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Riot Control Ray-Gun for Use in Iraq
team99parody writes "An 'Active Denial System' weapon that 'fires a 95GHz microwave beam at rioters to cause heating and intolerable pain in less than five seconds'
is scheduled for service in Iraq in 2006
according to CNET and the print version of New Scientist. It was recently tested on people playing the part of rioters at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico where they asked the subjects to remove glass and contact lenses to protect their eyes. Hopefully real rioters will get the same courtesy. Police and the Marines are working on portable versions. Sandia Labs also has a nice writeup on this system with pictures of smaller versions of the weapon."
It's only logical. Our right to peaceably assemble is in the process of being eviscerated, which means that future efforts on the part of the citizenry to protest the increasingly hateful policies of this government will become more and more confrontational, and which in turn sees the government resorting to ever more punitive policies in response.
Prediction: the ray-gun is on the streets in America in time for the 2008 Republican National Convention.
I can't wait to hear what they consider to be acceptable levels of casualties as the result of using this thing on people.
The thing I regret most in this life is that of all the science fiction movies I loved watching as I grew up, Soylent Green ends up being the one that most closely depicts the future.
(I'd rather take my chances on the Nostromo.)
--
Why didn't you know?
Wheres mine?
If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
--Kurt Vonnegut
I Wonder whether its usage can contribute to cancer down the track?
"The problem with our economy is that our budget is balanced by people who aren't" - A.E.N.
I hope that it might be a little more humane than lobbing teargas at someone.
Of course, someone will sue the inventor, the user, his boss, the bosses boss, the company, the government and some guy named Joe - because their cousin's niece's daughter's friend's cat got nuked by that thing...
= Grow a brain...
But New Scientist magazine reported Wednesday that during tests carried out at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, participants playing the part of rioters were told to remove glasses and contact lenses to protect their eyes. In another test they were also told to remove metal objects such as coins from their clothing to prevent local hot spots from developing on their skin.
In real life obviously there are going to be people wearing lenses or carrying metal objects so what gives???
Is Iraq just the guinea pig for our experiments now?
While I certainly support non-lethal weapons in use of riot dispersion, this does not seem safe at all (and certainly, I do not want to be aimed at with microwaves!)
That's the way to win "hearts and minds" of people angry at the US occupation forces: zap them with rayguns. We'll teach them how the 21st Century US welcomes them with "compassionate conservatism", by frying them with rayguns. After sizzling whole towns, there's no way they'll ever listen to insane jihadists telling them that the Great Satan has burned them with hellfire, that we're all better off in a medieval fiefdom under god. Yeah, sticking Iraqis into a microwave oven is exactly the way to get them to calm down, stop their civil war, and break out those flowers they're supposed to be greeting us with.
--
make install -not war
Having one of these mounted on my car would help me with my daily commute.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
so the government has created a sunburn gun and people are complaining about it. i guess they'd reather that they shoot the crowds with live ammo?
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
by tin foil?
Wait, isn't that terrorism? Using this thing could increase terrorism? Fucking wonderful.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
Technically microwaves consist of non-ionizing radiation, will not have cumulative effects, and in low doses are reasonably safe. I've defeated the safety interlocks on an old microwave and run it with the door open. The energy dissipates quite quickly with distance.
Nonlethal weaponry is a horseshit myth.
The term they should have used (and what law enforcement uses now, after more than a few wrongful death lawsuits, is the term of "Less lethal". Did any of the Kirtland Air Force Base participants have a pre existing heart condition? I bet they didnt let pregnant women participate.
Im so glad that when every time one of these proportedly nonlethal weapons pops up its run under a FULL and accurate barrage of labratory and set up tests, which almost never reveal the compounding issues that lead to death in real world enviroments.
The news.com article asks a few of the many lurking questions to this system. We all know this device is going to Iraq to go through real world testing before its used here in the US. Someone is counting on all the "little kinks" that are more than likely deadly will be ironed out under the public eye.
I find it highly ironic that our testing of this indescriminant weapon will be used in our even more indescriminant war.
Terrorists dont use large crowds as weapons, if you stop and think at why this weapon would be needed, its ultimately crowd control on our home front. Now why would we need that? Lakers winning again? I highly doubt it. Someone had a plan when they initated and funded the development of this, and it doesnt look like a good one.
There is truth in humor.
Why the heck are mods modding this flame-war up!?!
What could be more on-topic than a flame-war?
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
It's torture in a can.
No, they'd rather people not shoot protesting crowds. If the crowds are using lethal force or threatening the position of our troops, our troops will use lethal force back with or without our magic ray gun.
Seriously, from a practical standpoint, what will happen the first time we fire this thing into. say, one of al-Sadr's regular 10k+ angry-mob protests? Everyone with glasses risks going blind; everyone with metal on them gets burns. Everyone with a pacemaker risks getting their heart stopped. It'd be almost a guaranteed new Sadrist revolt, plus easily increasing other Shia and widespread Sunni insurgency recruiting, while not killing any insurgents. Of course, the effects don't apply just to the crowd; beams keep on going.
But lets take this further than the obvious anger that the US using some sci-fi style technology on a country that has no ability to resist it would inspire. Everyone who gets cancer within a few months of such a usage within half a dozen blocks of the site will blame it on the US's new "pain-ray". Everyone who miscarries? The same. Everyone who gets a headache, who has a heart attach, who comes down with a nasty disease... it'll all get blamed on the device.
Strategically, this is an awful decision.
Point of interest. Offering to shoot us might not work so well as an incentive as you might imagine.
Napalm is not used anymore by the US. It has too much of a bad name going with it. Instead, the US uses Mk-77 incendiary bombs. These contain a mixture with kerosene instead of gasoline. Works as well though.
To my knowlege, the Mk-77 has not been used inside the US. But apparently 500 of them were used by the marines in the last gulf war.
Please get your facts straight.
We have given up on winning their hearts and minds, instead we will cook their hearts and minds with experimental ray-guns. God Bless America!
They'll hate the US, anyway.
Historically invasion meant the invading power had complete control. You do what you're told or you're killed. The US invaded Iraq, yet went out of their way to spend $1,000,000 per laser guided bomb so they could be "nice" and avoid killing innocents. They're still hated. Being nice doesn't work. This weapon is another waste of money. It will only make people more angry.
And that is a fact of war. You kill them, or they'll come back and kill you. Anything less is a waste of time.
If you can't stomach that, then don't bother attacking in the first place.
with all our technology, science, power and resources, all we seem to do is come up with more and more fucking evil disgusting ways of hurting people? This is fucking sick.. Does nobody else see this?
More US troops get killed with instantaneous bullets while waiting for a simply microwave to do it's job in under 5 seconds.
Sorry, MASERs are only useful in wide-spread setups, creating an effective "anti-human force field" To wait 5 seconds for somethign to do it's job when a bullet is more likely to take your head off in far less time, is a fucking waste of money and life, IMHO.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Yeah! tell me about Quake, and Doom, and Half Life, and Counter Strike, and Halo, and Unreal...
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
This will nicely wrap up our hearts-and-minds campaign.
Government, as an institution, is supposed to exist to solve (or at least mitigate) the people's problems.
The average person, when placed in a position of power, wishes to use that power to improve his own situation. Such a person, in a government position finds that the best way to increase his personal power is to increase the size and importance of his domain of power -- which, as we've seen, is based upon "solving" some problem that the people have.
The best method they've found so far is to create the problem with one hand while solving it with the other. Move more responsibility from the people to the government, and justify more work. Create more complications and loopholes in the tax codes, and work harder to bust tax evaders. Make more things illegal, and make law enforcement look good. It's a justification to do more, to take more of your money for your own good. It is evil. It's a million acts of small, petty evil in the guises of kindness and service.
As to the bit about the Republicans -- it's been said before that the US is run by two parties: the party of Evil and the party of Stupidity. I agree with that assessment, but I think that the roles change day-to-day. Neither one is any better than the other.
Is this part of the battle for "winning hearts and minds"?
No, it's the battle for cooking them up with Worcestershire sauce.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
We geeks are also pretty good at distinguishing fantasy from reality.
Besides, Counter Strike is the only game you list that has any basis of fact, all the others are in totally fictional environments.
The whole point of violence in games, particularly with kids, is you don't stop them playing these games because they are just fun pure and simple. It's bad parents that use PS2s and XBoxes as "babysitters", leave their kids on them for hours on end and don't spend time with them balancing out in-game violence with real-life love and attention.
So let's have none of this "game violence" BS...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The real question is, can we trust the weapon operators to use this responsibly?
Probably not. Last year the police in the US managed to shoot one of their pepper-spray paintballs through an bystanding girl's eye, killing her. And that's a "non-lethal" weapon you can aim!
The thing in the article covers an entire area. Do you think the operator is going to check and make sure that nobody in the crowd is wearing glasses, jewelry, or contacts? That's impossible!
Even in theory, this isn't a non-lethal weapon at all... It's quite obvious that this is intended as a means of disarming (have we forgotten that guns/knives are metal?) and/or killing large groups of people immediately without collateral damage; just like a neutron bomb, only more controllable and cheaper.
-Grym
I have anti-globalization activist friends who were in Miami in 2003 protesting the FTAA meeting going on at the time. They tell me that the cops (other than having their own embedded journalists, getting extremely favorable corporate media coverage, beating people senseless and blinding some people with pepperspray) used some sort of microwave weapon on them and it made them throw up. For more info on that protest, check out a movie called the Miami Model http://www.ftaaimc.org/miamimodel.
Seems like they wont leave any external marks. How long before the portable ones are being used in interrogations by Iraqi police?
I'm surprised they haven't deployed water cannons over there - those would seem to be infinitely less lethal than machine-guns or even this microwave laser they're proposing. However, given the heatwaves and lack of electricity for cooling, there's a danger people would riot just to cool down.
Of course, a lot of the dissaffection is as a result of a lack of amenities in an extremely unforgiving climate. On that basis, it would probably be much more cost-effective simply to give every household their own generator and supply them with fuel until the power situation has been stabilized. Probably kill a whole lot fewer people, too. Might even win a few friends.
For the safer parts of the country, they could even run a water delivery service. Drop off a 20 or 50 gallon tank in the morning at the front door, picking up the empties in the process. No different than what a million milkmen do every day in England - except the getting shot at part, and the size of the bottles.
That wouldn't eliminate problems, but it would reduce a LOT of the tension. And if you reduce the tension, you reduce the risk of riots and other violent protest. Containment is better done by meeting legitimate complaints, rather than suppressing them. Suppressing them only risks building the tension up more, which increases the risk of massive confrontation.
Things are bad enough, over there, why go out of our way to make things worse, when it is cheaper, easier and quicker (not to mention more ethical) NOT to?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
True, but the energy of a photon is proportional to its frequency. E = hf, where h is Planck's constant. That's why hard ultraviolet light (~1 PHz or 1,000,000GHz) has enough energy to knock electrons out of orbit and cause mutations in DNA, while 95 GHz microwaves do not have enough energy to do so, no matter how many photons you crank out.
Tinfoil. Tinfoil hat, dungarees, under your normal clothes. And you can carry tinfoil placards that reflect microwaves back to police.
Dyslexics have more fnu.
we geeks are pretty much pacifists and don't care about this stuff.
You misspelled apathetic.
Seriously, this attitude is why crappy patents and laws like the DMCA are passed uncontested. It's all very nice living with blinkers on your eyes, ignoring the real world, but don't go crying when that world rudely intrudes on your own life.
If you really were a pacifist, then you should be extremely interested in the ways states have of hurting dissenters, since this thing could be used against you or your fellow humans (but not while you're locked in your bedroom playing Everquest)
Not to mention that inhumane weaponry like this is the best propaganda tool for those opposing war.
Also, I am very much in favor of considering the use of nonlethal weaponry for regular forces. Every war we fight is tragic and horrible, but every war we fight is more humane than the previous. I consider myself a pacifist, and until we have evolved to rid ourselves of violent ideologies, the development of nonlethal weaponry is worthy and admirable. If we can corral our opponents without maiming and shredding their bodies to pieces, I think we're improving the human condition.
The government that controls the weapons may be democratic or totalitarian, but I argue that the weapon ownership is a different discussion since most governments have automatic weapons, rockets, and bombs and can currently opress their citizens using equal methods.
Okay, so this crowd control of the lower classes is one thing.
But where are the tech research projects to defeat the techno-millitant industrial corporate police? Do you really think the world is safe breeding such corporations, capable of producing devices like this for the purpose of MASS CONTROL?
Weapons-manufacturers are the ones who create wars to sell their products. The U.S. Gov't has proven time and again that it cannot be trusted to keep its despotic fingers out of the mass-control pie. Why should we be 'grateful' that 'non-lethal weapons' are now being created out of electronics, when electronics have been governing the masses for decades now?
Show me a hand-held device that defeats television. Show me a device which will de-fuse a rabid neo-con. Show me a tool that can be used to bring religions together in peace.
Too many times I've seen Defense-industry nazi's get their rocks off on their latest weapons designs. I think its about time the people of the world revolted against the weapon makers
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
whilst on the subject, I doubt this would get very far if:
- it were a question of field testing this on congress/senate people
- it it were some important constituents that were fieldtested upon.
testing it in a country on the other side of the globe - where the military doesn't do civilian death tools - is all too convenient.
cowardly by any other name
-
This shouldn't surprise anyone, really - the whole culture of western government (the US and UK, certainly) is moving away from solving the problems they face, and toward minimising the bother they cause the government.
Too many people protesting outside parliament? Don't find out why they're so angry, just make it illegal for anyone to protest, peacefully or otherwise, within 1km of parliament.
Too many corrupt middle-eastern regimes? Don't try to help get rid of the corruption, just invade one and hope for the best!
Too many terrorist attacks? Don't try to figure out why so many people are willing to die to hurt you, just find a convenient country to blame and invade it!
Too many underage criminals active at night? Make it illegal for *any* children to be on the streets at night, whether they're doing anything wrong or not.
Too many riots and violent protests? Don't worry about it, just develop new and ever more sophisticated ways of punishing those who take part, or even those who are in the same place at the same time.
What's next? Too many people thinking Bad Things? Don't worry...
The whole mindset of the people in control at the moment is skewed - they're not solving problems, they're just hiding symptoms (or, increasingly, brutally suppressing them).
This will be perfect for the police for those sit-in (non-violent) demonstrations. A problem there is to apply force to remove the demonstartors: that puts the police action in pretty bad light.
With this weapon the police seemingly will not touch the demonstrators, no physical force will be used, but the dissenters will clear away regardless.
And no, not just in Iraq... It is a perfect tool for ANY government that wants to look like humane and democratic while needs to silence political dissent. It is time to pass a law about what type of weapons could be used for crowd control, especially in case of nonviolent protesters. (What is wrong with water cannons anyway?)
They tested a system to find out whether people were experiencing intolerable heat in New Mexico?
Surely in New Mexico, all you have to do is just stand in the sun?
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
This once again looks like the US is doing weapon-experiments on humans they'd shoot otherwise. As they did in the Gulf and any other 'war'.
It's disturbing really. I imagine this might be used domesticly as well when they see most Iraquee civilians don't end up dead or heavily mutilated and the ray proves 'humaine enough'.
More of these internet vids from kids being overrun by the riot-police and beaten up for voicing their discontentment using peacefull protest to come. nNow with added rays!
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Something a friend of mine said some four years back (when everybody shouted "tinfoil hat" at the idea): if a few seconds can do this, imagine doing it for a few minutes.
Isn't it nice we have all these backward countries to test our toys with and send our kids to to teach them some geography?
I think, therefore I am...I think.
...without addressing the actual cause or reason for the protest.
which is, of course, the fundamental flaw to this sort of "solution". It only goes skin deep in more sense than one.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong.
This is not why government exists. It exists for the protection of rights and preservation of justice:
I was at the Force Protection Equipment Demonstation this year where I talked to some of the Marines at the Joint Non-Lethal Warfighting Lab about this exact product. We as Marines are looking at this tool as a lifesaver (literally). If we can roll through a place like Fallujah and use this tool to incapacitate the bad guys in front of us, then that saves their lives and puts less risk on our Marines. We want to and are doing everything we can to improve our non-lethal and less-than-lethal capabilities so that we have more options when we're faced with an enemy.
More importantly, the general vibe that I got from these responses is that you all think that we're a bunch of indiscriminent killers! Guess what...we're not! We don't want to kill if we don't have to. However, when someone is pointing a gun at us, we're not going to sit there and wait them out. For example, we have Marines coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan who are messed up psychologically because they had to shoot a kid who was shooting at them. They had no choice. They did the right thing, but now they're fucked up in the head. The only reason they're fucked up though is because they believe that it's morally wrong to shoot a child. But when that child puts themselves into a situation where they become a combatant, the only response we have right now is to shoot them.
Back to this less-than-lethal ray gun, if that Marine could've incapacitated that child instead of killing him, then the Marine can go home knowing that he completed his mission and didn't have to shoot a child, and that child can go home alive.
I'm really dissapointed in this crowd. I've been a slashdot reader for the last 8 years and I've been pretty impressed with most of the comments up until now. Have a little faith in the people serving on the front lines. We're professionals, just like you try to be at work. We care about honor, courage, commitment, etc. Frankly, if I can use this ray gun to help make my Marines safer and bring them home to my families, then as a commander, I'm all for it.
-- Get your free Mini Mac http://www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=14209873
First off, I salute your courage to serve our insane country. Come back in one piece, okay? Having said that:
The active denail system is coming on-line because we are not allowed to use tear gas as it is considered a chemical weapon.
I am stunned if that statement is true. Because police officers in the US regularly use tear gas against civilian demonstrations (this happened recently to a friend of mine at a peaceful "bring our troops home before more get killed" demonstration that was broken up with gas because the cops didn't feel like putting up with it). Either: (1) there is some really fucked up politics at work and someone decided there was more money selling you a microwave laser than tear gas (in which case there should be outrage), or (2) police brutality is massively widespread in the US because they use tear gas (and there should be outrage if the US Army doesn't think it's humane). I'm guessing it's the former.
Iraqi's are moving towards the first democratic government in the arab world.
Yes, it was also a great boost to Iran, who recently elected a hard-liner who mockingly thanked George W Bush in his acceptance speech for scaring the country into voting for him.
What other nation has sacrificed the blood of hundreds of its own, spent its own treasure for the purpose of helping others.
Except that wasn't what we were told. Us stick-at-home taxpayers who are funding your desert adventures were told that you were going to prevent a madman from destroying the world with his nuclear and chemical weapons. None were found. We were lied to. And now almost 1,800 of you fine Americans have been killed, 18,000 wounded in action. We're not very happy about this, neither are we overjoyed about the 25,000 to 100,000 Iraqis that have been killed and 40,000 wounded (accurate death figures are hard to come by since the allied forces are not publicly tracking civilian deaths, but 25k is the accepted 'best case' minimum estimate, 100k the 'worst case').
You may accept your orders and faithfully carry out whatever mission you're told - even if they appear to contradict - but we don't. The Commander In Chief is employed by us. We elected him, we pay his wage and we're his boss. He lied to us and we're upset about this and about the Iraq war. This is why we're sore about Iraq, we do not forgive and we do not forget. If any of your subordinates lied to you and did not perform their mission, what would your reaction be? A court-martial at best?
Next time get your C in C to read "The Art Of War" first. Besides lying to the peons at home (ie: me), mistake number 1 was dissolving the Iraq army instead of having it work for you. It would have made your work far easier.
Every moment of the war and occupation have been covered by media.
Yes, and right now they're saying that Iraq is at the tipping point of descending into anarchy, that the allied occupational forces (ie: you) are not helping the situation by providing targets and that supposed allies like Syria and Pakistan are allowing suicide bombers free entry into Iraq.
I'm so sorry that you're in the middle of this mess, doubly so that you don't see the forest burning down around you because of all the trees.
Strategically, this is an awful decision.
But at least it's consistent with all the other strategically awful decisions.
Freedom: "I won't!"
You're forgetting one thing: This would never happen in China! The Chinese would likely just shoot the rioters, as in dead, with real bullets, end of story.
Meanwhile, there'd be nary a peep out of the international media because they'd be too busy getting the vapors over some captured terrorist whose dinner (honey-glazed chicken with rice pilaf) wasn't properly halal, or who is being forced to use 1-ply toilet paper instead of 2-ply (the humanity!), or who is being forced to read Slashdot against their will (shoot me, please!)
3000+ comments meta-modded. 0 mod points awarded.
Lesson for other meta-suckers: Don't believe the hype!
Maybe the "active denial" microwave gun will be used on protesters. It's hard to guess because there has been so damn little coverage of protests. So without it's hard to gauge what's going on elsewhere.
Recently, there were major protests at Spanish universities, including faculty, against sw patents. No coverage.
The other year, there were hundreds if not thousands of protests against the war in Iraq going on around Europe. Many had record turnout. Almost no coverage of them in Europe after the first few, no coverage in the US.
Or take the WTO protests in both Europe and the US. Very, very little coverage. In the US, the coverage only extended to the small number of violent protesters, not the topic of the protest nor the days of peaceful manifestation.
Or take coverage of May Day protests. Very little coverage, if any. One BBC report cover it, but used one sentence to say how peaceful they all were and then used the rest of the report to say how hard it was to track down an unruly protest whilst playing the sounds of violence and breaking glass in the background. That's not news anymore that's spin, almost as good as Faux News or CNN.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Browsing at 4: 33 comments, universally bemoaning the near-fascist oppression of the Evil Bush & Co., as well as the obligatory comments about how we shouldn't be in Iraq.
1) Do you people understand what a Riot IS? This is not a bunch of grungy stoners standing around peacably smoking hemp before they are brutalized by the jackbooted police thugs. I've BEEN in a riot, and they are characterized by VIOLENCE. Violence and damage to property, as well as against other people standing around. Many posters have said something about the indiscriminate use of these weapons. Hey dumbass: the point of RIOT CONTROL cops is not to beat your sorry ass down (as much as you may deserve it) it's to DISPERSE the rioters, because people are far less likely to be (rioting) assholes when not protected by the anonymity of the herd around them. If you're a spectator, you're part of the fscking problem. For all the sympathy we're supposed to have for 'innocent bystanders' accidentally caught in this weapon's area of effect, I don't see a SINGLE post suggesting sympathy for the people whose businesses, cars, property, and yes, even LIVES are threatened/damaged/ruined by the rioters.
But then again, why should they get sympathy? They're working a job, running a local business, making a living, supporting a family...you know, all those things that the "anti-globalization protestors" (really fancy way of saying unemployed vandals) are supposedly "protecting"...
2) It's great we're in Iraq, we're accomplishing good things in the majority of the country where the psychotic terrorists aren't an everyday event. And yes, it's JUST as irrelevant for me to make that point as it is to make yours that "we shouldn't be there".
-Styopa
I think its about time the people of the world revolted against the weapon makers ..
I'm not sure what your babbling on about, but in North America, Europe, Eastern Europe and in many parts of Asia the standard of living has never been higher. So I don't exactly see the masses wanting to "rock the boat."
Actually...
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
So you're right, but not exclusively right.
"Excuse me, did you say 'Trekker'? The word is 'Trekkie.' I should know; I created them." -- Gene Roddenberry
For those who think this device's use will somehow be limited to rioters, I want you to look up Victoria Snelgrove
She was killed by non-lethal technology (second hand shot from a pepperball gun to the temple) less than one year ago.
Technology always gets used for things other than what it was intended for. From people scratching on turntables, to aircraft, to video game music, to internet over cable, etc.
Those who suggested the emergence of "acceptable casualty rates" have the most foresight. That being said, this thing is pretty powerful. I wouldn't cry chicken little about it yet. The government doesn't get that scary that quickly. However, this is the kind of thing where we really ought to recognize that we can create any kind of technology we want to. Is this "heat ray" what we really want? What if we could instead, say, transport prepared food in minutes between here and other countries? You could feast on different food every night from around the world!
Probably one of the scarier things about this is it looks easy to build. Just a high-powered oscillator and Fresnel antenna (look closely at the pics). Now that the US has put the idea out there, I can imagine all kinds of people making their own...and forgetting to ask people to take off their glasses and remove their keys and pocket change and turn it off after five seconds.
And for those who might say 65 GHz oscillators are difficult, I thought they were too, until I just looked them up and found parts.
Remember, it feels like heat, because it IS heat.
And finally: "After her death , Boston Red Sox outfielder Trot Nixon said he would have traded back Game 7 Of The 2004 ALCS to have her back."
Never have I been less proud to be an American (well, maybe during the last two elections)
25,000 civilians dead in Iraq since the invasion, 80% killed by the occupying forces (the rest by the insugents).
And now we want to use ray guns. Anyone else think the world's going a bit mad?
Comparing the 25,000 figure with the death toll due to terrorism around the world leads me to think that the west's policy is "an eye for an eyelash".
There are significant health risks to certain individuals when targeted by 'non-lethal' riot-control measures. For example, persons with acute asthma (like me) can experience a fatal reaction to tear gas or pepper spray. Likewise, I imagine a person with lens implants in their eyes (like me) might be at risk for permanent damage, even blindness, when exposed to this 'non-lethal' microwave weapon.
And there is always the high probability of people being hurt in a stampede to get away from such weapons.
'Non-lethal' does not mean 'harmless', people. And guess what? The government won't care.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
When "anarchists" have been present in past protests, they have been shown to be plain clothes policemen for the purposes of provocateuring (starting violence) which then give police the justification to crack everybody's head. Just concoct a few anarchists and it doesn't matter if it's ray guns or tractor beams. The end result is the same: the scientific dictatorship is setting the rules and your opinion doesn't count.
In what way does this device make them 'feel' they are being burned alive rather than actually burning them alive? This isn't pepper spray that triggers pain sensors without associated damage. This thing makes people feel like they are burning because it is in fact cooking them!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
a result of looking what this could turn in to. Sure, most of us might not ever be in a riot, but I can easily see myself being involved in a peaceful protest (in the future) where our government has simply gone too far in taking our rights away. Then, while the protest is entirely peaceful, there are so many of us that the authorities simply stop caring, or even worse, plan to ignore the masses. Weapons like these make it all the more difficult for us to overthrow the governing body, should the majority find it inadequate and not sufficiently capable of fair ruling.
Its getting easier and easier for the gov't to supress, rather than acknowledge, the problem at hand, whatever it be; and we are the ones giving ground.
Don't get me wrong, I think stopping violent riots is a good thing. Using this would most likely save more lives than it would take; however this is teatering on the "cruel and unusual" line. I know thats for punishment, but I think the idea ought still apply for contol of the masses. Inducing nausea is simply not humane. Nor is making a person's skin feel like it's on fire. Each law inforcement officer should be subjected to the effects of each weapon they will be using before they are given conrol....say 5 seconds....enough to keep in mind the power they are wielding. Pay them a bit more, I don't care; just make sure they are as sparing as possible in the "non-lethal" weapon's use.
It is not the Uranium content that makes DU ammunitions "hot", but the assorted contaminants. Remember where the military gets the stuff? They cant afford to use "lab-grade" stuff (made from freshly-mined ore), so they buy at the other end of the nuclear fuel processing chain:
Military-grade DU is actually nuclear waste, mamely the "everything else" part that is left over after you have extracted the few elements/isotopes that can be profitably recycled. Sure, it is "mostly" Uranium (enough so give it the desired pyhsical properties: high density, internal structure, hardness). But on the radiological level the contaminants are very significant (e.g. lots of short-lived (=hot) decay products)
Yes its depleted or most radioactivity, but it's still a burning heavy metal regardless.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Normally on Slashdot, when an inaccurate statement or innuendo is posted, a response citing facts that rebut it will be quickly modded up.
The exception seems to be that if the statement or innuendo is Anti-American.
I guess the old chestnut that "America supplied Saddam with his arms" is just too good to give up, no matter what the facts are.
My impression from what I see on the media is that (besides IEDs) our forces are hit by bad guys who fire and then disappear, or blend into the crowd, or who appear to be good guys, and then pull out a weapon or blow themselves up. Is this correct? If so, the the weapon would be have to be used somewhat indiscriminately. Not that there is anything wrong with that IMHO, if you like to hang out on the street corner and watch your insurgent buddies you're asking for trouble.
Another use for the microwave beam might be to disrupt IEDs. Useful - you could zap a guy and if he's a suicide bomber he blows up, if he's not he just gets a headache.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
All popular movements start out as minority movements, because the rest of the population isn't sufficiently educated, or has been indoctrinated by the government controlled media. Those other 99.4% of the population that doesn't support you might not even know what's going on.
Example: Take East Timor, the US funded a state-run genocide by Indonesia. We did it because we wanted to drill for oil off East Timor and Indonesian control facilitated that aim. Now I'm sure 99.4% of the US population doesn't support genocide (there aren't that many neo-cons yet are there?), but I sure as hell never saw 298 million of them protesting with me or otherwise supporting the movement.
People are the problem, stop procreation now!
Some of you will say that this would undermine the effectiveness of the armed forces. I agree, it would undermine their effectiveness as a tool of opression and agression, however it should leave them well positioned to fulfill their original role, as defenders of the people against foreign armies.
Bring the armed forces home, and keep them here!
Don't give me any of that "preemptive defensive strike" either, I can't believe the American people fell for that BS.
People are the problem, stop procreation now!