Deere's remote shutdown capability finally comes in handy

[y_p_w]

A lot of cars have kill switches now. I've heard of rentals being disabled when a renter took it out of state against the terms of the rental agreement. And of course OnStar has commercials where they've talked about disabling cars when stolen.

 

[PandaBear]

Explode and injure the occupant is one thing, but perhaps something that explodes and damages the equipment to the point where it's useless might be another. However, that sort of thing usually would have regulatory issues. I for one would hope that cars don't have kill switches like that which will cause small detonations.

They probably can diffuse a road side landmine pretty good as they are military, plus what are you going to do damaging your own equipment when the other side is trying to steal it so you are losing money? They will probably just destroy it if they cannot move it anyways, rather than leaving it perfect in place for you to come back for it.

In a way, it is already lost once the war started and you cannot move it out of the country asap.

 

[y_p_w]

They probably can diffuse a road side landmine pretty good as they are military, plus what are you going to do damaging your own equipment when the other side is trying to steal it so you are losing money? They will probably just destroy it if they cannot move it anyways, rather than leaving it perfect in place for you to come back for it.

In a way, it is already lost once the war started and you cannot move it out of the country asap.

Sure. But the general idea is that others know that it can be done and maybe forget about the effort of stealing equipment into the future. Kind of like Dr Strangelove where both sides set up failsafes to destroy each other automatically with nuclear weapons if a launch was detected. Only they forgot to tell each other about it where there would some deterrence value.

But certainly kill switches are a thing.

https://finance.yahoo.com/video/onstar-kill-switch-ends-pursuit-071009015.html

 

[Wolf359]

Explode and injure the occupant is one thing, but perhaps something that explodes and damages the equipment to the point where it's useless might be another. However, that sort of thing usually would have regulatory issues. I for one would hope that cars don't have kill switches like that which will cause small detonations.

Pretty much nothing out there does that. You never really want a self destruct feature to malfunction although that's what some people claimed an air bag was.

 

[PandaBear]

Sure. But the general idea is that others know that it can be done and maybe forget about the effort of stealing equipment into the future. Kind of like Dr Strangelove where both sides set up failsafes to destroy each other automatically with nuclear weapons if a launch was detected. Only they forgot to tell each other about it where there would some deterrence value.

But certainly kill switches are a thing.

https://finance.yahoo.com/video/onstar-kill-switch-ends-pursuit-071009015.html

For stealing only for profit later that's true (in most civilian thieves), however in a war, if they cannot remove stuff to haul away, most of the time enemy will still do a scorch earth destruction instead.

So in this particular incident, no, if they know they will not be able to haul it away because it was strapped with explosives, they will just destroy it on-site instead of leaving it alone. This is not a bargaining or mutual assured destruction scenario.

 

[zzyzzx]

How the hell did they get the fuel for that long journey?

They probably stole that too.