Everyone's favourite knockabout security minister, Admiral Lord West of Spithead, has stunned the nation today by unveiling a net-flinging entanglement "bazooka" which he considers suitable for use on "topless lovelies" who "have had too much to drink".

No, really. Listeners to the BBC's Today programme this morning had the pleasure of a report from Horsea Island in Portsmouth harbour, where the admiral was overseeing tests of a "futuristic bazooka" intended to stop speedboats without harming their occupants. The idea is that such technology might be used to tackle kamikaze boat-bomb attackers like those who struck the USS Cole nearly nine years ago in Yemen.

Asked whether it might not, in such a situation, be appropriate to open fire with lethal weapons on a boat refusing orders to stop, Lord West said this wasn't always appropriate.

"Lets say now we're off Weymouth in 2012 and we're doing the Olympic games, and we suddenly find a boat," he told the Beeb, adding that there were "stupid individuals" about at such times - offering as an example "a bunch of topless lovelies heading around having had too much to drink".

In that case one might deploy the entanglement bazooka, actually a pneumatic line-thrower adapted to lob a length of specially tangly rope across the bows of a speeding boat. Having passed under the boat's keel, this would then foul the boat's propellor inextricably and so bring it to a halt without the need for any violence. The corporate vid above shows the Sea Scorpion, an example of such technology, in action. The Reg understands that new versions are forthcoming which are able to stop pump-jet/waterjet boats, as well as those with ordinary propellors.

The Home Office Scientific Development Branch (HOSDB), in charge of the boat-fouling bazooka project, is engaged in a series of trials at various locations around the country. ®

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