How to prevent ramming attacks....

[kerbie18]

Myself, and my superiors are looking for ideas to prevent ramming attacks. As previously noted in my last thread, we used well placed dump trucks with good results. And by good results, nobody rammed my innocent people that night, so yay we won that night, woo hoo.

What I didn't mention is we also placed our very own take home poilice cars in the way of rammers, in some cases several cars deep. We even had lesser paid employees, such as school crossing guards, even leave their personal cars as cannon fodder blocking the road for a ramming attack. This is, to say the least, less than ideal. 

Yep, ramming attacks are a total learning curve for us. We are trying to adapt. We have adapted a lot to ramming attacks, but not enough. Reasonable! suggestions are much loved. 

Just so you know, killing everyone with a sniper rifle is the opposite of a reasonable suggestion. 

[jfost11]

https://barriers.miframsecurity.com/products/mvb-3x/

 

[kerbie18]

18 minutes ago, jfost11 said:

https://barriers.miframsecurity.com/products/mvb-3x/

 

Wow, a totally reasonable idea right off the bat. I expected 50 dumbass ideas first before I got an actual intelligent suggestion.

[Eric]

I  would position officers with 12-gauge slug guns at the approaches. Those slugs will work equally well on the assailant and his vehicle. 

[kerbie18]

7 minutes ago, kerbie18 said:

Wow, a totally reasonable idea right off the bat. I expected 50 dumbass ideas first before I got an actual intelligent suggestion.

In reply to myself (yes I know). A totally reasonable and scientific idea...that will never be accepted by my local government. I will never get to do that in a million years, because politics.

[jfost11]

4 minutes ago, kerbie18 said:

In reply to myself (yes I know). A totally reasonable and scientific idea...that will never be accepted by my local government. I will never get to do that in a million years, because politics.

Because risking damage to vehicles that will have to be replaced with taxpayer money is always better than buying something that is built for the job.

[kerbie18]

37 minutes ago, Eric said:

I  would position officers with 12-gauge slug guns at the approaches. Those slugs will work equally well on the assailant and his vehicle. 

I would somewhat question if slug guns can really stop a suddenly ramming semi-truck, but I like your thinking better than almost everyone on this point.

[railfancwb]

Add rows of spike strips to the mix. 

[Batesmotel]

I took the USMC Tactical Driving class in the 80s. Ramming attacks are a serious bitch to defend against. Especially with large vehicles.  We were taught some nasty things to do with vehicles and how to penetrate defenses. 
 

Hardening a building or other fixed position is simple but takes a lot of concrete and steel. More if you harden approaches and make them curved instead of straight. 
 

What do we do? Harden everything? Restrict parades and other public gatherings to hardened areas?

I wish I had a good answer and hope someone comes up with realistic and viable solutions. 
 

Like I said, we learned some real nasty **** that can be done with vehicles. I am surprised we have not had more numerous and much more serious attacks. 

[tous]

Contact your local Army National Guard unit and explain the problem.

A modern military spends 98% of its time planning for war, 2% actually fighting the war and militaries plan for and anticipate every threat you can imagine and some you cannot, then they draw up plans to counter them.

Given the emphasis for the past 20 years on urban warfare and asymmetric combat, the Army and Marines have thought long and hard about your scenario and have ways to stop it, from the ridiculous such as an air strike to the sublime; sentry shoots the attacker in the eye, vehicle slows to a  halt.

Good luck, amigo.

[holyjohnson]

solution has existed for Years.

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/ithacas-roadblocker-special-purpose-police-shotgun

as shitty as it sounds 2 Cruisers blocking either end of the route with Mag 10s, Fire Trucks Ambulances Etc. Blocking any other means of entry by side streets

Rollers on Parade setting for the Kids Entertainment.

seems an Economical and Convenient way as everything is available and already in use.

[tous]

15 minutes ago, Batesmotel said:

... I am surprised we have not had more numerous and much more serious attacks.

Noting the intelligence of the past terrorist attacks, from the Boston Marathon Bombing to the most recent evil ******* in Wisconsin, these people are not tactical or strategic geniuses; I suggest most are barely literate and couldn't plan and execute  their way out of a paper bag, or to use one of my favorite expressions, they couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

11 September, 2001 was well planned and executed

Waukesha seems more like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum -- strictly an emotion of the moment act.

Sadly, it makes no difference to those killed or maimed.

 

[Batesmotel]

The problem with shooting a vehicle is you might kill the driver. Improbable but possible. You might stop the engine. But a 2 oz slug will not stop a multi ton vehicle if it is already underway. 

[jfost11]

Not trying to sell the things. I just like seeing stuff get destroyed.

 

Or just get some Czech hedgehogs.

[Huaco Kid]

[LostinTexas]

Wouldn't be a total stop, but would slow things immensely. Strategic deployment of caltrops.  Cheap, simple, effective.

Unfortunately, they are illegal here, but so are many of the tools police use., at least to the commoners. Y'all get all the good stuff.

[Fog]

The only thing that stops a moving mass is a bigger mass.

I have first hand experience with warning a government agency about the vulnerability to vehicle attacks in a threat assessment, only to see that very attack happen weeks later exactly as I warned.

Naturally, they double checked that I had nothing to do with it, I guess because it was considered too prophetic, or something. Damned if you do...

After they repaired all the damage from that I was asked to do another assessment. To this day they have not fixed most of the vulnerabilities, but they did add some big ugly concrete planters, with gaps wide enough to drive through.

We used rolling mass, trucks, busses, MRAPs, Stryker, fire trucks. Also modular concrete blocks, jersey barrier, sand bags, bulk totes full of water, piles of dirt. It just has to make them think they can't get through, that stops the ones dumb enough to forget how to math.

[tous]

kerbie, I am certain that you and your colleagues know this well, but it is not satisfying to plan on how to stop a bullet after it has been fired, rather, one wants to stop the bullet from leaving the muzzle, no?

Stop the attack at the actor's planning stage, mot the execution stage.

Sounds simple, yet is implausible.  There are not enough law enforcement personnel to watch over every possible miscreant planning a violent, probably fatal attack.  Consider the school shooting in Michigan. The actor walks out of the principle's office, gets a weapon and proceeds to kill and wound.  I object to calling the act a school shooting; it was murder and aggravated assault; the school was not a victim, now was the school shooting.  It was a depraved human -- murderer.

How do we stop such acts of evil before they can be carried out?

First, enforce the laws against battery and threats, especially on social media.  There is no First Amendment or federal, state or local law that allows one to state, "I'm coming over to kill every white person I can find."  Track the actor down, arrest them, indict them, try them.  If there is the threat of punishment, consequences for their actions, 90% of the soy boys and social justice warriors in their Mom's basement will quake in fear at the mere thought of doing as they do now.

I cannot publicly announce, "I plan to murder all of the women, gays, Muslims, Africans and Mexicans I can," without consequence.

Neither should the other side be allowed to threaten me or anyone else in a tweet.

Stop them before they kill, then you don't have to stop them while they are killing.

[tous]

30 minutes ago, Fog said:

The only thing that stops a moving mass is a bigger mass.

Negative, Ghost Rider.

An equal or greater force, which can be energy,  can stop a mass that has momentum.

 

Revised with an example.

Take a mass, from a single atom to an M4 Sherman tank, amount of mass is irrelevant, and accelerate it on a vector  perpendicular to the Earth's surface, i.e., straight up in the air.

The velocity and thus, the momentum of the mass begins to decrease immediately and consistently until the force (gravity)  has retarded the momentum of the mass equal to the remaining energy of the mass.  The mass then begins to change vectors 180 degrees, .i.e., it starts to fall back to Earth and continues to accelerate along  the new vector until it encounters another mass, the planet, and comes to a halt.

 

 

 

[LostinTexas]

Stop geeking tous.

[Eric]

2 hours ago, kerbie18 said:

I would somewhat question if slug guns can really stop a suddenly ramming semi-truck, but I like your thinking better than almost everyone on this point.

Brenneke Penetrator slugs are 1-1/3 ounces of super-hard lead, traveling at 1,650fps. The company designed them to penetrate just about anything, including engine blocks. If you put a few rounds into the center of the engine compartment, you stand a good chance of killing the engine. If instead though you put a few rounds into the driver's area of the vehicle, the slugs are not going to get deflected or slowed down much by the vehicle's glass or cabin structure, or by the driver's structure.

[Fog]

50 minutes ago, tous said:

Negative, Ghost Rider.

An equal or greater force, which can be energy,  can stop a mass that has momentum.

 

Revised with an example.

Take a mass, from a single atom to an M4 Sherman tank, amount of mass is irrelevant, and accelerate it on a vector  perpendicular to the Earth's surface, i.e., straight up in the air.

The velocity and thus, the momentum of the mass begins to decrease immediately and consistently until the force (gravity)  has retarded the momentum of the mass equal to the remaining energy of the mass.  The mass then begins to change vectors 180 degrees, .i.e., it starts to fall back to Earth and continues to accelerate along  the new vector until it encounters another mass, the planet, and comes to a halt.

 

 

 

True dat, but in practical application relative to subject matter of this here thread of bytes, he's going to need mass. 

Or, perhaps a really really big fire hose.

[Eric]

1 hour ago, Batesmotel said:

The problem with shooting a vehicle is you might kill the driver. Improbable but possible. You might stop the engine. But a 2 oz slug will not stop a multi ton vehicle if it is already underway. 

Killing the engine is a good start though. The vehicle will only lose enertia at that point and it instantly becomes a hell of a lot harder to aim it. Some well-aimed gunfire shouldn't be the whole plan, but it should certainly be in the mix.

[tous]

Dang it, amigo.

Now I'm sitting here with my slide rule calculating what volume of water and at what pressure one needs to stop a Ford SUV traveling at 30  miles per hour.

[Eric]

Personally, I never understood why cops stopped carrying rifled slug guns. They will cure what ails you.