The Starchase Pursuit Management system uses a special tracking device shot from a cannon to track suspect vehicles. High-speed chases may now be a thing of the past.
(Starchase Pursuit Management video)
All police have to do is hit a button inside their vehicle and a lid pops up from the car's grille and a tracking bullet shoots out and sticks to the car in front.
“If you had told me 16 years ago that I would have had a cannon on the front of my car, I wouldn't have believed it,” US Trooper Tim Sieleman told the Des Moines Register.
Mr Sieleman said they were able to use the technology only last week during a pursuit in western Iowa.
“I was able to tag a vehicle and back completely out of” the chase, he said. “We shut it down, tracked him over into Omaha.
“After they think the officer has disengaged, they back down to normal speeds to blend in with traffic so they don't get noticed again,” Mr Sieleman said.
The police fleet in Iowa only has one vehicle equipped with the technology, largely because each system costs $US5000 ($5211) and each round is $US500. However there are plans to install the technology into five more cars very soon.
In Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Obiwan Kenobi fights with infamous bounty hunter Jango Fett on the cloner planet Kamino. When Fett takes off in his ship Slave I, Obiwan throws a homing beacon that attaches itself to Fett's ship.
The Jedi homing beacon tracking device allows Obiwan to follow Fett through both hyperspace and heavy asteroid fields. No word on these capabilities for the Starchase device.
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