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US Deploys 'Heat-Ray' In Afghanistan
Koreantoast writes "The United States military has deployed Raytheon's newly developed Active Denial System (ADS), a millimeter-wave, 'non-lethal' heat-ray, to Afghanistan. The weapon generates a 'burning sensation' that is supposedly harmless, with the military claiming that the chance of injury is at less than 0.1%; numerous volunteers including reporters over the last several years have experienced its effects during various trials and demonstrations. While US military spokesperson Lt. Col. John Dorrian states that the weapon has not yet been operationally used, the tense situation in theater will ensure its usage soon enough. Proponents of ADS believe the system may help limit civilian deaths in counterinsurgency operations and provide new, safer ways to disperse crowds and control riots, but opponents fear that the system's long-term effects are not fully known and that the device may even be used for torture. Regardless, if ADS is successful in the field, we'll probably see this mobile microwave at your next local protest or riot."
... is the defrost setting any good?
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
That active denial system sounds eerily like the thermal discouragement beam...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFRbGppLaUI
FoOd fOr ThOUghT.
Here's how to create microwave-resistant clothing.
That miserable desert wasn't hot enough that they had to throw in a 'heat ray'?
I'm a bit concerned about how this might interact with my tinfoil hat... and cod piece!
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
"the device may even be used for torture."
Hell, I can torture Muslims by forcing them to watch a Lady Gaga video.
Should I say Americans test the prototype weapons on Afghans ? ;)
Well, this comment gets censored anyway...;)
Isn't it kind of a big jump to go from "weapon of war" to "local cops can afford this?" I don't think the VA Beach or Norfolk police can afford much of anything that Raytheon sells. Of course, neither article mentions the price of this thing, but the general rule is "if you have to ask, you can't afford it." Of course, its not like Posse Comitatus means anything anymore, so maybe they'll just get a unit from the local military base to come out for the day and "adivse" them with it.
made of hotdogs stitched together! Instant field meal !!!
It's been known for over fifty years that microwaves, at just a few milliwatts per square centimeter, cause cataracts. That's why there are rather tight limits on microwave exposure around radar and telecom equipment.
Spraying microwaves around and possibly inducing mass blindness is not going to look good in the history books.
FTFA: "the US military says the chance of injury from the system is 0.1%. It's already been tested more than 11,000 times"
So, there has already been eleven injuries from that?
The chances of anything coming from Mars...
Yup, heat ray is absolutely safe!
Rather than high-tech indiscriminate non-lethal weapons, the US should invest much more in intelligence gathering and infiltration. Which is difficult, but just because slapping a shiny new weapon into the battlefield is easier, doesn't mean it's better.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Nothing my tin foil suit can't handle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSMyY3_dmrM
Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) used in Pittsburgh.
Expect the heat-ray very soon.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The cops or soldiers that use them will work out how to make the weapon have far worse effects than were intended.They *always* do.
For example, trapping fleeing civilians against a wall or fence so that they can't esape, or more than one beam focussed on one person. (Incidentally, one technique with plastic bullets or baton rounds is to ricochet them off the street, so that they shatter and rebound up into the victims face)
Like tasers, they say that they're a 'non-lethal' alternative to guns, but in reality they still use guns the same as they always did, but now use tasers when they would just have grabbed someone & handcuffed them, or just spoke to them.
I don't really know anything about microwave physics...or any kind of wave physics, but would holding a metal sheet in front of you (either flat or curved) be effective in dispersing the energy directed towards the crowd/enemy, or maybe even direct it back towards the operator of the device?
The 'burning sensation' was developed and extensively tested based on the US military's prior experience in the Red Light district of Amsterdam and Eddie Murphy's stand up comedy.
that means 20 popped eyeballs every time you turn it at a middling crowd of protesters?
The abbreviation, which could mean any number of things, is telling of the military habit to name destructive, harmful things with innocuous sounding phrases that do not imply damage "Active Denial System" could just as easily have been a web term or a feature of an antivirus program. Imagine a TV ad: "Norton's Active-Denial-System or ADS is proven to..." This is shared by government which will often use formal, even flowery language to cover up a practice which is morally or ethically contentious:
For instance, a military spokeman or officer or a high-up politician cannot very well come out and say this without coming off badly from it: "We believe that as we kill off our opponents in the Taliban a number of civilian casualties are necessary to allow our victory."
Therefore you get pretentious, padded-out diction like this: "We concede that the Taliban are a formidable foe who possess a humanitarian record that we can only describe as deplorable. However if we are to restore and preserve the freedoms of the Afghan people, and we think you'd agree with us on this, that a certain number of hazards for those present in the field are bound up in these transitional times are justified in the context of the achievement of the coalition's greater goals: We're in the sphere of granting those formerly under oppression a life of liberty, free of oppression and terrorism."
This sort of puffed out prose is a long-time euphemism which has only proliferated over the 100 and more years - masses of Latin words lengthen a point, and those who do listen can't be bothered digging out the true meaning which was basically that civilian deaths can't be avoided and are actually needed for the coalition to win. The end justifies the means. But in our hypothetical wording up there this was disguised: The great enemy of clear writing is insincerity. A well-known author named George Orwell wrote much on this and his essays are recommended.
Only weapons specifically designed to cause permanent blindness are banned. See the convention on this. Since this weapon primary function is not blinding, this would fall outside this protocol.
In summary, you are wrong on this.
Reminds me of Dune. "I hold at your neck the gom jabbar."
Maybe the Black Smoke (as described by H G Wells) would be more useful at flushing Al Quaeda/Taliban out of their caves...
This is totally horrible.
Just like tasers, this will give nincompoops of military the freedom to hurt civilians and innocent people on the grounds that it won't 'harm' or 'kill' them.
It just gives them more incentive to be trigger happy against the civilians because the aggressors (read: military or police personnel) won't fear consequences of being court martialed for murder and there will be less public outcry against 'harmless' methods of crowd control.
This is just an alternative to the golden military rule: "Double check your fucking target", turning it into "Shoot your fucking target, if it happens to be the wrong one, just apologize".
Good grief - safety pins can be used for torture - maybe they should be banned!
That means you point it at 1000 people and one of them will be injured. In what way? Skin burns or toasted cerebral cortex?
If some over-aggressive soldier leaves it on too long, does that make the number .2% or 10%?
How long do we have to point it at people to change that to 100%? 1000 times too long or just a few seconds too much?
This is why I prefer the M-60 machine gun. After firing a few thousand rounds of 7.62mm NATO down the street, all you need to clean up is a firehose.
The "safer" a weapon is, the less the restrictions and controls over it's use, and the more often it is used.
As we have seen with tasers, people begin to see them as a tool which achieves their objective with minimal repercussions. There follows a normalisation process resulting in usage becoming considered appropriate even in situations where other forms of violence would be considered unacceptable. Like when trying to stop a student making a scene as he is leaving the premises as requested. Tasers were touted as a less violent option to bullets, instead they seem to be used as a more violent option to wrestling (and, if you go by Youtube, talking).
Even if the technology is 100% safe and cannot result in permanent injury, it is still the exercise of pain and violence in controlling civilians and must be very tightly controlled. Instead there seems to be very little interest in the misapplication of violence by officials if nobody dies.
Seriously, making people feel like they are on fire in order to "disperse crowds"?
The Coppertone girl must have mod points today.
One of them will be serious injured. (statistics an lies...)
But still it surely better than the current mandate the soldier in afganistan have. Their main weapon now are bullits and heavier variant, and it is no suprise that a lot of people are killed because of this. Some might be civiliians (it is not a traditional war after all). If you point a automatic weapon at a crowd, the odds that you hurt lots of people is much higher.
A better solution would be that the US invasion force would have to keep to laws like police would have to, but having less lethal weapons might be a working alternative.
Military Zips Lips on Pain Ray Accident (An airman received second-degree burns April 4 during a test of the Defense Department’s nonlethal millimeter-wave heat beam")
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/11/seven-months-af/
Another type of area denial weapon at the G20 in Pittsburgh:
http://gizmodo.com/5369190/lrad-sound-cannon-used-on-pittsburgh-g20-protesters
... in Afghanistan they smile and wave as you drive by. Then they whip out their cell phones and trigger the IED. How's your heat ray against that?
If this is just an excuse to see if a new gizmo works by harassing a few villagers with it, it'll make an excellent recruiting tool for the Taliban.
Have gnu, will travel.
And so the use of force to perpetrate democracy, freedom, and capitalism continues unabated, it seems. Brought to you by the same group of people responsible for the fair-minded genius of ACTA.
fresh off the beams
Where people might be hesitant to use lethal force due to the consequences, I suspect that they'll be all to willing to use "non-lethal" weapons as soon as things start to look remotely ugly. Or possibly for no reason at all. It's a lot harder to prove that an incident occurred if it doesn't leave bodies behind. Of course, they'll know their actions are wrong and will attempt to make it illegal to record incidents where the weapon is used, much as police departments are trying to prevent recordings of officers now so that there will be no documented proof of police brutality.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Actually, I think this weapon, oh sorry, device might have a frightening psychological effect on folk who can't really comprehend what the thing is doing. They know about guns that shoot bullets. But this thing didn't shoot anything, but they're suddenly feeling uncomfortably hot.
"Yo, they're using black magic! Is that allowed by the Geneva Conventions?"
Remember, when the first US troops arrived in Afghanistan, the Afghanis thought that mirrored sunglasses had X-ray vision, so that the soldiers could peep at their wives. Even if the local Taliban leader has a microwave oven at home and tries to explain:
"Do no worry! It is harmless! It is just like my microwave oven here . . . oh, um . . . "
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Countdown until it gets used on some poor bloke handcuffed to a railing.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
I knew it would prove essential someday!
Yep. I'm sure feeling a bit of heat is really going to work on a Taliban fellow who grew up in a desert. When guys like that are picking a fight, there are two things they understand: dead and not dead. If not dead, keep fighting.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
Reading about this weapon always reminds me of the one in E. M. Unfred's prison on the Moon:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13783502/Weaseljumper-Part-III
"I followed Jae and No-man through the silent corridors of the Penitentiary. The cells were all empty and the doors stood open. The autocams pivoted to aim at us as we passed by. Their plasma dart canisters, which I assumed were empty, hung menacingly from them. I knew what those things could do: they were designed for mob suppression, on the really, really good theory that a quick way to command the attention and respect of a band of Penitentiary inmates driven to insane rage by the monotony of four gray walls and constant subliminal suggestions of happy conformity would be to boil off the unlucky ones in the front row, leaving the rest of the group retching on the nauseating vapors. The plasma dart was a favorite weaseler toy. One had only to be careful not to use it on a weasel, for those fumes would corrode your lungs and your chest would cave in and you would have to be disposed of as toxic waste."
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Instead, the next time we link a terrorist act to a training location, we nuke the place. Everyone wants to reduce the number of nukes in our arsenal, too, so this should be a double-win for the pacifists.
(non non-americans were hurt in preparing this post)
Can't test it in America, on it's own people, the people wouldn't stand for it, but test it on the "terrorist" and the USA won't care, then, when they perfect it, they can bring it over to the USA, and when Obamacare kicks in, and the rest of the constitutionally guaranteed rights are taken away and the people rise up, they can use it on it's own people.
The Agonizer! Please tell me the project manager looked like Leonard Nimoy with a beard.
The ADS being an EM emitter, I wonder what would happen if the demonstrators decided to carry corner reflectors with them.
GPG 0x1B479C78
You are reading this wrong. The problem is that the army is used to disperse unarmed crowds. A protest is a political act, not a military one. It's not the army's job to control it or to develop weapons to do it.
As for crowds in foreign countries, the situation is even worse. It's not the US army's job to be there at all. Before someone says "but the Taliban kills innocent people" let me ask who created the Taliban?
These will last about a week in Afghanistan. Unlike the civilian targets the designers are used to living with, the Afghani's, and most anyone else in that region, will not hesitate to shoot back with non-non-lethal weapons.
that clothing is for SHORT BURSTS of microwaves. OTH, if you have a beam hit you for any length of time, you are going to be ripping off those clothes. Why? Because of the sparks that will be hitting your body.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"I don't know why they hate us"
Please, don't water it down. Call it what it is, a "Pain Ray".
High pressure water has been used to disperse crowds and break up riots for longer than I've been alive. It's very effective and relatively safe, but here in America we've been reluctant to use it because of it's ties to the race riots of the 1960s. So we shun a cheap, effective, and easy to deploy system of crowd control because nobody wants to be seen as a ruthless dictator as they clamp down on the masses, and yet we pursue other less-well-tested methods of doing the exact same thing.
Does no one else see the irony?
Will this be effective on the neighbor's dog that won't stop barking?
Can it make people stop playing rap music?
May I use it to make people get off my lawn?
The main problem people usually have with microwaves is that they're undetectable, unwarned and plausibly denied after the fact (pooh what ? Some coagulated protein is no proof for anything, good sire !).
Government law enforcement agencies should use easily detectable, and easily fingerprinted non-lethal techs, for easy avoidance, and for after the fact accountability.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
I live within 20 miles of the base (or one of them) this was tested at. I regularly eat lunch with some of the guys that saw this thing under test & development.
During initial tests--and this may have been turned down (haven't heard anything in a year)--they used this against humans outdoors. Multiple individuals that were tested dived out of the way of this (onto mattresses placed down to shelter the impact) so hard they broke bones.
Repeat: Whatever this is, it hurts so horrifically that combat trained individuals dived onto padded mattresses and broke limbs.
What the fuck do people think will happen the first time this is used on a crowded street? I'd kill to avoid pain like that.
This isn't a nonlethal weapon--this thing will be the T-Virus of crowd suppression, used only as an excuse to aggravate civilians to the breaking point and then fire into them.
This won't be used in situations where they want to cause death.
No sig today...
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
"Heat rays just slap at the problem. Nerve gas solves it."
Advice: on VPS providers
If this should get deployed at the civilian level,how long before some enterprising soul decides to:
a) abscond the equipment
b) manages to mass produce crude copies of said equipment
c) distributes these copies amongst random elements within protest crowds
If it's anything about human nature I've seen, it's that while there are no shortage of cowards, it is equally true that given a perceived equalizer, those same people are more than willing to make use of it in ways unintended.
If I were a member of law enforcement, I'd be VERY interested in protective equipment against the use of these same devices.
500m range in Afghanistan.
You're likely to be responded to with a barrage of AK-47 projectiles and/or RPG rounds (probably before you even unfold your antenna. A Jeep with a metal sail isn't exactly stealth).
Might work better in the open against banner waving tree huggers.
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Im sure there are several ways to destroy the feed point or reflector on the active denial system....
High powered rifle
Sledgehammer
Catapult
Coating the reflector with a microwave dispersant.
They better have live ammo as a backup to keep
these issues at bay.
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Proponents of ADS believe the system may help limit civilian deaths in counterinsurgency operations and provide new, safer ways to disperse crowds and control riots, but opponents fear that the system's long-term effects are not fully known and that the device may even be used for torture. Regardless, if ADS is successful in the field, we'll probably see this mobile microwave at your next local protest or riot."
In other news, OCZ has released a new 1,000 watt power supply. Proponents believe it will help power the next generation of high-powered workstations and servers. Opponents think it could even be used for torture.
...and a baseball bat...and a knife, and a screwdriver.
And a pencil could be used for torture.
Morons: Anything can be used for torture. What matters is the character of individuals. You don't take away screwdrivers because they *could* be used for torture. You find the person using the screwdriver to torture someone, and put a bullet between their eyes.
There's no place like
The first cop that blasts me with an energy weapon is going to land his ass in court.
1) why the heck are you *STILL* in afghanistan ?
2) Is this weapon AUTHORIZED for use against US civilian
3) do you think the feeling of pain will lower the unrest ?
Answer those two questions and you will see why people see this as a abd development.
I hope someone comes up with a cheap design for a reflector. Hopefully efficient enough to give the operators a taste themselves.
I never trusted Desmond on Lost. I always knew he was an Taliban spy.
Groucho not Karl.
Ever wonder how a microwave oven keeps itself from cooking anything outside it even though it has a window?
The trick is the perforated metal panel in the window. The spacing and size of the holes are such that the microwaves reflect off the the surface as if it was a solid sheet, at least for the frequency of microwaves the oven generates.
I would think that it would not be hard to work out what size mesh would be needed to shield a persons eye's, or full face (body?) from this system.
The ADS may turn out to be one of those Hi-tech devices that can be defeated by very low tech methods, like the $50,000+ radar guided missiles that can get distracted by a couple of shredded $.50 Mylar blanket.
Also makes me wonder how well a shield made out of plywood and heavy aluminum foil would work, hell a little extra work to give it the right curve and you might be able to send the beam back at the soldiers behind the thing.
Of one thing I am certain, this thing is not going to be as effective as they hope, and cheap effective counter measures will be found.
If this ADS causes injuries like cataracts, it should not be sold and debated as some sort of wonder weapon that does not cause injury.
It should be described as an effective ADS that its targets hate, and run from, but that can cause blindness. That might keep reporters from extolling its temporary virtues. It would allow the people (remember them?) do debate if we want this weapon used in our name.
We place soldiers in harms way, and that they can get harmed is a great deterrent to our frivolously placing soldiers in harms way. I am a bit uneasy and making war easy and painless for our politicians.
As someone who was beat up by the police, essentially for asking a question, in an unfilmed courtroom I think the problem is worse than is let on. For the person who posted in response to this man, critical of what he said, I think you'd feel different if it happened to you. The subposted said wouldn't there be more brutality on film if it was common? First, not everyone has a camera on them all the time and not everyone is using the camera all the time and second police are often very sensitive to being recorded and will behave differently if they know they are. I'm sure there are plenty of honest cops out there, but the one who was involved in my incident wasn't afraid to try to lie or badmouth to cover their own use of excessive force. Recording in a courtroom, where I got beat up, is illegal nor does the state itself provide any recordings of it's proceedings. I wonder why; no wonder why...
Does it go "whoosh" when hit by a molotov cocktail?
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
"... but opponents fear that the system's long-term effects are not fully known..."
unlike the long term effects of lead with a copper sheath travelling at hypersonic speeds.
The next thing to remember is to put next things next.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
Give someone in a position of power a weapon which is supposed to be safe, and it'll get used way more often than you'd expected. Tasers are a great example of this. Remember the "don't tase me, man!" video, or any of the other instances we've seen of police horribly abusing them?
The thing about a gun is that the mopes (or even the clever folks) holding them understand their consequences and know that there will be ramifications.
Hence my question about the amount of time you use them and what the slope of the curve on damage for the victims is. If these are designed to be used for 30 second bursts and can affect a crowd of hundreds, we can expect them to be used over and over on such crowds, with little or no restraint.
Yes, Kent States happen, but soldiers know that they're supposed to avoid such things. They know what happens when they pull the trigger. This microwave weapon, conversely, is a pleasant weapon to wield -- no visible/known consequences.
"Hey man, don't nuke us, man!" or "Could you please now, stop nuking us. We're trying to leave. Please stop. My friend's eyeballs are steaming."
...just another civilian torture device. It's 2010, and it's dystopian.
Prior to the convention the US (through Martin-Marietta / GE) developed the Stingray laser system. My recollection was that it was man portable, but FAS says it's mounted on a Bradley AFV. It's putatively designed to disable enemy sensors; it has a scan mode where it sweeps low intensity lasers around and looks for back scatter from optical systems. When that occurs, it illuminates the source with much more powerful radiation, to disable the optics. Thing is, if the optics in question have a human retina at the far end rather than a CCD, it still serves it's functional role of "disabling the sensor". I presume that the system was shelved in '86 because of the protocol mentioned above, but am not sure.
Anyway, a risk of "less than lethal" systems is that it drops the activation energy for their use. If something like the Stingray were deployed, I'd think it would get co-opted for use in roles beyond just disabling range finders. Another link with more blinding systems.
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Please check out the Dept of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and its DHS counterparts. They printed fiat money to buy a ton of LRAD sound cannons in Pittsburgh, handed out via these grants. This is the domesticization of the military-industrial complex, like a domestic version of our foreign arms aid budget. The exact same companies are pushing this junk out to local police departments, financed with debt via fed programs. :-(
I have been LRAD'ed at the G20 and had a similar experience at the 2008 Republican National Convention. They want to dump the 2012 DNC on Minneapolis too, God forbid
Bad news brewing in here
http://cryptome.org/dodi/fm-3-28.zip
New Army Field Manual draft -- all this stuff is coming home as NORTHCOM-commanded Full Spectrum Dominance type doctrine. Please read this new revised Army field manual to have a better idea.
These domestic military operations are rapidly expanding - in recent weeks, mass scanning/stops in NY state and now in CA border areas. You *need* to study the details before something like the G20 descends on your city -- I have seen these domestic military crackdown ops up close and personal and it's really, really bad.
--hongpong.com
Am I the only one who saw the rising popularity of Tasers and was uncomfortably reminded of the agonizers from all of those Mirror Universe episodes of Star Trek? "Your agonizer, Mr. Sulu." Clearly our world is the goateed, evil one.
This "ADS" thing is just more of the same. A remote-control torture device. Bah. How long until it's used on inconvenient crowds of hippies here? Boy, it would sure be convenient if those protesters could be made to go home and shut the hell up, wouldn't it?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
1. It was tested, under controlled conditions, by experienced engineers who only turned the thing on long enough to test it. What happens when you get some sadistic grunt on the trigger who just holds the fire button down?
Well, hypothetically the safeties kick in. In practice, when things go wrong you get $18,000 worth of second degree burns. And that's during a controlled test.
Of course, nobody ever encounters additional surprises when going from controlled tests to open production.
"The weapon generates a 'burning sensation' that is supposedly harmless" - Really?
And they expected that it was going to effect people that are used to temperatures in the Afghan Desert in exactly what way?
Grab their [insert body part with burning sensation here] and yell "Sunscreen! I need Sunscreen!!!" - and then run home?