Last year, Noah wrote about a Defense Department nonlethal “pain ray” called the Active Denial System (ADS).
Now, British magazine New Scientist reveals that investigators testing the system are insisting tons of safety precautions that “raise concerns about how safe [ADS] would be if used in real crowd-control situations”:
The experimenters banned glasses and contact lenses to prevent possible eye damage to the subjects, and in the second and third tests removed any metallic objects such as coins and keys to stop hot spots being created on the skin. They also checked the volunteers’ clothes for certain seams, buttons and zips which might also cause hot spots.
The ADS weapon’s beam causes pain within 2 to 3 seconds and it becomes intolerable after less than 5 seconds. People’s reflex responses to the pain is expected to force them to move out of the beam before their skin can be burnt.
But Neil Davison, co-ordinator of the non-lethal weapons research project at the University of Bradford in the UK, says controlling the amount of radiation received may not be that simple. “How do you ensure that the dose doesn’t cross the threshold for permanent damage?” he asks. “What happens if someone in a crowd is unable, for whatever reason, to move away from the beam? Does the weapon cut out to prevent overexposure?“
During the experiments, people playing rioters put up their hands when hit and were given a 15-second cooling-down period before being targeted again. One person suffered a burn in a previous test when the beam was accidentally used on the wrong power setting.
So what’s this got to do with the hockey picture? The real problem here is that people respond to very differently to varying levels of force.
When I was a lowly research drone at CSIS, I had the opportunity manage a project on nonlethal weapons. During one of our meetings, Dr. John Kenny — a member of the DOD Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate’s Human Effects Advisory Panel (HEAP) — gave an amazing briefing on human variability that included these two examples to illustrate the challenge facing “nonlethal” weapons:
On May 9, 1998, police used twelve shots to kill former NFL player Tom Nevile. One day later, St. Louis Blues’ captain Chris Pronger (above, right) collapsed after a hockey puck struck him in the chest during an NHL playoff game.
Kenny still believed the problem of human variability could be managed, but I don’t know.
We started using the phrase “less lethal weapons” after his talk.
– posted by Jeffrey Lewis.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
The comment above highlights much of the problem – the military are simply not trained for law enforcement. Looking at the ADS testing, they played three scenarios – one was controlling a distubance during voting in a developing nation, one was perimeter protection of a US embassy against a noisy but essentially nonviolent mob with some aitatots, and one was perimeter protection of a weapons facility against intruders who may or may not have been threatening. These are situations where lethal force would be inapprorpriate and a Really Bad Idea – nothing inflames the situation quite like killing people.
However, the test protocols suggest that the ADS is less than ideal. In theory the range of human response is very narrow – everyone can tolerate it for 2 seconds, nobody tested could take it for more than 5. But the variability with hotspots etc may make this invalid.
Police actions and War are different and I hope that no one is thinking this is war fighting equipment.
It seems to me that the biggest problems we are having in the two major conflicts we are having is that our military does not have the people or the training to be police officers. End of WWII, we have whole divisions of MPs, but in todays world where I think they are needed even more we have none.
Having said that, equipment is important. Less lethal systems are not perfect, they will kill, injure and maim people from time to time but it will be much less often than say, having a fire team open up on them. I am not really sure why everyone is so worried about this being a perfect completely non-lethal or (even harder to produce) non-injuring weapon. Its not going to be perfect but if you give them nothing else other than their riffle then they are either left without a way to deal with the crowd or use deadly force. We need something that military and police can use to break up and deescalate a situation and I think this is as good of a solution as any I have seen.
Paintball guns need to be looked at more I think.
For those who like to consider the unthinkable;
One of the major criticisms of the Vietnam War as that the AR/NG’s were not called upon to provide troops for the war zone. The CW is that the politicians knew that the AR/NG was a parking place for the children of privelage to avoid conscription and that was true. But another reason also was on the politicians minds, Civil Disobedience.
In the ’60′s there were many urban riots and such groups as the Black Panthers, The SDS, The Weathermen etc. They were unsettlling times to say the least.
Againt this background the though of an entire Infantry Squad or even Platoon of men serving together from the same city, town or even reagon set off alarm bells.
If the combat and leadership skills hoaned by a year of combat together in the Jungles, Highlands and Rice Patties of Vietnam came home with a group of angury men from the same town there could be a real problem. Thus draftees went to Vietnam as individuals and served in randomly made up units and returned by themselves.
Fast forward to 2005. Now returnig from the war zones after a year or more of intense combat are entrie units of soldiers (both men and women) who have served together in combat, have known each other all their lives, live, work and play in the same area.
These people are not going to unknow each other when they get home,they are still going to work together, hunt and fish together and they are going to become fixtures at VFW and American Legion Clubs/Bars all over America.
If one of these groups or even just an infulential member gets mad at civil authority or thinks they are being treated unfairly there could be a real problem.
Maybe those who ran the war in Vietnam did something right after all.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
“Stewart’s Platoon’