March 07, 2004
Twilight Zone Time, for Cars

Also from FARK, this article detailing a bizarre cluster of keyless entry failures that ocurred last month in Las Vegas. The town's proximity to Nellis Air Force Base and the mysterious Area 51 does not go unnoticed. What's not mentioned in the article but has been mentioned numerous times in Aviation Week is that the military is quite close to fielding microwave-powered munitions. They're designed to fry electronics even in underground bunkers over a very large area. As I recall, last year AvWeek had someone tell them on background the military only had to get around the "make sure it fries the bad guys and not you" problem and they were done. Seems like they might be.

Next up? Solid-state lasers mounted on Humvees that'll fry incoming ordnance. No, really!

Posted by scott at March 07, 2004 03:59 PM

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If it fried those, I would think it might fry others groups of circuits as well. Though with that many cases occurring at once, you can probably rule out coincidence.

Not sure what happened, but I think it'd be cool to know for sure...

Posted by: Ron on March 7, 2004 05:23 PM

They might have been testing circuit-hardening methods, to protect their own circuits from being fried. In order to properly test it, they would have to generate an EMP far more powerful than anyone would be likely to use on the battlefield, and maybe it was powerful enough to escape whatever shielding they used to isolate the test area. (If, indeed, there is any shielding other than distance that would work.)

Posted by: Tatterdemalian on March 7, 2004 09:07 PM

Actually, as I thought about it further, I can come up with a reason those circuits might fry - basically, they're very exposed (at least the input portion is), which could lead to the discrepancy between that and other items not failing.

also, need to take into account the inverse square law. Basically, forces like this tend to lose their power in a ratio that is inversely proportional to the square of their distance from the source. So, if the force that left the base was very powerful, by the time it got to Vegas, it was probably hugely less powerful (by several orders of magnitude), therefore, only sensitive exposed circuits were affected. Just a theory, but I'll sleep better because of it.

Posted by: Ron on March 8, 2004 11:20 AM
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