KIBOSH 'non lethal' sticky-bomb hits a car, fills it with gas

US special operations troops will shortly be armed with a projectile which can be fired from a portable launcher to hit a car or boat some distance off, following which the pocket-size adhesive bomb will release one of several types of "non lethal" gas into the target's interior. The new weapon has been dubbed the "KIBOSH" by …

[Anonymous Coward]

KIBOSH

backronyms FTW

Nothing Further to Add.

[The First Dave]

Death to anyone who says "FTW" !!

[Danny 14]

Indeed.

Death to multiple exclamation marks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've still not managed to work out

what "FTW" bloody well means??!

[Alien8n]

FTW

I'm reliably informed by my Terran to Betelguisian translator that it stands for "For The Win". Although "From The W*nker" is usually more accurate

[Bilgepipe]

"For The Win," an American sporting term, I believe.

[Anonymous Coward]

I always assumed it stood for "Free The World".

No wonder it never really made much sense to me....

[Intractable Potsherd]

Whereas I thought ...

... it meant "Fuck the World" - hence I may have been needlessly negative when I've seen it applied to things!

[TeeCee]

Death to anyone who says "Death to anyone"!

Ohshi.......

+++

NO CARRIER

[Stoneshop]

KIBOSH

Knockout Irreverent Bastards Or Suspect Highwaymen

[Marvin the Martian]

Now you ask us for backronyms!

Lore Sjoberg's Brunching Shuttlecocks is offline since years, so we cannot use the Cyborg Name Generator anymore -- it was built for exactly this purpose.

[TeeCee]

KIBOSH

Kills Incidental, Black Ops Stay Handsclean.

[Monkey Bob]

Kill It Before... Oh SH..........

[Jas 1]

KIBOSH Backronym

Killing Is Bad Only Sleepy Help

[Anonymous Coward]

KIBOSH

Kebab In Batter Olefactory Stench Hammer

The USGov may be interested to know that I can supply large quantities of this product at very reasonable cost. BUPA, on the other hand, will not be.

[Roger Stenning]

Oh for Gods' sake...

here we go again, the US Military is re-inventing the wheel. have they forgotten about the FERRET round?

[AJB]

timescales

deployment 6 months after placing an order? Then it already exists.

[Daniel Garcia 2]

Kill Innocents By Overwhelming Smothering Hiss

[Anonymous Coward]

Non lethal gassing?

Just smuggle my dog into the boot. He can clear a room in seconds.

[theblackhand]

Is this new?

Weren't the royal family using this type of thing in the late nineties?

Let me check back issues of the Daily Express for more details....

[Simon Neill]

Kills It By Oxygen Supplanting, Hello.

Yeah, I don't know where I was going with that.

"which might call its non-lethal nature into question in the case of a speeding car"

Surely its better to maybe kill someone in a car crash than definately kill them with a grenade? Seatbelts, airbags and all. Having been in an 80mph smash, I can tell you its suprising how little damage you take. Nothing broken, nothing bleeding. Shame about the whiplash.

[M7S]

@ Simon Neill

I'm not sure that this would be much comfort to any, perhaps innocent, bystanders as the now "out of control" vehicle mounts the proverbial kerb and ploughs into a queue of children lining up for the school bus.

I'm not saying that in this instance a grenade would be less of a problem but if the item is sold as less lethal it will be thought "safe to use in all circumstances" by some people. Generally I'd be less worried about the SF operators than the more regular grunts to whom this technology would eventually trickle down in any "police actions".

[Anonymous Coward]

many of the VBIEDs use a manual detonator where the driver activates the explosive payload right before impact. A speeding car that does not detonate the few hundred pounds of semtex and ball bearings in the trunk is a lot less dangerous than the one that does go off.

[FunkyEric]

terrorists are renowned for wearing seatbelts and being law abiding citizens ;-)

[Wommit]

Re : FunkyEric

That's absolutely correct. Because that way they don't get picked up and nabbed for something stupid like not wearing a seatbelt, or doing 5mph over the speed limit, or dropping litter, etc. etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Less lethal?

Is there such a thing? Surely it's lethal, "Urrgh! *thud*!" never to rise again or non-lethal "Urrgh! *flop*." might survive assuming no other ailments complicate things. Much like half-dead, no. You're dead or your still alive.

[dr2chase]

Less lethal means exactly what it says

Kills you less often than bullets and grenades, but more often than comfy chairs and fluffy bunnies. A woman in Boston (Victoria Snelgrove) was hit with a "less lethal" round in the eye, and ended up dead.

How much less lethal has a whole lot to do with how the weapon is used. A little pepper spray drifting into your eyes is one thing, a shot down your throat is something else. Shots to the head with any projectile are generally a bad idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

"You're dead or your still alive."

Only a Sith deals in absolutes. What about brain death?

[sisk]

Less lethal

Given that most less lethal weapons have very few (and in a couple cases no) documented fatalities, I'd say the term is applicable. It's a hell of a lot more accurate than the 'non-lethal' term they used to use.

Put another way, which are you less likely to die from: a taser or a bullet? A fragmentation grenade or a flash bang? A sticky bomb spaying sleep gas into your car or a 40mm grenade landing in your lap?

[JohnG]

Mitigation

Drive with the windows down.

[John I'm only dancing]

No need for mitigation

Just cover you car in oil and nothing will stick.

[Tomn8tr]

Kinetic Incident Bashed Ole Shit Heads

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-lethal

or more usefully, non-destructive delivery of lethal force, to preserve that USB key or hard-disk you were after.

A word to would-be terrorists: drive with your windows down.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

PTFE spray on your windows?

might be a countermeasure. Best simply not mess with the black ops guys.

[Paul 172]

err..

"A 12 gramme CO2 cartridge* will produce a mere six litres of gas under standard atmospheric conditions"

so surely the gas will be compressed ?

[Steven Jones]

re errr..

The density of CO2 at atmospheric pressure is 1.98 gm/litre, so 6 litres (at atmospheric pressure) from a 12gm CO2 cartridge would be accurate, however much it was originally compressed.

[No such thing as an Anonymous Coward]

Surströmming*...

in an appropriately sized can, should do the trick. Just need to ensue it explodes on impact and not in the launcher.

* fermented Baltic herring: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surströmming

[tim 4]

OH GOD!!!!!!!!!

i thought that had been banned by the geneva convention in the fifties!

[Parax]

Woot!

That's my Picture of a Google Streetview car used for the front page scrolling banner image for this story... I look forward to my royalties cheque/beer token.

[brym]

KIBOSH

Knowing It'll Be Over Soon Helps

[moonface]

KIBOSH

Warning label: Non lethal gas, do not use in confined spaces, such as Russian theatres.

[Anonymous Coward]

from the web

Kibosh -something that serves as a check or stop.

perhaps its not a (B)ACRONYM but they forgot that caps lock was on....

its origin seems vague http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/kibosh.htm

[Anonymous Coward]

Fotgot to add

That in the good old days of the Ministry of Supply, a British approach to the same idea would have got a name like "Orange Hatstand" or Purple Geranium"

[TeeCee]

Who is the Pink Oboe?

[Stevie]

Bah!

I'll believe it when I see it.

If it hits glass it won't stay attached when it shatters (windshield shots only?), if it hits metal it will have to puncture it without killing someone, and only the roof will work (I suppose the trunk would too, if the vehicle has one) unless the target is a white van.

[Intractable Potsherd]

@Stevie

I was having the same thoughts. In order for this to work, it not only needs to stick, but to have a method of injecting the gas into the car. Now, assuming that it is a standard vehicle, this could be done via a hollow tube with a piercing profile. However, to be sure of getting it into the vehicle and not merely into, say the well-ventilated door cavity of the car, the injector would need to be a good 6" (15cm) long, which means that it is likely to break of bend on impact unless some very tricky deployment mechanism is used.

In addition, there is the risk, if used on a thinner body-cavity, of piercing someone inside (okay, maybe not a huge problem, but think hostages). I doubt that anyone is going to survive several inches of very hard metal followed by an injection of 6 litres of gas (wasn't there a knife that was banned because it injected gas into the wound - something to do with killing polar bears or something?)

Overall, the gas-delivery seems to be somewhat difficult.

[Steven Jones]

Penetration?

So just how will the gas get into the vehicle or building without penetrating it? Drill a hole? Use a tiny, shaped charge? This doesn't sound easy to me given the range of materials and thicknesses it might have to deal with. Also, in a car, it seems to me that opening the windows might rather limit the effectiveness.

There's also the little question of what these gases are meant to do. Forget any ideas of fast-acting "knock out" gases. That's the realm of Batman cartoons. Thinks like tear gas might temporarily disable those in a vehicle or cause them to evacuate it, but they have to bedelivered in reasonably large concentrations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite easy. If your projectile has a narrow needle shaped pointy bit which can penetrate the door inner and outer skins (easy, Ive done it with arrows fired from a recursive bow when I missed and shot one of the bangers in the archery area field) it can inject the gas contents into the interior like that..

Then if said projectile has a larger flanged bit after the injection nozzle, it wont have enough force to poke say a 30mm hole through both skins so will just stop instead of going in and getting stuck in someone.

You could even go very oldschool and put a small point on the rear of the injection nozzle which when impacted by sufficient force as represented by piercing a car inner and outer door skin pierces the seal on your co2 alike container contained in the secondary section of the projectile.

Quite viable I'd say.

Anon because I dont want things stuck in my car doors.

[All names Taken]

Sounds like a lot of kibosh to me

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/kibosh.htm

(where hawking is not a scientist but a means of displacing phlegm from lungs into a gobful of spit about to be launched with a hawking noise?)

Or maybe to conquer or put down?

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kibosh

Probably the best gas is one that does not appear threatening at first whiff but encourages one to question bowel control of one's immediate neighbours?

[Drew V.]

"Kibosh", possibly derived from Yiddish or Hebrew, meaning "to conquer" or "tread down".

They're going to absolutely love these layers of meaning - and the indirect link to Israel - in Iraq, Afghanistan, and any future Middle East theater or war, no mistake about it!

[some vaguely opinionated bloke]

I always spelt it with a Y...

... whenever I have spelt it - which isn't often - with the theory that KYBOSH as a word is a backronym for "Knock Yer Block Off, Shit Head".

This obviously doesn't make much sense when using it in the context of "putting the knock your block off shit head on something", but does sort of fit when used in the context of "if you don't shut up, I'll kybosh".

I did hear - and use - the the word long before hearing the backronym however my usage of the term has mostly been in the former context, with occasional latter context usage.

The specific backronym above may be related to a kids TV program called "Knock Your Block Off" in which opposing children would attempt to punch through or knock down a wall between them and their opponent; within the show (and I seem to recall within the Radio Times) this was abbreviated to KYBO. But that's just my theory.