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Thailand's "Q" Banks on Rubber Bullets
redwolfoz writes "ABC News reports that Thailand's answer to 'Q', the legendary inventor of gadgets for movie spy James Bond, is busy at work at his warehouse on the edge of the country's capital. Workmen inside are trying out the latest inventions of retired Major Songphon Eiamboonyarith, who runs defence contracting firm Precipart Co. The range includes umbrellas that shoot rubber bullets, bullet-proof baseball caps and a hand-held device to fire a man-sized net 10m to stop a villain in his tracks."
I wonder if that spiedy-net would work in an office environment. Would make dealing with the boss MUCH easier, I think. That and Herf wars go to a whole new level.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
Not if it's a grazing shot to begin with. Besides, even if you're right, mild brain damage or a hemmorrage (chance of death) is preferable to a bullet in the skull (you're dead before you know what hit you).
"I may be quite wrong." - Socrates
It doesn't look like any of these inventions are particularly new, the US police force and riot response teams have been using/testing rubber bullet, bean bag bullets, nets, foam, sonic weapons, and other for the past several years. They've started deploying them to more and more officers, apparently it's lead to a number of situations where they were able to incapacitate and arrest someone they usually would have shot. So it sounds like a movement in the right direction, although I think these weapons get used more against rioters, drunks, the mentally ill, etc. I'm pretty sure they still shoot supervillains... or promote them.
Mod me down, and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I think I can make a potato gun do that.
Man in tuxedo walks up to the bar, orders:
...the name is Band...Rubber Band..."
"...Vodka Martini, shaken, not stirred...
Yeah, so i'm a dork. Join the club.
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
The article wasn't so much about how it's new and cool, but how they're new to Thailand, and very cheap and effective for the task at hand (mostly, training). Rubber bullets don't fly as far and are thus effective for training exercises in Thailand, where space is at a premium. The Howitzer shells they used to use cost over $200, but now they use rubber shells that are under $10.
I mean, just looking at the "armored tuk tuk"...it's not like anyone's saying this is something amazingly cutting edge. Though it did remind me slightly of the "elite military vehicle" from Stripes...
"I may be quite wrong." - Socrates
why should a rubber-bullet gun be disguised as an umbrella ??
A rubber-bullet gun is for deterrence, and should look like a shotgun, or something even more evil.
An advancing police line armed with umbrellas will most likely not cause a crows to disperse.
More likely, the umbrella is quite lethal, in the assassination meaning of the word, but since this is a PG rated story, it's been modified A-Team style.
Everyone's gotta have a hobby.
Mr. Songphon's happened to be killing.
o well.
Bullet-proof is rarely what its called, a standard kevlar bullet-proof vest will stop many smaller caliber shots, but you can still get killed, even if the vest isn't pierced, if your hit in the chest with a powerful enough shot, even if the vest stops the round you can still die from hydrostatic shock, the same goes for the kevlar vests with metal inserts, they my stop powerfull rounds, but if u look at the after photos from testing, you can see the plates of metal with large(2 or more centimeter) deep depressions, it may not penetrate, but that much force hitting you in the chest is enough to cause quite a bit of damage
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
"My father was a soldier. He used to give me manuals on explosives and guns."
Talk about the gift that keeps on giving, "hey what did you get for x-mas??" "My dad gave me that new transformer!" "That's nothing my dad gave me books on how guns and explosives work! I cant wait too try them out!"
Songphon says in three months Precipart will deliver to police in the south the firm's first armoured tuk tuk, Thailand's popular indigenous three-wheeled motorcycle taxi.
1. I suppose he is going to cover up the sides of the tuk tuk, because it makes no sense to have just an armored canopy and open sides. If he seals it up it won't even be a bicycle anymore, but will be like an armored car, except with only 3 wheels. How original.
2.In reference to the umbrellas: "They are designed for police use in hostage situations," says Precipart consultant Sanpetch Putarak, a retired wing commander
The prototype umbrella is pink. How many police officers would normally be walking around with pink umbrellas?
3. Police are expected to have things like rubber bullets. Is the umbrella used to surprise the one or people who don't know that police are armed?
4.The armored "tuk tuk" is equipped with a machine gun. Do you really need a web launcher in addition to that?
However he DOES have one good idea. He plans to make walking sticks which fire rubber bullets. I like this idea. When you run out of bullets, you can just whack people with the stick.
You really have no idea what you are talking about do you? Brain damage you have........
Helmets were first issued to troops to prevent death from grazing shots to the head as they were among the most common, if not THE most common cause of death (I believe this was WWI but dont quote me on that). A truly bullet proof helmet would be a great achievement and quite useful in combat and riot police situations.
Now maybe we can finally get someone working on the tuxedo from the Jackie Chan movie.
rejected (19) accepted (0)
Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
Maybe I just haven't thought about it enough, but why not pepper-spray paintball guns for riot control or other situations where you just want to incapacitate? You'd get decent physical range, with an automatic firing version excellent coverage.
.50s in the windows, guards with M-16s, all putting out 100s of rounds a minute of a chemical irritant instead of lethal bullets, risking a military conflict..
Regular mace or pepper spray requires you to be too close, "tear gas" or whatever they shoot in a gasseous cloud is too broad and not specific enough.
Paintballs hurt like a sonofabitch, a repeater could deliver a lot of them at a good distance to clothes, faces, hair, etc, adding some longer-term deterrant effect as well (have to change clothes).
From my experience, though, you'd have to "fix" the firing mechanism, since jams and fuckups with a tear-gas paintball would be a bit more than just an inconvenience. I'd make the paintball payloads more like conventional bullets, cased in a plastic cartridge. This'd solve a lot of feed issues as well as allow for more traditional box magazines. I'd also use conventional gunpowder propellant for higher velocities, larger payloads than CO2 can deliver.
It might actually be possible to make a paintball cartridge a standard weapon could use.
Of course the magic part is probably whatever membrane you use for the irritant payload. It has to be strong enough for firing and to really hurt on impact, but it also has to be soft enough to break on softer surfaces as well as not cause soft-tissue injuries other than bruising.
A weapon like this would really seem to be a natural, especially in situations where you want to deliver a lot of firepower in civilian environments -- think of defending an Embassy with this --
Anyway, why haven't they done this yet?
Villain Supply is the answer
Err... no.
Sometime ask the Second Chance company for one of their demonstration videos. You can see the founder of the Second Chance corporation put on a Second Chance armorvest and then take multiple 7.62mm armor-piercing rounds to the chest.
Given that the 7.62mm is just about the most powerful round anyone is likely to encounter, I have to say you're full of crap. Even a 12-gauge shotgun offers less momentum and kinetic energy.
Not that I recommend you actually *try* anything in it unless you're faced with an occupying army, but it was fascinating stuff.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Am I the only one that gets the feeling that they will be seeing some /and/ the the nets?" kind of way.
of these items at his next [A-Z]* protest?
Don't get me wrong. There is something very fun about this in that
"we will laugh about this when we are done with our court mandated
volunteerism. But for right now I am in a lot of pain. Did they have
to use the tear gas
Ascii artist &
No. Fragments are what helmets protect against. As artillery is the most casualty producing element in modern warfare (even WWI) it made, and still makes a lot of sense. People shoot for center mass, not the head, so a helmet is a stupid way to protect yourself from bullets. As a way of protecting you from bombs, shells and grenades (blowing up at ranges that don't turn you to soup), a helmet is well worth the money and discomfort. The rest of your body is less jam-packed with vital parts and tends to be less exposed than your head anyway.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
All this feel good bullshit about non-lethal means of controlling people being nicer and show that the authorities are really nice guys is a trick.
More non-lethals controls are still controls and actually lead to an increase in the state powers and ability to surpress protests and dissent!!
The easier it is for them to package it to the masses as a good, nice, humane thing, the easier it will be for them to get away with putting down people and their voices.
As if we need more that these days.
Wax on, wax off baby!
Don't you see? He invented the net while the reporter was there!
...
Have you ever been around Bangkok in a tuk-tuk? They are incedibly unstable and the extra weight high up would make them so dangerous to the occupant that no one would need to do anything extra to hurt the occupants.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Amnesty International (2002/06/11)
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
That's why helmets came back into vogue during WWI.
Soldiers spent the vast majority of their time in trenchs where the only danger (bar poisoness gas) came from air-burst explosions & shrapnel being blown in from near misses.
Hence the shape of British helmets with the broadlip all the way round, that gives as perfect protection a helmet could in regards to the danger of airburst & shrapnel wash to a soldier in a trench.
That's why it the US military's obsession with helmets amazes me. It's ridiculous the way their troops in Vietnam, Iraq 'n Afghanistan are virtually always wearing helmets.
Someone ought to tell them that slouch-hats (like the Brits wore in Burma, & the Aussies wore in North Africa & New Guinea) or Bush hats (like the Aussies wore in Vietnam) are much better protection from the elements (shading the face, keeping rain 'n sleet out of the eyes, etc) for jungle, dessert, bush & mountain warfare.
Bulletproof vests that stop .357 Magnum bullets is no big a deal.
The problem comes with stopping smaller high velocity rifle ammunition.
A level 3 Kevlar vest won't even stop a 7.62x25mm Mauser/Tokerov pistol round. The standard soviet pistol/sub-machine-gun round from WWII, which is bottlenecked & has a velocity of 1400+fps (the Chech CZ52 loads do 1600fps)