BRING THE PAIN

Can we have our pain ray now, please?
Yesterday, Iraqi insur­gents got a big wish ful­filled, when an American mil­i­tary heli­copter fir­ing into a crowd of civil­ians, killing a dozen or more.
Some say the Iraqis, who were loot­ing an aban­doned Bradley Fighting Vehicle, fired on the copter first. Some say oth­er­wise. It doesn’t mat­ter, really; either way, the U.S. winds up look­ing more bru­tal and less legit­i­mate — in Iraq eyes.
But what choice did the American gun­ner have? When U.S. sol­diers are faced with a hos­tile crowd, they only have, broadly speak­ing, two options for break­ing it up: the bull­horn or the machine gun. Words or bul­lets. Deadly force, or no force at all.
What’s need instead is a weapon that falls some­where in between. That shoots to hurt, not to kill. That dri­ves away loot­ers, with­out dri­ving up casu­alty counts.
A microwave-​​like pain ray, let’s say.
Fortunately, such a weapon is already deep into devel­op­ment. It’s called the Active Denial System, or ADS. And, by fir­ing electro-​​magnetic waves that pen­e­trate just a 64th of inch beneath the skin, ADS cre­ates a burn­ing sen­sa­tion that tends to make peo­ple run the other way, fast.
A Humvee-​​mounted ADS pro­to­type is expected to be ready by the end of the year, with bud­get deci­sions made in 2005.
But, whether ADS is accepted or not, atti­tudes about non-​​lethal weapons have to change. Right now, the Pentagon’s divi­sion devoted to such weapons gets about $44 mil­lion a year out of a $400 bil­lion bud­get. That’s to sup­port the devel­op­ment of new weapons, and not build up stock­piles of exist­ing ones, like stun grenades and rubber-​​ball-​​packed clay­mores.
These weapons often stay in ware­houses, rather than get used in the field, how­ever. As a com­bat zone grows increas­ingly hos­tile, com­man­ders often become reluc­tant to use the weapons. It’s like bring­ing a knife to a gun fight, they argue.
But that kind of atti­tude can play right into the hands of insur­gents, gen­er­at­ing the kind of ugly reports we are all read­ing today. Sometimes, in the mid­dle of a gun fight, a knife is exactly what’s needed.
THERE’S MORE: “You seem to assume that weapons such as the microwave device you describe will be used only for the pur­poses intended, and that their effects will gen­er­ally be less harm­ful than more directly lethal devices,” writes World Without Secrets author Richard Hunter.

But what hap­pens if the peo­ple faced with such a weapon can’t just run away? What hap­pens if they’re trapped in a crowd, and the crowd can’t move? How much pain must that crowd endure? How long can any mem­ber of the crowd be exposed to that weapon before his or her skin — or their eyes — sim­ply cook off?
What hap­pens if the devices are used delib­er­ately in a man­ner designed to cause max­i­mum harm — say, by train­ing the device on pris­on­ers trapped in prison cells until they lit­er­ally go mad with pain?
What hap­pens if the sys­tem oper­a­tor turns up the power? A lit­tle bit works well, why not try a lot?
What hap­pens if the sci­en­tists didn’t test the devices thor­oughly, and they turn out to ren­der any­one touched by them blind, or impo­tent, or ster­ile?
I need a lot of con­vinc­ing before I believe that weapons designed expressly to cause pain are humane.

Fair points, all. A sys­tem like Active Denial cer­tainly would have the poten­tial for abuse. But at least there would be the pos­si­bil­ity of using the weapon non-​​lethally — a pos­si­bil­ity which doesn’t really exist today with an M-​​16.
AND MORE: “Killing is in our inten­tions, not our weapons,” says Defense Tech reader JMW. When faced with an adver­sary, “the indi­vid­ual sol­dier has to decide whether to kill or to take a pris­oner. This has noth­ing to do with arma­ment.” Aim a pis­tol at the knees, and it’s just about as non-​​lethal as a pain ray.

There are NO “non­lethal” weapons when in the hands of mil­i­tary per­son­nel. Weapons which dis­able or con­fuse enemy troops are those used to pre­pare sub­se­quent removal of threats by lethal force. This was the clas­si­cal use of poi­son gas dur­ing WWI and in the Iran-​​Iraq War. When non­lethal arms are avail­able, one pre­vents enemy weapon use non­lethally, and then applies the lethal force. Of course, what­ever the weaponry, if cap­ture is fea­si­ble, it will be car­ried out; it doesn’t mat­ter whether non­lethal alter­na­tives are avail­able — and they load down our com­bat­ants with inef­fec­tive equip­ment.
This dif­fers from police use, where the objec­tive is law enforce­ment, not killing, threat removal, or cap­ture of facil­i­ties (we hope). 

AND MORE: “Whatever hap­pened to good old-​​fashioned tear gas?” asks Defense Tech reader RR. A few rounds of tear gas into a crowd does a great job of chang­ing the crowd’s pri­or­i­ties. Safe, cheap, and effective.”

September 13th, 2004 | Less-lethal | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.