To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. MILESTONE1 well as with the higher speeds of highway and interstate pursuits.” There are other factors to consider, too. Officers need to be ahead of the chase and figure out where the suspect is likely to go before placing the strips on the roadway. They have to place the device strategically. Officers have even been struck and killed by pursuing police cars in their attempts to remove the spike strips from the pursuing car’s paths after the strips disabled the fleeing vehicle. to generate the huge amounts of counterforce needed to stop a heavy moving vehicle, Martínez decided that it was enough to just ensnare the rotating components beneath it and stop the axles from turning. The SQUID is designed to release a mass of tentacles that entangle the axles, effectively bringing the vehicle to a screeching halt. An officer could lay down a road trap in seconds and activate it remotely from a nearby hiding place “One of the benefits of SQUID is that it can be put in place at any time,” said John Verrico, spokesman for the Science and Technology (S&T) directorate of the Department of Homeland Security. “The roadway can remain open to normal traffic right up to the moment that the target vehicle arrives. This protects the officers and innocent commuters, does not disrupt traffic and also does not raise suspicion of the perpetrator. Once the target vehicle nears, the SQUID is activated remotely. This deploys the initial arms, which spread out across the roadway. The arms have small barbs, which will catch on the tires and begin to get wrapped on the wheel. The rest of the action is automatic. SQUID senses the vehicle over it and deploys the tentacles, which shoot up into the undercarriage and get entangled in the drive shaft and other rotating parts. The tentacles are also attached to the larger arms, so the whole contraption works like a three-point harness. The overall effect is like applying the brakes. It stops the vehicle without spinning it out of control.” While it might sound like science fiction, the device is very real and may be operational in the field as soon as 2010. In a demonstration held last summer, a SQUID prototype safely stopped a pickup truck going 35 miles per hour. Currently, the team is working on making it lighter and more affordable and plans to work on making it more rugged, reliable and capable of reloading. That work is expected to take the rest of the year and is being funded by S&T’s Small Business Innovation Research Office. “The SQUID technology can be made or designed to many embodiments so it may look like anything that you may see in a roadway. The key is that, aside from the users (the military, law enforcement, etc.) no one (i.e. the bad guys) knows what may spring up from the roadway and snatch them,” said Martínez. The SQUID’s developers believe that the device represents a breakthrough because it ensures complete operational safety. The portable version can be placed on a roadway at any time,and a more permanent version can even be implanted in a roadbed or speed bump,such as in a border crossing or the entry road to a facility. The device has already caught the attention of state and local police, as well as federal agencies such as Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Before it can be actively marketed, though, the team will have to prove to law enforcement officers that it has the mettle to halt a 5,000-pound vehicle in its tracks,about the heft of a Ford F-150 pickup, speeding at 120 miles per hour. Martínez hopes that this spidery cephalopod will spawn a generation of non-lethal offspring technologies that can stop moving targets on land and sea and in the air, all based on the same sticky principle. A Safe Personnel Directed Ensnarement Restraint (SPIDER) would much more closely resemble what Spiderman would do. Sea versions of the SQUID—tentatively named SeaSQUID—could ensnare drug running and pirate boats. HST The SQUID solution There’s a critical need for a non-lethal technology that can halt fleeing suspects without endangering lives,and Martín Martínez, president of Engineering Science Analysis Corp. (ESA) of Tempe,Ariz.,believes that he has just the right answer. Inspired by both Spiderman and the sea-based squid, the company has come up with a very novel technology—a device that reaches up from below to trap and halt any fleeing vehicle— from a MINI Cooper to a Ford Expedition right in its tracks. Appropriately called the Safe Quick Undercarriage Immobilization Device (SQUID), the current prototype, conceived and developed by ESA, resembles a small wheel of cheese filled with holes. Like its oceanic namesake, the 1.5-footwide disc has been designed to ensnare its prey with sticky tendrils; moreover, these tendrils will stretch to absorb the kinetic energy of a moving target just like Spiderman’s webbing. “From Border Patrol, Customs and Law Enforcement, we learned that one of the keys to minimizing collateral damage associated with fleeing drivers was to stop the Chase before it starts,’” said Martínez. Instead of tackling the question of how Register online today for exclusive online content and eNewsletters Homeland Security Today Magazine | May 2009 17