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Stopping Cars With Microwave Radiation
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Researchers have created an electromagnetic system that can quickly bring a vehicle to a stop by sending out pulses of microwave radiation to disable the microprocessors that control the central engine functions in a car. A 200-pound unit attached to the roof of a police car can be used to stop fleeing and noncooperative vehicles. The average power emitted in a single shot is about 10 kilowatts at 100 hertz and since each radiated pulse lasts about 50 nanoseconds, the total energy output is 100 joules at a distance of 15 meters. One concern with the device is that it could cause an accident if a car is disabled and a driver loses steering control. The device could also disable other vehicles in the area so the most practical application may be for perimeter protection at remote areas. Criminals have a work-around too. Since electronic control modules were not built into most cars until 1972, the system will not work on automobiles made before that year."
What happens when criminals get their hands on this and start disabling police cars as well? :D
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Grandma was pulled over by the sheriff
Coming home from our house Christmas eve.
Cops say microwaves can be used safely,
But as for me and Grandpa, we disbelieve.
Now everybody knows the cunning terrorism attack vector I had planned. I bet they'll go and fix it now so Americans are no longer vulnerable. Here's hoping the police insist it must not be fixed for 'security reasons'.
Not just for hats anymore.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
beware of old muscle cars... they are the mark of a terrorist or criminal
*lots of good ol'boys going on the terror watch list very soon.
This is absolutely useless against old diesel cars. I don't need no stinkin' computers or sparkplugs.
So you put a Faraday cage around the car's ECM. Problem solved?
Also, are these rays energetic enough for, say, crowd control? And what if the cops are chasing someone with a pacemaker?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I'd be willing to bet that the first thing that happens is that an officer jumps the gun a little and uses it during, say, a routine traffic stop, causing an accident (as in the worst-case scenario described) and an ensuing lawsuit. Then it's back to the drawing board for a new crazy idea.
Seams a lot more useful in a war zone. At a roadblock in Iraq i think people would appreciate their engine getting shut off a little more the getting shot at.
It could even be set up on a speed trap so that if you enter a road block at a certain speed it would shut off the car automatically.
I guess once again the problem may lie in the fact that most cars in Iraq and other hot spots may not have the Electronic components needed for this. But hey if it stops something like http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4323209.stm then i think its worth it?
-EL
Shield the microprocessor with some left-over casserole. Microwaves never fully penetrate the the center of that mass.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
So when there is a chase in a populated area, the cops will leave a wake of disabled cars? That will be fun to clean up later...
Knight Industries K.I.T.T. 2000 was able to do just this. ;)
Pity those with Firestones...
so the police send the wave, and it get sent straight back to there car. lol
With that said, if the steering somehow could not be controlled with the PCM disabled, I smell lawsuit. This computer killer thing would also disable any other computerized device... like airbags.
The game.
I wonder if military vehicles have their vehicle's CPU's shielded...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Lets hope nobody near this thing has a pacemaker. Perps or pedestrians. This has trouble written all over it. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a good thing to have this, but cops have a nasty habit of using their toys indiscriminately, so if they get their hands on this we can expect to see city blocks of XBOX 360s and TV's get taken down in East LA in the first hot pursuit and then they'll have to steal new ones. That's a crime wave in the making right there.
Is a device that causes those obnoxious Bass units that shake every car for 3 blocks to implode. Now that would be a useful gadget.
The same shunts that are used to protect home electronics will work here just fine. However, few will have the forethought to implement VDRs, beads, and other tricks to dissipate the load that this thing produces. Microwaves, of course, don't operate at 100hz, but the pulses are designed to deliver big bangs of electrons. This means that all of the components in the chase car have to be protected, too; this is also fairly inexpensive to do, but requires creating classes of chase cars with protected integral electronics-- many items of which will not be the circuits running the car, rather the notebook, 4.7ghz, and other electronics that public safety people use... radios, and so on. While the antenna for this can be highly directional, you're still looking at lots of jumping electrons to dance around devices that don't like that.
In all: bad idea. Instead, put unique RFIDs in cars, and simply logon and turn them off. Cleaner.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
If you are pursing a fleeing suspect, the last thing you need is 200 pounds mounted on your roof. This would seriously affect the way the cop cruiser handles.
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
While some electronic control systems may have been available in 1972, it seems like computerized engine controls weren't really popular until around the mid 80's. I know of plenty of cars built in the early 80's that had pretty primitive carbureted engines, with no computer system and maybe just a few basic electronic sensors. How effective would this be on a car without a fully computer controlled engine? Wouldn't the engine need significant electrically controlled systems for this to even work? I'd guess that most cars built through the 70's would be immune to a system like this.
Any older non direct-injected diesel should be immune as well, since the most complex thing on them is the fuel pump...
Of course, only terrorists and hippies would drive an old diesel Mercedes...
If these things aren't any more accurate than radar guns, we can expect a shockingly high rate of mistakenly stalled cars littering the route of some otherwise dull high-speed chases :)
And then there's the guy that shapes the body of his car into a reflector - that focuses the energy into a nice tight beam right back at the head of the chump driving the pursuit vehicle. fvfvfvqkwazzappppp.... POP!
Microwave radiation might seem like a useful tool for law enforcement, but it's a slippery slope. First it will be used to stop Al-Qaeda operatives from driving suicide truck bombs into our troop barracks, but the next thing you know the highway patrol officers will be frying your nut sack for looking at them the wrong way and there's not a damn thing you can do about it!
I've run diesel engines with NO electric power (dead/frozen battery, broken alternator belt). As long as the fuel is gravity-fed, it'll run.
Fat chance stopping someone who decided to take a front-end loader to make an "ATM withdrawal".
Excuse me while I install a Faraday cage around my car's computer.
First a comment: "The average power emitted in a single shot is about 10 kilowatts at 100 hertz". What's that, a microwave at 100 Hz?? Microwaves have frequencies at the GHz range... Second: probably a trivial amount of shielding (likely already in place in the car, *if* the ECM is inside the engine compartment) would suffice to stop this since the penetration depth of a GHz signal is very very small in metals (microns of metal would block it). Seems like a nice toy, probably not very useful, possibly dangerous to people around (e.g. with a pacemaker). Just a ploy to get a government grant...
So, you shield the car's computer. What's their next idea?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
No electronics to kill.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
They're gonna hook up someone's 200 pound unit to the top of a car, and then microwave it.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
However, steer-by-wire systems are quickly coming into play in America, especially on some of the lower-end GM products. Now I'm no GM engineer yet, but from what I gather the steering system is either on the GMLAN high speed bus or it has its own bus but still gets data off GMLAN.
Now suppose the ECM stops giving out speed information on the GMLAN bus. Hopefully there is a contingency plan in the steering logic so that you can still have some steering I/O even without the vehicle speed information, but if the output isnt on its own bus, I cant say I'd want to be in that car.
Man, this is really going to drive up the price of the '69 Nova I want so much! :-(
It also turns the whole "no va" story on its head! (Apocryphal as it may be.)
-Peter
In other news, police officials are investigating the use of rocket propelled grenades to subdue uncooperative vehicles. "We tried these the other day - these grenades disable the vehicles in a hurry" says Lt. Sherlock, Research Officer in charge of Anti-Motorist Activities for the Trap County Sheriff's Department.
No shit?
Finally, a specially designed antenna beams the microwave energy toward an opposing vehicle through a part of the car, such as the windshield, window, grill, or spacing between the hood and main body, that is not made of metal. (Metal acts as a shield against microwave energy.)
Guess I will have to go ahead and replace that window tint, and make sure its the metallic type.
What would make a good reflector? Preferably parabolic.
Well get so techie that next headline will be: "Criminal escapes police by WALKING!!!".
I can already foresee them using this on some old woman whose car is out of control, thereby terminating the poor old woman as her pacemaker goes haywire. Not to mention the Borgs... once and for all the Borgs will be the ones hearing resistance is futile...
Now everyone wanting a sure get away will drive an old carburated (sp?) muscle car that will most certainly level just about any modern car it hits...
I'd like to try to explain why their microwave design might work, and why the "faraday cage" argument isn't enough: Differential vs. Common-Mode Signals. It's because of all the devices connected to the car's central engine controller.
Lots of old school communications protocols are based on single-ended signaling, where one voltage represents a 0 or 1. This includes RS232, Parallel, and even ISA and PCI slots on your motherboard. However, almost everything new that's outside the computer is based on differential signaling -- reading the differential voltage between two wires. This includes 10/100/1000BaseT ethernet over twisted pair, USB, Firewire, etc.
Here's the key difference: when you get noise coupling onto your signal, whether it's a pulse from the engine ignition coil firing or from this car-stopping microwave device, it tends to be the case that the voltage of *both* of the differential wires is increased by the same amount -- so that when the voltages are subtracted, the effect of the noise cancels out.
However, this exploits the fact that no devices have an infinitely large common-mode range. That is, the average voltage of the differential pair must be within some predefined limit, or your circuit won't work. By putting in a big enough pulse, this microwave device might be able to move charges around on the outside of the car body (which happens to be the ground that most devices hook to) enough to move the voltages significantly. This would cause any devices (think an oxygen sensor or a tachometer) to act as though they were momentarily dead.
Thus, even with differential signaling (which cars already use), it's possible to break things by putting too much common-mode noise on top. See Wikipedia article.
--
Can you code? Want to become a hardware hacker? Educational microcontroller kits for a digital generation.
At least the Duke boys will be safe in that '69 Charger...
Constitutionally Correct
Just try stopping one of those 5000 lb behemoths. (yes, I read the summary).
I hear tractor beams are much more effective at stopping large mobile objects.
Is in the low audible range. ;)
Perhaps the low frequency carries an added bonus of paranoia inducement or mind control
If someone lifts my car I wouldn't mind if the police disable it. Therefore there's no incentive for me to put an EMI cage around it.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
... but isn't this easily solved by placing a grounded metal surface (faraday cage) around your electronics? The only consideration then is ensuring that your cage is thicker than the skin depth that the waves can penetrate at the primary harmonic of 10 MHz, which looks to come out to about 1cm.
To mess them up and make go out of there set limits and I just found this to day.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine
Modern slot machines are controlled by EPROM computer chips and, in large casinos, coin acceptors have become obsolete in favor of bill acceptors. These machines and their bill acceptors are designed with advanced anti-cheating and anti-counterfeiting measures and are difficult to defraud. Early computerized slot machines were sometimes defrauded through the use of cheating devices, such as the "slider" or "monkey paw" used by notorious slot cheat Tommy Glenn Carmichael. However, more recent attempts at defrauding slot machines involve manipulating the EPROM, such as by directing microwaves toward it to disrupt its proper functioning.[6] Casino insiders such as Ronald Dale Harris have also been discovered manipulating the software in slot machines in order to defraud casino operators.
REMOTE MICROWAVE JAMMER DEVICE
http://arcadenemy.freewebsitehosting.com/microwave.html
yotube video of it working on a us game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMdEZezkrZ8
How effective would this be on a car without a fully computer controlled engine? Wouldn't the engine need significant electrically controlled systems for this to even work?
The two big things I can think of are fuel injection and electronic throttle control. If you have a carburator and a mechanical throttle, then I'd think you'd be good to go. A lot of the early electronics were more to do with emissions controls. Like there were O2 sensors or something like that, but many gen-x'ers remember ripping all that stuff off late 70s and early 80s clunkers in a desperate attempt to get more horsepower.
Once fuel injection happened, it got way more complicated. Then they added throttle by wire, and now they are on the verge of steering by wire. And, if you have an SMG tranny, then, you couldn't even shift gears, as those are all electronic.
Really, we should just bring back 1970s cars... except that they run best on leaded gasoline.
woops.
This is my sig.
Killing the CPU that controls the brakes, or randomly firing an airbag/ gearbox system, might not be clever either.
As reported in The Register, this is all likely to be shit of the bull and more useful for military use than police use.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm sure it does wonder's for pace makers too.
"Don't tase my car, bro!"
But seriously, do we really need to put more tools with serious abuse potential in the hands of the cops?
A friend of mine had a transmitter that operated on the same frequency as police radar. It wasn't a real radar, so it was a lot smaller and easier to conceal. When driving down the road (and I went with him a couple times), he would turn the transmitter on. It was funny to see somewhere between half and two-thirds of the vehicles ahead of us hit the breaks, as seen by all the break lights suddenly coming on.
I found that a transmitter on a certain frequency would shut off cruise control systems from many years back (a poor design). 50 watts would take them out as much as 100 feet away. It was funny to see a car very very slowly inching its way past just to the left, then suddenly fall way back.
So have they found another even more dangerous toy for us to play with on the highway? Or is this simply a nice solution to install in the back of my car to deal with tailgaters?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
From TFA it looks like the 100 Hz number comes from the fact that it generates 100 pulses per second. The radio frequency that it operates is "tunable in the 350-1350 MHz range".
It seems that the 200-lb weight of the unit, the problems inherent in trying to beam a microwave signal several yards to the engine compartment from behind the vehicle, and the dangers of collateral damage, could all be eliminated in one fell swoop, by redesigning the technology, not to work from a police car rooftop, but from a "stop stick" type device, similar to the spike strips police already use to disable vehicles by taking out their tires.
Instead of a spikes, the strip could contain the necessary apparatus to emit the microwave pulse, plus a pressure-sensitive triggering mechanism. Thus redesigned, the power unit need not be attached directly to the strip, greatly reducing its size. When the target vehicle passes over the strip, the pressure sensor triggers the pulse to go off in one big burst, directly under the vehicle's engine compartment, mere inches from the "brain box".
All three problems of the rooftop device solved. Police: I accept PayPal. ^_^
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Well, given that the device is described as a 200 pound unit affixed to the roof of a car ... I suspect that the cops will be able to locate the criminal and his vehicle without the need for close pursuit of any kind. It's hard to hide when your vehicle is pimped out like Ecto-1.
"People with pacemakers should stay away from this thing."
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
Which also makes me wonder why, if someone were intent on illegality, they couldn't put their own little faraday cage...
Faraday Cage: Your CPU's tinfoil hat. Never leave home without it!
Well now, my '64 fury is up for rent, by the hour.
This is why I love my car.
Also, because the average car thief wouldn't even be able to *start* my car, much less actually drive away in it. It's hard to evade cops when the slightest mistake while sitting at a red light or going through a toll booth causes the engine to die.
Oh, and did I mention that to restart the car while moving, you have to put the transmission halfway in between Reverse and Neutral, turn the key, then quickly shift back over into Drive in case the magical transmission gnome decides that you were closer to Reverse than Neutral?
So this is not useful to catch criminals, as they will prepare themselves against it, it might be used against the police (unless they do the same), it will work on most innocent civilians and it can be a health hazzard and destroy laptops et cetera? Clearly this is not intended for law enforcement.
Electronic voltage regulator and electronic ignition. There might have been a model or two that still had mechanical ignition in the early 80's, but I can't think of one. The last electro-mechanical voltage regulators were phased out in the late 1960's.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The researchers wouldn't also be attempting to devise a "Turbo Boost" device and a sardonic AI would they?
This sounds a lot like KITT's microwave jammer.
I know that many "FCC Approved" electronic devices in the US have the following (US) FCC Notice labeled on them:
"This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) this device may not cause harmful interference, and
(2) this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation." http://www.fcc.gov/oet/ea/labels.html
I Do Not think the FCC had in mind 10,000 Watt RF pulses for the "must accept any interference" clause.
I consider this a device with high problematic potential for numerous electrical devices at distances farther away than 15m. HAM Radio Operators in the US are limited to emissions of up to 1.5 kilowatts PEP (and 2.25 kilowatts PEP in Canada) of Electromagnetic Radiation on specific frequency ranges.
It is hard to fully imagine the interference that a device that emits 10,000 Watt pulses of Microwaves could do...
Imagine if it went off near a Datacenter... Imagine if it went off near a Hospital ICU or ER?
For that matter it could be used in the hands of "terrorists" to disrupt all sorts of sensitive electronic devices...
I can not imagine that this device would be something which US Government would allow to be be used in-country by any of its civilian law-enforcement agencies.
NOTE: MICROWAVE Radiation is NOT in the "100 hertz" range. It is in the 300 MHz to 300 GHz range. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave
The "100 hertz" frequency falls into the Bass hearing range of Sound Waves, NOT Microwaves...
Besides, 10,000W at 100 hertz is close enough to the 12-14 hertz "brown sound" that may actually be more effective stopping drivers of suspect vehicles... http://othermag.org/brownnoise.php
Great, Now "terrorists" are going to attempt to wire a series of 10 (easily obtained) 1,000 Watt 2450MHz microwave oven Magnetrons (powered by a 10 kilowatt inverter/capacitor/generator) on top their cars to pulse unsuspecting targets... -Z http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven
What's the liklyhood of something like this taking out a pacemaker, or an implantable defibrillator? Worse than the case that the vehicle is uncontrollable because of power steering failure, they could be dealing with a vehicle out of control due to driver death. Or maybe it won't be the car they zap, but the cardiac patient in the car in front of, or beside it. Disabling moving vehicles in a fashion that compromises control as they slow seems like a Bad Idea. Using an energy weapon with the capacity to disable technology people rely on to sustain their lives just takes it one more step lower.
squad cars with freakin lazer beams.
I have a vehicle built in 1981 and I know the electronics on it pretty well. The idle controller is the only part with ICs besides the modern stereo and car PC, and I believe it will simply idle rough without that controller functioning. My steering is rack and pinion, my auto transmission computer has nothing more advanced than a transistor; same for the door lock controller. Everything else is vaccum, steel cable, etc... So the date value for vehicles that are impervious to this attack can be set a little further forward.
um, maybe I'm just crazy or an idiot, (possibly both) but I remember seeing a $500.00, 10 lb machine that could disable any car, ANY car without a diesel engine that was directly over or under it, the delivery system was going to be a super fast remote control vehicle that would get it in range to fire some kind of EMP that screws up the ability of spark plugs / ignition coils to work properly. again maybe I'm just imagining things, the voices sometimes lie to me.
Not all life is cyber. Extra Income
whats that in jiggawatts?
and can it run my delorean?
for those who say this could be used to conveniently shut off an offenders car at a speed trap, it more likely frys the electronic control module, so that now you have a dangerous/(possibly moving) quite inconveniant roadblock.
Honestly, shooting at tires sounds about as reasonable. And less expensive, too. --As long as we're looking at dumb ideas, why not just endorse that scheme which would require the outfitting of all cars with state-controlled kill switches?
In my mind, the last really good tech idea brought to police forces was the walkie-talkie. Even the humble taser is earning a bad reputation, with its ever-growing list of abuses and unintended fatalities.
I can't wait to see how things will devolve with the introduction of the 'pain raygun'.
What's wrong with regular detective work, exactly? Seems effective enough to me. --What with the U.S. having by far the highest percentage of its population behind bars as compared to every other developed nation on the entire planet.
Yeah. That little detail.
-FL
I'm pretty confident that, if given the option between one HERF gun or several real guns for the same amount of cash, the terrrrists would choose real guns. I doubt it'll be a *real* problem in Iraq.
Frankly, I wonder if our brave men and women will prefer the new technology, or stick to murdering unarmed drivers. My hunch is that bullets, being cheaper, will necessitate more brutal murder of innocent civilians in front of their own children.
would be funny to see the cop's car get disabled at the same time from a reflected EMP...
Faraday cages aren't magic. Problem not solved.
You still have the cables connection the ECM to the rest of the engine - which will act as wonderful antenna, so you have to shield them. You also have to shield the sensors and actuators the cables are connected to. You'll have to shield the sparkplugs too... Not a trivial task at all. Probably not even possible.
A "I have a pacemaker, and I know how to use it!" bumper sticker.
Why would an honest person:
use encryption?
have anything to hide?
care about privacy?
mind waiting in line for two hours to pass through security theater?
mind having their civil rights violated?
mind missing a flight to get the therapy they badly need and mind dying while handcuffed by the TSA?
YEAH, I MIND!
RF on a wire can be shorted directly to the case with no way past due to lead inductance when coaxial feed through capacitors are used. They work well and are used on every microwave oven made. They are on the bottom of the magnitron. The fillimant leads come from the bottom inside a box. They then go through feed through capacitors to keep microwave energy from radiating out the wire.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7184256.html
photos here at the bottom of the page..
http://www.samwha.co.th/capacitor.htm
RFI suppression on motors..
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6307344.html
RFI protection for pacemakers.. PDF alert..
http://www.interferencetechnology.com/ArchivedArticles/medical/Article08web.pdf?regid=
A full filter often includes an inductor. Here is an example. PDF alert..
http://www.dearbornelectronics.com/pdf/EMIFilters.pdf
This shows performance curves of various filters. A 3 DB change is the half power point. To have the same effect on a device 3 DB less sensitive would require double the power. Many of these devices have more than 80 DB attenuation at 10 MHZ and above. This would provide a high degree of immunity as the RFI source would need to be very close and very powerful to overcome the attenuation compared to an unprotected device.
Info on ferrite beads is here...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ferrite+bead+RFI
Unlike a capacitor or inductor, a ferrite bead doesn't re-direct the RF current. It converts it to heat, and in the process, attenuates it. A capacitor on a wire, may make a tuned antenna at some frequencies. The ferrite bead is to prevent these tuned peaks by eating the power. Used in combination with a feed-through will prevent a tuned standing wave building on the wire.
A capacitor and inductor simply make a tuned circuit with a venurable frequency. Diodes, discharge tubes, resistors, and ferrite beads prevent a high Q tuned circuit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_factor
The truth shall set you free!
i'd just *love* to see this backfire, and end up being used to disable police cars.
I suggest that police set off a small nuclear warhead high above the city. The resulting electro magnetic pulse will not add an ungainly 200 lbs to any car, will pass through most hardening without a blip, and easily stop the suspects vehicle. Of course, it may stop their heart as well, with or without a pacemaker.
I remember all of these wi-fi competitions where teams are able to transmit an unboosted signal hundreds of miles, when I have a hard time getting a signal to my backyard. So perhaps the right antennae could work wonders. Of course it's quite possible the manufacturers of this device are already doing something like that. If the beam weren't focussed the cops would be shutting their own cars down first.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
..is a bad car analogy
A relative of mine that has been an electrical engineer since just after the "germanium thyristor" got shown around an Antanov transport aircraft about ten years ago. They still have an entire deck with long rows of valve electronics. Initially he thought this was backwards Russian tech or stupid since he actually used to work with valves and knew the drawbacks - then it became clear that an EMP burst would do very little to any system on the aircraft. The redundant systems in place just to handle blown valves in normal use would probably handle anything that picked up enough of a charge to burn out.
What happens when criminals get their hands on this and start disabling police cars as well?
What's to stop it from killing the engine to the police car?
What's to stop me from changing your quote to make it easy to counter?
is not in the "microwave" frequency band... maybe 100 Ghz...
Yeah, right, a "taser for cars", and thus likely to be just as abused as the taser. Who cares you fry almost anything else in the vicinity such as cell phones, PDAs, car stereo, GPS or a pacemaker..
/sarcasm
I have no idea what offence would justify the use of this gadget. Going 1 mph over the limit?
Insert
..most of them are jack booted thugs. The honest ones with ethics soon leave police "work" (yes, I know some who did just that, saw it from the inside and quit as fast as they could). The number one criteria for recruiting new police officers in most jurisdictions today is prior military *combat* experience. It is not a degree in any sort of "police science". As the expression goes "wake up, fo!". The US is rapidly de evolving into just another typical tyranny police state. Any crime committed by the state is excusable based on "security". The "state" works overtime enacting new laws so that no single human can even exist without breaking one. Years ago, "no knock" raids were extremely uncommon, almost non existent, along with "courtesy checkpoints" and so on,now it is routine-routine like in east germany stasi action routine.
Sorry, skinhead violence bent steroid popping cops are JBTs now more than anything else. "Officer Friendly" whistling and walking his beat in the neighborhood greeting everyone by first name is from long ago, that just doesn't exist anymore, and especially since they started the extremely lucrative and power accumulating "war on some drugs" and since the Feds started funding local police departments and since they all went to paramilitary setups complete with all the modern weapons they want. Abuse is *common* now, it is daily across the US, it isn't "a few bad apples". Want proof? Go out start taking some pictures of cops in a normal public place, get back to us with what happens to you. Want to try another, you know, test out "no unreasonable search and seizure"? Go find a roadblock, then say "no" to everything they say and then drive off, which by our born with rights you are able to. Go ahead, try it. Try saying no to a search of your car, try saying "Do you have a warrant or probable cause? No? Sorry, I am leaving, get out of my way officer"
that will be the last thing you say before "ouch!" (go ahead a do a review of our most basic born with rights, not state granted, born-with before you comment indignantly)
You'll wake up with a concussion and taser burns in a jail cell, probably cracked ribs leading to a punctured lung as well, perhaps permanent kidney damage from the boot treatment you will get from around 5 or 6 cops, with charges ranging from assault on a police officer, to resisting arrest, to failure to "obey instructions" and probably a host of other things, along with the drugs they "found in the suspect's vee-hick-el", which they will plant on you, along with most likely a cheap handgun.
Sorry, cops are just another mercenary force now, following orders to protect the elites in our society, their masters, and allowed as much sport on the street as they can handle, keeps them amused and their masters want a completely cowed and intimidated population, because this is how tyrannies stay in power. The state induces a terror into the population until such a point as all resistance is futile. Look around the planet today and in past history-there's no difference. The king's thugs are the king's thugs, doesn't matter the flag flown or the language spoken. sure, the US isn't quite as bad as say north korea yet, so what? That's the direction it is headed, they haven't retreated on one single issue, they keep coming up with more sophisticated weapons, more surveillance, more laws for you to break. Do you get it yet, see the pattern? Look back ten years, now turn around extrapolate out ten more. Feeling lucky?
After you get out of jail, you can go protest in a "free speech zone", unless you feel like protesting outside of that..lather rinse repeat of the above.
Car chases? Get rid of the war on some drugs, eliminate 90% of the crime. It used to be booze prohibition drove most crime. There is a clue there. Of course, they could get by with only 10% of the cops and lawyers and judges and so on then. think about that. that and all the paramilitary cop paraphernalia, the ability to restrict voting to huge swaths of the population, the ability to use thei
Scientists need to stop going out of their way to encourage scenarios where I steal a classic (pre-1972) roadster and go on the run from the law.
The "100 Hz" spec refers to the modulation frequency (on-off cycling) of the micro-wave source. Microwaves by definition fall in the range of 300MHz to 300GHz, with most home-use ovens operating between 2-4GHz.
Thank you for an excellent post. I'm disappointed how few electrical engineers appear to be on slashdot anymore . . . radios and transmission lines aren't magic, people!
I'm perfect in every way, except for my humility.
I just want to be able to take out the cop car who chases me down at speed traps.
Cop: "HAHA I'M ON UR HIGHWAYZ CLOCKIN UR CARZ!!1 OMG FIVE MILES OVAR!!!"
Me: "lol noob" *MICROWAVE-PWN*
Cop: D: WTF WALLHAX
+++ATH0
He didn't fail reading comprehension. My guess and my opinion is that it is either extreme ignorance or deliberate fraud, and maybe someone at Slashdot is taking money to post articles about companies that want "investment" money.
Fraud Alert. Fraud Alert. Fraud Alert.
Read the first comment to the article: "What happens to the pacemaker in the guy driving? Does speeding become a death sentence?"
Another comment: "If there are innocent victims in such incidents - such as hostages - how are you going to microwave the car without hurting the people?"
What about reflections? Fried police car, anyone? "I just looove the smell of burning plastic in the morning"?
I think November 13 is a little early for April Fool's day.
Quote: "These pulses are amplified to 640 kilovolts..."
Did you see the red whiskery antennas that extend in front of the car? Criminal: "There's that dorky police car again. Turn right. Microwaves only go straight." Or, are those not antennas, but an artist's rendering of microwave flames shooting from the top of the police car?
From the article: "The system has been tested on a variety of stationary vehicles and could be ready for deployment in automobiles within 18 months..."
Translations: 1) It hasn't been tested in heavy traffic. 2) As soon as we find some really, really, really dumb people with money to invest, something could happen.
Moral of the story: There is no time to play video games. You need all your time to learn about the world around you, not about fantasies. If you spend all your time with fantasies, anyone can tell you anything, and you won't be able to evaluate if it is the truth.
Quote from the story: "Finally, a specially designed antenna beams the microwave energy toward an opposing vehicle through a part of the car, such as the windshield, window, grill, or spacing between the hood and main body, that is not made of metal. (Metal acts as a shield against microwave energy.)"
Ohhhhh. It must be an opposing car, not one going in the same direction. The car must have no mirror-like surfaces. There must be holes. It can't be a camper going in the same direction.
Has no one who already commented on this story heard of firewalls, the kind in cars? Has anyone heard about tight-fitting hoods? Does the invention work only with hoopties?
Is it really true that no one who reads Slashdot has looked at the insides of a car? Does this "invention" work only with cars that don't have electronics shielded with a metal covering?
Those dumb car makers never heard of electromagnetic noise? Even though spark plug wires have 40,000 volts? Car computers have no shielding?
A service bulletin went out recently at a defibrillator manufacturer stating that independent tests had shown that the transmissions from the car (to the smart key) had caused an implantable defibrillator to not deliver therapy (shock the heart back to life). Patients are advised to stay at least nine inches away from any antenna on the car.
Finally! Now I can finally make my get-away in my old classic Volkswagen Beetle! Voom! er.. well, chirp! :) HEY! If nothing else.. I might be one of the few folks still able to drive a car for a while after a big EMP blast from space, eh? ;)
But I do wonder--mine is a little red 1974 Bug with a 1973 engine in it (therefore no EGR). I don't think it would be susceptible at all either, would it? It has a carburetor and an old mechanical Bosch 009 distributor and so on. I'd think that microwave would fry solid state microchips and I don't think anything in that Bug is microchip based.
I knew this story would draw out the tinfoil hat crowd. OMG "what if" terrorists get ahold of it! OMG "what if" it unintentionally disturbs other equipment that is critical to LIFE. OMG "what if" the crook loses control of his vehicle. Calm down, it will be ok. If it proves unwieldy to use it will never see the light of day... (probably). Imagine back in the day before automobiles, imagine the internet was around, and so was the tinfoil hat crowd. "Automobiles" were announced and the threads were thumpin. OMG "what if" another driver going the opposite direction is distracted and comes into my lane and KILLS ME! OMG "what if" a crazed crackhead gets ahold of this 2 ton machine of devastation and runs over old lady's on the side of the road!!! Shit happens, we gain some new functionality we lose some safety. This has been going on for many many many years. Yet everytime something new comes out people behave as though it is somehow different than all the other dangerous shit we live with every day. Relax, it will (probably) be ok.
USB doesn't use differential pairs. There are 4 lines - power, ground, transmit, receive. It was designed to replace RS232 and parallel ports - they weren't going for great speeds. I'm actually quite impressed that USB 2.0 works as well as it does as it is a bad design.
But 1394 does use differential pairs. There are either 4 or (more commonly) 6 lines. Power, ground, transmit+, transmit-, receive+, receive-. It is possible to omit the power and ground and thereby only use 4 lines - Sony likes to do this.
It is possible that I'm wrong as I have not done hardware design since the standards were introduced - but I believe I am correct on this one.
Actually this theme reminds me of the old Gordon Dickson "Dorsai" novels, where countermeasures were so sophisticated that people went to "spring rifles" because they were hard to jam. I remember thinking that was a great convergence of complexity and simplicity.
OK, it's been many years since I read those but I thought they were spring rifles in that the projectile was a spring. Not that they were spring powered like some BB guns?
And I remember my father telling me about how WWII German technology was unbeatable by anything except their own sophistication.
Actually that was the exception not the norm. Much German tech was so good we and the Russian appropriated it for decades Some of it is still in service, IIRC the M-60 receiver. My favorite anecdote went something like this. A PFC guarding prisoners asks an arrogant looking officer why if they are such supermen they are prisoners. The German officers replies that he commanded an 88mm antitank gun and that every time an American tank came down the road they knocked it out. He continued, eventually we ran out of ammunition and the Americans did not run out of tanks. I think this is closer to the truth.
this scares the jeebies out of me. A rapist could stop a car at night with a lone woman driver in it. I'm feeling sick at the thought of this "gadget" getting into the wrong hands.
That would violate FCC regulations.
Summary sez: The average power emitted in a single shot is about 10 kilowatts at 100 hertz and since each radiated pulse lasts about 50 nanoseconds, the total energy output is 100 joules at a distance of 15 meters.
The introduction of "10 kilowatts at 100 hertz" into this sentence makes it absolute nonsense. The submitter either pulled these numbers out of thin air or is very unclear on the concepts. You do not have microwaves at 100 Hz. And it is very difficult to build something that will focus wavelengths of 3000 km!
FTFA:
Peak power = 2 GW
Average power = 100 W (in a single shot, whatever that means)
Pulse time = 50 ns
single pulse @ 15m = 100 J
[power] = joule/second, so we find that according to the average power spec, a shot occurs in one second. Energy of a single pulse is 2 GW * 50 ns = 100J, which works out.
Get your units straight, people.
We need sharks with frickin' microwave car-stopping beams attached to their heads.
Cars are one thing, motorcycles on the other hand...
hell, even Harleys are now coming with fuel injection, ABS, and other fun stuff.
So do you get any notice, like when it's time to switch to reserve, so you can death-grab the clutch;
or do you just go flying over the handlebars?
(I'm talking about just being in RANGE, not being the actual target, but close enough to get some side-soakage-emp-damage).
So, they disable the car. At the same time they also disable everything in the car from cellphones to cameras to laptops, gps, and whatnot. And, maybe also causing an accident by disabling highspeed car on the highway. Maybe not so much of an issue if they follow a murderer and the like, but in this world no action, not even a police action, is without errors, so they'd better be prepared to pay for unnecessary damages. Other than that, I guess it's better to disable a car then follow it for dozens of miles, as you can also see it on tv, and which is something I will never understand: instead of rushing into the car, crashing it or pushing it down the road, they start to follow it, through miles, causing them to speed even higher, get more nervous, thus the risk of causing accidents and injuring even more people will get exponentially higher. And then they tell how successful they are and how good it is to catch a runner. Right.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I'm fairly certain that any system put into place would likely be focused. The inverse square of the distance works great for a source that is radiated in every direction, but when you focus it, it changes the decay rate. If not, than a flashlight or satellite dish would not any better than an open antenna. Like the difference between a candela and a lumen.
With that in mind it would not be difficult to imagine the beam missing or passing through. Think of how nasty it would be if you lock up cars in front of somebody evading police, or even in front of a persuing cop.
So if they are zapping someone and hit another car are they responsible if that car crashes? Will this affect on board safety equipment as well? ABS? Airbags? There is a lot of reliance on microprocessors in many new cars.
It would not be long after entering service before they hit the wrong car and the question becomes, how will the courts treat that?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Actualy I'm a technician. I never went for the engineering degree due to the math. I understood most of the concepts, but dont ask me to design a choke joint or circulators. I can tune the stuff, but not design it. RFI was a huge part of my job. Harmonic generation included finding the source of RFI from things like a rusty downspout rectifying an RF field and radiating harmonics which then would wipe out a television channel. The transmitter was clean, but the RFI came from the downspout. Technicians know to look for this stuff. Engineers at first are thinking we are off our rocker, but we are able to teach them in the field.
http://www.e-meca.com/rf-circulator-isolator.php
http://www.tpub.com/content/neets/14183/css/14183_51.htm
I didn't design it. I just make it work.
Info on the rain gutter stuff for the unbelieving engineers is here..
http://www.nzart.org.nz/nzart/Exam/AMATEUR%20RADIO%20STUDY%20GUIDE%2007A/Course%20Files/Harmonics%20And%20Parasitics/STUDY%20NOTES%20-%20HARMONICS%20&%20PARASITICS.htm
Often the conusmer complaint is our transmitter is causing problems. In reality the transmitter is very clean. The RFI is often generated by a bad connection near the TV reciever, such as rusty connections on the downlead of the TV antenna itself or the aluminum mast and mounting bracket or guy wires. It's always the fault of the transmitter. Often the fix is on the complainer's roof. I got out of the field because of the endless bickering over who pays the bill. It can take a long time to trace down a noise source that only appears after it rains and stops.
The truth shall set you free!
That is an overvoltage protection device to protect against relatively slow surges, hence they are used in surge protectors and squelch the bulk of an overvoltage surge. They are fast, but not fast enough to protect against a blast of RF at UHF or higher frequencies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varistor
The truth shall set you free!
I know that every over-testosteroned male with wheels feels the pressing and generous need to share their LOUD CRAP NASTY 'music' with ME NOW YES NOW but I don't kinda agree. (Never mind the non-personal stereos and maxed out mobile phone ghetto-blaster stand-ins in public places, often toted by angry-looking teenage girls.)
Get me one of these zappers now please, and I'll point and shoot every anti-social LOUD system for free, to help with public order.
Arrrgh! B^>
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
"Since electronic control modules were not built into most cars until well after 1972, the system will not work on automobiles without the ECM chips."
FTFY.
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
Do they know about a man called Faraday and his awesome cage?
, not just the ECM (which is already inside a grounded metal box on every car I have seen anyway). The wiring connecting the ECM to the rest of the vehicle will act as an antenna, and carry the incoming pulse right into the ECM.
Completely shielding the entire electrical system of the vehicle would be cost prohibitive, and technically challenging.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
and I'm only half joking - They'll ban all pre-1972 cars.. except for "trusted" individuals.
Just have the police car fire a car taser sticky pad at the target vehicle. That would cut down on the chance of hitting innocent bystanders pacemakers with the death ray.
Or even better yet - a CARPOON! Fire a barbed tipped harpoon at the car, and just hit the brakes. It would make for much better TV watching. Spearing the fugitive driver in the head (oops- darn) from an errant shot would be a minor detail that would need to be worked out.
..........FULL STOP.
Cars seemingly being drained of power were/are a main element of UFO stories, and interestingly, researchers found that firing microwaves at car headlights can stop the vehicle by, ISTR, burning out the electrical system. Has anyone else heard of this?
My web domain.
Has anyone on this site actually seen an ECM? They're usually mounted in cast aluminum enclosures. The wires in the harness are not shielded and that has to be what they're exploiting.
Now if you went and shielded every single wire in the ECM's harness, it might be impervious to this, but at the cost of several hundred pounds of mass.
For years I've wanted an asshole button you can use to disable the cars of the kewl boyz with the neato undercarriage fluorescents and spinny hubcaps who cut you off in traffic. You yell, "Asshole!" and hit the button, and a powerful EMP zaps their pimped ride and turns it into a chamber where they can take a time-out and consider their asshole driving and its corrosive effect on the social fabric and general decline of courtesy on our nation's roadways.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I had an idea, a few years ago, to mount a system consisting of a very large capacitor, a very large coil, a log periodic antenna, a high-voltage power supply and a big switch on the back of a Diesel Series Two (i.e headlights on the "outside") Land Rover (all series one Landies, i.e. headlights on the "inside", were petrol IMMSMC) and drive around causing chaos by blasting EM pulses into car engines.
..... I'd've liked to see what we got charged with.
Never actually did it. Shame really
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The average power emitted in a single shot is about 10 kilowatts at 100 hertz
Since 100 Hz works out at a wavelength of about 3000 km, we are hadly talking about microwaves in the usual sense. However, 3000 km is about 1 nanoparsec if I am not mistaken, so perhaps we are talking of nanowaves? It all just depends on the perspective, I suppose.
HERF weapons have been around since WWII, and highly researched during the seventies. I would imagine the EMP caused by the detonation of the first nuclear weapons had a lot to do with interest in this.
100Hz isn't microwave. Hell, it's almost sub-audible.
--Jim (me)
Lord, how I have prayed for an EMP weapon every time some idiot with a 50,000 watt car stereo going "THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!" gets near.
If it'll fry their car's engine, too, so much the better!
READ the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the other amendments! http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/const.html
That's why real cops, like Mad Max, use 1973 Ford Falcons XB Coupe, V8 351 with explosives attached.
Not sure it if has electronic control but I had to say it.
Ahhh ... the irony
... general decline of courtesy on our nation's roadways."
To quote:
"... You yell, "*******!" and hit the button, and a powerful EMP zaps their pimped ride"
And then:
"consider
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
It's the only way to be sure
Your car still has electronic ignition. An EMP blast will disable your distributor.
Only cars with point-type distributors are immune.
Cops,
Knock it off with the high speed chases in the first place. Is it really worth endangering everybody else nearby? You're simply pushing the person you are chasing to be even more wreckless. Let them go.
I just wouldn't want to be the Kidnap victim in the trunk.....
Recently my car's battery and alternator failed while I was driving to work. Steering the car became progressively more difficult, but I could manage. The really scary part involved braking, or lack thereof. My car quit in the parking garage, and later had to be towed out using an SUV rather than a tow truck because of height restrictions in the garage. Anyway, I had a lot of trouble keeping the car off of the SUV's bumper because it took all of my might to use the brakes. I would hate to be trying to stop a car, possibly in traffic, without power brakes. With that in mind, I think the likelihood of an EMP stopping system resulting in wrecks is very high. Very judicious use would be advised.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I see all kinds of problems with this technology.
First we all know how easy it is for Cops to misuse a device which gives them instant control over a situation. Look at how many time we hear about some Grandmother being TASED. How long do you think it will take before they start zappin cars for speeding? How about failing to clear a lane fast enough when they are trying to get through. What about residual damage to a car? The radio, your beloved iPOD, cellphone and laptop. How about the home of the innocent bystander that happens to be in path of the beam. Yes, I know that the power dissipates quickly with range but I have watched COPS and seen perps driving through someone's backyard too.
We should start selling devices to detect this type of RF burst, so innocent people can make claims against the Police Department that fried their iPod. Do you even think this device will work in a COP car. the have computers and radios galore. I was told by a cop that he can't even jump start a car anymore due to potential damage to his electronics.
YA Right, it is the same type of vapor ware as the fabled "Lightning Gun IED destroyer"
Old!
The Hoff have been doing this for years in Knight Rider!
SeqBox
... that destroys car stereo systems.
Stupid cops - they will never defeat Super Bad Guys in ancient muscle cars! So watch out for the black Barracuda hemi driven by the guy wearing the ski mask! He's looking to do some Serious Crime!
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
So you just shield the electronics..
Though the impulse crook, and carjacker wont be able to do that, but the hardcore plan-head for a getaway car criminal could.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's remember me the Lady Diana's accident!
Some strange unclarified parts...
What happens when criminals get their hands on this and start disabling police cars as well? :D
They don't need to do anything so complex. Just hold a thin sheet of metal over the rear window, wait for cops to shoot microwaves, the waves reflect and take out the cop's car behind. In fact you don't even need a full sheet a metal grill will do fine. However I'm somewhat amazed this thing works at all since most of a car is sheet metal. I'm wondering how well them have to aim this to get the CPUs or whether it only works on Saturns.
Naw, just install some snap-on ferrite beads on the harness just before it connects into the box.
http://www.ferrishield.com/html/ferrites/busbarferrites.html
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
The way I remember reading it, the idea is to give the car variable steering input (not to be confused with variable levels of steering assistance). In other words, a slight turn of the wheel at very low speeds results in a large amount of steering response, where a large amount of steering input at higher speeds results in slight amount of steering response.
To give simplified idea of how the system works, imagine an additional set of gears inserted into the steering shaft that are similar to those found in a standard rear axle differential. The steering wheel is connected to one sun gear, and the other shaft that continues on to the front wheels is connected to a secon sun gear. There is a set of planetary gears in a retainer that connects the two sun gears together. When the planetary gears are locked (not the retainer itself), the steering functions essentially the same as a normal car. However, a motor is connected to this retainer so that a controller can change the position of the retainer either with, or against the steering input to affect how much rotation is conveyed from one sun gear to the other. Without proper system control, the steering input could actually reverse itself from what would be considered normal (i.e. turning the steering wheel left could make the wheels turn right).
Although the steering response is varied, it still remains in direct mechanical connection with the wheels, so a certain amount of tactile feedback is maintained. From what I read, it was still a concept under development. The idea being that it could give a car the ability to reduce a driver's oversteer input in an unsafe or reduced traction condition.
Does this sound like a spark gap and a wave guide to anyone else? And why would an aircraft carrier want to disable cars at 15 yards?
I'll be curious what happens if one of the drivers of this car is wearing a pace maker.
Not everyone is an electrical engineer in the tech industry.
I'm disappointed how few true Unix people appear to be on slashdot anymore...
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Since when is 100hz considered a microwave? Someone care to explain?
In Halo 3 one shot from a fully charged Plasma Pistol will take out any vehicle's drive train mechanism.
Interesting posts. My brain hurts. :)
:)
As to stuff like the rusty rainspout -- I once concocted a pretty good TV antenna that involved barbed wire wrapped around a small barn, then hooked to the metal roof on the side toward the transmitters (hooking directly to the roof, or in any other spot, didn't work, nor did the wire alone). Sometimes a harmonic just gets lucky.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I've always thought that a cool idea would be to mount something like this facing backwards in your trunk. Get into a chase, cops come up behind you, hit the switch and blam! no more cops. I had originally conceived the idea using a directional EMP but this would work almost as good.
Will this microwave energy heat up my beer? I hate hot beer!
I've nothing of importance to say, now go away before I taunt you with a second sig!
At least passively, that is ;-)
Actually, each Volkswagen beetle of that era was equipped with a receptacle that would be connected to all electrical units (Lamps, blink-relays, indicator lights, battery, etc.). All authorized Volkswagen dealers had a "diagnosis computer" that would would be operated by a specially trained mechanic clad in a bright orange labcoat (this was the seventies, after all!). The orange guy would hook up your bug to the "diagnosis computer", which would then print out a checklist with a pass or fail for each of the circuits tested - about 20 to 30, if I remember correctly.
However, the extra wiring in the cars was so expensive, even for a beetle with only very few circuits, that VW discontinued this very quickly. In fact, it was mostly a marketing ploy.
All the dealerships then quickly scrapped this *very* expensive "diagnosis computer" - they just kept the orange labcoats.
In the early eighties, I salvaged a lot of parts from one of the computers that had been sitting in a corner for almost a decade, mostly passives and 74xx chips, but including a hybrid 6-bit ADC that must have cost a fortune back then, but which I never really used.
How about a banana peel?
Wow the cop'll get a nice popping surprise when he searches the trunk.
Just the other day on some "crazy weapons show" on the History Channel they featured a Japanese
death ray which was also demonstrated to have the same effect on automobiles at the time.
Were that I say, pancakes?
This link: http://www.heise.de/ct/redaktion/cm/Thumpmobile_Zapper.html/ provides a detailed guide on how to build your own EMP-Weapon for exactly this application from an old microwave oven and a satellite dish.
This is a german site (the author, Carsten Meyer, is a journalist at the leading german computer magazine "c't"), but please be advised:
WARNING: This is only for experienced electronics experts, there are lethal (not just "potentially lethal"!) voltages involved, and the concentrated microwave radiation may blind you!
Also, if you have just annoyed some armed Gangsta Rappers in the 'hood, the author suggests a powerful getaway car!
The new ones are VERY dependent upon electronics for the injection systems. That's why you can "mod" them by plugging in or "stacking" injection control modules onto the fuel pump. The GM Duramax, all the newer (2nd Generation and newer) Cummins 5.9 engines, and all the powerstroke engines fall into this category. Even the older 6.5L GM diesel engines had electronic injection. Unless you're aware of such things and you buy a '93 6.5L. Like I did. So I theory, if a gigantic EMP went off and all the diesel trucks in my neighborhood (yes I know, the thoughts of my over-active imagination), then I would be the only one left with a functional diesel. If it wasn't running at the time, I MAY need to push-start it though, even thought the starting system on those older trucks is refreshingly simple. Yes, I practice push-starting my truck. No, I don't have a tinfoil hat.
BTW, diesels are the wave of the future and you heard it here. Unfortunately the simple mechanically injected pumps such as the one of my truck have gone the way of the dodo bird. But me being angry about that happening would be like mourning the death of BeOS. And while I'm talking, a toast to Rudolf Diesel, who was a fricking genius.
somewhere, on a Big Red Sign:
if(color==blue){speed--;}
A Metal Enclosure is not a catch-all electromagnetic shield. In fact, a Faraday cage is only perfect for an electrostatic field - but due to the resistance of the cage material, the faraday cage can be penetrated by high frequency electromagnetic radiation.
Second, electromagnetic radiation can be steered electronically with multiple antennas acting as a phased array. In short, the disabling beam can "focused" and "directed" to an arbitrary accuracy dependent only on the radiation frequency and the processing circuitry. In short, the beam does not "only go straight." It could quite easily have a beamwidth of 1 meter at 100 meters and "follow" targets.
Third, all reflections of the device would be diffuse (d^2 attentuation in air) - even if the surface is "mirrored". You do understand that "mirrored" surfaces are only mirrors for visible frequencies?
In short, tight-fitting body panels, firewalls, hoods, ECU enclosures, can be penetrated. The radiation can be steered. The radiation can be focused. And no, it isn't going to reflect in a dangerous way.
It seems to me that is all highly theoretical, and doesn't apply to a small installation on the top of a police car moving fast in traffic.
Shined stainless steel or chrome-coated metal surfaces reflect at all wavelengths.
Parabolic mirrors reflect all wavelengths and concentrate the reflection.
Also, I seriously doubt that small amounts of externally applied microwave energy will have any effect on a car computer enclosed in the body of the car and in its own solid-metal enclosure. The car computer is in the front, and the police car is behind, and there are several metal sheets in between.
10 kW for 50 ns = 0.5 mJ, not 100J.
You don't get it:
It doesn't work on classic cars (pre 1972 they say).
Gangsters would go back to good old gangster cars.
Police will go back to classic police cars.
Then we will get to see those classic car chases without having to go watch a classic movie like the Blues Bros. and everybody benefits from the situation!
I haven't done any engineering work in over 17 years - not since peace broke out at the end of the '80s and we stopped making weapons systems, but if I recall the period of 100 Hz is 10 msec so a 50 nsec pulse is equivalent to 20 MHz.
Maybe we really don't want this company designing EMP pulse devices (and that is basically what it is) for the police since it sounds like they don't know what they are doing.
And I for one would not want my head just inches from a device putting out 10KW. It needs to be a directed wave pulse otherwise it is going to stop the police car too.
So now not only will I be cooked on medium high for 10 seconds, but all my electronic devices will stop working, perhaps permanently. Technology isn't free you know.