US Air Force to Test Hi-Tech Weapons on Americans?

GayBliss writes to tell us CNN.com has an article about how the US Air Force secretary proposes testing new 'non-lethal' weapons on American citizens before deploying them to the battlefield. New weapons like a high-power microwave device are designed to incapacitate people or sometimes even electronic devices. From the article: "The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne."

Comments

How about

[kalirion]

testing these weapons on the people in charge of the project? I mean they're non-lethal, so what's the problem?

Re:How about

[twofidyKidd]

Actually, I've had such a system (millimeter wave emitter) tested on me. I voluteered myself, as did the people in charge of the project. The thing hurts like you're being cooked alive, and stops immediately once you're out of the way, but leaves no physical trace of injury.

I work for Raytheon.

Re:How about

[Com2Kid]

Wanna test it in a riot scenario, pay yourself a bunch of Army recruits to stage a riot under controlled circumstances.

Hell with that.

You know those carnival/fair events where you get to dunk "Insert Person Here"?

I say we make the congress critters + president and cabinet sign up for non-lethal weapon tests performed by citizens who buy tickets to fire off said weapons. The more painful weapons have higher ticket prices.

Make all of them rotate through the program until the national debt is paid off.

I bet you that as a side effect, the budget would get balanced REALLY quick.

Re:How about

[ultranova]

The thing hurts like you're being cooked alive, and stops immediately once you're out of the way, but leaves no physical trace of injury.

I think the CIA just found a new favored method of information extraction / recreation.

Mod me down if you will, but you have to admit that that's a torturers dream - hurts like hell but won't leave evidence or run the risk of killing the subject prematurely. And with any luck it will also destroy any video tapes and photos of the incident.

'Unruly crowds?'

[Captain Sarcastic]

Hmmm... if there are crowds of protesters who disagree with this idea, then it's a ready-made opportunity!

<IRONY=0%>

Dammit, did I leave off the "IRONY=100%" tag again?

read this earlier

[thefirelane]

I read this earlier, I couldn't think of a better example of "damned if you do, damned if you don't"

Military uses them first on US citizens:
OMG the Military is testing weapons on US citizens!

Military uses them first on non-US citizens:
OMG the Military is testing weapons on non-US citizens! What are those people worth less to you racists?

Military doesn't develope these weapons:
OMG the Military is using deadly force against civilians

Re:read this earlier

[Dr Caleb]

"OMG the Military is using deadly force against civilians"

The question you should be asking is "Why is the Military being used for civillian law enforcment?"

Re:Major Flaw

[Red Flayer]

Give me a break. When you get to the point where you are trying to care about what people think about you in a war you are losing. War is for one thing only--the destruction of your enemy.

Wars have always been fought for things other than destruction of your enemy.

Independence (which doesn't require destruction of enemy.
Territory (ditto).
Other scarce resources (food, water, oil, gold, etc. -- doesn't necessarily require destruction of your enemy).

War isn't about destroying your enemy (that's genocide you're thinking of, there). War is typically about the control of resources, and one of those resources is popular opinion. Plenty of wars have been fought for PR reasons -- an external enemy is one way of helping ensure you don't have to deal with an internal enemy.

I'm a hippy, and I still think this post is funny

[spun]

I was all set to be offended, but it's a good laugh. I don't think he's actually dissing hippies here so much as just poking fun. So knock it off with the troll mods. That kind of oppression is so uncool, man, I mean, if we can't laugh at ourselves, we need to smoke more pot, am I right? The dude may be too square to realize that you don't generally get rowdy and smash stuff when you toke up, but that doesn't make him a troll. Come on, mods, don't be like The Man here, putting your negativity onto this poor dude, let him be himself.

Jmorris42, shine on, you crazy diamond.

This is to save lives, period.

[ScentCone]

The question you should be asking is "Why is the Military being used for civillian law enforcment?"

They're not. Here's a scenario for you:

You're with a platoon of Marines assigned to guard a US Embassy, or perhaps to support the local military in their protection of a local elected official (say, the Interior Minister of Carjakistan, who is friendly to democracy but tends to have angry mobs pointed at him by his local political opponents in the city where they're trying to put together a function municipal government that doesn't involve daily beheadings). A couple of busses pull up with that day's duly designated Angry Mob(s). They start screaming, throwing rocks, etc. Then, some shots ring out from the crowd, at the Marines.

So, they can fire over the heads of the crowd, hoping to disperse them. The people willing to attack some Marines don't really care about that tactic one way or the other, so that's something of a non-starter. Or, they can fire into the crowd, making them disperse into smaller body parts, and hopefully also killing the people who are shooting at whatever building they're in. That works, but has the unfortunate side effect of killing the people who were bussed in as angry-crowd-cover by the militants. Marines look bad on CNN for that one. Or, they can trot out a new toy or two that makes it pretty much unbearable to be in that crowd in the first place, AK-47 under your cross-dressing burkha or not. Unarmed civilians don't die, and Interior Minister gets to go to work on the police force that's ultimately supposed to handle these situations.

If I'm a Marine, I'm all for this. Likewise Air Force MPs (who are often guarding facilities that get swamped with representatives from Unruly Crowd Central Casting), etc.

Re:Major Flaw

[HarvardAce]

Give me a break. When you get to the point where you are trying to care about what people think about you in a war you are losing. War is for one thing only--the destruction of your enemy.

And this is why we're losing -- or at least not winning -- the "war" in Iraq. Wars in the last millenia are not like the ones you get in Civilization games -- they rarely (if ever) result in the total annihilation of the enemy, nor is that usually the goal of a war either. Wars with that goal in mind (e.g. the Germans in WWII) are doomed to fail because there are always more "them" than "us."

Wars these days are as much ideological wars as they are wars over territory or economics. Especially in the war on terror, public relations is a huge issue (and perhaps the most important one). The problem we are currently having is that the insurgents are recruiting people faster than we can neutralize (either by killing or capturing) them. If we were to use unethical or excessive force in dealing with the insurgents, we will only succeed in driving more and more people to the insurgent's cause. Events such as the prison abuse scandal have hurt our efforts in Iraq and in neighboring regions. Some people will be driven to the insurgency regardless of what we do in the Middle East and across the globe, but we must take whatever steps possible (and reasonable) to limit the number of people who join the insurgency.

If winning a war was just about destroying the enemy without regard to any reprecussions, we would just drop a ton of nukes on Iraq and Afghanistan and call it a day. Obviously the world does not work like that, and hasn't since the middle ages.

Re:FUD, FUD, FUD

[voice_of_all_reason]

I keep hearing about these "nonlethal alternatives" and have to wonder why they are being used more and more often in cases where a lethal alternative would never be condoned. That is not an "alternative", it is an entirely different justification and punishment altogether.

I don't usually agree with the Cowards, but...

[benhocking]

I've been in this situation. There was a peaceful anti-KKK protest in Atlanta many years back when I was an undergrad at GT (early 90's or late 80's), and I was there with more than a thousand others. Everything was going fine. Then, a few people started throwing rocks at the KKK marchers, several of which hit the police - either intentionally or unintentionally. (The KKK march was naturally the impetus for the anti-KKK protest.) Now, I was not in a position to stop "the destructive people in [my] midst", but I would have if I could have. The police then ordered us to disperse. Now, of course, with over a thousand people, no crowd can disperse quickly. I can't speak for everyone else, but I know that I was attempting to leave. Nevertheless, the police got impatient and started pushing. At this point, I got a club to the back from a police officer - not hard enough to do any real damage, but hard enough to leave a small bruise.

My point is that you shouldn't judge all protesters at a given protest for the acts of the few - or even the acts of the many. If I was there legally (and I was), then what other people did at the rally does not justify using force on me - as long as I'm continuing to act legally (and I was). Now, granted, the club incident was no big deal, and to the best of my knowledge no one else got treated much worse. The point is that even if you're doing everything right, you can find yourself in an unsavory situation.

(I also want to point out that calling police officers "pigs" (as the GP post did) is never useful. And, in most cases, it is highly inaccurate. Most police officers are decent, hard-working people and should be shown the respect they deserve.)

Re:Rich = Powerful = I Do Whatever I Want

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Does anyone get the feeling that sometimes America is a place where rich, powerful people do whatever they want?

Yes, it's been that way since a Supreme Court Clerk Decided that corporations were persons back in 1886. We lost our democracy then.

Yesterday, we learn that the HP executive who authorized the illegal surveillance has been slapped on the wrist.

Of course- she's not in your class.

Today, we learn that government officials will arbitrarily test military weapons on American citizens.

But only in keeping with what the Corporations want- in other words, they'll be used on protestors who are blocking streets and endangering profits.