Russian troops occupying the Ukrainian city of Melitopol stole nearly $5 million of farm vehicles from a John Deere dealership and shipped some of them more than 700 miles to Chechnya, CNN reported, only to find they had been rendered useless by a remote-locking system that prevented the thieves from turning the equipment on.
Two compound harvesters, valued at $300,000 each, as well as 27 other tractors, seeders, and additional pieces of equipment were stolen from the dealership. But the remote access technology of the equipment, which allows for GPS tracking and some of the vehicles to be remotely operated, prevented them from being used.
“When the invaders drove the stolen harvesters to Chechnya, they realized that they could not even turn them on, because the harvesters were locked remotely,” a source familiar with the incident told CNN.
Your reminder that the Russian military has a centuries-old tradition of rape and looting. What for other armies are crimes committed in uniform, for the Russians is simply a reward.
And I would not praise the forethought of John Deere for two reasons: They will use this as example why people do not have the right to fix the equipment they bought from them and two, the software used by farmers to bypass the locks used by John Deere and be able to repair the machines paid with their own effing money come from that part of the world.
Those harvesters will be up and running in no time.
Hat Tip Zeigfriedwhiffle
it might take a week of work, but I bet those machines are up and running by the end of the month. simple enough to rip out all the computer gear and replaced it with old school points, plugs and coil. bet on it.
a couple of gearheads will make a lot of money doing just that.
You won’t be getting a 9R 540 or S790 running with points and condensers. I doubt you would even be able to get them running be swapping out the entire injection system and replace it with a P-pump and mechanical injectors.
It’ll be a software bypass of the nanny features just like the shops that we’re doing deletes on Regen/DEF/DPF/EGR stuff on Powerstroke/Duramax/Cummins trucks . . . not like the Chechens are worried about getting the boys in Moline to honor the warranty.
I would be very interested to see if they manage to keep all of the “intelligent” ag stuff on there as well (at least as much as possible).
Kind of reminds me of the possible issues with so-called smart guns.
I’ll be the contrarian, and bet that they probably won’t.
Those they do get running won’t run for very long.
Will John Deere also be able to shut down such equipment when a governor like Whitmer declares a health emergency and further declares “small farms” non essential and orders them not to work, i.e. run their tractors around the farm? Covid 202* is coming soon…
Farm equipment, trucks, cars, motorcycles, airplanes, anything computer controlled, will soon be capable of being shutdown at the whim of demoncrat zealots, for any whimsical reason they want too. Lightbulbs, thermostats, iceboxes, washers/dryers, everything has computer chips controlling them.
It’s worth noting that the primary suppliers of John Deere jail breaks are Ukrainian and unlikely to knowingly sell to Chechen looters.
Of course those same Ukrainian hackers might decide to emulate their countrymen who hacked Russian car chargers