't conducted safely off-planet, or whatever.
I've never thought of wars that ensure peoples safety.
If you're well-enough educated you can tell which civilians it will be used on based on which part of the government is operating it. ;)
We have seen that. We've seen microwave weapons used on citizens in England protesting American bases.
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I think it's primary purpose is as a non-lethal way of stopping 3rd world suicide bombers from driving their IED-cars into US military convoys.
(The other option is that they just assume the worst and fire .50-cal Gatling guns at any suspected vehicle. "This kills the crab.")
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One word: Prototype.
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"To deploy it, the driver would pull out in front of the attacker and turn it on."
At that point, you could just drop the equipment in the path of the "attacker". Or just step on the brakes.
Also, isn't "fugitive" more accurate here?
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If you have to take along a 300kW gasoline-powered turbine and a copy machine-sized unit, isn't it easier to just throw this stuff in the path of the car you want to stop?
No, you park it right next to the road to stop cars at the checkpoint, if you put the equipment out in the road without turning it on they'll just hit it with a suicide bomber.
This is to stop the car a few feet farther back, keeping most of the checkpoint outside of the blast radius, and allowing a way to kill less civilians who don't stop at the right time.
Wait a year (Score:2)
Law suits (Score:2)
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Good luck proving it was this microwave generator and not the thousands of other possible causes.
300kW of microwave radiation, NOT dangerous? (Score:3)
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How can this be safe? (Score:2)
Guglielmo Marconi made this in the 1920s (Score:2)
Sigh. (Score:2)
Gimme 300KW of directed energy from a gasoline-powered turbine, and I'd stop a car no problem at all.
But this is just stupid.
"To deploy it, the driver would pull out in front of the attacker and turn it on."
Sigh. Press button. Stinger drops in road. Problem solved without lots of stupid and dangerous ideas.
And anything the military might want to attack that's not just a commercial car? Yeah, they'll shield the relevant parts against this from the first time you use it.
Sometimes I really wonder just how
FS: 1982 300SD (Score:2)
For sale: 1982 Mercedes-Benz 300SD. The fuel cutoff is vacuum-driven, and there are zero computers involved with the normal operation of the vehicle. It can even be pull-started (or bump started given a sufficiently large hill) in spite of the automatic transmission. The transmission is governed by a vacuum line and a cable so it doesn't need a computer either. Runs like a champ, but needs extensive cosmetic work like new paint and a good carpet cleaning. Located in Kelseyville, CA. $2500 OBO
Still waiting for my flying car... (Score:2)
The internal combustion engine killing ray was a staple of 1920s and 30's pulp fiction super-science villains. It was a common trope in spy thrillers and detective stories. In those stories airplanes (the highest of high tech) were continually falling mysteriously out of the sky, brought down by the villain and his henchmen's engine freezing ray.
If you think about it, the internal combustion engine in 1930 was newer to the general public than the computer is today. Before the model T in 1908 it was an ex
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A lot of UFO encounter stories feature the car just stopping for the duration of the encounter.
"To deploy it, the driver would pull out in front (Score:2)
of the attacker and turn it on."
And if it doesn't work, you've stopped that truck full of explosives and it only cost one soldier and a truck full of worthless electronics...
Um ... (Score:2)
It weighs 400 pounds -- it's the size of a large copy machine -- and uses 300 kilowatts of power that's generated by a gasoline-powered turbine. "To deploy it, the driver would pull out in front of the attacker and turn it on."
Wouldn't putting a giant truck carrying the 400 lb "ray gun" and generator in front of the oncoming car also stop it?
scale it up (Score:2)
And you can knock down drones at distance too.
"Tank, charge the EMP." (Score:2)
Much better solution.
Re: It won't stop an old diesel car. (Score:1)
>not every vehicle has a computer in it
Have no fear citizen! Deliquent and possibly subversive citizens who refuse to upgrade to new eco-standards compliant vehicles will be progressively taxed like the Japanese and flagged for monitoring by the NacebookSA.
Enjoy your freedumbs! Im sure your handguns will fix all these problems and moar.
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You might find NSAcebook is easier to pronounce and also more easily identifiable as two disparate privacy invading organisations.
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sure, but most car thieves and fleeing criminals/terrorists won't choose a "classic" vehicle for their getaway. I think the authorities will let those edge cases go.
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Well, since the brakes are also electronic with a fail-safe, they lock on hard. Assuming you believe the press release.
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You're worrying about the wrong part of the body. The balls would probably be fine a lot longer than the eyeballs.
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I can almost BET they have already squandered a ton of taxpayer dollars from which they will get kickbacks one way or another
Plus there will be costs for court cases where people are injured by this... even assuming it *really is* human safe, what happens if someone's smart-phone/tablet/laptop explodes?