Public DHS material on CVSC so far does not give quantitative data on human exposure or detailed test results for people on targeted boats. It only says the goal is to stop vessels “without undue risk” to Coast Guard crews or passengers. High‑energy microwave/ RF stopping systems in general are designed to focus energy on electronics rather than people, but they still create strong electromagnetic fields near the target. Existing international safety standards for radio‑frequency exposure (such as ICNIRP 2020 and IEEE C95.1) define limits to prevent tissue heating and nerve stimulation; a system intended for operational use would normally need to be engineered and tested against those limits, including modeling how fields behave around a small boat and operator. Open sources on HPM vessel‑stopping research (e.g., Naval Surface Warfare Center studies) emphasize “zero‑to‑low risk of human injury” but likewise do not publish detailed human bioeffects test data. In short, DHS has publicly committed to “no undue risk,” but specific human‑exposure testing protocols or results for CVSC have not yet been disclosed in public documents, so potential effects on people on the target vessel remain unclear from available information.
The CVSC program is still in the prototype / demonstration phase, so specific, published “rules” for its operational use do not yet exist. DHS and DoD documents indicate that, if fielded, CVSC would be treated as a non‑lethal or “intermediate force” tool and therefore governed by existing U.S. Coast Guard and DHS use‑of‑force frameworks: • DHS’s 2023 Department Policy on the Use of Force sets department‑wide rules that force must be objectively reasonable, necessary, and proportional, with special care for intermediate-force and non‑lethal technologies. • The Coast Guard’s Maritime Law Enforcement Manual and related use‑of‑force instructions (COMDTINST series) apply these principles to boardings and vessel interdictions. • As a directed‑energy, engine‑disabling tool for non‑compliant craft, CVSC would also fall under broader DoD “Intermediate Force Capabilities” guidance (e.g., JIFCO’s Directed Energy Vessel Stopper fact sheet and DoD non‑lethal weapons policy), which requires minimization of collateral damage and human injury. No CVSC‑specific oversight body is mentioned publicly, but any deployment would have to comply with these existing use‑of‑force, test‑and‑evaluation, and safety review processes within DHS and the Coast Guard.
Neither the DHS feature article nor the CVSC fact‑sheet gives numeric performance specifications such as range, beam width, or weather limits; those details appear to be withheld. The article only describes line‑of‑sight engagements from a pursuing boat and notes that the December 2025 test produced “almost instantaneous” shutdown of a tethered jet ski after fixing a cable and increasing pulse repetition rate. Comparable high‑power‑microwave vessel‑stopping efforts (e.g., the Navy/Joint Intermediate Force Capabilities Office “Directed Energy Vessel Stopper” and earlier NSWC Dahlgren HPM research) are designed to work at tactically useful but still relatively short ranges (on the order of hundreds of meters) and require fairly clear line‑of‑sight to the target engine area; their effectiveness can be reduced by distance, mis‑aiming, and environmental factors like heavy sea‑spray, rain, or rough seas that change the boat’s orientation. For CVSC specifically, DHS says the “next prototype” will refine “power levels, ranges and safety parameters,” which confirms that operational range and environmental envelopes are still under development and not yet publicly specified.
The only publicly cited evidence for “no permanent damage” in the DHS article is the test behavior of the single jet ski used at NAWS China Lake: during the September demonstration the CVSC prototype shut the engine down multiple times; each time the engine could be restarted and shut down again. DHS states this “show[ed] that there was no permanent damage to the craft.” No additional detail is provided about post‑test inspections (e.g., electronic diagnostics, teardown of the engine control unit, or long‑term reliability testing). Earlier Navy/NSWC Dahlgren high‑power‑microwave vessel‑stopping work similarly reported the goal of disabling motors with “minimal collateral damage” and “zero‑to‑low risk of human injury,” but open literature still does not describe exhaustive post‑exposure diagnostics. From public information, the claim of no permanent damage is based on repeated successful restarts in short‑term testing, not on published, independent engineering assessments.
DHS has not yet published a CVSC‑specific policy on who may operate it, but if the system is fielded it would almost certainly be treated like other Coast Guard non‑lethal / intermediate‑force capabilities used in maritime law enforcement. In practice, that means: • Authorized users: U.S. Coast Guard personnel assigned to units equipped with CVSC (e.g., cutters, patrol boats, or specialized teams) who are trained and qualified under Coast Guard law‑enforcement and use‑of‑force programs. • Legal authority: The Coast Guard’s statutory law‑enforcement authority under 14 U.S.C. § 522 allows officers to board, search, seize, and arrest on vessels under U.S. jurisdiction to enforce federal law. Disabling a non‑compliant vessel’s engine to stop it would fall within that enforcement authority, subject to use‑of‑force rules. • Rules of engagement / use of force: Force must be objectively reasonable and proportional under DHS’s department‑wide use‑of‑force policy, Coast Guard law‑enforcement manuals, and any theater‑specific rules of engagement when operating as a military force. CVSC would be used as an intermediate, non‑lethal option to stop a fleeing or threatening vessel when lesser measures (warnings, lights/sirens, radio calls) are insufficient and before resorting to potentially lethal force like live fire at the engine. No public document yet spells out CVSC‑specific ROE, but it would operate within these existing legal and doctrinal frameworks.
Public DHS documents on CVSC do not discuss countermeasures or collateral effects in detail. From what is known about high‑power‑microwave / high‑power‑RF vessel‑stopping systems in general: • Countermeasures: Engine and control electronics can be hardened or shielded (e.g., metal enclosures, filters, surge protectors) to reduce susceptibility to RF pulses. Research by NSWC Dahlgren and DoD on HPM vessel stopping explicitly notes that modern “hardened” or well‑shielded electronics are harder to disable, and part of the design challenge is overcoming such protection while still being non‑lethal. • Unintended effects on nearby electronics: Because the system radiates powerful RF energy, other electronics within or near the beam (navigation instruments, radios, GPS receivers, other small boats close by) could potentially experience interference or malfunction if they are within the effective field strength. DoD fact‑sheets on the Directed Energy Vessel Stopper emphasize that it is intended as a “non‑destructive” capability focused on target engines, but they do not deny the possibility of collateral disruption of electronics. DHS’s CVSC fact sheet simply states the goal is to disable a fleeing vessel “from a safe distance” and “without undue risk” to Coast Guard crews and passengers; it does not yet indicate how thoroughly collateral electronic effects or adversary counter‑hardening have been modeled or tested. So these issues are recognized in the broader HPM literature but have not been transparently documented for CVSC specifically.