Radio-beam device can disable car and boat engines from 50m

Dubbed RF Safe-Stop, the unit, which weighs approximately 350kg, has so far been integrated into Nissan Nevara and Toyota Land Cruisers and is designed to temporarily disable a vehicle’s electronic systems and bring it to a halt. Such non-lethal systems are said to be particularly suited to stopping vehicles suspected as being used as car bombs.

Andy Wood, product manager at e2v, told The Engineer that RF Safe-Stop can be fitted also into ground, fixed base installations, rib-type boats and that there are ‘blueprint’ ideas to integrate it into a helicopter.

Such non-lethal systems generate intense RF (radio frequency) pulses and Wood euphemistically said these pulses ‘confuse’ a vehicle’s electronics, rendering them temporarily inoperable.

RF Safe-Stop works differently on different vehicles although the principle of coupling electromagnetic waves into the target’s wiring looms remain the same.

‘At the weight of frequencies we’re taking about - L and S-Band - the wiring loom of, say a metre…is almost the perfect aerial,’ said Wood.