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US Military Tests Non-Lethal Heat Ray
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jan 25, 2007 08:46 AM
from the assembled-by-acme dept.
from the assembled-by-acme dept.
URSpider writes "CNN and the BBC are reporting on a US military test of a new antipersonnel heat ray. The weapon focuses non-lethal millimeter-wave radiation onto humans, raising their skin surface temperature to an uncomfortable 130 F. The goal is to make the targets drop any weapons and flee the scene. The device was apparently tested on two soldiers and a group of ten reporters, which makes me wonder how thoroughly this thing has been safety tested. The government is also appealing to the scientific community for help in creating another innovative military technology: artificial 'black ice'. They hope to deploy the 'ice' in chase scenarios to slow fleeing vehicles." We discussed the military's certification to use the device last month.
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Science: Millimeter-Wave Weapon Certified For Use In Iraq 806 comments
jdray writes "Wired has a story on the certification of the Active Denial System for use in Iraq. The ADS is a millimeter-wave weapon that uses a reportedly non-lethal energy beam to inflict short-term pain on its targets, encouraging them to leave an area. Experimenters call this the 'Goodbye effect.' I can see using this in a wartime situation, but how long before we see these things mounted to the top of S.W.A.T. vans for domestic crowd control? And, is that a bad idea?" From the article: The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves — 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven... while subjects may feel like they have sustained serious burns, the documents claim effects are not long-lasting. At most, 'some volunteers who tolerate the heat may experience prolonged redness or even small blisters'... There has been no independent checking of the military's claims." Wired used Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain documents on the military's testing program.
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Hearing Voices? Could Be the Lasers 225 comments
An anonymous reader sends us to Wired for a piece about some declassified Pentagon research from 1998 that has been revealed in a freedom-of-information filing. Apparently the Pentagon has investigated lasers that put voices in your head, among other non-lethal technologies such as microwave heating. The report suggests the techniques could be useful for controlling crowds or in negotiations. There is no context for the research or any indication whether it has continued, although the microwave heating bit sounds rather like the Active Denial System we have discussed recently.
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I hate vultures. (Score:5, Funny)
You're worried about the soldiers, right?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I agree (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I agree (Score:5, Funny)
Sure it's true that the lab mice don't get cancer 20 years from now after being shot in the face. Mouse physiology is quite different from ours, though.
In short, I don't think we've done enough carefully controlled human trials with bullets to make your claim. I'd suggest some form of double-blind experiment, shooting several thousand subjects from various socioeconomic classes with blanks and with bullets, and see what the effect on cancer rate is. I'll volunteer for the control group, which doesn't get shot at all. Providing a baseline for the population is probably the hardest job, as it takes the longest amount of time.
Reid
Parent
Re:I agree (Score:4, Insightful)
What will we see with this new weapon? When the crowd in the 'free speech zone' starts getting more vocal than you like, in the old day's you'de just have to have put up with it. Today you can just shoot them with a heat ray until they quieten down and hey! it's non-lethal so it doesn't matter!
Parent
Re:I hate vultures. (Score:5, Informative)
"Does it cause lasting damage?"
And if the military is willing to try it out on news reporters (volunteers all), as they did in the breaking story, they're pretty confident.
"A speculum was needed to hold the eyes open to produce this type of injury because even under anesthesia, the monkeys blinked, protecting the cornea," the report says.
[...]
[T]he Air Force is adamant that after years of study, exposure to MMW has not been demonstrated to promote cancer. During some tests, subjects were exposed to 20 times the permitted dose under the relevant Air Force radiation standard.
"Okay, no lasting damage usually, but how long does the pain last?"
The pain ceases as soon as the beam's no longer on you.
Yet the ADS, like every nonlethal weapon, is heavily scrutinized because of the potential for abuse ("Will the version in the field be as harmless as the one used on reporters?", etc.) and because, presumably, exotic new technologies like this are hard to sell to a skeptical public. Hence, the reporters themselves being subjected to the weapon.
Then, of course, there are those who oppose any new weapon almost on principle. But after reading similar comments at several sites, I have to ask, Why?
Why oppose battlefield (or riot zone) use of the ADS, which can allow our servicemen and -women to stop a suspicious person at long range rather than (A) let the person close distance and potentially harm our troops, or (B) have our servicemen shoot (lethally) first and ask questions later?
It's precisely these ethical and operational questions that lead me to believe that directed energy has a big part to play in future combat operations. Especially once these weapons get smaller (even as small as rifle-sized, perhaps with a battery in the backpack), there are all kinds of potential military applications.
If you can disable people all around a combat zone without killing them--perhaps so you can get in, detain a high-value target and get out--you don't really have to (for example) discriminate between innocent civilians and enemy combatants who dress like civilians. Instead of killing anyone who gets too close to a vehicle convoy (hey, you don't know if he has a bomb strapped to him, or a gun hidden in his clothing), just zap 'im for a few seconds at a few hundred meters (much further than bombs and much effective small arms fire usually reach) and keep moving. Furthermore, if you can make a combatant stop and drop without putting a bullet in him, you're more likely to be able to detain and question him.
That adds up to fewer "collateral" losses of innocents and more flexibility for our troops. Whatever your human rights concerns, aren't the consequences of not having such a system worse?
Heck, if they can miniaturize it, why not allow it in more mundane civilian/police applications? A short shock of pain is better than being shot, and as the North Hollywood bank robbery/shootout illustrated, bullets aren't always as effective as something like the ADS could be.
Parent
Re:I hate vultures. (Score:5, Funny)
But seriously, I would rather have a heat gun pointed at me than tear gas next time I feel like rioting.
Parent
Foil hat? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Foil hat? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Doing anything weekend after next? I've got the itch for a good riot.
Re:Eyes with contacts aren't safe (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I hate vultures. (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone were going to shoot me, I'd much prefer that they hit me with a "pain ray" than a bullet. That's so obvious it goes without saying, which is why most people tend to think that non-lethal weapons are a good thing with no downside.
There is a huge downside. Non-lethal pain-inducing weapons have a massive potential for abuse. Let me relate a few stories:
I saw some cops who had caught a shoplifter outside a supermarket. They had him in cuffs and he was being verbally obnoxious, though not physically dangerous. He made an admittedly very offensive racial insult at one of the cops. She walked right up to him, got out her mace, and blasted him right in the face. He collapsed choking, vomiting, unable to breathe, but the EMTs on the scene were prohibited from helping the guy because it was a non-lethal weapon: his health wasn't actually being threatened.
A student at UCLA [nbc4.tv] who committed the non-violent, non-threatening offense of refusing to show ID, was restrained and shocked repeatedly with a taser. It was caught on video [youtube.com], and the cops were very obviously using the taser as a tool for forcing compliance, not defending themselves against danger. The officer's comment in that article "If he was able to walk out of here, I think he was OK," is especially telling about the police attitude toward taser use.
Non-lethal weapons have the potential to be used in the same way as lethal weapons - namely using force to prevent someone from harming you. But they can also do something that lethal weapons cannot - they can be used for what is effectively torture: the inflicting of serious pain for very minor reasons. Lethal weapons cannot be used this way because shooting or stabbing someone has a very severe, permanent, and noticeable effect.
Officers or soldiers who shoot someone have a lot of explaining to do. There is an identifiable wound, a permanent harm done to them, and because it's easier to hold someone accountable for shooting someone, officers and soliders are much more reserved and judicious in their use of lethal weapons. By contrast, non-lethal weapons are used essentially at a whim, because the perceived severity of their action is both to themselves and the public eye, much lower.
Non-lethal pain-inducing weapons are torture - there's simply no way around it. There are undeniably certain circumstances when torture is preferable to execution, but we must think very carefully about how and where we introduce tools of torture to be used by our military and police - their use must be taken every bit as seriously as lethal weapons.
Parent
Re:I hate vultures. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So your objection is that it might be used for torture? Do you also object to batteries? Water and seranwrap? A long sock with a bar of soap in it? Any tool can be misused, that doesn't detract from it's benefits.
How about perfectly legal, safe, controlled protesting?
That's what I see this being used for. Gov't doesn't like
a). What they're protesting about (IE the protesters are right, the gov't knows it, and doesn't want the word to spread)
b). How many people are involved (same fear as above, word could spread)
So just use a non-lethal weapon that leaves no mark to get rid of the people with no consequences!
That's the issue here, there's a much smaller barrier to disbanding legal protesting than there was before ex
Re:I hate vultures. (Score:5, Insightful)
As standard-issues police/MP armaments? FUCK YES I OBJECT. We're not talking about a generic "tool", we're talking about something specifically designed to be a weapon, given to the police for that express puprose. If a cop was caught walking around with a bar of soap in a sock, there might be some questions asked. But his microwave torture device? He's supposed to have that.
There'll be plenty of other posts on the subject, just like there were in the last article on this weapon, but I'll say it again: The difference between a lethal and non-lethal weapon is not just that you'd rather have the non-lethal weapon used on you, it's also that the police are vastly more likely to use the non-lethal weapon on you!
Especially a weapon that leaves no marks, and thus no proof after the fact that the weapon was in fact used. You don't think that'll be used more recklessly by police than their sidearm any use of which requires extensive justification and accounting for every shot fired? "Huh, those protestors said we used our microwave pain rays? They're lying! Just like they're lying about the first guy to throw a rock being a plain-clothes cop!"
This isn't someone re-purposing a bar of soap and a gym sock as a torture device -- which, if a cop was found walking around with and using, would cause some questions to be asked. This tool's benefit is the same as its downside.
Parent
Re:I hate vultures. (Score:4, Informative)
That's because you're a fool who hasn't listened to a word that I've said.
I oppose spoons being given to the military for the express purpose of being used as torture devices. The day I see riot police brandishing spoons and threatening to harm protestors with them is the day your argument makes a god-damn lick of sense.
This weapon is not some random tool like a tape measure or a screwdriver that could hypothetically be re-purposed for torture, it is a torture device as designed and when used as intended. That is its function -- inflicting pain on human beings en mass and from a distance.
Parent
split opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
that's just the thing (Score:4, Interesting)
The only people against you'd want to use a non-lethal weapon is, well, people you don't want to give a lead poisoning in the first place. Like civilian demonstrations. That's what worries me. It's not a weapon of war, it's a crowd control device. Same as rubber bullets and water hoses, only a level meaner: when was the last time you heard of those used in a battle? It's not the kind of thing you'd win an offensive with, it the kind of thing you'd use to keep people from protesting against a puppet pro-USA dictator.
Parent
Oh, flippin' please (Score:3)
Did it ever occur to you that an embasy is, pretty much by definition, in the middle of another country? You know, _sovereign_ country? You won't be making many friends worldwide if the USA's embasies start frying another country's citizens just because they were making a ruckus in the wrong place.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You're assuming that the Iraqis want to mend their shattered country. Most would be perfectly happy fragmenting it along ethnic lines. The only reason the U.S. is keeping it together is to avoid pissing off Turkey (by creating an independent Kurdistan) and to avoid giving Iran the gift of a nice Shi'ite client state.
Re:split opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We knew exactly what his puropse was. That's precisely why we kept him there for 25 years. And the shah for 26 years in Iran. And Pinoche in Chile, Marcos in the Phillipines, Somoza in Nicaragua...the list goes on. You can blame the damn media for exposing our real intentions and hypocrisy about fomenting "democracy". So now we will foment chaos and destruction to "prove" that we were right in supporting these hooligans,
Re:split opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you even study Vietnam? You can't force people like the ones who live in Iraq to be peaceful, lest you become another Saddam Hussain.
"Iraq" is a stalking horse (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Here's what I wonder, though (Score:5, Insightful)
So, now you're no longer restricted to heating dinner using microwaves, but you're making sure I'm becoming the enemy you're so afraid of. Full of hate and dangerous.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Useful Against Insurgencies (Score:5, Insightful)
I know the kneejerk slashdotters will come out of the woodwork against this, but would you rather have dead people or civilians? It's funny how you guys love technology except when the military invents it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Useful Against Insurgencies (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're uneasy with how evil our leaders are becoming, it doesn't really matter whether they develop new technologies or not, does it?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are degrees of evil.
A lot of the objections over this sort of thing come from the fear that this weapon (and other less-lethal weapons) may be used against crowds of peaceful demonstrators.
The somewhat-but-not-completely-evil authorities might not feel entirely comfortable firing lead into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, but be perfectly fine with using a heat-ray
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Cold-hearted armed and armored U.S. troops in armored vehicles cooking screaming Arab children with a heat ray.
Brilliant.
Don't Forget! (Score:5, Funny)
if i recall correctly (Score:5, Interesting)
so what will happen with the OUCH ray is that someone will get hit in the eyes, and be blinded. or with the black ice, as any hockey player/ fan will tell you, someone will do a perfect backward fall and wind up with a concussion or brain damage
all i'm saying is that the nirvana of the perfect nonlethal crowd control/ imlpement of war is not very easy to obtain. all you do is trade in one kind of potential for damage/ death for another kind of potential for damage/ death. tragedy is not so easily avoided. we don't live in a world where improbable and deadly accidents never happen, and we don't live in a world where everybody has agreed that violence ion the name of advancing yout agenda isn't the answer (no matter what your ideology, from the right or the left)
Raytheon's Silent Guardian (Score:5, Informative)
The most interesting things from that product sheet: And I personally think the most important aspect of this weapon is that it fills the gap between shout and shoot which is a big thing when you think about it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wonderful! So you can shoot yourself without turning the gun around.
unintended consequences and baked Alaska... (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I do think one unintended consequence of non-lethal weapons is what we saw with Tasers when that student was expellend from the university library a couple of months ago. In t
Test it on me! (Score:3, Funny)
Isn't this "ray" easily blocked? (Score:5, Interesting)
Stopping Fleeing vehicles try a HERF Gun (Score:3, Interesting)
and
HERF Gun: Make it in your basement [slashdot.org]
Supposedly the High Energy Radio Frequency (HERF) burst will disrupt all the electronic components in an engine. My understanding is that the Coast Guard is already using these to stop fleeing motor boats (sorry no link) and the air force is researching a HERF weapon to knock all the electronics in a area USAF Detachment 8 Continues US Research Into EMP-Microwave Weapons [defenseindustrydaily.com]
Torture (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Watering down the word "torture" accomplishes nothing good. Any device can be used for torture; circumstances matter.
Please stop the strawman arguments (Score:3, Insightful)
Please stop using strawman agruments. The article said nothing about peaceful protestors. I seriously doubt the military cares about a group of people peacefully singing kumbaya around a campfire, seeing how they have their hands full fighting people with AK-47s and RPGs. Let's s
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds more like a tool to use on demonstrators who aren't armed, just pesky.
The Simpsons quote you're looking for: (Score:4, Funny)
Frink: Why, it's a death ray my good man, behold. (Frink fires death ray)
Grampa: Hey, feels warm, kinda nice.
Frink: Well it's just a prototype, with proper funding I'm confident this little baby could destroy an area the size of New York City.
Grampa: But I want to help people, not kill 'em!
Frink: Oh, well to be honest, the ray only has evil applications. You know my wife will be happy, she's hated this whole death ray thing from day one.
With thanks to The Simpsons Archive [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If soemone is zipping down the freeway you have a god indicator where to deploy this.
Another use would be outside of banks, just to watch robbers fall on their ass as the try to fly.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If that's true, then hooking it up to the mains isn't going to happen.
And you owuld need to hook it into something more powerfull then your 115 in a house. making it even more difficult to find a convienant spot to do that.
Mostly likely use is the drop it into an area, people flee, the military comes in to secure said area.
Also could be deployed from a tank, or other completly enclosed vehical.
People see
Re: (Score:3, Informative)