Pain Ray’s Burning Questions

When con­tro­ver­sial new mil­i­tary tools are being rolled out, per­cep­tions often mat­ter more than real­ity. Take the Active Denial System, the millimeter-​​wave pain ray devel­oped by the Air Force. The weapon’s effects are now pretty well under­stood by mil­i­tary researchers. But for the aver­age per­son, it’s been nearly impos­si­ble to sort through the range of claims and counter-​​claims sur­round­ing the sys­tem. And these ques­tions could come back to haunt the American gov­ern­ment, if and when they ever deploy the sys­tem.
I was pow­er­fully reminded of this by the recent case of Raul Castells.
Raul Castells is a con­tro­ver­sial social activist in Argentina. In 2004 he organ­ised a march on McDonalds ; in March 2006 he opened a com­mu­nity kitchen pro­vid­ing free food for poor peo­ple in Puerto Madero, a swish rede­vel­oped dock area. Located oppo­site the Hilton Hotel, it car­ried the slo­gan “We are fight­ing for an Argentina in which the dogs of the rich don’t eat bet­ter than the chil­dren of the poor”.
This behav­ior has angered some of his oppo­nents in Argentina.
On December 12th, Castells was in a scuf­fle with the police which resulted in his being hos­pi­talised with seri­ous burns over 20% of his body.
I was vic­tim of a new Police weapon, a type of flame thrower, said Castells (my trans­la­tion). In fact, he was not sure if it was a flamethrower,a giant lighter or some­thing else. Others claim that rub­ber bul­lets were fired at them after they went to help the burn­ing man.
The police dis­pute the account given by Castells and his fol­low­ers, say­ing that he was hit by a molo­tov cock­tail thrown by one of his own sup­port­ers.
The Buenosairean and Federal Police do not use flame throw­ers, said a police spokesman, rea­son­ably enough.
My first guess was that this was an acci­dent, and that Castells had been hit with pep­per spray which had been acci­den­tally ignited. Such sprays use a flam­ma­ble alco­hol base; non-​​flammable alter­na­tives have been rejected on grounds of safety, effec­tive­ness and envi­ron­men­tal dam­age. However, the police deny using pep­per spray in the encounter.
This leaves two com­pletely opposed ver­sions of what hap­pened. Who do you believe, the police or the pro­test­ers? While the days of the dirty war and crit­ics of the gov­ern­ment being ‘dis­ap­peared’ have long gone, the police are not uni­ver­sally trusted and offi­cers have been con­victed of extra-​​judicial exe­cu­tions of pro­test­ers as recently as 2002.
Im not sug­gest­ing that the Argentine police are covertly field-​​testing an Active Denial sys­tem (though a portable ver­sion for police use was under devel­op­ment, and the Argentine police are quite inno­v­a­tive, being the first to adopt the elec­tric cat­tle prod in the 1930s ). But when the ADS is employed, peo­ple will turn up on CNN claim­ing to be vic­tims, and show­ing off sun­burn, lep­rosy, blis­ters and every other skin con­di­tion ever seen. Who will you believe? More impor­tantly, who will the local pop­u­la­tion believe?
Dr Juergen Altmann sug­gests that pro­longed expo­sure would likely pro­duce high tem­per­a­tures result­ing in blis­ter­ing over the entire exposed sur­face of the body. Clearly there is a risk, but re-​​radiation of heat out­wards, and con­duc­tion of heat inwards will pre­vent the tem­per­a­ture from ris­ing indef­i­nitely. I have great respect for Dr Altmanns tech­ni­cal knowl­edge in mat­ters non­lethal, but the lack of this kind of injury dur­ing exten­sive test­ing leads me to sus­pect that the ADS is (rel­a­tively) safe.
Consider: if you step into warm sun from an air con­di­tioned room, in a few sec­onds your skin tem­per­a­ture shoots up sev­eral degrees. This does not mean the solar heat­ing will cause you to burst into flames if you remain for a few more min­utes.
But who is really right? Until ques­tions like this can be resolved, any deploy­ment of Active Denial tech­nol­ogy is going to be a polit­i­cal mine­field.
– David Hambling

February 5th, 2007 | Lasers and Ray Guns, Less-lethal | 345510 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2007/02/05/pain-rays-burning-questions/Pain+Ray%27s+Burning+Questions2007-02-05+15%3A45%3A33david_axe You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.