PAIN RAY, FUNKY FOAM COULD EASE IRAQ WOES

A slew of new tech­nolo­gies may give the American mil­i­tary non-​​lethal ways to slow down ter­ror incur­sions in Iraq: A fast-​​hardening foam could ren­der muni­tions stock­piles use­less; a portable net­ting sys­tem could stop vehi­cles in their tracks; and a microwave-​​like “pain ray” could scat­ter a crowd with­out a drop of blood being spilled.
But there are still a num­ber of tech­ni­cal and bureau­cratic hur­dles these sys­tems have to leap before they make it into Iraq. The foam and the net­ting have to go through the long, hard slog that is the Pentagon’s buy­ing chain. The pain-​​ray deliv­ery sys­tem must be shrunk down to fit on the back of a Humvee. And, oh yeah, mil­i­tary researchers want to make sure it doesn’t cause can­cer or any­thing, either.
Today, U.S. forces do have a few non-​​lethal weapons–devices that are designed to hurt, not to kill–in their arse­nal. Some of these have been dis­trib­uted to Iraq, includ­ing electricity-​​firing tasers, rub­ber bul­lets and old-​​fashioned riot batons.
But “the state of the art for non-​​lethal is prim­i­tive,” said Charles “Sid” Heal, an author­ity on non-​​lethal weapons who is a com­man­der in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “There’s noth­ing out there with what the mil­i­tary con­sid­ers suf­fi­cient range pro­vid­ing ade­quate pro­tec­tion against a lethal coun­ter­mea­sure.” Rubber bul­lets, flash-​​bang grenades and other non-​​lethal weapons travel only a few hun­dred feet.
But the pain ray being devel­oped by the Air Force Research Laboratory, with a reported range of more than 700 yards, could make the grade. Officially des­ig­nated the Active Denial System, the sys­tem fires millimeter-​​wave elec­tro­mag­netic energy–like microwaves but in a dif­fer­ent band­width. Penetrating just a 64th of inch beneath the skin, the waves feel “like a hot iron on you,” Heal said.
The burn­ing sen­sa­tion is bad enough that peo­ple have to run away from them, quick. And that causes mobs to break up in a hurry. It’s no won­der, then, why Heal calls the ray the “Holy Grail of crowd con­trol.“
My Chicago Tribune arti­cle has details.

December 20th, 2003 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.