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How Governments Are Getting Around the UN's Ban On Blinding Laser Weapons
Lasrick writes Despite the UN's 1995 Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, the world is moving closer to laser weapons in both military and law enforcement situations that can cause temporary and even permanent blindness. Military-funded research in this area continues to be conducted by the Optical Radiation Bioeffects and Safety program, and already "dazzlers" have been in use in Afghanistan. Domestic versions of these weapons are intended for use by law enforcement agencies and in theory cause motion-sickness type illness but not blindness. "But something bright enough to dazzle at 300 meters can cause permanent eye damage at 50 meters, and these devices can be set to deliver a narrow (and more intense) beam."
Used on Navy boats. They manual says "for starting fires", but, of course, anyone that looks towards the fire at the reflected beam is most likely blinded, and anyone can walk in front of it. This is no different. The manual says for dazzling at long distance. "Improper use" or "unintended circumstances" will be the excuse when people start to go blind with any of these weapons.
Last time I mentioned tens of kw fire starting lasers potentially leading to blindness from primary or even greater reflections...people down voted me here.
They only expect these rules enforced on other nations.
It's wavelength dependent. visible light will blind people but for the military combat lasers they probably use wavelengths that the eye is opaque to, meaning no focusing on the retina and damage due to minor scatter and reflections, but will still literally cook the eye if directly exposed.
Also, the military type blinder weapons that was developed in the past to intentionally blind had a kilometer+ range. Blindness at 50 meter or blindness at 2km? Is it really a getting around or unintenional consequences(in the same manner that less-lethal weapons can still be lethal)
The Protocol contains a loophole large enough to drive a truck through, never mind some photons:
"Article 3 Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition of this Protocol."
As long as the blinding is a side effect (mitigated by "all feasible precautions to avoid the incidence of permanent blindness to unenhanced vision") of a non-blinding purpose(setting things on fire, destroying machine vision/optical sensor gear, 'dazzling', and basically anything else you might feel like using a laser for, it's all legal. That is not exactly fertile ground for any sort of serious arms control, even if lasers weren't comparatively cheap and trivial to build, especially at the modest powers that will really boil your eyeballs but aren't subject to the engineering challenges of aspirational air-defense and antimissile systems.
It gives me no pleasure to say so; blinding is a pretty ugly thing to do; but the Protocol as written is about as effective as forbidding murder; but making it legal to put a bullet through any hat you see, regardless of whether it contains a head or not.
I can shoot you in the head and kill you but I can not just intentionally blind you?
Actually it seems like a simple enough technical problem. When you go to fire the first burst is a range finder burst and then you set the power for the range. Of course this would all be done by the weapon and not the user.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This plus the microwave weapon that makes you feel like you're on fire for "Crowd Control" - oh, no one would ever use it to "interrogate" someone, I'm sure.
What a sick fucking world we've created, or have allowed to be created by silent consent. Getting tear-gassed in the 60's was all for nothing, we were all just a bunch of idealistic assholes; we shoulda just kept our mouths shut and concentrated an getting rich, then we could be doing the burning and the blinding. What a colossal species fail we are.
I welcome that killer asteroid.
"Life is not magic." Dr. Ron Weiss - "If we don't play God, who will?" Dr. James Watson
How is blinding someone with a laser worse than killing or maiming them with a bullet?
After all, you could turn the cops laser right back at him...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As long as the UN uses the same tactics to stop this research as they're using to stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, nobody cares what they say.
How is blinding someone with a laser worse than killing or maiming them with a bullet?
Welcome to international rules of war. They're chock full of semi-absurdities like this. One of my favorite is the fact that the M2 .50 caliber machine gun is not classified as an anti-personnel weapon. That means you are not allowed to shoot people with it. You can, however, shoot it at any sort of military equipment, including any that may be carried or worn by an enemy soldier.
I say "semi-absurdities" because with all of these rules you can construct situations where they do make a difference and make war more "humane" (to the degree that makes sense). But you can also always construct common scenarios where they're absurd.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It's like the sign says, "Do not shine laser in remaining eye."
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Right. But being non-lethal, there is less to discourage cops from using this technology against the "$15 per hour now" marches instead of potentially violent confrontations.
Police are there to protect the public order, not your civil rights. And public order is often defined by the upper classes as not wanting to see a bunch of dirty hippies marching with signs.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yes. That is exactly the rule. Weapons that are intended to injure but not kill are illegal, weapons intended to kill are ok. Injuring someone because you tried to kill them and missed is considered acceptable, because not everyone has perfect aim.
In world war 1, countries invented poison gas, which caused blindness and severe lung damage, leaving huge numbers of soldiers badly injured but alive, exactly when battlefield medicine was advancing enough to cause soldiers who were losing an arm or a leg to be far more likely to survive.
This caused everyone to realize that poison gas was an amazing weapon for destroying the enemy country for the next two generations by INJURING soldiers -- all the 18 year old guys who are blind and have bad lungs from your gas attack go home, and are a drag on the economy for 50 years by being unable to work and on intensive health care... Civilized countries take care of their veterans, so you know your enemy would deal with the cost... but a world war with unlimited use of these weapons causing millions of badly injured veterans would basically cripple the economies of winners and losers alike.
Thus, after the war, everyone decided that before the chemists finished perfecting gas weapons, we should all agree to ban them. Laser weapons for blinding, as soon as those became vaguely practical, got the same treatment. Other, more obscure types of weapons get this treatment too.
Does anyone give two shits what the UN says, I mean really?
You misunderstand the way the UN works. It is a collection of the world's states. The UN blinding-laser protocol is a protocol authored by various states, and signed by various states. In this case the protocol on blinding weapons was co-authored by the US, and was signed by the US in 2009.
Does anyone care what the "UN says"? In this case, yes, in 2009 the US consented to be bound by that protocol, so it becomes part of the body of US federal law, so yes everyone in the US cares about it.
Hint: whenever you say a sentence with phrase "the UN says", replace it with "the collective nations of the world say", and see if it makes sense. If it doesn't (as in this case) then don't bother posting.
One of the primary reasons that the US Military went with a 5.56mm round instead of the standard 7.62mm is because it does not kill, it wounds people more often. Military Philosophy is that if you wound an enemy, it takes 3 soldiers out of commission and demoralizes them. The wounded soldier, a medic, and someone to carry the guy to the medic. Killing someone only takes 1 person out of commission, and will often make enrage their companions.
The convention against certain types of weapons had nothing to do with not wounding someone, it had to do with humane ways of wounding and killing people. This is why it's perfectly fine to stab someone with a smooth bayonet but you can not stab someone with a serrated bayonet, even though death from serrated bayonet was more likely. You can stitch up a wound from one pretty easily, the other is going to leave a big mess that probably won't be closable..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Believe it or not, those military conventions restricting certain weapons are also done because of an often ignored military logistic. Rather simply put, a bad public perception of your activities will have a strong negative impact on your military capabilities in the long run, and sometimes in the short run.
People get killed in wars, that's been pretty much understood and accepted by the populace. However, there is that little phrase "worse than death". Exactly what it means may vary by culture and time period, but it's very important. In general, if the public finds out you are doing things they consider too abhorrent, they will withdraw their support. That means less recruits, less funding, less access to other resources, and politicians trying to deal with the masses calling for your resignation and/or prosecution for war crimes.
Every military leader through out history that has ignored those very factors has ended their career in disgrace if they were ever in a position to act upon it, unless they got killed first. It's been going on since at least the Roman times. Just look at some of the politics their generals had to put up with. Although admittedly, there wasn't a lot you could do back then that would piss off your people without going out of your way to do it, but still, it did occur at times.
Best is something that takes you out of commission for a while, but causes no permanent damage
From a law enforcement perspective I absolutely agree with you. From a military perspective, this is not true. You don't want to blind someone for 24 hours and have them back on the battlefield (as one example of obviously many).
I'm happy to share knowledge and ideas with you, but we should set terms and ensure that we are discussing the same subject. I posted this due to someone presenting a false military doctrine. If we attempt to merge military and law enforcement doctrines we end up with conflicting ideology in the same generalization because the goals are not compatible. Reading what you wrote above, it appears that you are trying to merge the two hence. I have concern in continuing dialogue.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Be that as it may, laws that are not enforced or do not have penalties for infraction that are enforced are meaningless.
Not true. Often laws are in place to provide cover for those who want to engage in activities the laws sound like they should prevent. For instance if you have a law that has a few well crafted loopholes then the people engaging in activities that may not fall under a technical definition of the law but are certainly against its spirit can point at the law and say "hey, we are following all relevant laws so we are the good guys".
I dont read