US Military Tests Non-Lethal Heat Ray 420
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.
split opinion (Score:5, 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.
Fear and cancer (Score:2, Insightful)
Secondly, how long until we discover this causes cancer? Microwaving people is obviously really unsafe, so making them feel their about to set alight must be pretty damn shitty on the old body.
Thirdly, this + metal = ?? If it is real heat it's going to REALLY hurt.
Re:I hate vultures. (Score:1, Insightful)
That is over a long period of time, but we are talking about powers of microwatts or milliwatts at most from 10-34GHz being absorbed. I'd argue that this "heat ray" throws decawatts at a body.
There will be repercussions.
Microwaves not ionizing (Score:2, Insightful)
Microwaves are not ionizing like Ultra-violet, X-rays and other higher energy shorter wave-length radiation. If they really did cause cancer, folks are around airports and other radar (Microwave) installations would have a much higher incidence of cancer than the general population.
"Non-Lethal"??? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Fear and cancer (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh yeah, and that metal thing... yeah, that could be bad.
Here's what I wonder, though (Score:2, Insightful)
On enemy soldiers? If someone is dead set on ventilating your brain, what's to stop them from using some kind of shielding? If it's millimeter wave, it's still possible to block it, for example, with a fine enough metal mesh. You can see through it (poorly) to aim the gun. Plus, guiding a weapon via a periscope isn't exactly a new idea. Any tank or APC includes such devices.
Will it protect against a sniper in Iraq? Well, no, because if you knew where the sniper is, and had LOS for such a device, then you also have LOS to counter-snipe him. In practice they can still shoot once or twice with impunity, then be gone before you even figure out where he was.
So they're going to help, how? Preemptively microwave everything in sight, including kids, pets, retired seniors and everything, just so a possible sniper gets inconvenienced too? Not entirely practicable or sane.
It seems to me like this kind of thing is only useful for one thing: against demonstrators which weren't armed to start with. Yeah, giving a few of those burns will soo make it clear that the USA is there just to bring them democracy and freedom of speech.
Temperatures (Score:2, Insightful)
Torture (Score:4, 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?
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds more like a tool to use on demonstrators who aren't armed, just pesky.
Re:split opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Non-lethal, huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
First, this is a weapon like any other weapon. It can be used poorly and is ultimately a tool of the person that wields it. There are hundreds of more effective and less detectable methods of torture that could be used via 15th century technology. Do you think this is any more dangerous than 100,000 19 year olds running around with machine guns?
Second, stereotyping different states as "back-water" and making baseless assumptions about the humanity of our soldiers is not just ignorant, its potentially harmful. Just because you politically disagree with the war in Iraq doesn't mean you should punish those who have volunteered to serve this country with your disdain. Soldiers do not make policy, and 99.9% of them have no desire to torture anyone. These people are doing a job that is noble, and that requires a lot of sacrifice. If you keep attacking the soldiers instead of the policy then pretty soon we're not going to have anyone volunteering to protect our country from the real dangers of the world.
You are undoubtedly a symptom of the real problems this country faces. You are an ignorant elitist, who bases assumption on conjecture instead of reality. You assume that you are better than everyone else, and that somehow you are the embodyment of humanity, when nothing could be further from the truth. Why any sensibile person would take your comments seriously, or place any merit in them is beyond me.
Please respond in a way that allows me to further stereotype you, so that I can continue to make my point.
Re:Black ice (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:What it'll be used for (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:split opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
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 that case, it seemed to me that if the guards had not had tasers, they would not have escalted to beating him with nightsticks, they'd have had to just haul him out physically. Because they had a non-lethal but very unpleasant weapons, they escalated to that wheras otherwise they might have been more patient.
Something similar might happen with this. You have an unruly crowd: rather than just wait it out as you might currently, instead you microwave them with this device. Thus the non-lethal weapon can result in more force being used rahter than less.
Having said that, if this is being used instead of rubber bullets let alone metal ones it's difficult to see the problem.
And of course it could vastly simplify the manfacture of baked Alaska ; )
Re:Useful Against Insurgencies (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I recall reading somewhere that all who volunteer for being hit by the device are told to remove all metal objects from their persons. So what if someone in the crowd has metal jewelry - would end up welded to their skin?
Re:I hate vultures. (Score:1, Insightful)
Why indeed oppose a weapon that causes excruciating pain but doesn't leave any kind of mark, which you have no chance to run away from, and which is far more useful against groups of people standing in the open than against individual enemies? I can't imagine...
By the way, when'll the handheld "tough questioning" model be coming out?
Ahh yes... more weapons... (Score:0, Insightful)
Makes ya proud, doesn't it?
Re:Torture (Score:2, Insightful)
Non leathal weapons work because they cause momentary pain, not permanent damage (like getting shot). Using your arguement of torture, we'd have to get rid of pepper spray, tazers, stun guns...
Re:split opinion (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, and that you need an iron fist to keep the peace. Right now, all that chaos is very good for the bottom line. As the old joke goes, When you write the check to pay your taxes, remember, there are two L's in Halliburton.
Re:I hate vultures. (Score:5, Insightful)
Untold Details (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Torture (Score:3, Insightful)
Watering down the word "torture" accomplishes nothing good. Any device can be used for torture; circumstances matter.
Re:I hate vultures. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Useful Against Insurgencies (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 against a crowd.
Of course, the same effect could be achieved with older technologies like fire-hoses, teargas, rubber bullets, etc. These have been used in the past as weapons against peaceful demonstrators in order to silence them, so there's no reason to believe the heat-ray wouldn't be used as well.
So, if there are potential dangers to being on the receiving end of this technology, it's probably best that we find them out now, before it is used against large groups of civilians.
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.
Re:split opinion (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.
Please stop the strawman arguments (Score:3, Insightful)
The technology is supposed to be harmless -- a non-lethal way to get enemies to drop their weapons.
Hmm...Peaceful protestors don't carry weapons.
During the first media demonstration of the weapon Wednesday, airmen fired beams from a large dish antenna mounted atop a Humvee at people pretending to be rioters and acting out other scenarios U.S. troops might encounter.
Hmm... Peaceful protestors are not rioters.
They let volunteer reporters experience it, so the public could know what it really did. None of the reporters have so far claimed they were "tortured".
However, I will grant that the device could be abused. But then again, so could a rubber hose, a car battery, or a bamboo cane.
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.
Re:Useful Against Insurgencies (Score:3, Insightful)
Cold-hearted armed and armored U.S. troops in armored vehicles cooking screaming Arab children with a heat ray.
Brilliant.
Re:I hate vultures. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 existence of this weapon.
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!
...and if your friends die? (Score:3, Insightful)
If sectarian violence and civil war is inevitable, why waste the lives of our service men just to postpone it a little longer?
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.