Slashdot Mirror
Weapons of War Now Include Lightning Guns
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post is running a lengthy article today about Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems, an Indiana-based company that says its developed a nonlethal weapon that shoots lightning bolts. This article is an in-depth look at a company that's stirred up some controversy on Slashdot in the past. From the article: 'Lightning guns, heat rays, weapons that can make you hear the voice of God. This is what happens when the war on terror meets the entrepreneurial spirit.'"
I wonder how good the accuracy is. If a "bad" guy and a "good" guy are in close combat how do they make sure that the bolt strikes the "bad" guy and is not instead attracted to the metal gun being held by the "good" guy?
It seems to me that lightning wouldn't necessarily go where you want it to, but instead would go where it wants to...
"Chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are exceedingly rare, but... you never know." - MIT Physicist Bob Jaffe
Mine, or the one worshipped by evil people?
Supposedly "safe" Taser guns can kill people, and we're supposed to believe that they've perfected a non-lethal lightening bolt?
Why on earth are private companies (I won't even get started on governments) still developing weapons? This is incredibly sick.
Besides for profit, there's one great reason: Non-Lethal Weapons.
Sure we could just stick with the landmines, bio-weapons, and nuclear arms that are already developed, but I think we can do better. Don't you?
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
We already have those. They're called religions. The forces of evil have been using them to control idiots with great sucess for thousands of years.
Calm down they're non-lethal. Better that then sprey a crowd with bullets I'd say
Because some people, under the name of seeing the light, are doing a major power grab while portraying themselfs as god fearing people.
Why the question?
Nice Tesla Coil there. Now stop wasting my tax money on this BS.
As far as I can tell this guy just has some lasers and Tesla coils and "artist's renderings" of terrorists being struck down by sparks.
There's a fundamental problem yet to be addressed. It's extremely difficult to incapacitate someone without risking their life.
His vision of "Zapping the hostages with the kidnappers and sorting it out later" is scary!
That's the real risk of less-lethal weapons, they lend themselves to overuse.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Why are private companies still developing weapons? That's an easy question - because it's profitable. In a capitalist society, there doesn't need to be any other reason.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Private companies have been developing weapons for as long as human history. Why would anybody here think that should slow down or cease to exist?
You guys have really gone off the rails when you blame Bush for weapons technology continuing to improve. Has everyone here really lost their minds, or have all the adults left?
There are designed to be used on you.
It's a Bagel.
This is not specific to the US military. The 'private sector' has been developing weapons since Og showed nGg!g how to hit Blorg over the head with a rock.
Whom are we supposed to be fighting?
While I can appreciate a noble desire by people to wonder why weapons are needed, you do need to understand that weapons exist both as a means to inflict force as well as a means to psychologically affect a potential enemy.
The U.S and (former) U.S.S.R. nuclear arsenals are a perfect example of this idea. If only one country had possessed such a devastating arsenal, it could use it with impunity, thus constituting a an effective deterrence against any other party initiating hostilities. With both parties having the same weaponry, neither side can start anything without a devastating reprisal and are thus mutually deterred.
So, you see, the weapons themselves don't have to actually be used in order to be effective. The very fact that they could be used can deter someone who is considering attacking us or our international interests. Indeed, the lack of such weapons can actually encourage belligerent activity against us and our interests since any such belligerent party might feel they could "get away with it."
Finally, the more effectively our weaponry is, the less likely we'll ever need to use it. For that reason if no other, we should be glad research in these areas is continuing. The fact that this "lightning gun" is intended to be non-lethal is another great idea. It would alway be preferrable to "stun" a target than exercise lethal force. A stunned person will live if you make a mistake. Non-lethal weaponry, if perfected, could eventually eliminate the very concept of civilian casualties. And that is a very good thing to have in your arsenal no matter which "side" you are on.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Doesn't the US military have the so-called terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere massively outgunned? Doesn't the US already have several different non-lethal means of breaking up crowds?
The people of Vietnam did not want US domination and neo-colonialization, and the US lost that war.
The people of Iraq do not want US domination and neo-colonialization of their country, and the US is losing that war.
Afghanistan is rapidly sliding downhill. After overthrowing a democratic gov't in Haiti, the Haitian people are still resisting the US/UN troops.
Does anyone see a pattern here?
All the high-tech gizmos in the world will not help the US to pacify a country when the people of that country hate you with a passion.
Some people will not support the foreign domination and US puppet governments that are placed on them -- all in the name of some noble cause like "freedom and democracy"; and even worse for the US imperialists, some of those people will fight to the death to protect their country. Lightning bolts or microwaves aren't about to turn them into quislings.
Certain other highly profitable ventures (for instance, drug running and people trafficking) do occur in capitalist (as well as non capitalist) societies, but involve risks to those involved because of their illegality. These risks act as a deterrent to most businessmen.
I would also add that there are capitalist societies where moral issues also enter the equation. While in the US it seems to be considered the duty of executives to maximise profits (insofar as possible without ending up in jail) this is not true, for instance, of Japan or Scandinavia. Personally, I prefer the more moral approach of those societies.
Robert McClain learned that chainmail is no match for a Taser. He tried to go medieval on Michigan cops. While holed up in his basement armed with a large mallet he uttered: "I'm gonna crush your fucking skulls, I have a thousand years of power."
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Okay, firstly, fuck the karma. I ain't ACing this.
Secondly, you're an idiot. If we decide to "fuck the rules" and so do they, we both become suicidal nutters with bombs on our nuts. It's by sticking to the rules (AKA don't torture people, hello Bush). That we stay ABOVE their level.
When we start using the same tactics as they do (not to mention Bush is also happy to force Christianity into other peoples lives even if they don't want it), we become the "evil".
A lot of innocent people got their homes blown up and lost family members on both sides. You're bullshit just shows how stupid you are.
A human life is a human life, if it's okay for US to do anything, it's okay for THEM to do anything. A free life is not free if you have to be searched and risk your life every time you leave your house, which is how it is right now in Iraq.
I like muppets.
Korea and Vietnam were really a case of helping another nation defend itself.
Let's be serious. After the Japanese were defeated, a Korean gov't rose to power in Seoul. It was only a matter of days after US troops arrived that they overthrew that gov't -- it was too leftist for the US' tastes.
The US then put in a puppet dictator, Syngman Rhee -- a guy who lived in the US and who had lived in the US for 40 years. Once in power, Rhee -- with US backing -- started to undermine the northern gov't. Before the "attack" by the north, there were battalion-sized battles going on along the 38th parallel and fighters were dogfighting daily.
Please, the Korean war was nowhere near the black-and-white issue that whitewashed US history and propaganda makes it out to be. That's reflected even today. A Gallup/Chosun Ilbo poll conducted this summer found that fully 2/3 of South Koreans of military age would side with the north in the event of a war between the United States and North Korea.
In the case of Vietnam, no qualifications have to be made. The US was just dead, tyrannically wrong in that war.
During the Eisenhower administration, when the Vietnamese kicked the French out, the peace agreement temporarily divided the country until free and fair elections were to be held.
But the US refused to hold any elections. Why?
Well, declassified CIA documents show that the CIA reported to the US gov't that any fair election would be easily won by the Vietnamese national hero -- their version of George Washington -- Ho Chi Minh. The US could not hold elections because they knew that the US puppets would lose any fair election hands down.
Let's be clear: the Vietnam war was not in any way related to "democracy" -- the US refused to hold elections and backed South Vietnamese dictators. Similarly, the only "freedom" the South Vietnamese enjoyed was the "freedom" of capitalism, as dictated by the US.
This reminds me SOOO much of the UV Nitrogen stun laser cum "phaser" gun that was all in vogue 18 months ago.... what a load of crap.
In my never too humble opinion what's hapenning is that some fast talking BS artist spins a tale to tech to a defense buddy/contact/flak who's more knowledgable about ProSprorts than science....and gets a million or so research grant to pursue the idea. Then of course a small chunk of the grant goes out to the spin machine flaks like the Wash Post (and eventually end up) here.
By te time the idea is proven to be BS (which any 2nd year college physics student could likely have told you ) then everything is covered up and forgotten so there are no embarrassing questions about what MORON allocated the funding in the first place.
Moller and his fantastic flying cars has been pulling that stunt on the government every 15 years and those f-tards never learn.
Am I ranting again?....
Oops..
One more thing - the original artical goes on to say that the company's big achievement to date is selling scay green laser pointers to the military as a defense weapon for $1100 a pop! Oh well...at least it keeps these a-holes out from selling junk bonds to grandmothers.
Am I ranting again?
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
Nonlethals can be useful for
1. Hostage situations: instead of having to risk the hostages lives and negotiate with hostage takers you can take a minimal fatal risk right at the begining of the hostage crisis by shocking everyone in the premises unconscious, possibly saving the hostages, police, and even the criminals from a potentially deadly and psychologically scarring situation.
2. Attacks on a building, a giant lightning gun could shock people storming a building and knock them all unconcious, no assault rifle can take down 200 hundred guys storming an embasy like they did in saigon or terhan.
3. Preventing bad press, instead of a soldier or police officer entering a sitution where he is unsure of what is going on and feels endangered so he shoots someone, he merely blinds them or shocks them to the ground.
Nonlethals are not perfected yet, thats why we are still investing in them, but I would rather take my odds with a taser than a semi automatic pistol any day of the week. Complaining that people still could die misses the point, people are definitely going to die if they get shot with a M16.
Well I was thinking about just not shotting them at all.
You know not harming our fellow man and all.
Oh yes. Because, you know, angry rioting crowds are really friendly once you get to know them.
As Mao Zedong said, power is only in the barrel of a gun. You can argue political theory all you want, but when a fight breaks out in vivo, you've got to make sure that the side you agree with has the stronger weapon. And I'd prefer the power be in the barrel of a non-lethal gun - because it could also be wielded through the crowd's sticks and stones.
If you want to say that the mob is right, that's a different argument - and one that I would only accept partially, because most of the time violent protesters are mainly there for the fun of the protest, and only secondarily there to ask for a redress of grievances.
Nobody (well, nobody except some weirdos like China and so forth) is using weapons (non-lethal or not) against peaceful dissenters. And most of the recent major revolutions in which the good guys won were carried out peacefully.
Not quite but we're getting there.
There's no point just having voltage - You need current to flow.
High frequency AC can utilise all sort of parasitic effects to create an effective path - very small inductances and capacitance (like skin, shoes etc) can be utilised.
The glass plasma balls at the toy shop use high frequency to this effect. It wouldnt work with DC.
Get over yourself. You aren't being persecuted, you're frankly not that important.
Don't take this the wrong way but if you had studied history you would know that the terrorists would still be trying to kill us even if we all dropped our weapons and tried to play nice with them.
One of the first edicts of islam is that muslims must fight non muslims till they either a) become muslims b) submit to muslim rule and pay muslim taxes (Muslims aren't suposed to tax other muslims so the only way they had of collecting taxes was through non muslims) or c) die fighting the muslim armies.
For the first century christian europe did nothing against the muslim forces attacking christian europe taking christian lands and booty and killing christians. Not fighting didn't convince the muslim forces to stop lay down their weapons nor to be friends (that's when the crusades begain after over a century of muslim attacks and pillaging). Islam's laws as laid out by mohammad make this impossible unless you propose we all either convert to islam which is impossible because it would conflict with another of mohammads edicts which as previously stated muslims can't tax other muslims. So in order for islams tax base society to continue their would have to be non muslims to subjugate and tax or fight and pillage from otherwise their governmental system would collapse and they would be forced to violate mohammads edict of not taxing muslims.
Bottom line islam needs to get money like it does now off of oil from other non muslims to keep their government going or to fight non muslims for spoils or to rule and tax non muslims. It's a system designed to promote violence to other religions and to keep themselves going off of the suffering of others that can't hope to end it even by all of us converting to islam because they can't allow us all to become islamic without destroying their own society in the proccess.
So turning off the tv and going out to talk to your neighbor while a good idea and benificail in the long run towards getting along with most people providing they wanna get along with you to begin with. But it will do nothing to stop terrorism not as long as their are thoughs out their who are intent on not getting along or causing terror to get what they want or need through whatever means avalible to them.
As for the guns they are also used to defend as well as to attack and yes ultimatly to kill but in a time when men are killing men and the only thing they had to defend themselves with were guns, swords, spears, knives, arrows etc.. it was what had to be used because non lethal means weren't avalible to them. Yes their were also plenty of examples where thoughs supposedly defending became as bad as their attackers or started out as bad as them their were also thoughs who just wanted to live peacefully but couldnt and had to fight to protect themselves. Rest assurd though that even if we replace our lethals with non lethals their will still be others out their who don't share the same views about the lives of others who will continue to develop and perfect new ways of killing to allow them to continue killing us to achieve their goals whatever they may be.
Sowing swords into plowshares is a great idea something to strive for but unless everybody wants it it's an unobtainable goal, And clearly from looking at history and looking at whats happening now it's still just as unobtainable as it has ever been even without the TV.
Is it any wonder then why people hide themselves in fantasy worlds rather than going out to talk to their neighbors? It's just plain safer and gives them something to distract and make them forget for a time the things they can do nothing about.
And thats the sadest thing of all.
Coward? Coward! Thems fighten words!!
All those "pieces of shit" are there as the result of combat in either Afganistan (a war) or Iraq (a war) or a "War on Terror". Geneva conventions bind any signatory, regardless if they are fighting a country which was not one.
Folks like you piss and whine whenever US troops scare someone with a damn dog or make them sweat a little under the interrogation light, but you're awfully fucking quiet when the same type of folks we hold prisoner in gitmo blow up an iraqi police station, or kill a few newly elected iraqi officials in broad daylight.
Look, idiot, let me explain it in a way your peanut brain can absorb: this is becasue if you do the same as they do, you become the same pieces filthy shit they are. Get it? Now, I fully understand that it is the objective of some, like you, to become as imbecillic, vicious, murderous and bigoted as the Al-Queida crew, but some of us still hold to these "quaint" notions of civilization and that supposedly civilized nations are to be held to a higher standard then a band of blood-thirsty thugs.
It's new compared to conventional weapons. The problem most non-lethal technology is the fact that it's: a) Easier and cheaper to simply kill someone b) Bigger logistics footprint with non-lethal technology c) More energy required for effective non-lethals There is a demand for them, but the technology must first overcome engineering, legal, and support issues. As for the XADS, it seems nothing more than a fancy Van De Graaff http://science.howstuffworks.com/vdg.htm
"And it's not like our military does not have nonlethal weapons, it just won't arm our guys with them for the obvious lunkhead reasons."
Care to elaborate on those obvious lunkhead reasons?
Fielding less-than-lethal weapons is not something to be done lightly. The fact that soldiers will be less familiar with them would immediately make them less effective, so you'd have to at least delay employing them except with new units who have trained with them. How many months is that, bureaucracy included?
Sustaining them in operation can be a hassle too. As has been pointed out, the less-lethal quality of these weapons lends them to freer use, which is not always good. Not to mention the ammo can be, well, wierd. It's not fun to try and differentiate pepper rounds from beanbag rounds from shotgun shells when your adrenaline is pumping, you've got tunnel vision, and your fine motor skills are so shot to hell you couldn't tie your enemy to a telephone pole if you wanted to. Bullets, on the other hand, are cheap to make.
Also, as weapons become less and less lethal their effectiveness seems to become a matter of their being used correctly, which will never happen all the time in the stress of a combat situation (which crowd control can become easily once someone throws a rock or bottle). In other words, they're more likely to fail to stop an attacker than just aiming a three round burst at the center of the body. The soldier just may be aware that his weapons were made by the lowest bidder.
Human beings can be killed by some very slight trauma, but can also survive surprising amounts of abuse. Police officers keep a healthy distance from knifers even when they have their guns on him. Why? Because even a lethally wounded man can take from 10 seconds to two minutes or therabouts to die (Yeah, those drawn out war movie scenes where the Sargeant is dying are more accurate than you might think). In 10 seconds a knifer can close a hefty distance, much less two minutes.
Obviously, less lethal weapons are not a magic bullet (mod me down if you can't forgive the pun). Only good training and understanding of the weapon and the dynamics in which it is employed can achieve those results.
If you bothered to do your research you would know that 100's have been released from Gitmo after around 2 years. All totally innocent. Turns out Northern Alliance were handing over people who were strangers/could talk English for the 5K reward.
Shame about the ones who died in transit though, or the ones the US had shipped off to other countries to have tortured (In one case an Canadian too). And terrible that none of where compensated for 2 years of their lives taken away from them to come back to find all their property was taken from them.
But hey keep living that dream.
And that is to be arbitrarily determined by the very enemy who captured them?! You gotta be kidding. If that were true, no soldier ever would qualify as a POW as soon as some officer in the invading army decided that he "violated the rules of war". As per GC3 4.A.1, the POW status is awarded with no exceptions to: "Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict, as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces" which would cover all Taliban foot soldiers (an army of Taliban-controlled Afganistan) and all Iraqi "insurgents" who were members of the Saddam's Ba'ath army. Note that the additional conditions are placed in 4.A.2 only on "other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements".
If you were to take your reasoning to its logical conclusion, the Chech partisans who assassinated the Reinhard Heidrich - the German Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia would be terrorists and the Germans would be entitled to do with them as they please. I do not even want to consider looking into the the dark sewers of relative morality such an opinion could only dwell in.
The Numremberg trials were possible because the actions of the German leadership were so at odds with civilized conduct that all of the members of the Alliance agreed upon and came up with a protocol to deal with them. The Geneva Conventions are a result of that agreement as they were signed after the Nuremburg trials.
While the Geneva conventions prohibit the trial of POWs for the act of making war, they can be tried, by US military tribunal, for violations of rules of war. We are perfectly within our rights, under international law, to execute these people if they are judged to be war criminals.
NO! If they are "violating the rules of war" that determination is to be made by the court in Hague not by the US! You can't appoint yourself judge, jury and executioner. The test to determine if they are "violating rules of war" is designed so that you cannot fudge it yourself, to your own ends. Only after the international courts decide that these people were indeed violating the rules, can you try them in (international or under international supervision) military tribunals. Until then they are POWs.
Seriously, how much does the US really care about accuracy? Consider that in the "war on their terrorism" since 9-11 we no longer use intelligent surgical methodologies to apprehend and prosecute those who seek to harm us. Instead we use "shock and awe" with impunity against everyone and anyone who happens to be in the strike zone.
Our attack against Afghanistan killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians in the first weeks of bombing. Many more were injured, blinded, and maimed. And who gives a fuck? It was cost-effective.
Likewise, we've imprisoned thousands of "enemy combatants" without levying any charges and withhold all due process, and we know that likely a majority of them were simply handed over for those nice juicy ransoms we offered for Al Qaidas. And hundreds of these un-charged suspects have been beaten to death in our custody. And who gives a fuck? After all, you and me are just fine. I got a beer, got the computer, and a whole new TV season is right around the corner. Life is good!
Not only can't we hit the target, lately we can't even hit the right country. (Must be something in my eye... Ah, there it is, a giant plank of lies stuck in there.)
Now you'd think that when you're attacking a country like Iraq purely to fulfill the elite agenda of hawkish industrialists - especially when you know there is no ethical justification - you'd make some effort not to harm too many civilians. But no, we kill tens of thousands of civilians there too, and then through plain old inaction, willful ignorance, and ineptitude we allow a hundred thousand more to die - mostly children, just like the prior sanctions. And isn't it nice, nobody cares! Apparently it's cost-effective to be indiscriminate and to close your eyes to the collateral damage.
And then consider the use of depleted uranium for its singular density and ability to bore through inches of plate steel. Neato! We value those properties, and don't care a fig for the long-term collateral effects to those kooky ululating foreign civilians and our own soldiers alike. We really don't give a flying fuck about the negatives, because we can just pretend they don't exist.
I would love to believe that non-lethals are the future, and that we really do care about collateral damage, but I know better. The system favors sloppy non-surgical strikes, and there is no sense of accountability in this divided and conquered post-postmodern world where We The People can just pretend it away, and our "authority" figures encourage us to do so.
And here come the bunker buster nukes! You think they're just making them for fun? Indeed, we will use them, and do even more collateral damage.
Really, collateral damage is practically a tradition with the USA. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just the first rush of the drug. We love killing innocent people in our shocking and awful campaigns. It makes our collective nut-sack tingle - especially when we get away with it.
Do I exaggerate?
-- thinkyhead software and media
And then the $1000 blinding green laser, most certainly just a repackaged $50 oem cost Asian manufacture green laser pointer of the kind that showed up in the news when they were aimed at aircraft cockpits. Nice profit margin.
And delivering weapons in a Burger King parking lot because it's too much trouble to get cleared to deliver it? Bogo-Meter off the scale. The military does NOT take delivery that way except in a TV series. And he would have had to get a security clearance FIRST before producing the 'weapons'. This guy's story smells like a low-rent hustler hyping things.
In which case he is a criminal to be tried for mass murder by the courts in his country. As far as the Occupying Power is concerned he falls under the Fourth Convention.
The preamble of first convention of 1949:
Yes, technically the Conventions originated in 1929 but they were nearly completely revised at the end of WWII as a result of the Nazi experiences.
The US didn't sign the treaty that would recognize the permanent international war crimes court in the Hague.
Which is only another point against the US.
As far as I'm aware the US is bound by the following verbage in the same treaty quoted above ... before its own courts
Yes but not military tribunals. "Own courts" here refers to regular civilian courts with all the due process that entails. Witness the following section of Article 146:
but most importantly examine the whole provision of "Protecting Power" (i.e. 3rd party to oversee the trials) which exists solely for the purpose of curbing arbitrary judgments, see Aticle 9 and so on.Again, the standard is "competant tribunal", not civilian courts, and certainly not international courts. I'll admit there's certainly room for reasonable people to disagree about what that means
The term "competent tribunal" does not even appear in GC4 you quoted. The term appears in GC3 in Article 5 as
Note that it applies only to the determination of status of the combatant. Following which the other provisions kick in: civilian criminal = civlilian court, POW = internment till hostilities cease, War Criminal = a trial in front of a regular court for war crimes (under the supervision of a Protecting Power) or in Hague if you are sane and do not wish to credibly accused of rigging the trial (see Milosevicz and crew).When a bullet can arrange a face-to-face introduction?
(sorry, sorry, couldn't resist)
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
That's the problem with too many Americans (and yes, I am one myself, keep that in mind when you flame me): they think that waving their dicks around and threatening/bullying the rest of the world will make us safer, when in fact it does the opposite.
I think lots of people on the Left want to think that the only reason that people hate and attack the USA is because of the USA's "bad behavior". Keep in mind that this action gives ammunition to the rabid Right-wing war hawks who call you the "blame America first crowd", but that's a side point to what I'm trying to state.
If the USA stopped "threatening/bullying", as you imply it should do, then it would be the only country on the planet that does NOT "threaten" or "bully". What one person may call "threatening" or "bullying" is what another person would simply call "looking out for one's interests" -- which is the very essence of diplomacy. Every nation is competing and standing up for their own interests, regardless of the spin that we want to put on it and pretend that everyone is "cooperating". Is China cooperating with Taiwan and Tibet? Is North Korea cooperating with anyone?
Diplomacy happens no matter what you and I may desire. (Hehe, "Diplomacy happens.") Some diplomatic decisions happens to deprive individuals of life, liberty, and property, and that precisely what I decry.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.