thedrifter
01-26-06, 09:19 AM
New weapon allows a soldier to zap enemy with energy bolt
Knoxville News ^ | 1/26/06
By LISA HOFFMAN, Scripps Howard News Service
January 26, 2006
WASHINGTON - A car moves toward a checkpoint in Iraq, and U.S. troops order it to stop. It doesn't. Fearing the vehicle is a suicide bomb waiting to happen, a soldier aims his weapon.
Using an invisible ray that travels at the speed of light, the soldier zaps the driver with a bolt of energy that feels like a body-wide bee sting. The beam's punch, which leaves neither a burn nor residual pain, instantly stops the driver.
When the soldier approaches the car, he finds not an insurgent intent on attack but a confused civilian who didn't understand the order to halt. If the beam had been a bullet, an innocent Iraqi would be dead.
That is one scenario that boosters use to describe the potential utility of the revolutionary "Active Denial System," a nonlethal weapon developed at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. Whether it will make it to Iraq anytime soon is unclear.
While some U.S. commanders in Iraq have pressed the Pentagon to quickly dispatch it to the Iraq battlefield, the lone, $51 million prototype - which took a decade to create - remains under review, Pentagon spokeswoman Maj. Susan Idziak said.
According to the trade publication InsideDefense.com, the head of the Army's Rapid Equipping Force has requested that the directed-energy weapon be rushed to the field, where it would be used to head off insurgent attacks and prison uprisings.
For Doug Beason, author of "The E-Bomb: How America's New Directed-Energy Weapons Will Change the Way Future Wars Will Be Fought," the slow pace is puzzling. Beason, who is director of defense threat reduction at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, says extensive testing has shown that the weapon lives up to its billing.
"I just cannot think of any reason not to send it over," said Beason, who said he was speaking only for himself and not for Los Alamos or any other government entity.
Neither can Jack Fischer, a spokesman for Raytheon Missile Systems, which built the device.
If the prototype makes it to Iraq, it would be mounted on a Humvee from where its transmitter would send a narrow beam toward a subject. The ultra-high frequency waves of electromagnetic energy penetrate less than 1/64th of an inch, heating up the skin's surface and causing a stinging sensation.
Ellie
Knoxville News ^ | 1/26/06
By LISA HOFFMAN, Scripps Howard News Service
January 26, 2006
WASHINGTON - A car moves toward a checkpoint in Iraq, and U.S. troops order it to stop. It doesn't. Fearing the vehicle is a suicide bomb waiting to happen, a soldier aims his weapon.
Using an invisible ray that travels at the speed of light, the soldier zaps the driver with a bolt of energy that feels like a body-wide bee sting. The beam's punch, which leaves neither a burn nor residual pain, instantly stops the driver.
When the soldier approaches the car, he finds not an insurgent intent on attack but a confused civilian who didn't understand the order to halt. If the beam had been a bullet, an innocent Iraqi would be dead.
That is one scenario that boosters use to describe the potential utility of the revolutionary "Active Denial System," a nonlethal weapon developed at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. Whether it will make it to Iraq anytime soon is unclear.
While some U.S. commanders in Iraq have pressed the Pentagon to quickly dispatch it to the Iraq battlefield, the lone, $51 million prototype - which took a decade to create - remains under review, Pentagon spokeswoman Maj. Susan Idziak said.
According to the trade publication InsideDefense.com, the head of the Army's Rapid Equipping Force has requested that the directed-energy weapon be rushed to the field, where it would be used to head off insurgent attacks and prison uprisings.
For Doug Beason, author of "The E-Bomb: How America's New Directed-Energy Weapons Will Change the Way Future Wars Will Be Fought," the slow pace is puzzling. Beason, who is director of defense threat reduction at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, says extensive testing has shown that the weapon lives up to its billing.
"I just cannot think of any reason not to send it over," said Beason, who said he was speaking only for himself and not for Los Alamos or any other government entity.
Neither can Jack Fischer, a spokesman for Raytheon Missile Systems, which built the device.
If the prototype makes it to Iraq, it would be mounted on a Humvee from where its transmitter would send a narrow beam toward a subject. The ultra-high frequency waves of electromagnetic energy penetrate less than 1/64th of an inch, heating up the skin's surface and causing a stinging sensation.
Ellie