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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."
That active denial system sounds eerily like the thermal discouragement beam...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFRbGppLaUI
FoOd fOr ThOUghT.
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?
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"
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?
Tin foil hats will have to be outlawed, like bulletproof vests.
Only criminals need tinfoil hats. You ain't no CRIMINAL, is you?
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.
Reminds me of Dune. "I hold at your neck the gom jabbar."
Did you even think about what you typed before you hit 'submit'? State Police will put 9 rounds into you, maximum. Soldiers will put that many in a burst, and you might get a couple bursts.
If you take a single shot from a state policeman's sidearm, and a single shot from a soldier's sidearm, I would agree with you. But many soldiers are behind SAWs like the BAR, or are looking down the barrel of an M2.
I don't give a shit what the ammo is made of - if it's got some metal in it, and is coming at me at 4, 5, 6 rounds per second, my survivability isn't going to be all that high.
Sure, a soldier's last-resort, government-issued sidearm isn't as lethal as a state police officer's privately purchased first line of defense. Why would you expect it to be, when the soldier has some badass firepower, and the state police officer has just a single sidearm, and maybe a shotgun in the trunk?
That said, I agree with your point continuing the GP's that international law regarding weapons of war is pretty backwards.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Only if you lose. I've never heard of war crimes trials being conducting against the winning side, have you?
The ADS being an EM emitter, I wonder what would happen if the demonstrators decided to carry corner reflectors with them.
GPG 0x1B479C78
Obviously, war crimes trials cannot be "conducted against" the winning side(in the classic Nuremberg sense of "war crimes trial") because "conducting a trial against" somebody requires that they be in your physical possession, or likely to be in the near future.
In that sense, it is practically a tautology that war crimes trials are never conducted against the winning side.
However, and this is important, all armies have internal codes of conduct and(unless they are really breaking down logistically, which means they probably aren't the winner) do enforce them at least much of the time. Thus, unless the army in question in fact endorses war crimes, the process of "war crimes trial" will be a series of individual, internal trials of members of the army, by that army, for breaking the rules. You can only be prosecuted for doing things that your army approves of if you lose; but any army that isn't currently disintegrating carries out internal punishment more or less continually for violations of its rules.
How many total years in jail were served by anyone as a result of Mai Lai?
Tin foil hats will have to be outlawed, like bulletproof vests.
Only criminals need tinfoil hats. You ain't no CRIMINAL, is you?
You might mean it as a joke, but the Germans are a step ahead of you here -- anything that can serve to protect you against police violence in a protest has already been outlawed for the last twenty years as a "protective weapon" (the law is 17a of the Versammlungsgesetz).
They have outlawed padded clothing that protects against beatings, mouthguards that protect against police knocking your teeth out, masks that protect against teargas and ballistic vests that make it harder to maim you from a distance. Outlawing tin foil hats is the logical next step.
A couple of points I'd like to point out.
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?
2. Cataract surgery is out patient in areas with the tech and for people with the money for it. What about in some town in Iraq or Afghanistan, or the back waters of Louisiana, where they don't even have indoor plumbing?
That said I think all you points however are dead on. Technically I don't think this device is covered by that section of the Geneva C's since it was not specifically made to cause blindness. I do however think that how it may be used later could be considered a war crime, like handcuffing somebody to the side of a building and zapping them until they talk, or die from shock.
Time will tell.
I would mod you up if I could.
The US Army, and all other major armies, are designed to do one thing: destroy other armies. In a word, to kill. The American military is the best in the world at fighting other armies. They blew through the Iraqi army in literally hours. They haven't lost in a fair fight since Korea.
If the US wanted to, they could just let their military do their thing, and completely annihilate every country they're fighting in. They wouldn't even need nukes, just let the tanks roll and shoot everything that moves. Pave it, sell it to Disney, put up a theme park.
Of course, no leader in their right mind would do that. Most of the ones that aren't in their right mind still wouldn't.
The problem is threefold. First, no sane insurgent will go against the Army or Marine in "fair" combat. Second, soldiers aren't trained for nonlethal combat. You can't exactly pull punches with 5.56mm full metal jacket. Third, you can't deploy police to a country halfway across the globe.
So, the solution is what America always goes with: invent something. Make a poison gas that doesn't kill. Invent bullets made of rubber. Give the soldiers some kind of sci-fi non-death ray.
Sure, it won't be perfect. It'll probably kill people. But that's the thing people forget. You recall the saying, "shit happens"? That applies triple in a warzone. Shit happens. Jammed rifles. Friendly fire. Helicopter crashes. Civilians get shot.
War is the ultimate necessary evil. It takes homicide to the level of science, mass-produced murder. It is also completely necessary, and probably always will be.
You can unilaterally declare war. You can NOT unilaterally declare peace.
I don't know if you were serious or joking, but that might actually be a viable defense! A suit made out of, say, a couple of $2 metalized "space blankets", with eye holes covered by very fine (1mm or smaller mesh) metal screen. And ground straps on your shoes! Don't forget that. Those are readily available from industrial supply companies. All in all, it seems to me that if you shopped around you could work up an effective "Active Admission" (as opposed to "Denial") suit for under $20.
But reportedly, not death.
And that's my point.
Given misuse of this or a dozen men with fully automatic weapons, this will cause injuries. Bullets through your brainpan tend to cause death.
Are you really arguing that we need to worry about an injury rate of 0.3% or 3% or 30%, when the alternative is death? Because that sort of idiocy is what I was pointing out as a very poor rationale for holding back use on this weapon.
This is a weapon used by SOLDIERS for crowd control. They are currently using automatic weapons. Why is it so hard to see that there is a very, very good chance that this is a better option?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor