Stopping Cars with Radiation

Interesting article...If this technology will works as advertised, it will hopefully help stop those who try to run from the police etc.

A beam of microwave energy could stop vehicles in their tracks.

Researchers at Eureka Aerospace are turning a fictional concept from the movie 2 Fast 2 Furious into reality: they're creating an electromagnetic system that can quickly bring a vehicle to a stop. The system, which can be attached to an automobile or aircraft carrier, sends out pulses of microwave radiation to disable the microprocessors that control the central engine functions in a car. Such a device could be used by law enforcement to stop fleeing and noncooperative vehicles at security checkpoints, or as perimeter protection for military bases, communication centers, and oil platforms in the open seas.

Full story here.

Certainly viable- it is an application of a small scale EMP, directional and short range so as to protect devices other than the target.

Imagine... Popping popcorn on the front bumper of a police car.

Hmmm, A 2 gigawatt 50 nS electromagnetic pulse weapon in the hands of a Boss Hogg type LEO. 'America's Craziest Car Chases', looks to have the posibility of being even crazier, with the ubiquitous chasing helo's falling out of the sky, whole districts losing their power grid, people stuck in elevators, security systems going down within dozens of blocks, GPS satellites picking up the EM pulse leading the folks at STRATCOM to think a small nuclear detonation has occoured within the CONUS, with the perpetrator still getting away in his 1970's Diesel pick-up, all to the sound of heavy metal grunge rock music in the background. Can't wait

After reading the other comments,

I agree with Ironraven concerning the theory,

but

I think Am_Fear_Liath_Mor's version of the practical application may be more accurate in the early application period.

Sounds like a quantum leap forward from tire spikes and a 12 guage. I hope they make it work.

Or we could just do what they do in Europe--let the perps get away so as to avoid offending their delicate sensibilities.

Apparently 95% of convicted criminals are quite happy to stay within the grounds of the local open prison.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/output/2004/09/01/newsstory6285779t0.asp

http://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/output/2007/10/24/story10461537t0.shtm

Good idea except unless they generator is right on top of target the pulse will radiate like a cone causing damage past the target, making it relatively useless in crowded areas. If they can make a tight narrow beam it will require a better aim and when you adrenalin is up that still leads to collateral damage. This will affect the people around the bad guys vehicle who have in the best-case scenario cell phones I-pods or other misc. electronics. Or in the worse case scenario the drivers with the pacemaker diving in the same area. Unless they have an insurance that will pay for all the electronics destroyed it won’t catch on, at least not in the near future.

Oh great! They've already got me wearing my foil hat. Now I've got to wrap my truck up in foil!

I don't think this would be the case if it works like police laser radar which has a beam width of approx 1.5' at 100'. If there are any LEO's out there, please correct me if I wrong on the beam width.

Knew I should have kept that Willy's Jeep.

I'm an ex LEO but there is a huge difference between a laser (which does expand over distance) and a microwave emitter.

Thanks for the clarification on the above. I had based my previous post from here.

Finally, to avoid collateral damage to other vehicles, particularly on multi-lane highways, HPEMS is designed to optimize the antenna beam size, given operational frequency and the limitations of the antenna aperture size, which, together with system operational procedures (distance to the target vehicle and aspect angle) will assure the “illumination” of the target vehicle only. The tables below cite 1) HPEMS features, advantages, and benefits and 2) HPEMS comparison with other key competing technologies.

Don't count on it- you can keep an EM signal in cone measured in percentages of MOA, and when I've seen information on the earlier prototypes of this system in the past they had the effective range under 30 feet. This isn't exactly a new concept, it's just been flaky from a maintenance perspective, bulky, power intensive and expensive. If they have been able to beat those three points, it is good to roll as far as I'm concerned. More effective than spikes, safer than the PIT. Even if you don't take out the ignition or the fuel injector, if the fuel pump goes they are pretty much done.

As for the pacemaker issue, they are shielded by the body. You are a bag of mostly water- water is a great EM absorber. When you add in the degree to which the pulse is constricted and the low power, there are only two ways in which this could have a chance to effect someone- they are in the target car, or you are aiming it at pedestrians. The later is no different than aiming a weapon (or a moving car) at a ped. The former... By and large people with pace makers aren't going to be needing to be hit with one of these.

I remember the "it might cause an accident" BS was raised in Vermont when spike strips were first introduced, to. Or people with pepper allergies. Or the chance of someone being hit with a Taser who might have a heart condition. Specious argument- this isn't for a simple traffic stop, something like this wouldn't get used unless you've had plenty of chance to give up.

Unless your truck has a fiberglass body, all the aluminum foil will do is make it look silly. :P

Its already made of metal so its pretty much already wrapped.
What you want to do is look at the ham radio guys who ground everything extra well to keep their vehicles a good electrical cage.

They make a good case but there is a lot of electronic gear that is far more susceptible to EMP than cars or trucks. One miscalculation in the heat of the moment could cause a lot of damage. I believe it will have its place but not on crowded road for the same reasons you don’t shoot at vehicles or do a PIT on a crowded road.

My prediction-

This emp-like shutdown won't work very well for a long list of technical reasons. (engineering judgement on my part)

But the sales job will cause the LEO community to demand the ability to halt high-speed chases and carloads of terrorists.

The feds, responding to LEO demands, will require that all vehicles have embedded within their onboard computers the capability of receiving, processing, and executing commands (like "shut down" or "brakes on now" or "continuously honk the horn so we know where you went")from LEO transmitters.
This is a simpler, more effective though totalitarian solution.
And if bystander vehicles are shutdown.... big deal. They can be reset. (unless there is a crash resulting but hey, that's the price of freedom from high speed chases)

I predict it will happen within 10 years. Perhaps as early as 5.

Next year if Osama is spotted in downtown LA and the LAPD is unable to catch him and the chase is seen on TV....

I don't see it happening unless there is some way to limit the vehicle effected due to liability. If they do put it in, it won't get used after the first lawsuit. Deliberately causing a third party vehicular trouble that causes a crash will get a serious $$$ award. Not to mention lawsuits due to financial damages. Employees with a limited number of late to work days would have grounds to sue all parties involved in the chase.

There are plenty of ways to stop a chase without this. It just means the individual departments would have to communicate better.

Off the top of my head:
Spike strip
Road blocks
Pit maneuver
Follow at a distance until a chopper can take over & drop back. they will have to stop for fuel sometime.

Plus the TV News has a vested interest in having the occasional chase.

How is the collateral damage from shutting off the wrong car any different than doing the PIT in the wrong place, or spiking the wrong tires - all of which have already happened many times?
I don't think lawsuits against the cops are successful often enough to really be that much of a factor. At least around here the cops can pretty much shoot anyone they think they need to and walk free.

Maybe the TV news chase would be the biggest driver of the decision. But not that many cities have choppers in sufficient quantity to follow the chases.
LAPD may prefer PIT rollovers and spikes so they can see their unit number on TV....
Anyway, I predicted it here. Check back in 10 years. :-)

If you look at the specification of the device HPEMS system at http://eurekaaerospace.com/hpems.php , the device generates microwave radiation pulses at 100 Hz with peak pulse widths at 50nS, hence peak power at 2GigaWatt with the average power with the overall design goal to increase the radiation pulses to 1000 Hz, increasing the radiated power by over 10 times. The frequency of the radiated energy will be tunable, (i.e mechanically modifying the length of the transmission line to the antenna load). Total power at the antenna (continous) will be around 10KW and 100KW at full design specification. With that amount of radiated energy being channeled in into an area of a few square metres cross section a person will slowly start to cook from the inside out after a few minutes. You really would not want to be in front of the antenna of the current or future HPEMS device either a few feet or a few miles away.

To shut down an automobiles electronics, which is in effective a faraday cage with a radiation wavelength greater than a few decimetres is impossible. It would be impossible for the radiation to enter dimensional gaps which is less than the wavelength of the microwave radiation if the microwave radiation was of a continuous type. What is being relied on here is something called parametric frequency amplification due to the pulse widths being deployed (only few nanoseconds), whereby spurious higher frequencies of undetermined powerband spectrum are being generated. This is so that much higher microwave frequencies (much shorter wavelengths), which are being generated can enter the seals of the effective faraday cage (radiator grill etc) to damage the electronics of microprocessors and memory circuits due to the huge electric field strengths of 20KV/m still present.

Most of the radiation energy will reflect of the vehicle, causing the large 100-1000 Hz EM pulses to radiate backward to the pursuing vehicle. Some of the energy will reflect skyward. Some of the radiation may reflect of the vehicle and may hit another vehicle possible passing in the opposite direction causing the driver to be completely startled as the top half of his body feels as if it has just caught fire, thus losing control of his vehicle. This will of course also happen to the vehicle being targeted by the HPEMS weapon. If one vehicle drifts left and other drifts right, well I think you can understand the consequeces. Some of the energy may reflect of the target vehicle and destroy other less well protected electronics, which are not prtotected by faraday cages. This could be within a radius of many hundreds of metres.


Then of course we now have the car. After the perp has crashed his vehicle (hopefully not into another car or anything else that would cause collateral damage (other dead civilians to use its correct terminology), we could now have a vehicle in flames because using the HPEMS device could have some other strange effects such as the vehicle fuel pump still pumping fuel into a stalled engine. Vehicles have a strange tendency to catch fire when hit with an EMP.

Have you ever heard of military aircraft initiating anti-radiation missile lock of one of those LEO's RADAR speed detectors (only a few watts power) because I have.

Have you heard of anyone sticking their head between the dish and the waveguide of microwave transmitter for a few seconds. I have and the victim ended up with permanent brain damage.

Have you ever heard of the RADAR set in a MIG25 (RP-25 Smerch radar) killing rabbits at 2km, because I have.

Of course the real question is why on earth is the LA police thinking about deploying electronic warfare weapons against civilian targets. Why not just use high powered laser weapons and deliberately just blind the perpetrator instead. The effects of collateral damage will probably be a whole lot less.

Then of course there is the risk of cancer (for both the target, the colateral damage and the LEO) due to the use high powered microwave devices

Perhaps the authorities could ask James Tatoian to stand in front of his proposed HPEMS device for a good 10 minutes whilst standing 20 feet away. I wonder what his response would be?

Hmmm.. this whole idea of "Point 'N Click Law Enforcement" is getting closer and closer. Just a few more pieces of software and cameras, we can have "San Angeles" from Demolition Man!

I need to get into this field now. If I write the software, then I can't be touched.

JUst do away with sex, cussing and spicy food and you have it. Ummmm reimind me not to visit!

Don't worry, I won't let you. I'll put you on the "DO NOT TRAVEL" list.

Oh I want to travel but just to the places with lots of spicy food and more sex.

It sounds like you need to live in Lousy-anna!!!!!!!!

Remember, we also have the best Politicians & Policeman that money can buy!!!!!!

And if the bystander has an implanted defibrillator and he's killed as a result of a radiation source that WAAAAY exceeds any FCC limits, that's going to be one heck of an expensive lawsuit for the city and manufacturer since that's such an easily-foreseen risk.