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Millimeter-Wave Weapon Certified For Use In Iraq
jdray writes "Wired has a story on the certification of the Active Denial System for use in Iraq. The ADS is a millimeter-wave weapon that uses a reportedly non-lethal energy beam to inflict short-term pain on its targets, encouraging them to leave an area. Experimenters call this the 'Goodbye effect.' I can see using this in a wartime situation, but how long before we see these things mounted to the top of S.W.A.T. vans for domestic crowd control? And, is that a bad idea?" From the article: The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves — 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven... while subjects may feel like they have sustained serious burns, the documents claim effects are not long-lasting. At most, 'some volunteers who tolerate the heat may experience prolonged redness or even small blisters'... There has been no independent checking of the military's claims." Wired use Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain documents on the military's testing program.
Sounds like the Neronic Whip that Isaac Asmiov described in his Foundation series. Now whether or not its a Good Idea(TM), that is a tough call. Likely it depends on whther you're on the trigger end or muzzle end, so to speak.
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how long before we see these things mounted to the top of S.W.A.T. vans for domestic crowd control? And, is that a bad idea?
Is using a non-lethal device for crowd control a bad idea? I'd guess it would depend on if this can create permanent harm or not. If it has no ill side-effects I'd say it's one hell of a lot better than tear gas that can kill people with some respiratory conditions.
Crowd control in an of itself is not a bad idea if that's what you're getting at.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Absolutely NO amount of radiation is completely safe. I'm wondering if this will be a new disaster like the use of radioactive munitions by NATO in former Yugoslavia...
What happens if it's aimed at the head for a prolonged time?
What if it's aimed at someone with a pacemaker?
Test it on Dick Cheney's pacemaker. Those things have warning against retail anti-theft devices!
Then we can see if it's use is safe against the general population.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Crowd control should be about de-escalating the chance for conflict. If you start burning people with microwaves, you radically and abruptly increase the chance for a peaceful protest to turn into a bloody lynching.
During the protest against the invasion of Iraq in New York, just trying to deny all the intersections to protesters with sawhorses and mounted police caused surging to begin in the crowd, and the NYPD came within a hair's breadth of inciting a riot that would have burned out Midtown Manhattan and killed a lot of people.
And if any police department or government agency in the United States gets the bright idea to employ this kind of means here against people exercising their constitutional rights, they should think very carefully and deeply and consider that I and many of my patriotic countrymen are very jealous of our rights and also possess automatic weapons. How far do you want to push us, Mr. Man?
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Joking aside, how easy would it be to make protective armor against this kind of attack? You can buy rolls of steel or aluminum window screening at any hardware store for under $50.
=Smidge=
How is this "humane"? Inflicting wide area pain at a distance is somehow better than delivering it in person? (It will not be long before we hear about this being used on confined prisoners.)
People remember what you do to them. If you make them suffer, they are not going to thank you for it later. This is going to be just another reason for people to hate the US. (Like we have not given them enough Shock and Awe already...)
How long before it gets used on US citizens? Protest and find out!
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Because they have never mislead us before.
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On the one hand, it beats the hell out of using machine guns for crowd dispersal.
On the other, because it doesn't (apparently) kill people, armed forces will be *much* more likely to use it to disperse people, instead of trying to do things that keep people from rioting. Technical solution to non-technical problem isn't a solution, it's a treatment.
Any bets on whether this is already in use for interrogation?
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves -- 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven..
I wonder how it relates to UV, visible light and IR then? That's mighty big frequency range from 2,4GHz to 30 EHz.
Why couldn't they just say "EHF" if they needed to specify the frequency area where 94 GHz resides. I hate these articles that try to sound technical with some babble but in reality just betray that the writer does not know what's he talking about.
I'm all for nonlethal weapons when the other choice is killing people en masse. But in the current Iraq situation, all I can see in a device that causes pain without killing is a lot of hurt people wanting payback big time. Something like this could be perverted into a horrible torture device. To ever use something like this against a civilian population would be dubious at best. Doesn't the world hate the U.S. enough already?
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I'd rather suffer "intense pain" that is non-lethal than get shot. I have the same argument for tasers, if the cops are going to take me down because I'm drunk and throwing bottles at them better a taser than a bullet.
the problem becomes in what situations is force, even if non-lethal used. if we march on washington because we don't like the results of the next election and start getting zapped and tear gased, I don't think that is acceptable. unless of course the protest became a violent mob, which happens so easily these days.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
argumentum ad fallacium: Fallacy of defining a fallacy which allows one to dismiss the argument in question.
Sounds like a good idea in principle, but someone, sooner or later, is bound to abuse it. Who will be responsible for determining when it can/can not be used? For a soldier to kill someone with a gun, they have to have a damn good reason to do it. To use something that inflicts pain with no long term effects? Very high danger of abuse.
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1) Develop new weapon.
2) Deploy weapon during a civil war.
3) Watch insurgents develop counter measures via trial and error.
4) Insurgents publish counter measure globally.
5) Return to step 1.
Even if there are no lasting effects, that doesn't necessarily make it acceptable.
It reminds me of our government's line on torture of prisoners. They don't consider it torture if it doesn't have lasting effects. It's kind of like a rapist, claiming it wasn't wrong because he wore a condom.
The next question is, "Will you be mobile enough to avoid the pepper spray, teargas, rushing beatdown and real bullets when they come?"
Precisely. If I hadn't just burned through a batch of mod points that'd get one from me.
White phosphorous is a chemical weapon issued to US forces so that it can be used for smoke screen purposes. However since it has historically also been used as a particularly nasty incendiary weapon, some of the more 'enterprising' elements of those same US forces have used it as an offensive weapon - most notably against civilians in Fallujah. I'm not trying to blame the so highly lauded US soldiers here - I know what that'll get me thanks - but I am trying to reiterate that soldiers under high stress on the battlefield will use whatever tools you give them without necessarily taking the ethics arguments into account at all - and who could blame them? The same logic of course extends to law enforcement and so-called "crowd control".
That's why it's all the more important that governments, international legislative bodies and military/law enforcement authorities keep themselves and each other in check and only issue such weapons under situations of absolute necessity if at all. Any power or weapon issued to anyone will some day be abused. The more powerful, potentially unethical and/or just plain nasty that power or weapon the more grave the risk to innocents.
So it's imperative that we, you know - the people, do everything we can to keep these things out of their hands.
In a situation like Iraq, you do not want to kill lots of civilians -- even those who are angry at the military already -- because that begets more enemies. If there's a huge riot against American forces because the security promised never appeared, shooting into the crowd will cause more fanaticism.
Shooting a microwave into the crowd hopefully will break up these things without a huge firefight.
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How about not doing whatever it is that's causing widespread unrest?
Also, the first time it is used at a US political protest, such as a GOP convention, there's going to be hell to pay.
Or used on crowds with pregnant women, and tiny children who don't know what is going on. (Of course, in Cheney's view, ethics and minorities, no great loss.)
Or when the field intensity ends up with strong lobes they never planned on, because of metal in the urban environment accidently causing concentration.
This thing is, basically, a weapon of mass torture.
I disagree slightly with your deduction that if I'm wearing protective gear then I mean to attack. If I was planning to be in a peaceful protest and I suspected that this device would be used against me, then why wouldn't I plan to wear armor? Peaceful demonstrations are planned and organized too. I hope that doesn't mean that they'd fall back to using a machinegun on demonstrators!
Intentionally inflicting intense pain on a person to illicite a response is torture. Saying the pain is non-damaging and short term, doesn't change the fact that it's torture. This is a mass torture device.
In crowd control situations, I can't think of a scenario where this wouldn't also be collective punishment. It's like two Geneva Convention violations wrapped in one. Go USA!
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
You wouldn't be wearing the armor unless you anticipated being in a place where the millimeter-wave weapon would be used. You wouldn't anticipate being in such a situation unless you were planning to cause a disruption or asked to join in one.
Yeah, because no experienced protester expects that the police might employ anti-riot weapons even if the situation doesn't warrant it. It's simply inconceivable.
*rolls eyes*
The enemies of Democracy are
Are you actually serious? Do you have any idea what goes on when a prisoner is tortured for information? This weapon system is the Disney-ified G-rated version of even the mildest "information extraction" techniques, divided by a thousand. This is nothing in comparison. As for your highly specious rape analogy, I can't speak for everyone here, but I'd much rather be mildly burned by an energy weapon than raped, any day, no contest, they're not even in the same goddamn universe.
Honestly, you über-pacifists are never satisfied. First you bitch about the horrible casualties of war - and I won't argue with ya on that one -- but when military contractors try to develop a non-lethal weapon system you bitch about that. The world is an ugly place, human beings are ugly by nature, so any sovereign nation (not just the U.S.) needs a standing military to defend itself when and as needed; the less lethal/destructive we can make those conflicts between nations, the better. Quit your whining, this is a step in the right direction -- a small one, but important nonetheless.
For domestic protests I'll have to retract my statement. You're right, as well as the guy above you. My conclusions are far more likely to be correct in Iraq at the moment.
In Iraq today, as in India once upon a time, resistance to a foreign occupying power is "domestic protest". Unless by "domestic" you mean "American", in which case that is what you should have said.
Domestic protestors in Iraq know full well they are likely to be attacked by any number of forces, including militias of groups opposed to them, as well as the American occupying forces. Any reasonable protestor would come prepared to deal with a variety of threats, and if American forces deploy this weapon then it is reasonable that anyone who thinks they might be a target of it will take appropriate counter-measures.
The only way one could believe that counter-measures are not appropriate for peaceful protestors is if you think that American troops never make mistakes. The last time I looked, although on average amongst the best soldiers on the world, American troops are still human beings, and therefore make mistakes really rather easily.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
At least in my experience, Tasers replaced nightsticks and billy clubs because they're more photogenic and have less of a stigma. Most of the situations you see Tasers being used in, would in the "bad old days" probably have engendered use of the club. Only that's not quite acceptable anymore, so instead they've found a method that looks better from a distance, and leaves fewer marks. (No awkward explanations of how somebody 'fell down the stairs,' etc.)
I'm not at all convinced that the level of police brutality has increased in recent years, if anything I think it's probably at its lowest level in this country historically. Arguing with people who consider themselves to be in a position of power has never been a safe sport, and depending on where and when you did it (and who you were), you might have been lucky to get out with the equivalent of a Tasering.
I'm not defending the practice per se, I'm just suggesting that I think you're wrong to assume that the technology actually causes brutality; the brutality has always been there, and always finds an outlet. That the Taser seems to be the choice du jour for causing pain doesn't really make it unique.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Come into my country and torture me with experimental technology, I'll be forgiving.
Quack, quack.
Instead it induces a panic response. There is a difference. I'm not saying waterboarding is right, only that it isn't torture.
Torture, (n) 1 a : anguish of body or mind
That word you keep abusing, I do not think it means what you would like it to mean.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I think people are confusing "protest" with "mob." A planned protest with people who know what they're getting into, and have protection, is a very different entity from a spontaneous street riot.
Sometimes people who want to crack down on a protest will term it a 'mob' or 'riot,' but they're different. A riot, and what this machine is designed to disperse, is a situation where you have a whole lot of people just getting together spontaneously for the purposes of causing violence. Since spontaneity implies lack of preparedness, this would be effective there.
Even if you have something that starts off as a protest and then becomes a mob or riot, say by virtue of people joining up with the protest whose ends are violent rather than peaceful, then the deterrent system is most effective against the violent hangers-on, rather than the core protesters. So again, it's not ineffective.
"Professional protesters" and the other people likely to bring protective gear are not the real concern, because they're the ones least likely to be causing violence. (And if they are, you can't really call it a 'protest' anymore, it's a battle, and time to bring out the real weapons.) In many ways, a good crowd 'discourager' should have some form of protective gear that's effective against it, because this allows you to drive off violent spontaneous rioters but have minimal effect on core protesters.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You couldn't get away with firing an automatic weapon into the crowd during a riot in L.A., but something tells me it wouldn't be a problem in Iraq.
You are quite clueless regarding the rules of engagements. US forces generally expose themselves to extra risk in order to avoid endangering civilians as much as possible.
. Unless you haven't noticed, it's not exactly like we're going out of our way to detail the number of Iraqis killed by Americans in the news.
First, it is no secret and it could never be kept secret. You might want to keep in mind that *both* side are trying to manipulate you, that the enemy is working very hard at their media campaign to manufacture images of atrocities and civilian casualties. Hence the videos in Lebanon at different sites but with the same people. The enemy has learned very well from Vietnam, that you can lose on the battlefield, but prevail if you can win on the TV. The Jihadist leadership is very media saavy.
Secondly, Iraqis killed by Americans is a number dwarfed by Iraqis killed by Jihadists coming from other nations and killed by fellow Iraqis. Hence the news coverage.
Otherwise, we have 3k+ dead soldiers who died for nothing at all.
We do.
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What you'd more than likely do with your tinman outfit, is re-focus the energy in some intense ways on yourself or others around you, causing real problems.
You also make a nice, bright, shiny target for a taser if you really seem to be resiting the call to leave an area, and wearing a giant conductive suit around tasers seems like one the less bright choices you could make.
Please let me know what protest you plan to attend wearing tinfoil so I can show up with a video camera and earn big bucks with the hilarious result on Revver.
If a protest is lawful and you have the permits, you have no need for such a suit...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I oppose nonlethal weapons, and I am a pacifist.
Let me tell you why. Lethal weapons have consequences. If you shoot someone, it's undeniable that you shot them, and you will have to answer. If you're the police, facing off a crowd, and the only enforcement tool you have is a gun, you're MUCH more likely to do the proper thing, and talk the situation down or handle it in such a way that it stays in control.
If you have a magic ray gun, you're much more likely to shoot as soon as you bloody well feel like it, without trying to properly address the situation. Not only does this give you a crowd of angry, hurt people, it also fails to address the underlying cause of the disturbance in the first place.
Additionally, the media treats them so much differently. If the police shoot into a crowd of protesters, there is instant, full coverage, and possible society-changing events (Kent State?). If the police shoot tear gas into a crowd, or now shoot them with the magic ray gun, the story is always "An unruly crowd of protesters was dispersed by police. We'll tell you how they were bad people at 11". And nothing else happens. If someone tries to sue for the force being used without cause, the response is usually "it was just tear gas, ya big baby, get over it". So, nothing changes.
And while I do agree that society is becoming a bit more violent, it's also true and documented that police in many countries have taken to instigating violence at large protests in order to have an excuse to disperse the entire event. There are videos of plainclothes officers getting out of police vehicles, mingling with the crowd, and then starting vandalism or violence in an effort to encourage others. So it's no longer a fair measuring stick to say "we'll only use it on violent crowds", because the police are making the violent crowds.
A respect for life is about the only thing we have left going (and it's marginal at that), so it's for that reason that I say we use it to our advantage, and I discourage the use of nonlethal weapons for crowd control. Make the police do their job, not just hit a button every time they think it's time for a coffee break.
(this is also the reason I oppose the use of unmanned combat vehicles, but that's a discussion for another thread.)
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
It's a recruitment tool. This is going to be used to recruit more "terrorists" etc.
...
Also, if it causes a net increase in trouble and violence I guess the _weapons_ companies are going to be a bit bothered about that aren't they?
1) Sell something to the US military that's supposed to make people pissed off with them "move away" by using something that will piss them off.
2)
3) Profit!
There's actually plenty of info out there on how to actually reduce terrorism, win people to your side, lots of actual real life cases etc.
But it actually seems the people controlling the USA are not interested in reducing the threats to the USA. Just look at the US actions after 9/11 - many Islamic nations were on the US side immediately after 9/11, but what did the USA do instead?
It's not Iraq or Iran or North Korea that's the greatest threat to the USA or the world (it never was Saddam Hussein or even Osama), it's the people ruling the USA. And that's been true for many decades.
Funny the USA spends billions on weapons and wars, and can't even afford to make and use voting machines that work. Makes you wonder what the real priorities and motives are eh?
> Why?
Because I suspect people *individually* are not particularly prone to torturing others.
What happens is that people get places in a situation which leads them to behave sadistically - and they do, with gusto, and so they would use such a device because they would enjoy it. It's not about being torturing people because despite a deep revulsion at the suffering caused, there's a intellectual belief that it will save the lives of others; it's about being sadistic, being deliberately cruel and dehumanizing and inflicting suffering.
As such, a lovely high tech weapon is another way to "tell" your victim, by your actions, that they are violated, dehumanizaed.
Sone WTO protestors showed up planning to riot some did not. The quality of their information in this regard was dubious. The events in both Seattle, Miami, and Italy were marked in large measure by an unwillingness on the part of police to draw the distinction or to wait until there was actual evidence of crimes being committed before "swooping in". In some cases the justification for tear-gassing an otherwize nonviolent and legal group was the claim that they had 'intended to' commit crimes. This is not a legal justification. Similarly the claim was made that such groups were, like Iraqi houses, harbouring would-be attackers. This is also a dubious claim given that many of the nonviolent groups (e.g. United Auto Workers) drew a clear policy of *not* harbouring any of the destructive crowd.
If you have evidence to the contrary by all means share it with me but the evidence that has been provided in the past has been litte more than post-hoc claims and does nothing to change the fact that in most cases nonviolent groups were attacked not the other way around.
There is also a related strain in this with the "Free Speech Zones" that have eruped around the Presdent lately. Now because of "evidence of likely crimes" protestors (especially those oppositional to the President) have been locked into large steel cages at his events. This same thing was done for both the DNC and RNC events befoee the last election. The claim was that since unspecified evidence existed that some people might do bad things everyone who opposed the star of the show needed to be jailed (in this case jailed en-masse for a fixed period of time) even though they had not committed any crime.
Such actions do nothing to enhanse free speech or protect people. All that they do is futher segregate society and draw a line between the cops and the population. All they do is give meat to the arguments of the violent crowd that, since we will be jailed either way what does it matter?
Since you mention the Million Man March consider this. 40 years ago when similar marches were attempted they were met with the tear gas, the guns, the firehoses, and the senseless attacks. At that time they were being locked up or attacked because the cops 'had information' that some of them were planning violence. Said actions only raised levels of violence on both sides and made the arguments of people who advocated violence seem that much more attractive.
People often forget that Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, for all their nonviolence, still spent a lot of time in jail, and a lot of time getting attacked by people in uniform.
-b.
Dude, look at the last month, year, and 3 years news from Iraq on CNN, MSNBC, or any of the four networds. Look for stories of American casualties and then look at the number of Iraqi casualties in the same story. Not common to see them, is it? We fight, we get shot at, yet there doesn't appear to be a close account of how many we kill.
Now look for stories that talk about how many civilians we've killed? Still kind of hard, isn't it? How about stories from the main invasion on how many Iraqi soldiers we killed. You're searching pretty hard aren't you?
Don't you know, logically, that we're not just sitting there letting everyone take pot shots at us? We did successfully take over the country didn't we? We probably had to kill a few people to make that happen, didn't wee? And we know for a fact that bombs, mortar rounds, etc take out civilians as well as soldiers. When you bomb cities, someone always gets caught in the crossfire. So where are the stories even estimating how many we killed?
I know that there are a few stories. They're small, or vague, or go away after a day and don't get picked up by the other networks. But you have to know these things are happening. So how do you justify insinuating we're taking great pains to avoid killing civilians? Do you have some great news source I'm missing? Do you believe that rules of engagement are being followed, without any source other than our own millitary telling you it's true? I'm not saying you should believe they're not being followed, but there's not exactly a lot of justification to believe one way or the other, is there?
I'm not saying I have all the facts. I'm really saying the opposite, that I don't have very many facts about how many Iraqi soldiers or civilians we've killed. I know about a year ago, Bush himself put the number at around 30 thousand (that number was widely reported) which is more than 10 times the numbers of US soldiers killed. Bush is not likely to be exagerating on the high side with that number.
Please don't patronize me by saying I'm being manipulated. The truth is that we're both being manipulated. The question is, can you see it, can you read between the lines and can you come to some conclusion with the data you actually have? My conclusion is that we care a lot about US casualties. We know to the man how many have died. We print all of their names in some newspapers. We read them aloud at cerimonies. The number of dead are in the news almost daily for all media and almost weekly for any individual news network. But we just don't care enough about the Iraqi dead to report casualties with any kind of regularity or any kind of accuracy. That tells me we don't really care that much about Iraqi casualties at all. We have American human beings that die and are morned, even by those that never met them, but Iraqis die the same bloody deaths and we're almost completely indifferent.
You can talk about manipulation all you want, but I generated my conclusion from our press with our numbers. If you think we really care, go back and look again. Iraqis don't even justify a number to us, much less represent human grief. That being the case, I find it very hard to believe that "US forces generally expose themselves to extra risk in order to avoid endangering civilians as much as possible" has very much real meaning.
TW
Because the administration doesn't care what incenses activists. I'm with the administration on that point. They also want to be able to defend our soldiers without causing unnecessarily loss of life. I again agree with the administration.
One persistant problem in Iraq is the recruitment of children to attack U.S. troops with rocks or incendiary devices (probably with an Al Qaeda operative nearby with a camcorder, hoping for a retaliation). This is the kind of thing this is needed for. Current strategies have included shutting down the streets completely until the villagers figure out who's children they are and do something about it. In one case, a soldier followed one of the children back to his home and told his mother about it, upon which the kid got a good smack.
P.S. Yeah, I'm a little biased being from the west, but I'm also an atheist. So all you peaceful Muslims out there with their knickers in a twist over what I wrote, please be at ease and know that my mockery is directed soley at those individuals that perpetrate heinous acts in the name of and therefore mock most sinfully the tenets of, your religion.
You can be an atheist and still not want to succumb to some weird cross-over sheep disease -- AC
1) if someone is trapped in a crowd and is exposed, they may not have the option of turning away, and are likely to be in pain but will keep their eyes open. If you suddenly start burning and are in panic in a crowd, are you going to close your eyes and keep them closed while trying to escape from an unknown source of RF radiation? Most of the public wouldn't.
2) Would you be willing to stare into an open running microwave oven for ANY length of time? Do you know how much damage can be done to tissues in even 250 ms of applied energy? Depends on the field intensity of course.
3) "Tests on monkeys showed that corneal damage heals within 24 hours, the reports claim." This is a lie. Corneal damage of this sort does not heal in 24 hours. Try scratching your eye with a sharp object and seeing how long it takes for even that simple damage to heal, much less cells damaged by being cooked briefly by high-power RF. Go read ophthalmic medical journals. I have. Go research cataracts then come back and rebut me.
4) I didn't say the damage to pregnant women came from being burned. However, pregnant women being burned by this weapon will have great induced stress. Tell me how easy or difficult it is to trigger a miscarriage. Go ahead.
5) "Or when the field intensity ends up with strong lobes they never planned on, because of metal in the urban environment accidently causing concentration."
Yes, I'm sure that they, with their 10 years and $40 million, never thought of that; it's remarkable that you, with a few minutes, $0, and no experience whatsoever with the weapon, could so easily spot such a flaw.
They DID think of that, and in their tests asked volunteers to remove metal-framed glasses to prevent accidental refraction and focusing of the RF to a higher beam intensity around the eyes. I'm sorry to see you believe everything you're spoonfed by the military's PR guys. Of course, governments never lie, so let's all just take everything they say without questioning it. As I said, my background includes RF and microwaves, and yes, I do spot BS without needing the backing of $40 million to do it.