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Heat Ray Gun Fails Final Test; Nixed From War
eldavojohn writes "The heat ray gun to be deployed in Afghanistan has failed its final test and will not be deployed. US military commanders who have had it in the field now have declined to use it. After being tested more than 11,000 times on around 700 volunteers, it failed to achieve satisfaction from the military and will not be deployed."
That we should have been investing in either freeze or death rays.
I'm kinda baffled why anyone in the military thought a heat ray pain gun would help them achieve satisfaction... but who am I to judge someone's kink?
The enemies of Democracy are
I'm sure these things will start showing up in U.S. police departments soon enough.
RTFA. There's nothing in the linked story about it "failing" any test. What happened is that the military decided that no operational need for the weapon existed in Afghanistan.
The ADS does work for crowd control, but generally the military isn't dealing with crowds of rioting civilians attacking their outposts. They're dealing with insurgents fighting with guerilla tactics and IEDs. The ADS is the wrong tool for the job.
It didn't fail any tests at all, it was merely not deployed. I can think of multiple reasons not to deploy this. The biggest being that it is really only useful as crowd control during riots, and even then could be relatively easily taken out. There's also the fact that leaving enemies angry enough to shoot at you alive would seem to be a bad idea. Since the US military, the only people using the tech, would not have enough manpower to roundup all the people they used this against, all it would do is cause greater US casualties in the long run.
"get the hell out of here, the americans have some scary new technology that causes your eyes to glow/ flesh to fall off in a month/ all your female relatives to lose their virginity!"
What, they are going to introduce beer in large quantities?
Ultimately, upgrading your units to use the heat ray is not worth the points cost. Despite the superior strength and AP, you need to be within 12 inches to use it. This is assault range, and at most you are going to get one round of shooting before your opponent closes in. There's an excellent chance you will not get to use it except with bike mounted troops.
The heat ray is ultimately a weapon of opportunity, and you would be better off with the plasma gun for 5 more points. It's rapid fire and gives you a couple good rounds of shooting. Another alternative is a combi-gun with a melta attachment, for all intents and purposes you are going to get to use it the same number of times in a game. Even a standard rapid fire rifle is going to result in more shots against infantry, and the probability of a hit...
oh wait...
this isn't a conversation about 40k, and we are not talking about fantasy SF weapons that don't work. We are talking about real world fantasy weapons that don't work. My mistake!
M
That's 15.7 times each. Being shot with that thing must feel awesome. You'd think the military would have caught on once the volunteers started queueing up for the fifth or sixth time.
The truth is that as much as the military is against non-lethal weapons, they can actually save lives on both sides and help in the winning of the war at the same time because you have less casualties which tend to cause the other side to galvanize against you.
Not really.
The truth is "conditioning" pisses people off. Useless missions to touch the edge, raze some troops for non-tactical entertainment, and run off are a good way to show the enemy that we're completely evil and have no respect for life. Defending our borders and encampments is fine; but dipping into enemy lines just to do some damage and run is not.
Unfortunately, any useful military strategy involves penetration. While defending our encampments has obvious tactical advantages, those encampments are worthless if they don't support military motion. Thus, our military is of the predisposition to advance through enemy resistance onto a target.
In any non-lethal strategy, we have problems. If the enemy is allowed to retreat, they will increase resistance further ahead: the 500 troops facing us at the next battle become 1000 troops. If the enemy is left for dead, they trap our troops in a pincer maneuver: the enemy troops immediately behind us don't have to mobilize for interception far ahead, and can prevent our retreat and attack from behind when we encounter more resistance. Alternately, we can take prisoners of war; this is a lot of prisoners to deal with though, quickly mounting to several times the number of active troops.
Thus, the only viable military strategy to win a war is to advance through enemy resistance, inactivating troops we encounter-- that is, killing them or butchering them to uselessness (remove limbs). For those being invaded, a repelling defense eventually wears out the political atmosphere and economics of the invader; but a decapitation exercise is a better strategy for either side. In either case, lethal force is necessary: invaders that don't die will continue to attack until you die for quite a while, without eroding the political atmosphere anywhere near as quickly as casualties.
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