Comments on: Will DOD Recall Pain Ray?

By: Byron Skinner

Byron Skinner — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 18:41:42 +0000

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’

By: The Cenobyte

The Cenobyte — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 16:12:17 +0000

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.

By: Wembley

Wembley — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 08:04:13 +0000

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.