"Less-Lethal" Microwave Gun Trial Results Faked

[theweaselking]

Volunteers taking part in tests of the Pentagon's "less-lethal" microwave weapon were banned from wearing glasses or contact lenses due to safety fears. The precautions raise concerns about how safe the Active Denial System (ADS) weapon would be if used in real crowd-control situations.

The ADS fires a 95-gigahertz microwave beam, which is supposed to heat skin and to cause pain but no physical damage. Little information about its effects has been released, but details of tests in 2003 and 2004 were revealed after Edward Hammond, director of the US Sunshine Project - an organisation campaigning against the use of biological and non-lethal weapons - requested them under the Freedom of Information Act.

The tests were carried out at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Two experiments tested pain tolerance levels, while in a third, a "limited military utility assessment", volunteers played the part of rioters or intruders and the ADS was used to drive them away.

The experimenters banned glasses and contact lenses to prevent possible eye damage to the subjects, and in the second and third tests removed any metallic objects such as coins and keys to stop hot spots being created on the skin. They also checked the volunteers' clothes for certain seams, buttons and zips which might also cause hot spots.

The ADS weapon's beam causes pain within 2 to 3 seconds and it becomes intolerable after less than 5 seconds. People's reflex responses to the pain is expected to force them to move out of the beam before their skin can be burnt.

But Neil Davison, co-ordinator of the non-lethal weapons research project at the University of Bradford in the UK, says controlling the amount of radiation received may not be that simple. "How do you ensure that the dose doesn't cross the threshold for permanent damage?" he asks. "What happens if someone in a crowd is unable, for whatever reason, to move away from the beam? Does the weapon cut out to prevent overexposure?"

During the experiments, people playing rioters put up their hands when hit and were given a 15-second cooling-down period before being targeted again. One person suffered a burn in a previous test when the beam was accidentally used on the wrong power setting.

A vehicle-mounted version of ADS called Sheriff could be in service in Iraq in 2006 according to the Department of Defense, and it is also being evaluated by the US Department of Energy for use in defending nuclear facilities. The US marines and police are both working on portable versions, and the US air force is building a system for controlling riots from the air.

Comments

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

Question: Isn't this evil?

Also, I think some countries have laws that would prevent this sort of thing. It would seem a bit counter to the idea of human rights to shoot people with a "pain beam" to break up things like protests.

I mean, cops don't exactly have a record for cautious, moderate use of crowd-control devices.

[jchance.livejournal.com]

For cops, yeah, you're right. For military...if the alternative is live fire, I'll give them the pain beam.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

If it works as advertised, it's a hell of a lot better than tear gas, water cannons, and bullets. Those cause permanent damage.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

At least for the water cannon and rubber bullets, that's cause some damage, maybe, and occasionally permanent. If everyone wearing metal belt buckles, zippers, or glasses gets to deal with bad burns in thos places, the aggregate damage is probably more than water cannons.

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

I'm not fond of the tear gas or bullets either.

[jchance.livejournal.com]

Ah, in the fine tradition of testing a heatseeking missile against a target covered with hotplates. Still...no, it's not perfect, but I'd still call it better than spraying a crowd with bullets. Maybe that's just me, but...yeah.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

> I'd still call it better than spraying a crowd with bullets.

Absolutely. Now, since you've told the operators of the device, these undereducated 19-year-olds already trained to do their jobs without considering the target, that it's going to hurt the target a hell of a lot but *cannot harm it*, how many of them are going to *stop* using it just because somebody is screaming?

How many of them are going to consider they maybe shouldn't keep it on the target an extra few seconds just to "teach him a lesson"?

Since this *is* the US we're talking about, how long do you think it will take before it's used as a tortureinterrogation device?

[jchance.livejournal.com]

Not going to argue on the first point--portraying _anything_ as a zero-risk device is criminally irresponsible. The second, I fear, will be not long at all, as it has even less of a potential to mark than stun guns.