Millimeter-Wave Weapon Certified For Use In Iraq 806
jdray writes "Wired has a story on the certification of the Active Denial System for use in Iraq. The ADS is a millimeter-wave weapon that uses a reportedly non-lethal energy beam to inflict short-term pain on its targets, encouraging them to leave an area. Experimenters call this the 'Goodbye effect.' I can see using this in a wartime situation, but how long before we see these things mounted to the top of S.W.A.T. vans for domestic crowd control? And, is that a bad idea?" From the article: The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves — 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven... while subjects may feel like they have sustained serious burns, the documents claim effects are not long-lasting. At most, 'some volunteers who tolerate the heat may experience prolonged redness or even small blisters'... There has been no independent checking of the military's claims." Wired use Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain documents on the military's testing program.
One problem (Score:5, Interesting)
In every war ... (Score:5, Interesting)
domestic usage (Score:2, Interesting)
It is not a bad idea if you are for the system and the establishment, trying to protect your own interests and the status quo. Fry them hippies.
It is a bad idea if you are not a member of the elite, and you are trying to resist tyranny and fight for freedom and human rights via non-violent civil disobedience. This would only be one more tool for police to potentially abuse, like the tazer which has its good and bad sides.
parabolic dish (Score:1, Interesting)
2. Stand x meters from the millimeter-wave weapon.
3. Enjoy frying your aggressor with their own energy.
Re:Suit up guys! (Score:3, Interesting)
Riiiigggght.
Re:They should be careful about escalating (Score:2, Interesting)
Middle ground (Score:5, Interesting)
"Get Away" or GITMO? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
Better than getting worked over with a club, I suppose.
Pulling teeth (Score:5, Interesting)
Application as a non-harmful torture device? (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, given the current administration's apparent view that coercion which causes non-permanent harm is not torture (e.g. waterboarding), this seems ideal.
I wish I was kidding
Re:No. (Score:2, Interesting)
I see NO need at all to use this type of device under the guise of 'Crowd Control'. If you want to use it for 'Riot Control' or 'Looting Control' (see post-Katrina, LA-Riots), fine and dandy. Under NO circumstance should this be used on non-riotous demonstrators, protesting the Republican National Convention, or WTO meetings.
The mere thought that this thing is probably going to be implemented right along with 'Free Speech Zones', makes me want to commit 'hari kari'. The government doesn't realize it, but this type of thing feeds the anti-government establishment, and confirms the fears of those who think the US is heading towards a Totalitarian 'Big-Brother' state.
Is it fear-mongering or paranoia, even if you are correct???
Re:Middle ground (Score:3, Interesting)
And as people get older, their net worth probably increases, and might be less likely to participate in a riot. You might get a higher percentage of young people in a rioting crowd. A search on Google results in some second-hand info and notes of a 20-something average age for individual riots, but nothing conclusive. Does anybody know the average age distribution for a normalized riot crowd?
If younger people are more likely to join a riot, then a sonic repellent device might work out well. Plus you might have the added benefit of being able to single out the instigators of the riot; those people might be older and more dedicated to the "cause", but won't run because they can't hear the noise.
Re:One problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Hard to remove and externally invisible.
I really wouldn't like them to start getting hot. You can take your glasses off.
Not to worry - this radiation doesn't penetrate beyond the first mm. or two of skin.
Now, those who wear metal jewelry in external body piercings...THEY should worry. ;-)
Re:Suit up guys! (Score:5, Interesting)
A good compromise, though, is tickling. Invent a tickling field and you may be on to something.
Re:Ohforfucksake (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe this would be a humane and cost-effective way to guard the US-Mexican border against illegal invaders. Establish a DMZ just inside the US. As you cross the border and enter the DMZ, the pain level would increase the farther into the DMZ you go.
uWave vs. Fire hoses (Score:3, Interesting)
The use of firehoses for crowd control is frowned upon if not outright illegal as a human rights violation since their use in the race riots of the 1960's. Those weren't lethal either.
Can anyone explain why weapons that would incense the human rights activists in the US or Canada are being deployed overseas? Aren't people overseas considered human by the administration(s)?
Re:So punish the actions. (Score:3, Interesting)
You're confusing the use of a crowd control device before the crowd does some stupid crap with using them as the crowd is doing stupid crap. Freedom of assembly and speech aren't damaged at all if 500 drunk frat boys dancing around a bonfire made up of a flaming police car and all of the books they just stole from the storefront they just trashed are dispersed by some non-lethal mechanism. You could march 100 police officers in, but you risk physical harm if they have to physically handle people to get them to leave, and you can't just call up 100 police officers in some mid-sized college town after you realize that idiots are pouring gasoline on utility poles and lighting them.
But if you position those officers right there, in advance, then you get accused of being Nazis. So, you can't win, if it's your job to keep the main street next door to Enormous State University intact until the next business day after a particularly exciting basketball game. So... things get out of hand, and a small number of crowd control officers could fire teargas cannisters (and risk hitting people in the head, catching clothes on fire, or killing asthmatics), or perhaps they could use some newer technlogy that doesn't involve high speed projectiles, incindiary devices, etc. That's what's being talked about here.
Implying that the only way to save time, injuries, thin municipal budgets, etc., is to use such devices in advance is nonsense. The whole idea is to give the law enforcement people responding to such mayhem something new, safer, and more effective with which to get things back to civilized without having to have the paramilitary-looking guys (who wear that stuff so they don't get cut up with broken glass, etc) there in the first place. And that reduces tensions. And if the twits that like to smash store windows, burn cars, and block streets understand that something passingly unpleasant is one of the tools in the police toolbox, they might even think twice about showing up with that molotov cocktail (or making one out of rum) in the first place. And, thus no mayhem, and thus no need to act in response. Good for everyone involved.
Re:Not a new phenomenon. (Score:2, Interesting)
Hail King Lee [npr.org], may the fat fucker be rotated slowly on a spit for all eternity. Or maybe he's just carrying on the legacy of Jefferson Parish Race Relations [evergreen.edu].
Offtopic, I realize. I just fucking hate cops, growing up where I did.
Coming to a library near you (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Stupid idea (Score:3, Interesting)
But if you gather on public property, your gathering will prevent your fellow citizens from using that property themselves. Since your fellow citizens have an equal privilege to use public property, and since your desire to use it doesn't trump their desire to use it, some kind of arbitration is needed.
And that arbitration is carried out by exactly the people you'd want to carry it out: elected representatives of the citizenry or their appointed public servants. That is, the arbitration is carried out by you and me, as citizens, via our constitutionally-defined agents.
How else should our conflicting claims on our joint property be decided?
Re:Stupid idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Protesting in the streets is a lazy man's solution to avoiding the proper legal and political process, and gives them a good excuse to kick back a few cold ones with 100,000 of their closest friends and make a mess. Society would be much better served if everyone just stayed home and just 1 out of 100 of the protesters participated in the political process with meaningful and substantive support for their position.
Re:Suit up guys! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Suit up guys! (Score:3, Interesting)
Heck, from the sound of this, it only impacts the outermost layers of your skin and is of a frequency that would be absorbed by water, so simply covering or coating yourself head to toe in something that contains water, be it a flexible solid or a gel, should be enough.
This reminds me of typical US military form, be it creating a video game that programmers aren't allowed to have the enemies learn in, or running the most expensive war games of all time and resurrecting your fleet after the enemy sinks it because they didn't do what you expected them to. Sometimes, it seems, the more hype there is around a weapon, the less effective it is. Remember the Stryker? It's been a disaster in Iraq.
well yes, it's obvious (Score:3, Interesting)
Then you'll hear from suspects that it was used on them, and the police departments will deny it. Eventually it'll happen to a telegenic white person, and there'll be a congressional hearing (assuming the Democrats are still in office) and they'll discover that US police departments are using them to torture confessions out of people. Everyone will act shocked, condemn the "few bad apples" and it'll continue as before after a brief pause.
Understanding of this issue is divided starkly into two camps--those who understand that power is abused, and those who think power is only abused by that other political party, the one they don't like. I know that humans are who they are. I spent part of my morning reading http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=
It isn't that particular police officers are "bad people" but that people can't be trusted with this much power. Give any population of human beings the power to inflict great pain without being caught, make it convenient for them to use it because doing so will get results, and the results will always be the same--people will do the wrong thing if doing so is in their best interests. Call it original sin, whatever, but power corrupts. It's part of our nature, and can't be negated by optimism or indignant "cops are good people!" responses. People invariably take it as an insult to good cops they know, because they think that evil in this world is due to a few bad apples, not to an innate, insurmountable flaw in our nature. It's that naive optimism that prevents us from acknowledging the limitations to what we can trust people with, and leads us to keep inventiing torture devices like this. This is one of those cases where optimism causes more harm than good, and a bit of cynicism would result in a lot less human suffering.
Re:So? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not true. They died to make your country less safe.
Re:Protest vs. Mob (Score:4, Interesting)
So this heat ray device is for use against disorganized mobs rather than organized protestors.
Why is it better than tear gas for this purpose? Is it because tear gas leaves clear signs of its usage that can be videotaped during or immediately after an event, while the heat ray leaves no evidence of its use?
If it is better than tear gas, does that allow whoever is calling the shots a wider scope of action than tear gas would? Is this a good thing, if the scope of action is expanded from dispersal of crowds that threaten the peace to dispersal of crowds that threaten to delay the Hummer from getting back to base in time for the evening movie?
How will a detail of US soldiers fair when an insurrectionist hits them with a blast from a "liberated" heat ray device? Would this leave them more vulnerable to a second punch with a machine gun or RPG? Or is this heat ray device for use in a fantasy world where the bad guys simply aren't allowed to get hold of the fancy weapons?
At this point I think the Pentagon has spent $40 billion on yet another boondoggle, and that they know it, and that is most of the reason why this thing has been developed in secret. The only strong rationale for developing this weapon is that it would allow the US forces to disperse crowds without the telltale evidence that tear gas, water cannons, and rubber bullets leave behind. In short, I think it is probably an inferior method of crowd control that is favored only because it could be used with great impunity, since it would be almost invisible to the media.
I think I do not like this heat ray very much.
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN! (Score:3, Interesting)
Gosh, dear, those are the sweetest words you've ever whispered in my ear.
If anything, the flamers are the people who blindly believe what they're told by the military, then spout off against those not accepting the official line.
The easiest and quickest link for item 5) is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System [wikipedia.org] but I have read in perhaps four or five sources about the volunteers being asked to remove glasses, so it's pretty well-known. Just Google Active Denial Systems and read a bit. Also note the wiki mention of people being burned by metal objects in their clothes.
I add a prediction to my previous comments. The cornea contains tiny and delicate nerves that govern feedback for the eye's lachrymal (tear) system. If these nerves are damaged by millimeter wave energy, it can result in eventual breakdown of the tearing system and the condition known as 'dry eye'. This in turn can cause major eye damage. Cataracts can result, and a lot of other nasty things. So though someone hit by mm wave RF might not go blind instantly, their eyes could still be damaged as an after-effect. The military experiments only seem to have looked for near-term injury and have ignored follow-on, as far as I can tell. The review panel for the experiments concludes misleadingly that the probability of thermal eye injury is low. However, 1) low is not non-zero, and 2) there can be other damage as I've noted, that does not show up immediately as thermal damage.