Journalist Gets Blasted By the Pentagon's Pain Ray — Twice

dsinc writes "Wired's Spencer Ackerman voluntarily subjected himself to what the U.S. military calls the Active Denial System, an energy weapon commonly known as the 'Pain Ray' that turns electricity into millimeter wave radio frequency and blasts targets with heat. He describes it thus: 'When the signal goes out over radio to shoot me, there’s no warning — no flash, no smell, no sound, no round. Suddenly my chest and neck feel like they’ve been exposed to a blast furnace, with a sting thrown in for good measure. I’m getting blasted with 12 joules of energy per square centimeter, in a fairly concentrated blast diameter. I last maybe two seconds of curiosity before my body takes the controls and yanks me out of the way of the beam.'" The device has been tested now on over 11,000 people, with only two serious injuries to show for it. However, the device has limitations: rainy weather decreases its effectiveness, and its "boot-up" time is 16 hours, making it useless for breaking up unexpected, impromptu mobs.

Comments

16 hours?

[Haven]

What electrical components take 16 hours to boot up?

What mechanical operation requires 16 hours of prep?

Any insight? I read the article, and it had very little in the way of information.

Re:16 hours?

[Anonymous Coward]

I could be completely wrong here but I think it is because you need to create a superconductive state and it takes 16 hours to get cold enough. That's the only thing I can think of.

Re:16 hours?

[Dogbertius]

The capacitor banks in certain analysis instruments (ie: high precision impedance analyzers) take at least two hours before they are ready to take measurements. The primary reason is that they have to build up the power slowly to avoid stressing the components. Also, they don't want to introduce too much ripple or overshoot, so the charging circuit is effectively overdamped, and has virtually no ripple when fully charged.

Why something that just pumps out such large amounts of juice needs that long a startup cycle though, I have no idea. My best guess is limitations on the components themselves. Maybe the energy storage elements suffer from charging too quickly, or maybe it has to store plenty of energy in advance to maintain a full-power beam over extended periods of time.

Re:16 hours?

[interkin3tic]

Takes that long for the ritualistic sacrifices and dark prayers to Satan to be chanted.

Not really integral to the function, the design team was just really goth.

Re:16 hours?

[mindcandy]

This is CW Microwave at 95ghz so I'd imagine it takes that long for everything to charge and come into spec frequency-wise, since all of the waveguides and antenna would be very sensitive to SWR if the frequency drifts too badly .. probably to the point of destruction at 100kw PEP.

Re:16 hours?

[vlm]

This is CW Microwave at 95ghz so I'd imagine it takes that long for everything to charge and come into spec frequency-wise, since all of the waveguides and antenna would be very sensitive to SWR if the frequency drifts too badly .. probably to the point of destruction at 100kw PEP.

Close not exactly. The highest freq amps I've worked on are just above Ku band and the highest power is a KW or so, so I'm about a factor of 4 low in freq (which in microwave work is practically in their backyard) and low by a factor of 100 in power (which is a big difference).

Waveguide and antenna for microwave work are pretty much inherently broadband. Unless you're doing it wrong or weird darn near 2:1 is normal. Its not the antenna and waveguide. Combining networks are pretty precise ... wavelength at 100 ghz is what 3 mm or so, so you'd like to build them to a hundredth or better of that, or about 0.03 mm accuracy which isn't all that taxing for a machinist. The point being that its probably not realistic to build something that requires 12 sig figs of freq accuracy if you can't build anything to more than maybe 5 or 6 sig figs of wavelength accuracy even in theory.

I can purchase off the shelf GPSDO with frequency accuracy better than 10e-11, even better than 10e-12 on a good day, also rubidium oscillators are not that bad. You can build one that takes "16 hours" or whatever to stabilize. Like I figured out above, you can't build an antenna that depends on 11 sig figs of freq stability (this is required for comm purposes, not required to just blast watts downrange to torture people).

A normal person would engineer in a really good quartz crystal oscillator probably a TXCO which unlike the non-temperature stabilized dip oscilator in you PC that wanders 50 ppm or so, the txco is probably pretty stable to 0.1 or so ppm, or 10e-7, which is better than you can build your wavelength dependent components, so.. also it "boots up" in less than a second.

The puzzler for me is at 100 GHZ you're gonna use WR8 or WR10 and those do not tolerate more than 10 KW or so before arcing over. High freq = small wavelength = small waveguide = short distance for arc to zap across. My guess is they're using an array of like 10x10 or 100 little 1 KW blasters. Some brave OWS protestor or Ron Paul supporter should walk in front of the beam and see if its got the beamwidth characteristics of an antenna a tenth the size.

From having been in the Army reserves two decades ago I can guarantee that the army tech manual for my unisys strange btos minicomputer thingy for ammo accounting probably said it can be unpacked, hooked up, restored from backup, tested, blah blah in 16 hours, but in practice, in sane and normal weather and sane and normal conditions we could set up in like one hour or less including running comm cabling for the remote terminals and test suites and everything. But, yes, airdropped into Antarctica with new/untested/not-pre-setup gear and all noob staff doing it the first time "for real" outside of AIT I could see Fing around for 16 hours. I remember at AIT having to do this one inventory operation that was pretty tricky and they gave us 4 hours and I did it in about 45 minutes because I knew what I was doing, but some hopeless cases took darn near the whole 4 hours.

Re:16 hours?

[idontgno]

ADS is a Raytheon product. They're already pretty good at high-energy microwave systems. And the know a little about tubes, since that was their original product line.

Wear Foil!

[owenferguson]

Would a foil suit help? Can we reflect it back at the source somehow?

Re:Wear Foil!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wear a foil hat all the time. It seems to disable the mind reading abilities of the satellites that the United States government uses.

That's really the only thing you need to worry about. I'm thinking of having foil implanted on the inside of my skull for a more permanent solution. I just hope the person performing the surgery isn't a reptile. He or she or it might kill me on the operating table. You know how They are. They are always plotting against us, and they have been slithering around in the highest offices for so long...

Corner reflector

[Sqr(twg)]

If you ever go to a protest where you expect the government to use one of these on you, bring a buch of corner reflectors.. They can be bought in boat stores, or made cheaply out of paper lined with aluminum foil, and they will send the "pain ray" right back at the operator.

Re:Corner reflector

[sideslash]

Good luck with that. If you are successful, you will be accused of doing horrible things to a law enforcement person, and will be locked away for a very, very long time. The prosecution will describe the effects of the heat ray in very different terms than the defense would, if the tables were turned and you were suing law enforcement for using it on you.

Less Effective

[wisnoskij]

Sounds less effective, most costly, and more dangerous then tear gas.

Re:Less Effective

[billcopc]

It is the American way (tm).

Tube filaments.

[jeffb (2.718)]

Everybody knows that you can't get that perfect warmth without tubes.

Re:future weapons ?

[History's Coming To]

Depends on your frame of reference. Something that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away may not have happened here yet. If it happened 5m years ago (their time) in a galaxy 5.1m lightyears away then it's still 100,000 years in our future.

Hey, you started it.

Torture

[sideslash]

Why is it OK in public spaces for law enforcement and the military to use extreme pain from heat rays and Tasers (TM) to force people to do what they want, yet it's not OK in a private cell to force somebody through pain to share information? We can torture people without leaving permanent physical injury, just like with the heat ray. So do we as a society really have moral qualms about torturing people because of the pain, or is it purely a pragmatic decision based on the low signal to noise ratio of intelligence from tortured prisoners?

Re:Torture

[JustinOpinion]

There's that. There's also the fact that these non-lethal weapons are intended to be used against someone who is being violent: in other words, they are a last resort to subdue someone out of control before they do serious harm to someone, whether that be another citizen (either protestor or bystander), a police officer, or even the person hurting themselves. The purpose in using a non-lethal weapon is that in doing this harm to them, you will prevent a much greater harm.

Which, really, highlights how inappropriately all these non-lethal weapons and anti-riot instruments are used nowadays. They've gone from 'preventing imminent violence and harm' to 'making someone unstable easier to deal with' to 'a way to subdue someone, no different from handcuffing them really'. It's positively criminal and evil how thoughtlessly devices like tasers, rubber bullets, and mace are used nowadays by law enforcement. These things were designed as last resorts and are now being used routinely. If a person is being disruptive but there is no imminent threat of harm, then these tools should not be used. Even if the person has clearly broken a law and needs to be arrested, these tools should be avoided: the person should be subdued peacefully somehow (sometimes this means just waiting, letting them yell and whatnot, until they tire themselves out and can be safely arrested).

Re:future weapons ?

[Hentes]

The device has been tested now on over 11,000 people, with only two serious injuries to show for it.

Doesn't sound like an effective weapon to me.

Other unfortunate uses

[JeanCroix]

Sixteen hours warmup might be far too long for use as crowd control, but it's plenty of time for use in interrogations.

Right answer, wrong question

[srussia]

The proper resistance mantra is:

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.

Re:The same old problem with non-lethal weapons

[pz]

There was an instance of non-lethal weapon abuse by a Boston policeman who shot a Red Sox reveler with a projectile that's supposed to only cause the sensation of burning, like pouring hot sauce on the skin. It's like a targeted remote pepper spray. Problem is, the policeman hit this poor woman in the eye. She died as a result of the injury.

The words "non-lethal weapon" should more accurately be written as "not-usually-lethal weapon". A weapon designed to hurt enough to seriously distract everyone it is used against cannot be non-lethal in all cases, given the wide range of physiologies found in humans, and the wide ranges of unanticipated potential uses. While one might argue whether the officer in question above should have aimed at this student's head (if the weapons are so inaccurate that they cannot be controlled well enough to avoid hitting someone in the head, or if the officer was inadequately trained or prepared to do so, then that is another matter entirely), because he did hit her in the head that must therefore be an anticipated use. Thus this particular paintball-like weapon, and by extension, all non-lethal weapons, must be considered less lethal, but certainly not non-lethal.
 

I saw this on TV the other day

[OzPeter]

The reporter said that the injuries that were sustained were 2nd degree burns because the people didn't get out the way quick enough.

But what if you can't get out of the way? If you are trapped you could easily sustain 2nd or 3rd degree burns over quite a bit of your body - and that sort of thing is potentially lethal.

This device is non-lethal in the sense that a bullet is non-lethal. I shoot someone in the hand they probably don't die. I shoot someone in the head and they will probably die.

Resistance...

[Roger W Moore]

Has to be reflective, though; if it's just resistive/dissipative, then you're wrapped in flaming fabric.

So with these things resistance really is futile.