The name bothers me almost as much as the potential ramifications of this new weapon.
(Bold highlights mine)
A non-lethal — but potentially harmful — crowd control weapon that heats human skin is bound for Iraq, and possibly to a police department near you.
More below:
The Secrets of ‘Active Denial’
The Active Denial System is a Pentagon-funded, $51 million crowd control device that rides atop a Humvee, looks like a TV dish, and shoots energy waves 1/64 of an inch deep into human skin. It dispenses brief but intolerable bursts of pain, sending bad guys fleeing but supposedly leaving no lasting damage. (During a Pentagon press briefing in 2001, this reporter felt a zap from an ADS prototype on his fingertip and can attest to the brief but fleeting sensation that a hot light bulb was pressing against the skin). ADS works outside the range of small arms fire.
After a decade-long development cycle, the ADS is field ready but not free of controversy. Military leaders, as noted in a recent USA Today article, say it will save lives by helping U.S. troops avoid bombs and bullets in urban zones where insurgents mix with civilians. Temporary pain beats bullets and bombs, but Edward Hammond’s files have rekindled scientific questions about how the classified system works, what it does to the body and how it will be used in the streets of Basra or Baghdad or, one day, Boston.
Energy beam weapon may lower Iraq civilian deaths
“Initially, it felt like someone had opened an oven door, and you felt a rush of heat,” said Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the Air Force Research Labs who was one of hundreds of test subjects. “Within milliseconds, it became intolerable.”
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The hallmark of all directed-energy weapons is that the target — whether a human or a mechanical object — has no chance to avoid the shot because it moves at the speed of light. At some frequencies, it can penetrate walls.
Since the ammunition is merely light or radio waves, directed-energy weapons are limited only by the supply of electricity. And they don’t involve chemicals or projectiles that can be inaccurate, accidentally cause injury or violate international treaties.
“When you’re dealing with people whose full intent is to die, you can’t give people a choice of whether to comply,” said George Gibbs, a systems engineer for the Marine Expeditionary Rifle Squad Program who oversees directed-energy projects. “What I’m looking for is a way to shoot everybody, and they’re all OK.”
Almost as diverse as the electromagnetic spectrum itself, directed-energy weapons span a wide range of incarnations.
Among the simplest forms are inexpensive, handheld lasers that fill people’s field of vision, inducing a temporary blindness to ensure they stop at a checkpoint, for example. Some of these already are used in Iraq.
Other radio-frequency weapons in development can sabotage the electronics of land mines, shoulder-fired missiles or automobiles — a prospect that interests police departments in addition to the military.
A separate branch of directed-energy research involves bigger, badder beams: lasers that could obliterate targets tens of miles away from ships or planes. Such a strike would be so surgical that, as some designers put it at a recent conference here, the military could plausibly deny responsibility.
The name-Active Denial System-describes the whole Bushco Administration.
