NATO on Sept. 11 unveiled a new technology–high intensity electromagnetic beam–that can jam signals sent to detonate bombs, and shut down electronic systems on various vehicles whether on land or sea or unmanned aerial vehicles.
Ernst Krogager leads the international team developing this new NATO-funded system to stop suspected suicide bomber’s vehicles. The system is comprised of a high intensity electromagnetic beam that sends out a pulse to shut down a vehicle’s electrical systems and engine.
In 2012, NATO issued policy guidelines on counter-terrorism, which had been shaped by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. NATO’s work in this area focuses on improved awareness of the threat, adequate capabilities to address those threats and engagement with partner nations and others.
In a video posted NATO’s website on the anniversary of 9/11, the new technology was revealed: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/index.htm.
A reporter with a car packed with simulated explosives is seen driving toward a checkpoint–and his car goes dead, the lights go off, and it rolls to a stop.
The system works on-the-move, too. The same reporter, with the project’s senior scientist riding shotgun tried to overtake another vehicle. As their vehicle closed in on the target vehicle, the engine-stopping system was fired, and the electro-magnetic beam stopped the “attacking” vehicle.
Project Senior Scientist Odd Harry Arneson from the Norwegian Defense Research agency said the system is non-lethal. “It doesn’t actually kill anyone, it doesn’t harm anyone, it doesn’t really harm the vehicle much either.”
The system would be useful outside combat zones. For example, in Oslo, Norway in, 2011 Anders Behring Breivik planted a car bomb outside the Prime Minister’s office that killed eight and injured 209, the worst atrocity on its soil since World War II, the reporter said. Spain, too, suffered a devastating attack on commuters in 2004, leaving 191 dead.
NATO researchers also tested the system in a marine environment, considering that in 2000 terrorists on an explosives packed small boat attacked and rammed the USS Cole (DDG-67). Seventeen sailors died.
The electromagnetic beam was mounted on a vehicle facing a lake as a jet ski tried to launch a simulated suicide attack–and went dead in the water.
It’s not only explosive IEDs in Afghanistan the system can interfere with said Andreas Ganghofer, Diehl project manager. The new technology jams chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear–“We can kill it.”
NATO Chief Scientist Maj. Gen. Albert Husniaux said, “The NATO Science and Technology Organization nations can share their knowledge, their experts and their means. The uniqueness of this event is that it brings together in one trial all possible applications of the technology.”
A further test pitted the electromagnetic beam against bombs mounted on a UAV. Those bombs also were successfully jammed.