Coming Soon To A Government Near You, A 'EMP Weapon' To Stop A Car

[Sionyn]

'RF Safe-Stop shuts down car engines with radio pulse' I like this line "The firm added that it did not believe the RF Safe-Stop posed any risk to people using a pacemaker." 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25197786

[G7PSK]

I would have thought that a car is a fairly good Faraday cage and its electronics are shielded against interference, I smell a bit of puff here and posibly some BS as well,

[alm]

If it would actually work reliably, I would be all for it. It's not like the tools police currently use to stop a car (spike strips, firearms) don't pose a risk to people with or without pacemaker.

[olsenn]

It would only work for modern cars that are at the mercy of electronics... if it works at all. Likely, it would just take the headlights out so that the officer (after using spikes to flatten the tires) could further add sriving with busted headlights to the list of offences. Damn pigs!

[tom66]

According to the report it causes "its dashboard warning lights and dials behaved erratically, the engine stopped and the car rolled gently to a halt".

Cars do go through a lot of EMI testing including being exposed to strong fields as part of mandatory testing for various critical systems. If it causes a complete shut down like this most likely it will have totally fried most of the electronics inside the vehicle.

I can't see how this would be popular with other motorists who happen to get into the path of this machine, nor how someone with a pacemaker couldn't be at risk.

[daqq]

Well, at a 50 m range it'll be fun to see it deployed in a city - if it can indeed make enough noise to stop a car that went through serious EM testing as well as being effectively 'hardened'-ish, then unless they'll have to have a seriously directional antennae to avoid frying/messing up consumer electronics in the general area, it might get interesting. That includes non-dastardly vehicles, their automatic systems, ranging from airbag controls to speed controllers... anyway, the results on an actual street would be interesting to watch... from a distance.

[tom66]

How much of an effect would it have on a mostly fly-by-wire car, like a VW Touareg, or a completely fly-by-wire car like the Tesla Model S / Roadster? (no engine, so the throttle pedal just sends a signal to the vehicle controller.)

Could be chaotic if anomalous conditions are created.

[SLJ]

Or drive by people you don't like homes and take out their electronics, or store alarm systems, bank security cameras, etc.  The possibilities are endless.

[G7PSK]

If it kills car electronics it's got to kill pacemaker's as well, Even stray currents induced onto the lead wires from the pacemaker to the heart could cause problems for the person with the pacemaker.

[Phaedrus]

If it will kill a car, imagine what it will do to cell phones without nearly as much shielding. Stops a car at 50 meters, kills iPhones at half a klick!

[alm]

Wouldn't that depend on the wavelength?

[Dongulus]

This reminds me of the electric dart in "2 Fast 2 Furious" that somehow shorts all the electronics through the car door.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qaBlaPsuHQw#t=64

[jahonen]

Normal electronics is EMC RF immunity tested only up to 3 or 10V/m. EMP pulse has orders of magnitude more, something like kV/m. Not very easy thing to shield against. Note also that FCC does not require immunity testing, only emission.



Regards,
Janne

[XOIIO]

Interesting idea, though accuracy and bystanders may be an issue, and it's not like it could kill a cars momentum, a panicked guy running from the cops might not think to put the brakes on when his car shuts down and that could lead to some serious issues.


I would think some sort of system like on stars stuff they advertise would work better mass implemented but it wouldn't work for older cars, only new ones that have it unfortunately

Wouldn't that depend on the wavelength?
[/quote

err...

[MartinX]

Normal electronics is EMC RF immunity tested only up to 3 or 10V/m. EMP pulse has orders of magnitude more, something like kV/m. Not very easy thing to shield against. Note also that FCC does not require immunity testing, only emission.



Regards,
Janne

But electronics in cars are much different, the legal requirements may not be that severe but in the automotive industry the different manufacturers have their own standards and they often require 100V/m and sometimes more, and this has been going on at least since the mid nineties when I first got involved in EMC testing of vehicle components.

This thing about stopping cars with EMP pulses is a dream that will never result in a practical device that would reliably stop cars without shutting down the entire neighbourhood, that film shows a not so portable device that would wreak havoc if it was discharged in a populated area. And old cars with carburettors or a mechanical diesel injection pump would still be unaffected.

[XOIIO]

Normal electronics is EMC RF immunity tested only up to 3 or 10V/m. EMP pulse has orders of magnitude more, something like kV/m. Not very easy thing to shield against. Note also that FCC does not require immunity testing, only emission.



Regards,
Janne

That's so fake, if it was real it would make the same sounds as EMPs do in need for speed hot pursuit and have sparks shoot out of the car!

[Psi]

There was an article a few years back about an em pulse system to be mounted on top of police cars and used to disable other cars.
I remember it actually had some details.

The pulse was repeating but extremely short. It was only trying to corrupt the ECU digital and analogue logic and cause signals to be read wrong.
I got the impression it upset the ECUs ability to maintain the correct CAS vs cylinder firing and fuel mixing which caused the engine to stop.  Perhaps it caused ECU MCU hardware interrupts to fire every time the pulse hit, that would cause problems.

It was only effective while it was in use. Once it stopped you could start most cars just fine. Others needed the battery disconnected and reconnected.

There was even a diagram in the article which i remember had a small transmitting dish as well as some voltage multiplier stages.

[JohnnyGringo]

Interesting idea, though accuracy and bystanders may be an issue, and it's not like it could kill a cars momentum, a panicked guy running from the cops might not think to put the brakes on when his car shuts down and that could lead to some serious issues.

+1  When your engine dies, there goes your power steering and power brakes, not to mention the air-conditioning.   If in pursuit at high speeds, most likely the vehicle would not roll "gently to a halt", but rather careen out of control.

[TerraHertz]

Old news. Google: law enforcement herf gun  or EMP gun.
Some police forces have had these since at least 2008.

Also,  those arguing that this is unlikely because disabling a car this way could lead to collateral damage, are living in some nice rose-coloured world that isn't this one. So do Predator drone Hellfire missiles, or firing machine guns at a car driven by a couple of lady schoolteachers, and yet...

I had a conversation about 5 years ago with the manager of a vehicle service company that serviced Subaru and Mercedes cars. The stories he told me about electromagnetic susceptibility of cars, even Mercedes, convinced me that either the designers of car electronics are incompetent fools, OR there is an official policy of making modern cars deliberately vulnerable to HERF guns.

The second case sounds much more likely to me. (With a dash of the first mixed in.) Very useful for the State to be able to ensure that any consumer vehicle can be disabled from a distance. When they really want to stop them, in those special cases where a police chase isn't getting the job done.

Then again, there are other options now. Google Michael Hastings assassination, car computer remote control.

That manager drives an old, computer-free car, for the same reasons I do. And I'm a retired embedded microprocessor systems design guy. I'm NOT driving a car with any software involved in the car's function. Bad enough that my car has some electronics in the spark plug drive - that's probably enough to make it vulnerable to a HERF gun. But at least it's real 4WD, unlike my ex-wife's Honda CRV, in which the computer doesn't understand driving on sand, and the so-called '4WD' vehicle digs its front wheels floor-pan deep within a few meters of driving onto sand. No manual '4WD on' control either. Genius.

[Zad]

Near here is one of the NATO early warning stations. These use incredibly powerful phased array radar to detect missile launches and so on. The car rescue companies are forever having to send out rescue vehicles to the area because customers cars refuse to start. It rarely seems to stop cars which are already running, but really confuses the immobiliser systems. Strangely it tends to be premium cars like BMW, Mercedes etc which are most prone. Or perhaps their owners just complain more loudly.

I can just imagine some of the less intelligent parts of the law enforcement community around the world. Nuking a local telephone exchange, zapping all the flash drives in a bank, or perhaps pressing the wrong button when they are in the police station car park - whoops there goes half the technology in the police headquarters.

[amyk]

I drive an old diesel-engined car that probably would be quite immune to EMP... the most sensitive part is the radio

[jahonen]

Normal electronics is EMC RF immunity tested only up to 3 or 10V/m. EMP pulse has orders of magnitude more, something like kV/m. Not very easy thing to shield against. Note also that FCC does not require immunity testing, only emission.



Regards,
Janne

But electronics in cars are much different, the legal requirements may not be that severe but in the automotive industry the different manufacturers have their own standards and they often require 100V/m and sometimes more, and this has been going on at least since the mid nineties when I first got involved in EMC testing of vehicle components.

True, automotive electronics has higher immunity requirements than residential or industrial electronics, but there still is a gap of at least order of magnitude, if EMP is to be called as "true" EMP. While not practical, but as an example, high altitude nuclear explosion EMP might generate field strengths of 50 kV/m at ground level. I guess that even much lower levels cause havoc in normal electronics.

Besides, EMC immunity testing is done with sinusoidal sweep (with AM modulation), but EMP is one big pulse. That is another reason why EMP testing requires specialized test setup. I can't imagine that RF immunity test pass gives any guaranteed tolerance for EMP, even with automotive levels.

Regards,
Janne

[daqq]

Nuking a local telephone exchange, zapping all the flash drives in a bank, or perhaps pressing the wrong button when they are in the police station car park - whoops there goes half the technology in the police headquarters.

I take back my statement - I'm all for this technology, provided that I can bring popcorn during the early days of deployment.

[djococaud]

If it can fry cars ECU, the cops better have to drive an old fashionned car too...
I would laught so hard if I saw a cop on the side of the road, the engine killed by it's own weapon !!!

[GK]

And I'm a retired embedded microprocessor systems design guy. I'm NOT driving a car with any software involved in the car's function. Bad enough that my car has some electronics in the spark plug drive - that's probably enough to make it vulnerable to a HERF gun.

Yeah, I've heard that ASIO is targeting "retired embedded microprocessor systems design" guys. You can never be too careful and it's always prudent to take all necessary precautions. Have you also had your arsehole sewn shut to thwart probing by aliens? If so that would explain a few things.
 

[G7PSK]

How much power is such a device going to require to drive it. Besides the fact that a car mounted device might kill the car its mounted on will it be like the radios fitted to police cars in the 50's and 60's where when they keyed transmit the car slowed down by about 10 miles an hour due to the very large dynamo fitted to drive the radio.